In India, if you are a Muslim man, you can divorce your wife via a simple SMS. Or through online services such as Skype, or messaging services like Whatsapp. A Muslim bride waits to take vows that could be instantly broken via SMS. Danish Siddiqui /Reuters
This “instant divorce” is called “triple talaq”. It is legal and allowed under the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937, which states that husbands can separate from their wives by simply uttering the word “talaq” three times.
But when a Muslim woman seeks to divorce, she needs to go through a longer, different procedure.
Supporters of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which initially backed the discriminatory law. Amit Dave/Reuters
The Supreme Court undertook the review after Muslim women activists campaigned for an end to the practice, calling for reform of Muslim personal law. They also demanded better living conditions, more facilities, and fairer rights overall, on par with women from other communities in the country’s vast multicultural society.
In India, religious freedom is a fundamental constitutional right. In accordance with your faith, personal laws can apply and decide upon your marriage, divorce and inheritance matters, among other things. When spouses are of different religions, they rely on the Special Marriage Act.
But is “triple talaq” a religious or legal question? Scholars Faizan Mustafa and women’s rights activist Flavia Agnes have invoked constitutional provisions regarding freedom of religion, minority rights and cultural preservation to justify noninterference by the judiciary in existing personal laws.
The court has examined both the legal and religious aspects of “triple talaq” and is currently reserving its verdict, which is expected to come in the next few weeks.
Used by far-right groups
The conservative All India Muslim Personal Law Board, an influential organisation for Indian Muslims, initially supported the practice. But on May 22, it stated that those who use talaqshould face a social boycott.
It did not, however, call for reforming Muslim law. And other Muslim organisations support it too.
Students burn Valentine Day’s greetings card, claiming they are contrary to Indian values. Amit Dave/Reuters
But why are Muslim women not allowed to speak for themselves?
Both Hindu and Muslim right-wing groups work in a form of consensus to keep this issue simmering to serve their existential needs.
There also attempt to marginalise moderate and rational voices within the Muslim community on the abolition of instant divorce and project the community as a monolith block.
The diversity of Indian Muslims
But Indian Muslims are not homogeneous. Besides the main Shia and Sunni sects, they are also divided along many cross-cutting lines of identities, which prevents the community from having a uniform view on “triple talaq”.
Indian Muslims are too diverse to be considered as a monolithic group. Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
None of these categories follow similar patterns in term of social or cultural practices. Muslims, like other Indians, clash over class or income, and have mutually exclusive interests and deprivations. Their diversity runs along linguistic and regional variations from Kashmir (Himalayan northern India) to Kanyakumari (south).
Due to intense disagreements within and between these social groups, it is difficult to develop consensus on something called an Uniform Islamic Code that may deal with marriage, divorce, inheritance, maintenance, adoption and polygamy.
Need for a unique civil code
Given their diversity, it’s important to preserve the cultural autonomy of Muslim groups. Reform of existing Muslim personal laws must take place and could use some of the egalitarian principles found in the Quran.
Second, the Special Marriage Act should be reformed on broader lines to work as a uniform civil code as there must be a choice available for all, especially for those who disagree with the religious personal laws governing them.
We need to deconstruct the claims of those stating that “triple talaq” is legal and Islamic. In many cases, disadvantaged and uneducated groups among Muslims are unaware of what is called Islamic and are easily influenced by self-proclaimed clerics and scholars.
Does a Muslim cease to be one if he or she does not follow the so-called religious sanctity of “triple talaq”?
The Muslim community must show its progressive side by proposing and accepting the reform of personal laws to reconcile with gender justice norms. It should work on a civil code that challenges not only the un-Islamic “patriarchal bias” but also the unquestioned privileges of conservative forces among Muslims.
NEW DELHI: After the British had vanquished the Indians in our first war of independence in 1857 under the leadership of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, they virtually leveled the entire sprawling fashionable market cum residential colonies of the Mughal nobility living in the land between the Jama Masjid and Lal Qila, and turned that into their first cantonment and the regal Jama Masjid into a stable for their horses.
Image: Indian Express
The Indian nobility was so badly demoralized and pauperized that it was in no position to dispute much less challenge this sacrilege of their prized heritage. That was when the butchers of Meerut and vicinity rose and offered to buy back the place from the British and restore it as a mosque. And they paid a princely price in those days of Rs 12 crore to buy back the Jama Masjid and restore its preeminence.
Such was the monetary strength of the butchers among the Muslim community. Even today Makki mian’s palatial house is situated opposite Jama Masjid alongside Chawri Bazar/Dariba Kalan, close to where they sell the fireworks. Makki mian’s forefathers had collected the amount and handed over to the British. Makki mian himself must have died several decades ago.
It is not for nothing that the Hindutva outfits have targeted the meat trade, for this, they have keenly observed, will break the economic backbone of the Muslims.
So, the first thing Yogi Adityanath did on assuming the office of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh was to attack the meat trade, fully aware that this more than anything will hurt the Muslims, not merely in terms of attacking their food habits but the source of sustenance, neigh prosperity of the Muslim community.
That it will also hurt the Dalits who apart from being non vegetarians are also intricately involved with the meat business in several accessory trades, including the leather industry and even the OBCs who are the main cattle traders, is an add on. So with one stroke you kill three sets of despicable non Aryan social groups.
If the object was merely to protect the cow, and we may or may not agree, but never mind that, if the object was to protect the cow and mind you not the bullock or an ageing bull, least of all a buffalo or an ox, why issue the diktat to implicitly obstruct the slaughter of the buffaloes as well? Because, the real purpose is to close the cottage meat industry and remember only the next door meat seller, for the big factories owned by the Jain community, exporting from Saudi Arabia to Mexico are still running and will continue to run full steam.
The Aryavrat, even Rajasthan High Court judge Mahesh Chand Sharma, has never put any premium on the buffalo. Buffalo is black and only the Yamaraj, himself black, rides the black animal. There is no religious sanctity attached to the buffalo in any Hindu text.
So the Hindutva brigade and their private army of cow vigilantes are not fired by any love for their religion or the alleged hurt to their religious sentiments. It’s what Guru Golwalkar said long ago: “The Muslims will seek nothing and expect nothing.” They will live merely on sufferance. Under the current dispensation what else should be expected?
So in this far right establishment the Muslims will not become second class citizens, they already are reduced to that state. For decades the RSS/BJP were looking at neighbouring Pakistan with amazement and dare say,appreciation: “If they can achieve this why can’t we?” . Pakistan has been their ideal for all of the 70 years of its creation, and we are copying Pakistan in every which way, unmindful of what a situation that country has landed themselves in.
1977 elections were my first opportunity to cast my vote and like many others I too was campaigning actively for defeating Indira Gandhi. My best friend and class fellow from AMU Hari Kishan Sharma, no leftist, was dismayed at my rooting for the Janata Party pointing out what a communal rabble rouser Atal Bihari Vajpayee was then. But I brushed him aside. But as soon as Vajpayee became India’s External Affairs Minister, where did he go first? To Islamabad to enjoy the hospitality of that mullah in khaki General Mohammad Zia-ul Haq to virtually endorse the dismissal of the first constitutionally elected government of Pakistan led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto was hanged later and thanks to Vajpayee presiding over the Foreign office, we refused to condemn that judicial murder by Zia ul Haq.
Soon as Vajpayee became the Prime Minister he headed Lahore wards yet again with much fanfare to bless the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Then, soon after NDA went out of power. L K Advani led a large contingent to Pakistan and travelled all around from Lahore to Islamabad to Karachi.
Now our very own Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi, first thing he thought even before being sworn in was to beckon Nawaz Sharif to come and join in the celebrations which he did. Mind you, I am all for very cordial diplomatic relations with Pakistan and regular exchange of people and people to people dialogue. Bu we are here talking of those who said “Doob maro, doob maro ( go drown yourself)” when Pakistan’s Prime Minister came to pay obeisance at Ajmer Dargah.
The point is that while the Sangh fans hatred and anger against Muslims, in India or Pakistan, they are bewitched by the Pakistani model of governance and are ever ready to emulate that. There was one difference though: we bet that the ethos of democracy is so ingrained in us in India that we can never become a military dictatorship. Seeing the way the Army is today being made into a holy cow, and the way that out of turn promotee General Bipin Rawat is gloating about Major Gogoi for tying a Kashmiri youth as a human shield to his vehicle, I can’t say how far we are from a military takeover now.
(Faraz Ahmad is a senior journalist based in New Delhi).
A Dalit MP from Gujarat, MP of the Rajya Sabha has reportedly admitted to be under “tremendous pressure” from his political bosses in Delhi not to speak out the way he did against the gruesome Una incident, in which four Dalit youths were tied with a chain attached to an SUV, and thrashed by cow vigilantes in a procession in the town.
Shambhunath Tundiya, a Dalit MP, considered dharmaguru in the community, had told a local TV channel that the BJP had failed to act against atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat, and the Una incident was the “last straw.”
In a video which went viral, he said, Dalits would not tolerate “oppression any more”, and that the authorities should realize, the Dalits have been “forced to eat dead cow’s beef for centuries because they were forced by circumstances…”
“I was made to retract. You don’t know the type of problems I faced in the party after I made that statement. I will not speak out any more”, Tundiya is learnt to have told a Dalit delegation which went to meet him to persuade him to speak out against “attacks” on Dalits across India in the recent past, especially in Saharanpur, where 56 Dalit houses were blazed by an upper caste crowd.
Martin Macwan reading out the demands at Zanzarka rally
The delegation, which belonged to the Dr Ambedkar Vechan Pratibandh Samiti, or Stop Selling Dr Ambedkar Committee, went to Tundiya as part of its two-week long programme across Gujarat to ask Gujarat’s Dalit MPs and MLAs as to what they have done to protect the community, in whose name they were elected from the reserved constituency.
Revealing this, a member of the Committee, Kirit Rathod – one of the organizers of a well-attended June 3 Dalit rally in Zanzarka, the “religious seat” of Tundiya about 100 km south-west of Ahmedabad – told Counterview, “We had gone to meet him on May 27 to inform him about our mass agitation programme, which ends on June 13. Tundiya was quite apologetic. He said he knew the ground realities UP, where he had gone to campaign during the recent elections.”
Following the June 3 rally, the Committee members, led by Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust founder Martin Macwan met Tundiya to seek his answers on why he was not speaking out for the Dalit cause in Parliament and outside. "I will raise the issue", is all he told the delegation.
Banner on display at Zanzarka rally
The list of 10 questions on which Tundiya was sought answer at the Zanzarka rally included what he had done to press upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ban cow vigilantes. While reading out the list of questions, a member a Samiti recalled, Modi had personally insisted that there was no place of cow vigilantes who attacked Dalits, and action should be taken against them. The four Dalit youths were attacked on suspicion of cow slaughter.
Following a month of uproar across India against cow vigilantes, indirectly referring to the Una incident, which took place in July second week last year, Modi had said, “It makes me angry that people are running shops in the name of cow protection… Some people indulge in anti-social activities at night, and in the day masquerade as cow protectors.”
Other questions asked to Tundiya included whether he had accused the slogans such as “Ambedkar murdabad” and “Ravidas Murdabad”, ransacking of the Ravidas temple, blazing of 56 Dalit houses, murder of a Dalit youth, all of which happened in Saharanpur, UP, on May 5, 2017; what had he done to stop forced migration of Dalits from their villages in Gujarat and elsewhere in India; what had he done to press upon the government to act against manual scavenging, and so on.
Addressing the Zanzarka rally, Macwan announced that Dalit Valmiki community women were preparing a 16-feet soap to be delivered to UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, whose men had handed over over shampoos and soaps to 100-odd Musahar Dalit families, asking them to “come clean” before they met him in Kushinagar district.
The Guardian UK reports on the Saturday Night (June 3) terror attack on London Bridge. The story may be read here
Here is what happened:
♦ Attackers drove van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in Borough Market ♦ Prime minister says too much ‘tolerance of extremism’ in UK ♦ 48 injured people taken to hospitals ♦ General election campaigning suspended
In the event of a major ISIS-inspired action in Britain, what principles do far-sighted – and brave – politicians need to observe? First published on 20 January 2017.
Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire/PA Images. All rights reserved.
"A few months before the 7/7 attacks in London in July 2005, and in the wake of the Madrid bombings, I went to a meeting that the Bishop of Bradford had convened to try and think through how a multi-confessional city like Bradford might respond if there was a similar attack in the UK. He brought together representatives from the local mosques, the police, the Council, the youth service and community groups, and I think this might have been one of the factors that helped maintain a degree of calm and resilience in the city when the 7/7 attacks came. Remembering this was part of what prompted me to write the following piece for openDemocracy in January, which was republished on 23 March in the light of the attack in Westminster. Following last night’s terrible attack at the Manchester Arena, it may be helpful to look at the original column again. Now that we are in middle of a very fractious general election campaign it may be that the final few paragraphs, especially the last one, are particularly salient." Paul Rogers 23 May 2017
Another 7/7-type attack in the United Kingdom is likely. In the aftermath, it will be essential to respond carefully with responses that seek to explain the wider context. In London, the inquest has opened into the deaths of thirty British beach tourists in Sousse, Tunisia in June 2015. Eight others were killed in the ISIS-facilitated attack. Many questions remain over the warnings given and the levels of security offered.
The assault, as well as causing great grief to family and friends, had a substantial national impact. Yet this was less than the bombings of London's transport network on 7 July 2007, when fifty-two people were killed on a bus and three underground trains. (The four perpetrators also died). It remains the defining event for Britain in relation to political violence, closely connected to the Iraq war although this was strenuously denied by the Blair government at the time.
This “disconnect” has remained a feature of British attitudes to al-Qaida, ISIS and other extreme Islamist groups, even if some people pointed out at the time that the loss of life on "7/7" was no higher than the daily loss of life in Iraq.
Now, nearly twelve years later, the war goes on with a similar disconnect – there is simply no appreciation that Britain is an integral part of a major war that started thirty months ago, in August 2014. It may take the form of a sustained air-assault using strike-aircraft and armed-drones, but its intensity is simply unrecorded in the establishment media. This is a straightforward example of “remote warfare” conducted outside of public debate.
Thus, when another attack within Britain on the scale of 7/7 happens, there will be little understanding of the general motivations of those responsible. People will naturally react with horror, asking – why us? Politicians and analysts will find it very difficult even to try and explain the connection between what is happening "there" and "here". The straightforward yet uncomfortable answer is that Britain is at war – so what else can be expected? It may be a war that gets little attention, there may be virtually no parliamentary debate on its conduct, but it is a war nonetheless.
There are several factors which underpin this approach.
The post-9/11 western-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have left three countries as failed or failing states, killed several hundred thousand people and displaced millions. This causes persistent anger and bitterness right across the Middle East and beyond. While the Syrian civil war started as the repression of dissent by an insecure and repressive regime, it has evolved into a much more complex "double proxy war" which regional rulers and the wider international community have failed to address. This adds to the animosity.
The situation in Iraq is particularly grievous, given that it was the United States and its coalition partners that started the conflict and also gave rise directly to the evolution of ISIS. The Iraq Body Count project estimates the direct civilian death-toll since 2003 at more than 169,000. After a relative decline over 2009-13, an upsurge in the past three years has seen 53,000 lose their lives through violence.
Since the air-war started in August 2014 the Pentagon calculates that over 30,000 targets have been attacked with more than 60,000 missiles and bombs, and 50,000 ISIS supporters have been killed. But there is abundant evidence that western forces have directly killed many civilians. AirWars reports that:
"As ISIL was forced to retreat in both Iraq and Syria, the year [2016] saw a dramatic jump in reported civilian deaths from Coalition airstrikes. A total of between 2,932 and 4,041 non-combatant fatalities are alleged for 2016, stemming from 445 separate claimed Coalition-caused incidents in both Iraq and Syria."
ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), and other groups have no air-defence capabilities yet are determined to continue the war, seeing themselves as guardians of Islam under attack by the “crusader” forces of the west. At a time of retreat they will be even more determined than ever to take the war to the enemy, whether by the sustained encouragement and even facilitation of individual attacks such as Berlin or Nice, or more organised attacks such as in Paris and Brussels.
The aims of these groups are threefold: * Retribution via straightforward paramilitary actions, responding especially to the current reversals in Iraq. * Demonstrating to the wider world, especially across the Middle East, that they remain a force to be reckoned with. * Inciting as much anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred as possible in the target countries.
In the last of these they are greatly aided by the attitudes of Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, UKIP and other western political phenomena, especially the incitement of fear of refugees which reached its height in Britain in the closing days of the Brexit campaign.
A repeat 7/7–level attack in Britain is probable, although when and how is impossible to say. Again, it will not be easy to respond. But in trying to do so, two factors need to be born in mind. First, the aim of ISIS and others will be to incite hatred. Any tendency to encourage that is doing the work of ISIS. This can and should be said repeatedly.
Second, the links between the attack and the ongoing war in Iraq and Syria must be made. That Britain is still at war after fifteen years suggests that some rethinking is required.
Politicians who make these points will face immediate accusations of appeasement, not least in the media. But however difficult the case, it needs to be made if the tide of war is to be turned.
About the author: Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international security adviser, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers
The Indian Writers' Forum participated in the Dharwad Literature Festival held on 6-7 May, 2017. The IWF Team spoke to Dr. Muzaffar Assadi, Professor of Political Science at the University of Mysore about the slow rise of communalism in Karnataka and the gradual co-option of local icons into the Hindutva fold. The aim, Professor Assadi explains, is to convert the masses into Hindus, mainly from the marginalised communities, into cultural and finally into political Hindus.
Cultural Syncretism and Tolerance When compared to other parts of India, whether it’s Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, or Haryana and other places, Karnataka has been relatively free from communal tension and communal ideology. Karnataka remained unaffected by the Partition. It never had any memories of the Partition. In fact, memories of Partition came to Karnataka through texts or in the form of textual memories.
The first instance of communal tension can be traced back to 1920. It started on a small pretext that is the Ganesha Festival. In fact, one may recall that there is a long absence of communal tension in the history of Karnataka. The reasons were: Karnataka had a tolerant society and it celebrated cultural syncretism. Some examples of its cultural and religious syncretism are represented by the ritual practice of Naga Pantha and the influence of Sufism. As a result, this syncretic culture gave rise to a “fuzzy” community where identities were blurred.
The State was not only tolerant, it was also receptive. One remembers the Bahmani Kingdom/ Bahmani Sultanate around the Bijapur area which not only upheld Islamic tradition, they also extended their support to literature, the arts, and languages from the other princely states.
In the 1920s, a non-Brahmin movement set the stage for an affirmative action to secure reservation for marginalized groups in the princely state. Not only was there a strong alliance between communities and the State but also among the different communities. There was no division based on communal identities. Watch the interview here and read the transcript below.
Communal Ideology enters Karnataka in 1980 But in the late 1980s, the scene changed. Karnataka was on the verge of major communal shake up. Since then, certain pockets have been treated as experimental labs of the Hindutva. The coastal belt of Karnataka is the best example. What led to this transformation were the land reforms of 1970s.
These land reforms were progressive in nature and they provided social security to backward classes in the coastal region. They created a category of cultivators who were not landlords. Prior to this, their economy was in doldrums. They were given small patches of land. But after the land reforms, they were able to secure their own social identity. But in the 1980s this changed. There was widespread social and economic crisis. The BJP took advantage of this crisis and tried to appropriate the disillusioned lot which in turn created many fringe groups. Therefore, communal violence in the coastal belt was mainly engineered by the Hindutva groups.
The fringe groups comprised people from the Other Backward Classes. If one observes the structure of communal tension in Karnataka, three things become evident. Communal tension is primarily engineered by Hindutva groups in the coastal belt, the bashing category consists of people from the OBCs; and finally, the ideological apparatus for this was provided by the upper castes. However, this does not mean there was no backlash.
Competitive Communalism This further gave rise to competitive communalism in the region. Islamic Fundamentalist groups such as the Popular Front of India and the Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) are results of the aforesaid competitive communalism.
Any kind of dialogue between Muslims and Hindus has nearly stopped in the coastal region. Competitive communalism has also penetrated the public sphere. One sees saffron flags everywhere—in bus stands, tied to poles, rickshaws, etc. Communal tension has seeped into everyday life—one rarely sees people from these two communities get together in the coastal belt.
Communal ideology is increasingly appropriating Karnataka’s syncretic culture. Liberal spaces are shrinking in Karnataka. They are also trying to influence civil society groups and trying to mobilise and organise them.
Most importantly, political defeat is not the primary concern of communal politics in Karnataka. What is more important is the task of converting a Hindu into a cultural Hindu, especially people from the Other Backward Classes. In order to do this, they have started appropriating local symbols like Narayan Guru, Ambedkar, Rani Abbakka (the freedom fighter from a place called Ullal) and Kittur Rani Chennamma (by naming a university after her).
Who is countering this rapidly growing communal politics in Karnataka?
There are five or six groups. However, they are not strong enough to confront or counter communal politics in Karnataka. Since communal politics has penetrated everyday life practices: culture, lifestyle, texts, etc, one has to build a strong counter-culture. Strong multifaceted civil society and institutional collectives should be formed to counter communal ideology with ideas of secularism, liberalism, and freedom. Only heterogeneous, multifaceted fronts can help rebuild a tolerant and communally free Karnataka.
Against an unprecedented wave of smears, the socialist Labour leader has bucked the consensus and slashed his opponent's lead.
Jeremy Corbyn
This June 8, British voters will decide whether or not to continue with the conservative status quo, or take a chance on a new kind of left-wing politics that would represent a firm break with the orthodoxies of the ruling Conservative Party and the Labour Party’s establishment wing.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party’s intrepid new socialist leader, has pledged to drastically change his society. His party’s leftist manifesto calls for more funding for the socialized health care system, nationalizing the country’s tattered railways and putting a stop to massive cuts in social spending.
Yet Corbyn has also taken a step further than others in his party have dared, pledging to do what to many progressives remains a shibboleth: oppose war and imperialism and limit the violent blowback they have caused back home.
The liberal political establishment in the U.S. and across Western Europe has uncritically supported wars from Iraq, to Libya, to the push for regime change in Syria, often in the name of humanitarianism and “civilian protection.”
While many progressives have portrayed the so-called War on Terror as an unfortunate but necessary evil, Corbyn has made a crucial break with the norms of the political establishment, condemning the imperial wars the West has waged and emphasizing that this military intervention has only fueled the violent extremism the British government claims to be combating.
A new series of polls shows Corbyn has slashed Prime Minister Theresa May's enormous lead to just 3 points, and has surged ahead of her in London.
Manchester Attack and Government Complicity On May 22, a man detonated a suicide bomb at a concert in Manchester, England, killing two dozen civilians and wounding more than 100, many of them children. The Salafi-jihadist group ISIS took credit for the attack.
Salman Abedi, the attacker, was a British citizen — not a refugee — from a family that was part of the Western government-backed right-wing Libyan opposition to longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi.
As Max Blumenthal detailed in an article on AlterNet, the British intelligence services played a direct role in supporting Islamist militancy in Libya, working closely with the Al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in a cynical bid to topple Qaddafi. When NATO escalated 2011 protests in Libya into an explicit regime change operation , the U.S. and U.K. governments encouraged foreign fighters to travel to the North African nation to help fight. Among those who took the MI6 ratline from Manchester to Libya was Ramadan Abedi, the father of the bomber.
During her tenure as Home Secretary, Theresa May was in charge of overseeing the operations of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency. It was during this time that Libya was flooded with fighters from the U.K., with passports being handed even to British-Libyan citizens under government control orders for their alleged ties to extremist groups.
According to Akram Ramadan , a mechanic from Manchester who fought with the LIFG, roughly three-quarters of all foreign fighters in Libya arrived from his hometown in Britain.
With Ramadan Abedi on the Libyan front lines, his children eventually followed in his footsteps. His youngest son, Hamza, arrived in the country and joined up with an ISIS affiliate, while Salman took a trip to Libya just days before the bombing. Abedi had also reportedly visited Syria, apparently to make common cause with the jihadist groups battling the Syrian government with arms and support from the West and its Gulf allies.
In the past, right-wing politicians have successfully exploited terror attacks like the kind carried out in Manchester, stoking fear and anti-Muslim bigotry to shift public opinion. Jeremy Corbyn, a left-wing anti-war stalwart, upended the dynamic by introducing a counter-narrative that challenged violent extremism at its roots.
While many liberals spoke of the bombing as a mere tragedy, whitewashing its politicized nature, Corbyn pointed his finger at interventionism and empire.
Groundbreaking Speech In a groundbreaking speech on May 26, Jeremy Corbyn pledged to “change what we do abroad.” He linked Western wars of aggression to the plague of violent jihadist attacks targeting soft targets in the West.
“Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home,” Corbyn noted.
Many experts have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries & terrorism here at home pic.twitter.com/6nlWf67WsI — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 26, 2017
The leftist Labour leader forcefully condemned the “horrific terror and the brutal slaughter of innocent people.” But unlike his political peers, Corbyn did not depoliticize the bombing. He explained that in order to prevent future attacks, Britain’s foreign policy must change. Foreign wars may not be the only thing fueling this violence, he noted, but they are a key factor.
“We must be brave enough to admit the War on Terror is simply not working,” Corbyn emphasized. “We need a smarter way to reduce the threat from countries that nurture terrorists and generate terrorism.”
“That assessment in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children,” he added. “Those terrorists will forever be reviled and implacably held to account for their actions.”
Ultimately, in order to defeat terrorism, Corbyn stressed, we must understand what fuels it: “Protecting this country requires us to be both strong against terrorism and strong against the causes of terrorism.”
The Media’s War on Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn’s comments provoked a predictable festival of mock outrage from his Tory opponents, who borrowed a line from their Republican counterparts across the pond and accused him of denigrating the "troops.” The attacks were accompanied by a wave of tabloid headlines alleging that Corbyn had fostered deep friendships with terrorist groups from Hamas to the IRA.
The Conservative Party issued a ham-handed attack, claiming the Labour leader’s speech “has shown today why he is not up to the job of keeping our country safe.” The statement continued , “Jeremy Corbyn has a long record of siding with our enemies.” Britain’s Conservative security minister smeared Corbyn, claiming his speech “justified” terrorism.
Centrist Blairites also chimed in. The liberal interventionist and pro-Israel activist Nick Cohen lashed out at Corbyn, writing a hackneyed op-ed that utterly ignored the Western wars he has wholeheartedly supported that have destabilized the Middle East and fueled Salafi-jihadism. Cohen instead framed violent extremism as a matter of “values,” subtly reinforcing the line of far-right Islamophobes like UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
The corporate media did its part, tarring and feathering the leftist Labour leader. A columnist at the right-wing Telegraph published a hatchet job not so subtly titled “Jeremy Corbyn has long hated Britain.”
Analysis from Loughborough University’s Center for Research in Communication and Culture showed the almost comically ridiculous bias Labour faces in the British media.
Few media outlets, even ostensibly left-leaning newspapers like the Guardian, acknowledged that, in reality, the policies pursued by the U.K.’s right-wing government, with the support of Theresa May, have led to the spread of the type of violent extremism that fueled the Manchester attack.
Virtually no one cited the British government reports that corroborate Corbyn’s argument.
The Government’s Own Findings Back Corbyn Up Behind the bluster, multiple reports released by the British government backed up Corbyn’s remarks.
In 2016, the British House of Commons’ bipartisan Foreign Affairs Committee published a detailed report on the 2011 war in Libya exposing that the NATO military intervention had been sold on lies .
Among the deceptions deployed to justify NATO regime change was the myth that the Libyan opposition was politically “moderate.” The Foreign Affairs Committee report on the other hand noted that the British government “failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element.”
The House of Commons report added, “It is now clear that militant Islamist militias played a critical role in the rebellion from February 2011 onwards.”
Moreover, the U.K. government’s enormous, decade-long Iraq Inquiry, popularly known as the Chilcot Report , revealed in 2016 that before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, British intelligence officials had repeatedly warned that the joint American-British war would fuel and empower Salafi-jihadist groups like al-Qaeda.
Despite these reports, centrist former Labour prime minister Tony Blair teamed up with the U.S. in an invasion that the United Nations explicitly said violated international law . Blair admitted in 2015 that the Iraq War, in which he played President George W. Bush’s junior partner, gave rise to ISIS .
Closing the Gap With mere days before the election, Jeremy Corbyn has managed to close the once large chasm between his party and the Tories. And he has done this despite enormous odds and tremendous opposition from his party’s ossified establishment.
When the snap election was scheduled by Prime Minister May in April, it seemed a Tory victory was all but certain. In the months since, support for Labour has slowly increased. On May 31, leading pollster YouGov put Labour just 3 percent behind the Conservatives, which could lose its parliamentary majority. Corbyn and May are neck and neck.
Corbyn has managed to do this in spite of a level of media bias that is almost unprecedented in British politics. Even the Guardian has treated Corbyn as a pariah .
Yet the British public has rejected the elite media’s torrent of attacks, sending a surge of support for Labour. While the political establishment and the corporate media have been unable to explain why the scourge of violent extremism continues, Corbyn has provided the public the answers it has been desperately seeking. His deft response to the Manchester attack appears to be paying dues.
For years, Corbyn has been an outspoken, principled critic of Western wars. He has long been a leader in the Stop the War Coalition. (In a symbolic anecdote, Chelsea Clinton interrupted a Stop the War Coalition event in 2001 that featured Corbyn as a speaker.)
Jeremy Corbyn is trying to mainstream a left-wing alternative to the discredited centrist and the far-right fringe. Rather than running from his political identity, he has put it front and center, reminding British voters after Manchester, “I have spent my political life working for peace and human rights and to bring an end to conflict and devastating wars.”
Corbyn may not beat the odds and unseat May, but his unexpected surge in the polls has served as a stunning rebuke to the militaristic political elite, and gives a glimmer of hope to those who still imagine an end to the forever war.
Ben Norton is a reporter for AlterNet's Grayzone Project. You can follow him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton .
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah . His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at@MaxBlumenthal .
