The Kuwaiti government has decided to arrest and deport an unspecified number of expats who participated in a protest against the controversial remarks by two former functionaries of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against Prophet Mohammad, reported a newswire service. This is because the Gulf nation’s laws do not allow expats to organise or participate in such demonstrations.

“The detectives are in the process of arresting them and referring to the deportation centre to be deported to their countries and will be banned from entering Kuwait again,” reported Al Rai, a Kuwaiti newspaper. The report did not mention the nationalities of those expatriates who took part in the demonstration. The newspaper that is published from Kuwait also states that instructions have been issued to arrest expats from the Fahaheel area who organised a demonstration after Friday prayers in support of Prophet Muhammad.

Arab News, an English-language daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia, quoted sources as saying that the protesters will be deported to their respective countries as they violated the laws and regulations of the country which prohibit sit-ins or demonstrations by expats.

Kuwait was one of the several Gulf countries that had summoned the Indian envoy over the remarks of the former BJP functionaries. A week ago, the Kuwait Foreign Ministry had publicly announced that that the Indian Ambassador to Kuwait Sibi George was summoned and handed over an official protest note by the Assistant Secretary of State for Asia Affairs expressing Kuwait’s “categorical rejection and condemnation” of the statements issued by an official of the ruling party against the Prophet.

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), that has almost never backtracked on a slew of hate speeches made by elected officials and party members, made an exception this time after the widespread condemnation of Gulf nations. It was quick to suspend and expel party spokesperson Nupur Sharma and Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal, both of whom had used offensive language against Prophet Mohammed, as it sought to defuse a row over the issue.

Thereafter, the ministry had welcomed the statement issued by the ruling party in India, in which it announced the suspension of Sharma.

Close to a dozen Islamic countries had condemned the controversial remarks uttered on a television debate on May 26. Times Now has since removed the video of the show from public viewing. 

Back in New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the government has made it clear that the remarks do not reflect the views of the government. “We have made it pretty clear that tweets and comments do not reflect views of the government,” MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said at a media briefing soon after the diplomatic fiasco. 

“This has been conveyed to our interlocutors as also the fact that action has been taken by the concerned quarters against those who made the comments and tweets. I do not think I have anything additional to say on this,” he had said.

Related:

Bulldozer Injustice: How far is the regime planning to go?

Right-wing calls Ranchi boy’s ordeal a “victim card” tactic

Ranchi: 2 dead, Muslim boy terrorised for Friday protests

Spontaneous pan-India protests against Nupur Sharma

After Times Now debate Nupur Sharma gets online threats from trolls

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Freedom of thought needs an atmosphere of tolerance where people can speak their mind and no one is forced to accept the beliefs of others. In the Middle East, though, tolerance is in short supply and ideas that don't fit the expectations of society and governments are viewed as a threat.

Where religion is concerned, the "threat" can come from almost anyone with unorthodox ideas but especially from those who reject religion entirely.

Increasingly, atheists in Arab countries are characterised as dangerous extremists – to be feared no less than violent jihadists.

Persecuting atheists is the inevitable result of governments setting themselves up as guardians of faith. Among the 22 Arab League countries, Islam is "the religion of the state" in 16 of them: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the UAE and Yemen. 

For most of them, this is more than just a token gesture; it also serves political purposes. Embracing religion and posing as guardians of morality is one way for regimes to acquire some legitimacy, and claiming a mandate from God can be useful if they don't have a mandate from the public.

State religions, in their most innocuous form, signal an official preference for one particular kind of faith and, by implication, a lesser status for others. But the effects become far more obtrusive when governments rely on state religion as an aid to legitimacy – in which case the state religion has to be actively supported and policed. That, in turn, de-legitimises other belief systems and legitimises intolerance and discrimination directed against them. 

The policing of religion in Arab countries takes many forms, from governments appointing clerics and setting the theme for weekly sermons to the enforcement of fasting during Ramadan. 

To shield the government-approved version of religion from criticism, a variety of mechanisms can be deployed. These include laws against "defaming" religion and proselytising by non-Muslims but general laws regarding public order, telecommunications and the media may also apply.

In Algeria, for instance, the law forbids making, storing, or distributing printed or audiovisual materials with the intention of "shaking the faith" of a Muslim. In Oman, using the internet in ways that "might prejudice public order or religious values" is an imprisonable offence.

For Muslims who publicly abandon Islam the problem is even worse. In Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen anyone convicted of apostasy faces the threat – at least in theory – of execution.

Using a state religion as an aid to legitimacy turns the personal beliefs of individuals into a political issue, because disagreeing with the state's theological position also implies disloyalty to the state. Those who happen to disagree must either conform or risk becoming not only a religious dissident but a political one too.

Equating religious conformity with loyalty to the state allows Arab governments to label non-conformists not merely as dissidents but extremists. This in turn provides an excuse for suppressing them, as has been seen in Egypt with the Sisi regime's campaign against atheism and in Saudi Arabia where "promotion of atheist thought" became officially classified as terrorism.

Although Saudi Arabia's war on atheists stems from fundamentalist theology, in Egypt it's the opposite: the Sisi regime presents itself as a beacon of religious moderation. To describe the Sisi brand of Islam as moderate, though, is rather misleading. "Militantly mainstream" might be a better term. Theologically speaking it is middle-of the-road and relatively bland but also illiberal and authoritarian in character.

The result in Egypt is a kind of enforced centrism. While allowing some scope for tolerance – of other monotheistic religions, for example – the regime sets limits on discourse about religion in order to confine it to the middle ground. The main intention, obviously, was to place Islamist theology beyond the bounds of acceptability but at the other end of the spectrum it also means that atheism, scepticism and liberal interpretations of Islam have become forms of extremism.

Defining 'extremism'

Absurd as it might seem to place atheists in the same category as extremists such as terrorists and jihadists, the issue hinges on how "extremism" is defined: extreme in relation to what? Violent and intolerant extremism is a global phenomenon but confusion arises when governments try to define it by reference to national or culture-specific values.

Arab states are not the only offenders in this respect, though. They have been assisted by western governments defining "extremism" in a similar way – as rejection of a specific national culture rather than rejection of universal rights and international norms.

In its effort to prevent radicalisation of students, for example, the British government defined extremism as "vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values". Also in the context of eradicating extremism, the education minister talked about actively promoting "British values" in schools.

Approaching the problem in this way invites other countries to do likewise – even if their own national and cultural values would be considered extreme in relation to universal rights and international norms. Thus, Saudis can justifiably claim that atheism is contrary to fundamental Saudi values. Furthermore, the British minister's idea of instilling British values into British schoolchildren is not very different in principle from "instilling the Islamic faith" in young Saudis – which the kingdom's Basic Law stipulates as one of the main goals of education.

This article was first published on al-Bab.
 

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The consequences could be catastrophic in Iraq and around the world. The United States may reap a whirlwind of terrorist retaliation – and step up the possibility of nuclear Armageddon.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and company are committed to an "imperial ambition," as G. John Ikenberry wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs – "a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor" and in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector and enforcer."

That ambition surely includes much expanded control over Persian Gulf resources and military bases to impose a preferred form of order in the region.

Even before the administration began beating the war drums against Iraq, there were plenty of warnings that US adventurism would lead to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as terror, for deterrence or revenge.

Right now, Washington is teaching the world a dangerous lesson: If you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible threat. Otherwise we will demolish you.

There is good reason to believe that the war with Iraq is intended, in part, to demonstrate what lies ahead when the empire decides to strike a blow — though "war" is hardly the proper term, given the gross mismatch of forces.

A flood of propaganda warns that if we do not stop Saddam Hussein today he will destroy us tomorrow.

Last October, when Congress granted the president the authority to go to war, it was "to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."

But no country in Iraq’s neighbourhood seems overly concerned about Saddam, much as they may hate the murderous tyrant.

Perhaps that is because the neighbours know that Iraq’s people are at the edge of survival. Iraq has become one of the weakest states in the region. As a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences points out, Iraq’s economy and military expenditures are ‘a fraction of some of its neighbours’.

Indeed, in recent years, countries nearby have sought to reintegrate Iraq into the region, including Iran and Kuwait, both invaded by Iraq.

Saddam benefited from US support through the war with Iran and beyond, up to the day of the invasion of Kuwait. Those responsible are largely back at the helm in Washington today.

President Ronald Reagan and the previous Bush administration provided aid to Saddam, along with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, back when he was far more dangerous than he is now, and had already committed his worst crimes, like murdering thousands of Kurds with poison gas.

An end to Saddam’s rule would lift a horrible burden from the people of Iraq. There is good reason to believe that he would suffer the fate of Nicolae Ceausescu and other vicious tyrants if Iraqi society were not devastated by harsh sanctions that force the population to rely on Saddam for survival while strengthening him and his clique.

Saddam remains a terrible threat to those within his reach. Today, his reach does not extend beyond his own domains, though it is likely that US aggression could inspire a new generation of terrorists bent on revenge, and might induce Iraq to carry out terrorist actions suspected to be already in place.

Right now Saddam has every reason to keep under tight control any chemical and biological weapons that Iraq may have. He wouldn’t provide such weapons to the Osama bin Ladens of the world, who represent a terrible threat to Saddam himself.

And administration hawks understand that, except as a last resort if attacked, Iraq is highly unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction that it has — and risk instant incineration.

Under attack, however, Iraqi society would collapse, including the controls over the weapons of mass destruction. These could be "privatised," as international security specialist Daniel Benjamin warns, and offered to the huge "market for unconventional weapons, where they will have no trouble finding buyers." That really is "a nightmare scenario," he says.

As for the fate of the people of Iraq in war, no one can predict with any confidence: not the CIA, not Rumsfeld, not those who claim to be experts on Iraq, no one.

But international relief agencies are preparing for the worst.

Studies by respected medical organisations estimate that the death toll could rise to the hundreds of thousands. Confidential UN documents warn that a war could trigger a "humanitarian emergency of exceptional scale" — including the possibility that 30 per cent of Iraqi children could die from malnutrition.

Today the administration doesn’t seem to be heeding the international relief agency warnings about an attack’s horrendous aftermath.

The potential disasters are among the many reasons why decent human beings do not contemplate the threat or use of violence, whether in personal life or international affairs, unless reasons have been offered that have overwhelming force. And surely nothing remotely like that justification has come forward.

(Courtesy International Tribune; March 17, 2003)(Noam Chomsky is a political activist, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the bestseller "9-11." He wrote this article for the New York Times Syndicate).

Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2003 Year 9  No. 85, Cover Story 13

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