Residents reported that seven separate airstrikes slammed into a former university building in the southwestern city of Dhamar which had been converted into a detention center by the Houthis, obliterating the structure and killing or wounding every single detainee. Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) rushed to the scene of complete devastation to search for possible survivors and comb through the rubble for the bodies of victims.

While the Saudi-led coalition justified the horrific attack by claiming the site had been used by the Houthis to store drones and missiles, the ICRC confirmed that the attack had in fact destroyed a prison where its representatives had previously visited detainees.

“It’s a college building that has been empty and has been used as a detention facility for a while. What is most disturbing is that [the attack was] on a prison. To hit such a building is shocking and saddening—prisoners are protected by international law,” Franz Rauchenstein, the head of the ICRC’s delegation in Yemen told the Guardian .

The Saudi monarchy, given the green light by Obama in March 2015 and now with the unyielding support of Trump, has been waging a bloody assault on Yemen in an effort to return its puppet President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi back to power after he was forced to flee the country in the face of an advance by the Houthis. The US claims the Houthi rebels are backed by Iran and that the war is a critical component of its efforts to counter Tehran’s influence in the region. Despite repeated assertions, the Trump administration has yet to provide any evidence to back up its allegations.

Trump reaffirmed Washington’s support for the Saudi-led slaughter in Yemen in April when he vetoed a congressional resolution which would have required the Pentagon to end direct military support. Without enough votes to overcome the president’s veto, the bill was seen as an opportunity by a number of current Democratic presidential candidates to make a phony show of sympathy for the broad antiwar sentiments in the US population.

Saudi jets, armed with US and UK bombs and provided with targeting information by US military intelligence officers stationed in Saudi Arabia, have continued to carry out repeated attacks on civilian targets, including schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods, mosques, funerals and markets. The US had provided coalition jets with mid-air refueling until the end of last year, ensuring maximum carnage.

An analysis of casualty and death toll data published earlier this year by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) found that the total number of people killed in direct political violence in Yemen is approaching 100,000, including 12,000 civilians, between January 2015 and June of this year. ACLED found the Saudi coalition responsible for 68 percent of all civilian casualties recorded.

These figures do not include those civilians, including children, who have died of cholera and malnourishment as a result of a naval blockade enforced by the Saudi-led coalition and the US Navy and airstrikes on critical infrastructure, including water, sanitation and electrical systems. Some 8 million Yemenis are currently living on the brink of starvation.

The global charity Save the Children estimated at the end of last year that as many as 85,000 children under the age of five had died from starvation since the Saudi assault began. And the worst cholera outbreak on record has infected more than 1.2 million people, claiming the lives of more than 2,500.

The Saudi-led coalition has hindered efforts to treat the wounded and sick by repeatedly bombing hospitals, including an attack on a Doctors Without Borders cholera treatment facility in northwestern Yemen in June 2018.

Despite spending billions of dollars, dropping tens of thousands of bombs and thereby creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, Saudi Arabia and the US appear no closer to the goal of dominating Yemen today than they did in March 2015 when the onslaught began.

An apparent split has emerged between Saudi Arabia and its main coalition partner, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in recent months, with Abu Dhabi announcing the pullout of its ground forces from Yemen in July and subsequently turning equipment and positions over to the tens of thousands of militia members whom it has funded and trained.

As a result, a new front has opened up in the war, with Yemeni army forces loyal to Hadi supported by Saudi Arabia fighting the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) and allied Security Belt Forces militia backed by the UAE for control over the southern port city of Aden.
On Thursday, airstrikes by UAE fighter jets killed 45 soldiers and wounded dozens of others in an assault which targeted forces loyal to Hadi in Aden and neighboring Abyan province. Dozens of Hadi loyalists have been arrested by the southern separatists on charges of “terrorism.”

With the backing of the UAE, the STC is seeking the re-establishment of the independent state of South Yemen, known officially as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which existed from 1967 to 1990 with the backing of the Soviet Union. The dissolution of the USSR led to the creation of unified Yemen followed by a failed southern secessionist movement in 1994 which was suppressed by the north.

Meanwhile the Trump administration has continued to carry out the drone war in Yemen which was initiated by Obama under the guise of the so-called “War on Terror.” So far this year there have been nine drone strikes, with at least 10 people killed. While there have been no reported use of US drone strikes in support of the Saudi-led war, an armed US military MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down over Dhamar by Houthi forces in late August.

Originally published in WSWS.org
 

The post Saudi airstrikes on Yemen prison kill more than 100 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The United States is helping Oman militarize its border with Yemen, trapping refugees from the U.S.-backed bombing of the country.

Shutterstock
 

This article was jointly produced by Foreign Policy In Focus and In These Times.

By now, the images are infamous: stunned, bloodied Yemeni children arriving at the hospital after their summer camp bus was bombed by Saudi aircraft. The United States is deeply implicated in that August 9 attack, which killed 54 people — most of them children
Fragments from the bomb bear the labels of U.S. weapons manufacturers. The indefensible nature of the bombing — there were no combatants anywhere in sight — has garnered headlines and even attention on Capitol Hill, opening a new conversation about U.S. involvement in the years-long siege of Yemen by a coalition headed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The coalition frames its war as an intervention on behalf of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the man they recognize as the legitimate president of Yemen. Saudi Arabia and the UAE claim to be targeting the Houthis, the opposition group on the other side of Yemen’s civil war that controls the country’s capital, and that has alleged ties with Iran. The images from the school bus attack, however, reveal the actual targets of the coalition’s air power.

While both the Houthis and the coalition take actions with destructive consequences for Yemen’s population, the overwhelming blame for the devastation and the humanitarian crisis lies with the United States, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The United States is supplying the aircraft to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the precision munitions they’re dropping, intelligence and mid-air refueling of the coalition war planes. The United States also continues to carry out military operations in Yemen directly, with its own special forces and air strikes. But even when American personnel are not personally dropping the bombs, they seem to be involved in all of the other steps of the coalition’s operations.

On the same day of the attack on the school bus, and not far away, U.S. personnel were finishing up another, quieter activity that has received far less attention.

From August 5 through 9, a unit of the Wisconsin National Guard that was assigned to U.S. Army Central conducted a week-long training with members of the Royal Army of Oman’s Border Guard Brigade in Haima, Oman. The exercises were part of Oman’s militarization of its border with Yemen — with funding and other assistance from the United States.

In other words, not only is the United States. helping the coalition bomb Yemeni civilians. It’s helping trap the refugees fleeing that bombing.

Walls around the world
Before, it was clear that the American government wanted no Yemeni refugees in the United States. Yemen has been listed in all three iterations of the Trump administration’s anti-Muslim travel ban. That was unjust enough. In Oman, the United States is helping to prevent Yemenis from leaving their country at all.

In August, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — its military budget — for the fiscal year of 2019. The Act calls on the Secretary of State to certify that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are taking steps to minimize civilian casualties, among other measures to assuage qualms that Congress may have about continuing the U.S. mid-air refueling program.

The restrictions laid out in the Act have come into the spotlight as Trump has signaled his refusal to abide by them, sparking a dispute between members of Congress and the White House about who has the authority to make decisions about foreign affairs — a fight that has been fueled by the horrendous school bus bombing.

But the same Act also quietly expands the list of countries that the United States supplies aid to for the purpose of militarizing their borders. A provision was added to the military budget in 2016 that appropriates such funding to “certain foreign countries for border security operations.” The list of countries — each of which is eligible for up to $150 million in the program — includes Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. The 2019 budget includes Pakistan and Oman.

What do these states have in common? They share borders with countries from which millions of refugees emerge or flow through. Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan neighbor Libya, Syria and Iraq. Pakistan borders Afghanistan.

Oman’s steps to “secure its border” sound familiar. In a trend taken up by states around the world — and championed by the White House — Oman is building a wall. Construction began five years ago and is slated to continue for another three years.

The U.S. has promised $2.5 million in aid to Oman for 2019 in a package under the heading “Peace and Security.” And a flurry of meetings between U.S. and Omani officials suggest deeper coordination could be underway.

In March, Defense Secretary Mattis met with Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said and Defense Minister Badr bin Saud al Busaidi in Muscat to discuss enhancing military cooperation. At the end of July, Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi traveled to Washington and met with Mattis at the Pentagon, Secretary of State Pompeo, and members of Congress. Conversations focused on the bilateral relationship in regard to the ongoing crisis in Yemen.

And then there was the joint training in Haima.

Beyond the Bombings
Migration is difficult for Yemenis. Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East before the war began in 2015. While there are more than 2 million internally displaced people in Yemen, poverty prevents Yemenis from leaving the country.

Despite the many obstacles, more than 190,000 Yemenis have fled to neighboring countries according the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency. Many of those who have left are in Oman, so the measures the country is taking with its U.S. ally will put up new obstacles to would-be refugees.

Remarkably, despite the nightmarish conditions that the United States, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made in Yemen, it’s also the case that more than 280,000 people—mostly from the Horn of Africa—have sought refuge in Yemen. The measures that the United States is supporting with its allies, then, are not only devastating Yemenis. The cruelty of those actions extends to refugees from outside of Yemen who are now effectively stuck in the same conditions that are displacing — but imprisoning — Yemenis.

The wars that the United States is carrying out and supporting include wars on the freedom of movement and those who seek to exercise it. From the caging of children and adults at the border with Mexico to the bombing of children in Yemen with American weapons, this summer has demonstrated to the world that the United States isn’t only driving people from their homes — it’s preventing them from escaping to safety.

It is significant that U.S. support for the Saudi bombing is getting more critical attention. But from walls to travel bans, our government’s disastrous activities extend beyond the bombings alone. We need to identify and expose Washington’s many attacks on people around the world—and resist them all.

The post The U.S. Isn’t Just Backing the Yemen War — It’s Helping Trap Those Forced to Flee appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: catchnews.com

The significant pressure that has been brought to bear on the Houthis and the Iranian authorities by the Arab and non-Arab world in recent months has, no doubt, stayed their hand an even prompted some Houthis to engage in dialogue with the Baha’is to end the persecution. However, as of this penning this piece, a number of Baha’is remain imprisoned in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, after four years of their arrests, detentions, and continuous torture by the Houthis. Most tragically, the death sentence against Hamed Bin Haydara, one of the Bahá’í practitioners, has been issued along with an order for the confiscation of all of his assets and the dissolution of this religion’s institutions and the banning of its activities. Mr. Haydara’s death sentence remains to be repealed.

Notably, Bahá’i practitioners in Yemen, as in other parts of the world, are known for being committed to rules and regulations of the country and are working for peace and pluralism in the society. But given the Houthi leadership’s continued coercive actions, thousands of Baha’i practitioners are vulnerable to disastrous consequences in Yemen.

It is high time that the world governments in general and Muslims around the world in particular speak out to condemn this nefarious case of religious persecution in a supposedly Islamic country. Several countries have raised voices of objection to the persecution against the Yemeni Bahá’ís, demanding the cancellation of the death sentence for Hamed Bin Haydara. But sadly, no Muslim country is coming to the fore to speak for the religious peaceful coexistence in Yemen on behalf of the imagined global ‘Ummah’.

If we Muslims desire the full protection of the human rights for the world’s Muslim minorities as an ‘Ummah’, we must ensure that the non-Muslim citizens living in the Muslim majority countries are accorded the same rights and privileges that we Muslims seek to achieve in the non-Muslim nations. In order to achieve this, I would like to offer concrete solutions and final recommendations derived from the Madina Charter of Human Rights (Misaq-e-Madina)—the first ever written constitution of the world formulated by the Muhammad (peace be upon him).

It is noteworthy that the constitution of Madina also known as Misaq-e-Madina was compiled when the Holy Prophet (pbuh) and his companions migrated to Madina as an oppressed minority. It was the first social contract to be written ever in the history of mankind. Muslims and the non-Muslims lived under this covenant which organized the public affairs and governed the relations between them and their neighbors, as Ibn-Ishaq reported:

 “The Holy Prophet (pbuh) wrote a document between the Emigrants [from Makkah] and the Ansar [the natives of Madina], and in it he made a treaty and covenant with the Jews, establishing them in their religion and possessions, and assigning to them rights and duties.”

The charter of Madina focused on these pivotal cornerstones for a nation or governance: (1) peace and security (2) Justice and (3) organizing the judiciary.  It reads:
“In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. This is a document from Muhammad, the Holy Prophet, governing the relation between the believers from among the Qurayshites (i.e., emigrants from Makkah) and Yathribites (i.e., the residents of Madina whose majority were non-Muslims). They form one and the same community as against the rest of peoples. (Source: Sunan Al-Bayhaqi, no. 16808 and see the whole constitution in Ibn Katheer’s biography, part 2, page 321, and Ibn Hisham’s, part 1, page 501.)

The concept of Ummah or a “nation” through the terms of the Madina constitution clearly states that the Muslims or non-Muslims whether from Makkah or Madina are one community. It states clearly: “They form one and the same community as against the rest of men!”Thus, the Islamic charter f human rights recognized the “nation” for the first time in the history as a one indivisible unit, moving from the individual or the tribal life to the life of the single nation which was not characterized by any particular religion, racism or tribalism.

The Madina charter of human rights ensured “equal rights and duties” between its parties and by this it ended racism and segregation in one go. It stated:

 “The Jews shall be responsible for their expenses and the Believers for theirs… The Jews shall maintain their own religion and the Muslims theirs. Loyalty is a protection against treachery… The Jews of Banu Najjar, Banu al-Harith, Banu Sa’idah, Banu Jusham, Banu al-Aws, Banu Tha’labah, Jafnah, and Banu al-Shutaybah enjoy the same rights and privileges as the Jews of Banu Aws…”

Thus, the Madina constitution affirmed the full bonding between the Muslims and non-Muslims based on justice and equity. This equality was based on the common value which is termed in the Islamic law as ‘Karamat-e-Insani” (human dignity). Allah states in the Qur’an:
 “We have honored the children of Adam, and have borne them on the land and the sea, given them for sustenance things which are good and pure; and exalted them above many of Our creatures.” (Qur’an 17:70).

It also stated that its terms apply on those who have signed it and those who shall follow them later and fight with them (whether Muslims or non-Muslim) and by this it is the first treaty in the history that acknowledges the principle of joining treaties even after they are signed (Madina Treaty – Context and Significance” by Ahmad Al-Shuweibi, issue 110 from the Al-Ummah Book issued by Al-Awqaf Minstry, Qatar).

After the Holy Prophet (pbuh) departed, his companions followed his footsteps and so Umar Ibnul-Khattab signed a treaty with the people of Illia called “The Omarian Covenant” which stated among its articles:
“In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. This is the security that Omar gives to the people of Illia. He gives them security for themselves, their monies, their churches, their crosses, their sick and ailing, and all their peoples. Their churches won’t be taken over, won’t be destroyed, won’t be reduced in size, neither will their crosses, their wealth, neither will they be persecuted because of their faith nor will any of them be prejudiced…“(Taareekh Al-Tabari, 436/4)

A great number of companions were witnesses to this covenant like; Khaled Ibnul-Walid, Amr Ibnul-Aas, Abul-Rahman Ibn-Awf and others; which means that they all accepted the content of the covenant.

Same thing was done by the Holy Prophet’s companion, Hazrat Amr Ibn A’as with the people of Egypt, Utba Ibn-Farqad (appointed by Hazrat Umar Ibnul-Khattab) with the people of Azerbaijan, as Al-Tabari wrote in his encyclopaedia of history.

Not only Muslims, even all non-Muslims living in Madina state of the  (pbuh) were accorded full protection of life, religious freed and democratic rights. A clause in Misaq-e-Madina was stipulated in these words of Holy Prophet (Hadith): “I shall dispute with any Muslim who oppresses anyone from among the non-Muslims, or infringes on his right, or puts a responsibility on him which is beyond his capacity or takes something from him against his will.” (Reported by Abu Dawood)

In the 10thyear of Hijrah, a delegation of 14 Christian chieftains and bishops from Najran came to Medina to enter into a treaty with the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The Prophet (pbuh) not only welcomed them with open arms but also permitted them to pray in his mosque, the Masjid-e Nabawi. The Christian delegation prayed in the Holy Prophet’s mosque, turning towards the east, their Qibla or direction of prayer. This glorious instance of the Holy Prophet ’s religious tolerance cannot be discarded by any Muslim sect, as it has been authenticated by numerous erudite Islamic scholars of great repute, including Imam al-Qurtubi (in his Tafseer Jame’ Li Ahkamil Quran), Imam Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jauziya (in his book Zadul Ma’ad), and Imam Ibn Kathir (in his Tafseer Ibn-e Kathir).

Similarly, a Christian delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery came to the Holy Prophet (pbuh), requesting his protection. The Prophet (pbuh) granted them a Charter of Human Rights, which is recorded in the Islamic history as the written document for the protection of minority human rights and respect for other faiths.

But deplorably for Muslims living in the so-called Islamic countries, they have diverted from the right path shown by the Prophet (pbuh). The worrying incidents of the faith-based discrimination against the Yemeni citizens are symptomatic of not only a humanitarian crisis but a systematic religious persecution. This is not only a clear violation of the Yemeni Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights agreements, but a brazen violation of the Prophet’s beautiful cultural heritage. The legacy of diversity, pluralism and coexistence that has shaped the Misaq-e-Madina’s peaceful clauses has eroded almost each and every Muslim country today.

Regular Columnist with Newageislam.com, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a classical Islamic scholar and English-Arabic-Urdu writer. He has graduated from a leading Islamic seminary of India, acquired Diploma in Qur’anic sciences and Certificate in Uloom ul Hadith from Al-Azhar Institute of Islamic Studies. Presently, he is pursuing his PhD in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post Indian Muslims must speak for the rights of Bahais in Muslim-majority Yemen appeared first on SabrangIndia.

American taxpayers are helping to fight someone else’s war in Yemen, and the blood is on our hands.

Yemeni refugees wait in line for food. (Photo: IRIN / Flickr)

We’re helping fight someone else’s war in Yemen — and the blood is on our hands.

Since March 2015, the United States has supported a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that’s intervening in a civil war in Yemen. The war has resulted in massive civilian casualties and the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis and wounded more than 40,000, the majority of them civilians. Over 3 million Yemenis are displaced, millions more have contracted cholera, and some 14 million are at risk right now of starving to death.
These aren’t empty statistics. They’re crimes, which we’re enabling.

American weapons — including American bombs — are helping to wage the war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is a close U.S. ally in the Middle East, so many American lawmakers have turned a blind eye to American involvement in this humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

“This war has created refugees, orphans, and widows,” said Senator Bernie Sanders as he took the Senate floor recently to call for an end to U.S. support for a war most Americans know nothing about.

Sanders, an independent, and Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, recently co-authored a bipartisan resolution to pull the U.S. out of this three-year-old war. Unfortunately, that resolution failed in the Senate, despite significant support from outside organizations and in the House of Representatives.

Yemen’s fate hangs in the balance as the world watches heart-wrenching scenes of hospitals being bombed and stick-thin children crying because they’re hungry. There’s another major cholera outbreak, and medical officers lack enough supplies to treat people.

This isn’t the country Yemenis know and love. Yemenis and Yemeni Americans like Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a coffee merchant known the Monk of Mokha, have shared haunting stories of their lives in Yemen and the country they remember — and the war that’s taken so much from them.

We’ve been here before. The United States has given foreign allies supplies, funding, and weapons that have supported human rights atrocities around the world.

Most Americans can’t even point out Yemen on a map, but that hasn’t stopped us before. It’s not even our war, but that hasn’t stopped us before either.

We’re helping our allies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE create the most horrific humanitarian crisis on earth. And when innocent Yemenis flee, they face the prospect of being barred from the United States, where the Trump administration is still trying to enforce its travel ban against Yemen and other Muslim countries.

It’s time to end our participation in this carnage. The United States supplies a significant portion of the money, intelligence, weapons, and logistical support that fuels the Saudi-led bombing campaign. If we withdraw that support, we could potentially force our allies to abandon the war entirely.

As taxpayers, we’re complicit if we stay silent. Our lawmakers have the power to end this humanitarian crisis, and they must act before it’s too late.
For too many people, it already is.
 

Olivia Alperstein is the Deputy Director of Communications and Policy at Progressive Congress

Courtesy: http://fpif.org/
 

The post It’s on Us to Stop the War in Yemen appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Young students play in the ruins of the Aal Okab school in Saada City, Yemen. Giles Clarke for UNOCHA. All rights reserved.

On 26 December, a crowded market in the Al Hayma district in Yemen was hit by airstrikes from a Saudi-led coalition that left 54 civilians dead, including eight children with 32 others injured. 

It was the latest bloody episode in a conflict that has been raging for a thousand days and claimed 10,000 victims with 20 million more (from a population of 28 million) in dire need of assistance.  

The United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, has described the conflict as “absurd” and “futile”, characterised by “the destruction of the country and the incommensurate suffering of its people.”  

The Saudi Coalition airstrikes began in March 2015 in response to Houthi rebels’ seizing control of much of Yemen in late 2014. There was widespread disillusionment in Yemen with Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose transitional administration was dogged by corruption, unemployment and food insecurity.

The Houthi uprising forced Mr Hadi to flee abroad in March 2015 which signalled the start of Saudi airstrikes. On the larger canvass of Middle-East relations and current tensions, the Sunni Saudis accuse the Houthis of being proxies for Shia Iran, their main regional rival.  
 

Targeting civilians

Yemen’s impoverished civilian population has been caught in the middle of this contagion of hostilities with Human Rights Watch finding in 2016 that 60 per cent of civilian deaths resulted from air strikes. 

It reported that “[a]irstrikes have damaged or destroyed numerous civilian objects including homes, markets, hospitals, and schools, as well as commercial enterprises” which “appear to be in violation of international law.”

This assessment is based on the monitoring of attacks that “do not discriminate between military targets and civilian objects.” “Taken together”, the report argues, “the attacks on factories and other civilian economic structures raise serious concerns that the Saudi-led coalition has deliberately sought to inflict widespread damage to Yemen’s production capacity.”  

The effects of the conflict have been compounded by an air, land and sea blockade of Yemen imposed from November 2017 by Riyadh allegedly “to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran.”

The war and blockade has pushed some seven million people to the brink of famine and left nearly 900,000 infected with cholera.

The blockade of Yemen’s Hodeida port in particular has been disastrous for a country “90 per cent dependent on imports“, 70 per cent of which came through the port.

The war and blockade has pushed some seven million people to the brink of famine and left nearly 900,000 infected with cholera. 

Mark Lowcock, who co-ordinates humanitarian affairs and emergency relief for the UN, has said that without urgently needed humanitarian aid, Yemen would be subject to “the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims.”

Jamie McGoldrick has denied that Yemeni rebels are smuggling arms through Hodeida port saying that a UN verification mechanism had “never found any weapons” on arriving ships. 

As with the Israeli ten-year siege of the Gaza Strip, we are witnessing the collective punishment of a civilian population in Yemen for political ends. 

The blockades of both Gaza and Yemen are causing enormous humanitarian suffering, are man-made disasters and could easily be lifted with political will.
 

Western complicity

Western governments have been fuelling the Yemeni crisis through lucrative weapon sales to Riyadh used in Saudi’s three year bombing campaign. Amnesty International has argued that:
 

“Countries such as the USA, UK and France, which continue to supply coalition members with arms, are allowing Saudi Arabia and its allies to flagrantly flout international law and risk being complicit in grave violations, including war crimes.” 

Amnesty urges these countries to: “immediately halt the flow of arms and military assistance to members of the Saudi-led coalition for use in Yemen. This includes any equipment or logistical support being used to maintain this blockade.”

The UK has licensed $4.6 billion worth of arms sales to the Saudi regime, a relationship described as ‘shameful’ by Campaign Against Arms Trade, given Riyadh’s record as “one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes.”  

France, too, has sold “€9 billion of weaponry to Saudi Arabia from 2010-2016, amounting to 15-20 per cent of France’s annual arms exports.” 

And the United States has “designed and negotiated a package totalling approximately $110 billion” with Riyadh in 2017 following on from a total of $115 billion approved in arms sales by the Obama administration in 2009-2016.   

Su-ming Khoo has argued that “[i]n conflict situations, the deliberate, indiscriminate and criminal targeting of civilians and civilian structures such as hospitals and schools marks an all-time low in respect for the most basic humanitarian norms and laws.” This is underscored by the Human Rights Watch World Report 2017 which warns against a “global assault on human rights.”

Yemen appears to be a prime example of this deterioration in the climate for human rights which, perhaps, really took root in the ‘war on terror’ that followed the 9 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York. 

Even in the context of new ‘lows’ in the application of international laws and norms, the scale of the Yemeni crisis should cause international alarm and provoke immediate action to end hostilities, particularly the Saudi airstrikes and blockade. 

A besieged and starved population has been pushed to the brink of famine and is already subject to malaria, dengue fever, diphtheria, and cholera. This is a moment when the UK, US and France should re-evaluate its relationship with Riyadh and the diplomatic and humanitarian poisoning caused by their trade in arms.

Stephen McCloskey is Director of the Centre for Global Education, a development non-governmental organisation based in Belfast. He is editor of Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, an online, open access, peer reviewed journal. He is co-editor of From the Local to the Global: Key Issues in Development Studies (Pluto Press, 2015). He manages education projects for young people in the Gaza Strip and writes regularly on a range of development issues for books, journals and online publications.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net
 

The post Western complicity is fuelling Yemen’s humanitarian crisis appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Anton_Ivanov / Shutterstock.com

Last Thursday, the head of the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF), Anthony Lake, arrived in Amman, Jordan after a heart-wrenching tour of war-ravaged Yemen. ‘Stop the war,’ said Lake. It was a clear message. No subtlety was needed. ‘All of us,’ he said, ‘should feel ‘immense pity, even agony, for all of those children and others who are suffering, and they should feel anger, anger that this, our generation, is scarred by the irresponsibility of governments and others to allow these things to be happening.’

Lake’s message has gone unheeded. As is the voice of all those who have tried to raise discussion of the atrocity done to Yemen. Last night, the charity group Save the Children raised the alarm once more. In a brief report, Save the Children said that more than a million children who suffer from acute malnutrition live in the areas where cholera has swept the country.

‘After two years of armed conflict,’ said Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s country director for Yemen, ‘children are trapped in a brutal cycle of starvation and sickness. And it’s simply unacceptable.’ Kirolos’ teams in the hardest hit areas find ‘a horrific scenario of babies and young children who are not only malnourished but also infected with cholera.’ The combination is deadly. What lies ahead is apocalyptic: mass deaths of children from a combination of hunger and disease.

In June, UNICEF reported that a Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes. These deaths are not tragedies. They are crimes.

The war in Yemen, prosecuted by Saudi Arabia and its allies and backed with weaponry from the West, has destroyed the country’s food, water and health infrastructure. In January 2016, Saudi aircraft bombed a water desalination plant north of al-Mocha. This bombing run, which lasted minutes, left the million residents of the Yemeni city of Taiz without water. Piped water is no longer an option for most Yemenis. They rely upon water tankers; this water has become more expensive as fuel prices have skyrocketed. Last month, Gabriel Sánchez of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Yemen said that in one district, ‘our teams are seeing an extremely poor sanitation situation and insufficient access to clean drinking water.’ Absence of clean drinking water has helped fuel the cholera epidemic which broke out this March.

Aid groups, from the UN and elsewhere, as well as citizens groups across Yemen have tried to address the crisis, but the scale of this human-made disaster is enormous. Four out of five children in Yemen need some humanitarian aid. No aid agency can solve this crisis if the war continues – particularly if the fragile infrastructure continues to be bombed and if repair of this infrastructure continues to be prevented. Saudi Arabia has blockaded this country and bombed its main port. This has not only hampered the work of charity groups, but it has also meant much needed supplies for repair have cannot reach Yemen. The country is being isolated into desolation.

On Tuesday, the country director for Yemen of the UN Development Agency (UNDP) Auke Lootsma said that 60 per  cent of Yemen’s population does not know where their next meal will come from. Lootsma, who is based in Sanaa (Yemen), spoke to reporters via a videoconference. Save the Children said that a million children are near death by cholera. Lootsma offered double the figure. ‘We expect the cholera outbreak to continue to wreak havoc despite the best efforts of the UN agencies’, he said. Over 90 per cent of Yemen’s food is imported. With a combination of Saudi Arabia’s blockade, depleted foreign exchange reserves and poverty in the country, food is out of the reach of families. Yemen, Lootsma said chillingly, ‘is like a bus racing towards the end of a cliff.’

Terrible stories come from the edge of the cliff, including that desperate Yemeni families have begun to sell their children for food. When the UN’s coordinator for emergency aid, Stephen O’Brien, came to brief the UN Security Council in May, he said, ‘Families are increasingly marrying off their young daughters to have someone else care for them, and often use the dowry to pay for necessities.’ Such survival tactics, on the backs of children, will have a long-term impact on Yemeni society. This war is driving people to great barbarity.

Saudi Arabia’s war aims can never be met in Yemen. That is now clear. It simply cannot bomb the country into submission and it does not have the ground forces to enter Yemen and defeat the various rebel groups that defy it. An attempt to get the Pakistani military to enter the conflict on its side failed in 2015 when the Pakistani parliament took a neutral position on the war. In March of this year, the Pakistanis sent a brigade to defend Saudi Arabia’s southern border. This shows that Saudi Arabia, by far the best equipped military power in this conflict, now fears the war will move northward into its own territory. Yemeni rebels have fired crude scud missiles into Saudi Arabia and at both Saudi and Emirati ships that enter Yemen’s coastal waters. These attacks—one against an Emirati ship yesterday—show that defeat of Yemen’s resistance to Saudi Arabia is not on the cards.

Meanwhile in the Hadhramawt region of Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula (AQAP) continues to make gains. In February, the International Crisis Group released a report that said that AQAP ‘is stronger than it has ever been.’ AQAP and its allies have become indispensable to the Saudi air war, providing crucial ground troops in Aden and elsewhere. Fighting units such as Humat al-Qidah and al-Hassam Brigade are well-supplied by the UAE and Saudi Arabia to protect Aden. They are direct beneficiaries of this war. The Crisis Group suggests that AQAP ‘is thriving in an environment of state collapse, growing sectarianism, shifting alliances, security vacuums and a burgeoning war economy. Reversing this trend requires ending this conflict that set it in motion.’ The point about state collapse is important. 1.2 million Yemeni civil servants have not been paid since September 2016.

Meanwhile, the West continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, offering these arms sales as a way to sanctify the war. The West with these sales is utterly complicit in the Saudi-led war.
The West’s complicity extends to the manner in which it has allowed Saudi Arabia to yoke this obscene war with its paranoia about Iran. Saudi Arabia argues that the rebel Houthi group in Yemen is a proxy of Iran and that Houthi capture of Yemen cannot be permitted. It is the impetus for this war. What is needed, however, is not a war to destroy Yemen, but the opening of a serious process for Saudi Arabia and Iran to talk about their broad disagreements.

In Istanbul, during an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation around Israel’s actions in Jerusalem, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran shook hands and spoke for a few minutes. Adel al-Jubeir (Saudi Arabia) and Javad Zarif (Iran) later offered warm words about their meeting. These are little gestures. But they need to be magnified. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran not only fuel the war on Yemen, but also the war on Syria. They will certainly be a major factor in October when US President Trump has to offer his recertification of the nuclear deal with Iran. If the US goes to war against Iran, it will partly be because of Saudi pressure to do so.

How to prevent the atrocity that is taking place in Yemen? The war must end. That is now a consensus position among the humanitarian community. Arms sales by the West must be stopped. Pressure for a grand bargain between Saudi Arabia and Iran must increase. A million to two million Yemeni children’s lives are stake.
 
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

Courtesy: Alternet
 

The post A Million Children at Risk of Death by Cholera in Yemen appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Villagers scour rubble for belongings scattered during the bombing of Hajar Aukaish, Yemen, in April 2015. (A. Mojalli/VOA)

Just as the invasion of Iraq eventually produced the Islamic State (ISIS or IS), the killing of innocent Yemenis for no moral reason at all is providing a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East and Africa. And just as the Iraq invasion was predicated on a false claim of weapons of mass destruction, the war in Yemen rests on the bogus argument that Iranians are supporting terrorism in that country. In the first two years of the conflict in Yemen, the United States was not able to point to any evidence of Iranian weapons delivery to Yemen. Yet, the United States joined with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States with weapon sales, intelligence, and a U.S.-enforced naval blockade. Trump’s recent sale of arms to the Saudis was worth $125 billion.

The results of all this has been catastrophic. Take a look at the suffering of the Yemeni people in the past few years.

Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Arab region. It has gone through conflicts for a variety of reasons: religion, ideology, and resources. In 1990, Yemen unified, but conflicts remained. The Zaidis (a branch of Shia Islam) are located in the mountains of northern Yemen where the Houthis are the major tribe/group. The remainder of the population of the country are Sunni. In 2014, the Houthis surged south and took control of the capital, Sanaa, and most of the surrounding area. The president of the country, Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, escaped to Saudi Arabia in 2015. In six months, the Saudis and Hadi formed an army and took back part of the area but not Sanaa.

The Saudi-led war against the Houthis brings together troops from Saudi Arabia, President Hadi’s supporters in the Yemeni military, Emirati countries, Islamist militants and some smaller tribes. Saudi allies are intervening to support the Hadi’s Saudi-installed puppet regime, with the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, and Belgium joining in the effort. Regional countries – Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Republic (UAE), Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Sudan – are also providing support to the Saudis.

The Saudis are not just waging war against Houthi soldiers. They are bombing hospitals, schools, medical clinics and other civic places. The Houthis, outgunned, have resorted to fighting the war with child soldiers and, more recently, using smuggled weapons from Iran.
Yemen, a country of 25 million people, has lost 10,000 lives so far in this conflict. It has also experienced widespread human rights violations and disease, and nearly half the population is in a food crisis. “There is no food, no pure water, no electricity, nothing,” a a Yemini woman says. “One day, a businessperson came to us and give us dishes and spoons but I told him sarcastically, ‘what should we do with these? Eat the soil?’”

The dire situation in Yemen has become even more severe since the recent outbreak of cholera. The lack of sanitation, clean water, and medical care are fertile ground for the spread of the disease. This current outbreak reportedly infected 269,608 people and has caused the deaths of over 1,600. This number of fatalities in Yemen due to cholera is larger than all the cholera deaths in the world in 2015, as reported by the World Health Organization.

The current civilian slaughter, chaos, and daily indignities in Yemen create the perfect recruitment tool for the expansion of terrorist organizations. Al-Qaeda has been operating in Yemen for a long time. Known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), they are augmenting their presence with technological savvy and are now considered one of the most dangerous al-Qaeda groups. In addition, IS has begun to make their presence felt in Yemen.

The Islamic State is on the verge of defeat. But U.S. analysts, most recently Ashton Carter in a Washington Post op-ed, continue to overlook how U.S. policies created the blowback of terrorism and entities like IS. In Yemen, the United States is repeating the same errors it made in Iraq. And the results, in terms of breeding terrorist backlash, will be the same. Until the United States learns to be more humane and severs ties with corrupt and ruthless dictators for the sake of oil or other commodity interests, this cycle will never end.
 

The post America’s Yemen Policy is Creating More Terrorists appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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.
 

The post Arab world: Where atheism is equated with extremism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Famine killed nearly 75 million people in the 20th century, but had virtually disappeared in recent decades. Now, suddenly, it is back. In late February a famine was declared in South Sudan, and warnings of famine have also recently been issued for Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen.

Moreover, in January the Famine Early Warning System (FEWSNET) – a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1985 specifically to predict famines and humanitarian emergencies – estimated that 70 million people affected by conflicts or disasters worldwide will need food assistance in 2017. This number has increased by nearly 50 percent in just the past two years.

What explains this rapid rise in the number of people who need emergency food assistance? And why, in an era of declining poverty and hunger worldwide, are we suddenly facing four potential famines in unconnected countries?

What are famines?

Famines are extreme events in which large populations lack adequate access to food, leading to widespread malnutrition and deaths. More of these deaths are caused by infectious disease than starvation because severe malnutrition compromises human immune systems. This makes people much more susceptible to killer diseases such as measles, or even common conditions such as diarrhea. Young children are especially vulnerable.

Experts now agree on three characteristics that define a famine:

• At least 20 percent of households in a given group face extreme food deficits, with no ability to cope;

• At least 30 percent of children in a given group are acutely malnourished, meaning that their weight is dangerously low compared to their height; and

• Mortality rates exceed two people per 10,000 population per day. For comparison, a noncrisis rate in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa would be about 0.3.
   

People affected by famine may also experience other impacts, including widespread hunger, loss of assets, the breakdown of social support networks, distress migration and destitution.

The last large-scale famines affected the Horn of Africa in 1984-85 and 1992, and North Korea in the mid-1990s. Since that time, only one large-scale famine has occurred: a devastating crisis in southern Somalia in 2011 that killed a quarter of a million people.

Click to zoom. Famine Early Warning Systems Network
 

Human-made emergencies

For many years experts believed that famines were caused by a shortfall in food availability. Then in 1981 economist/philosopher Amartya Sen published “Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation,” which showed that famines actually resulted when food was available but  some groups could not access it. Although many people believe today that famines occur mostly in Africa, the deadliest famines of the 20th century were in Europe (Ukraine) and Asia (China).

Today we recognize famines happen only with some degree of human complicity. Some analysts assert that famines are crimes of either commission or omission, because human decisions and actions determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine. They also contend that we cannot eradicate famine without holding people who cause it accountable. 

Famines typically have multiple causes. They can include climatic factors such as drought, economic shocks such as rapid inflation, and violent conflict or other political causes. Their impacts are more severe when underlying factors make some groups more vulnerable.

Mortality during famines may be exacerbated by conflict and displacement. Deliberately cutting off access to food is often a means of war. It is not a coincidence that the threat of famine in South Sudan, northeastern Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia is occurring in the midst of protracted, violent conflicts.
 

For example, the 2011 famine in Somalia was caused by a severe drought, a dramatic spike in the cost of food and devastating loss of purchasing power, and conflict. These occurred on top of long-term environmental degradation, deteriorating opportunities in agricultural and pastoral livelihoods, and the absence of a central state authority.

One party to the conflict, Al Shabaab, was an armed group that the United States and other countries labeled as a foreign terrorist organization. Al Shabaab controlled people’s movements and access to markets, and excluded or directly threatened many humanitarian agencies.

External donor governments prioritized containing the terrorist threat, and warned that any stolen or diverted aid that ended up in the hands of Al Shabaab would be treated as a criminal offense. These policies made it extremely difficult for humanitarian agencies to assist groups affected by the famine.

This combination of human-made factors thwarted adequate prevention or response measures until the famine declaration provoked a more vigorous response. By then, the number of people being killed by the famine had already peaked. Not surprisingly, the most marginalized groups within Somali society were the worst affected.

Famines are recurring today because once again, conflicts and natural disasters such as drought are converging in vulnerable areas. Shortened recovery cycles between recurrent crises – due partly to climate change – leave ever-larger groups more vulnerable.
 

Better warning systems

Famines result from cumulative processes we can observe and predict. That means we can prevent them through timely public action.

Early warning systems such as FEWSNET monitor agricultural production and rainfall trends, commodity markets and price trends, and conflicts. They also track trends in food access, malnutrition or mortality, and labor migration among at-risk populations.

Governments and humanitarian agencies can use this information to prevent or limit famines. Since the 1950s, food aid has been the main tool for responding to famines. Producer countries ship food to countries in crisis, and humanitarian organizations like the World Food Programme deliver it to affected populations.

Now we are paying more attention to protecting people’s livelihoods to help them cope with crisis and recover afterwards. Cash transfers have become the primary form of aid, although the U.S. government also provides food aid.

Ready-to-use therapeutic foods – high-energy pastes typically made from peanuts, oils, sugar and milk powder – have significantly improved treatment of acutely malnourished children. Actions in other sectors, including water and health, are helping the humanitarian community prevent and respond to famines.
 

Acting in time

Nonetheless, even when famines and food access crises are predicted, governments, donors and humanitarian agencies often fail to head them off – a pattern known as the “early warning/late response” problem. Sometimes it is due to negligence or bureaucratic inertia. More frequently there are political reasons, or armed conflict blocks access to affected populations. And donor nation policies may limit where assistance can go for political and security reasons.

Today the situation is urgent. Humanitarian aid budgets have not kept up with needs in recent years.

Some governments in affected countries and donor nations are gearing up responsibly to meet this problem. Others are not, or are sending unclear signals. While the U.S. is responding to the current crisis, foreign aid is one of many areas in which the Trump administration has proposed major cuts.

Even when enough resources are available, more must be done to deliver it to people who need it. This means working out measures to ensure access before crises deteriorate into famine. National governments and even rebel groups should renew their commitment to International Humanitarian Law, which guarantees civilians caught in conflict the right to assistance, expressly forbids the use of food as a weapon of warfare and provides support for efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts. Timely action based on early warning can avert major crises and save resources and lives – but it requires political commitment and constant vigilance.

Peter Hailey, founding director of the Centre for Humanitarian Change in Nairobi and former Chief of Nutrition for UNICEF Somalia, contributed to this article.

Daniel Maxwell, Henry J. Leir Professor in Food Security, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Famines in the 21st century? It’s not for lack of food appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Twenty-year-old Mohammed Atboush (seen in the video above) is a medical student in Aden and the son of a judge. He also takes an interest in philosophy, which led him to write a book about the conflict between science and religion in Islam.

His book, "Critique of Scientific Inimitability", was published last February by Masarat Publishing & Distribution in Kuwait and has been featured at book fairs in several Arabic countries, including Yemen. It looks critically at claims that the Qur'an is a "scientific miracle" – claims which are also included in the Yemeni school curriculum.

The book that Mohammed Atboush wrote

The "scientific miracle" claim is a fairly recent invention and not part of Islamic tradition. It originated in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and is based on the idea that the Qur'an contains scientific information which could not have been known in the time of the Prophet – thus reinforcing belief that the holy book must have come from God.

Publication of Atboush's book was reported in a factual way by a local news website in September but it is also said to have been denounced in some of the mosques. Then, last month, Atboush narrowly escaped assassination.

The attack happened on the evening of December 29 when Atboush arrived at his family home in Khormaksar, a normally quiet district of Aden. The street was unlit because of a power cut.

Atboush says he was knocking on the door of his home for someone to let him in when a masked man got out of a white Toyota Corolla. The man fired at him from a distance of two metres with a silenced handgun but the bullet hit a wall.
Since no one had answered his knocking, Atboush then ran to a hotel nearby to seek help. The masked man fired again before getting back into the car which then drove off.

The attack was widely reported in local Arabic media (here, here, here, here, and here). Police believe it was the work of al-Qaida militants.  

Last April another young man in Aden was murdered after religious fanatics accused him of atheism because of comments he had posted on Facebook. Seventeen-year-old Omar Mohammed Batawil was abducted in front of his home in the Crater district and his body was found later in another part of the city. He had been shot.

Omar Mohammed Batawil: abducted and killed in Aden

Atboush seems to have caused offence by questioning whether the Qur'an really contains foreknowledge of modern scientific discoveries. The idea that it does can be traced back to a French doctor, Maurice Bucaille, who served as family physician to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s. Bucaille wrote a book, "The Bible, The Qur’an and Science", which was published in 1976. In it, he argued that while the Bible contains many scientific errors, the Qur'an was remarkably prescient: references to the Big Bang, black holes and space travel can all allegedly be found in its verses. 

Since then, the idea that the Qur'an is miraculously scientific has given many Muslims a renewed sense of pride in their religion and has become a major tool for Islamic proselytising – with considerable success. In the eyes of others, though, it has done much to discredit Islam.

One popular claim (among many) is that the Qur'an reveals the existence of the ozone layer surrounding the earth.

An article on the True Islam website talks about the ozone layer and begins by explaining its importance in shielding the Earth from harmful rays. “The discovery of the ozone layer,” it continues, “took place many centuries after the Qur’an was revealed, nevertheless, there is mention in the Qur’an about this protective layer that shields us against the sun’s harmful rays.” Then comes the all-important verse:
 

Until he reached the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had provided no shield against it [i.e. the sun].  

For those who don’t immediately see that this refers to a hole in the ozone layer, True Islam's writer explains:

Five implications are drawn from this verse:
1. The word “shield” implies that there is something harmful from the sun, because if there was no harm to come from the sun, there would be no need for a shield.
2. In earlier interpretations of the Quarn [sic] the word “shield” was taken to mean mountains or hills, but mountains and hills do not shield us from the sun’s rays ultra violet rays unless we live all our lives inside one!
3. The phrasing of the verse indicates that the people mentioned as having no shield are in fact the exception and that for the rest of mankind there exists a shield.
4. The words “We had provided no shield” indicate that the shield is a natural one (of God’s making) and not a man-made one. This automatically eliminates the suggestion of houses and other man-made shelters.
5. The verse indicates the presence of a people, and thus areas, that are not shielded. This is in line with the current knowledge concerning the existence of holes in the ozone layer. It is generally thought that these holes have always existed. The matter has suddenly acquired an alarming nature because the size of these holes are greatly being enlarged as a result of man’s pollution of the planet.
The only phenomenon that is able to accommodate all these five implications is the ozone layer.  
 

On a more unscientific note, the same verse seems to imply there is a spot, somewhere on earth, where the sun rises. There's also another verse stating that the sun sets into a muddy spring.

This type of Qur'anic "science" relies heavily on linguistic ambiguities. Describing Bucaille's methodology, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist, writes: "He asks his readers to ponder on some Qur'anic verse and then, from a variety of meanings that could be assigned to the verse, he pulls out one which is consistent with some scientific fact."

Hoodboy also notes that the same phenomenon can be found in other religions. Hindus used to claim their scripture was full of evidence supporting the Steady State theory of cosmology – until scientists abandoned the Steady State theory in favour of the Big Bank theory. Needless to say, Hindus soon found other scriptural passages “which were in perfect accord with the newer theory and again proudly acclaimed as a triumph of ancient wisdom”.

Abdul Majeed al-Zindani

A key figure promoting Qur'anic "science" in the 1980s was a Yemeni sheikh, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, who worked at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia and began seeking out western scientists who were visiting the kingdom, with the aim of getting them to say positive things about scientific "knowledge" in the Qur’an. Zindani’s technique was described by Daniel Golden in an article for the Wall Street Journal:

His breakthrough came when one of his assistants, Mustafa Abdul Basit Ahmed, presented a leech to Keith Moore, a University of Toronto professor and author of a widely used embryology textbook.

Mr Ahmed wanted to show that a verse from the Qur’an, which states that God made man as a leech, was an apt simile to describe early human gestation as seen under a microscope. Mr Ahmed says Prof Moore was bowled over by the resemblance between the leech and the early embryo. Since the Qur’an predated microscopes, Prof Moore, son of a Protestant clergyman, concluded that God had revealed the Qur’an to Muhammad. 

Moore was so impressed that in 1983 he produced an "Islamic edition" of his embryology textbook, "The Developing Human", which he described as containing the same material as the original version but with the addition of "numerous references to statements in the Qur’an and Sunnah about human embryology". The book is currently available on the internet, free of charge.

Zindani left King Abdulaziz University but in 1984 secured Saudi funding to establish the “Commission on Scientific Signs in the Qur’an and Sunnah”. Mustafa Abdul Basit Ahmed – the man who had presented the leech to Professor Moore – was then employed by the commission at $3,000 a month to travel around North America cultivating scientists, according to Golden.

The commission drew the scientists to its conferences with first-class plane tickets for them and their wives, rooms at the best hotels, $1,000 honoraria, and banquets with Muslim leaders – such as a palace dinner in Islamabad with Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq …

During the course of their trips, scientists were presented with verses from the Qur’an to consider in the light of their expertise. Zindani then interviewed them about the verses in front of a video camera, pushing them to acknowledge signs of divine inspiration. Golden spoke to several who felt they had been tricked or manipulated. Here is one account:

Marine scientist William Hay, then at the University of Colorado, was assigned a passage likening the minds of unbelievers to ‘the darkness in a deep sea … covered by waves, above which are waves.’ As the videotape rolled, Mr Zindani pressed Prof Hay to admit that Muhammad couldn’t have known about internal waves caused by varying densities in ocean depths. 
When Prof Hay suggested Muhammad could have learned about the phenomenon from sailors, Mr Zindani insisted that the prophet never visited a seaport.
Prof Hay, a Methodist, says he then raised other hypotheses that Mr Zindani also dismissed. Finally, Prof Hay conceded that the inspiration for the reference to internal waves ‘must be the divine being’, a statement now trumpeted on Islamic websites.
“I fell into that trap and then warned other people to watch out for it,” says Prof Hay, now at a German marine institute.Years later, many of the comments from scientists targeted by Zindani are still circulated on the internet.  

Zindani, who had long-standing ties to Osama bin Laden, eventually returned to Yemen where he became a prominent figure in the conservative/Islamist Islah party and founded the notorious Iman University, a Yemeni religious institution with about 6,000 students. 

Thanks to the university’s research efforts, Zindani claims to have developed a herbal cure for HIV/AIDS. Since 2004, he has been listed by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, mainly because of his connections with Bin Laden and al-Qaida. 

This article was first published on: al-bab.com

The post Yemeni who questioned Qur’an “science” survives assassination attempt appeared first on SabrangIndia.