I bring you notice of a series of lectures starting on Monday 14 May 2012, (17:30-19:00h at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London - Khalili lecture theatre): The opening lecture is titled:" How Islam Saved the Jews". Professor David J Wasserstein, a professor at Vanderbilt university in Nashville, Tenessee, will give this lecture and two seminars over the course of the week.
"In the early seventh century C.E. Judaism was in crisis, says the blurb. " In the Mediterranean basin it was battered by legal, social, and religious pressure, weak in numbers and culturally almost non-existent. It was also largely cut off from the Jewry of the Persian Empire, in Babylon, present-day Iraq. The future seemed clear: extinction in the West, decline to obscurity in the East. Salvation came from Arabia. Islam conquered the entire Persian Empire and most of the Mediterranean world. Uniting virtually all the world's Jews in a single state, it gave them legal and religious respectability, economic and social freedoms, and linguistic and cultural conditions that made possible a major renaissance of Judaism and the Jews. The significance of Islam for Jewry has been interpreted very variously since the middle ages and is a source of controversy to this day. "
When told of the lecture series, Dr Andrew Bostom reacted as follows:
"This is the sheerest idiocy. Just look at historical Palestine where the devastating Islamic conquests effectively wiped Judaism--and Christianity-- out, other than vestigial remnant communities of brutally subjugated dhimmis.
"Moreover, look at the basic demography of Jews over this 600 year period from the mid 13th through the mid 19th centuries. In the md 13th 90% of the world's Jews lived in Islamdom, and 10% in Christendom; by the mid 19th century those numbers were reversed due to ..what.."Islamic salvation?"
I am no Islamic scholar, but Professor Wasserstein's views seem to be at considerable variance with those experts who say that Jews experienced periods where they flourished under Islam, but nonetheless identify periods of great persecution, forced conversion from Judaism and Christianity to Islam, and above all, the imposition of the dhimmi status of forced humiliation and oppression of non-Muslims. Jews were wiped out from the Arabian peninsula. Christians were wiped out from North Africa. It would seem at times more accurate to say that Judaism survived despite, not because, of Islam.
The Wasserstein lectures are presumably being paid for by the kingdom of Jordan, in another government-sponsored effort ( previous conferences here and here) to show the points of connection between Judaism and Islam. Unless they also show the points of division, however, these lectures might be little better than propaganda to make Islam look good.
But let's not prejudge the issue. If any readers are planning to attend the lectures, please let me know your impressions.
Monday, 14 May 2012
How Islam saved the Jews
Pakistan, US near a ‘deal’
ISLAMABAD - The US and Pakistan achieved significant progress in the exhaustive weekend talks, sparking speculations Nato would invite Pakistan to Chicago Conference in return for country's pledge to reopen ground supply routes of the western military alliance.Diplomatic sources told The Nation both sides achieved appreciable success in Sunday's interaction at the forum of Pak-Afghan-Isaf Trilateral Commission and on its sidelines.In a sign of easing tensions, the meeting came almost six months after US airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, prompting the country to take retaliatory measures, including suspension of vital ground supplies of the Nato forces.US General John Allen, Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and Afghan army chief General Sher Muhammad Karimi led their respective delegations at the trilateral military moot, primarily aimed at solving border management and coordination issues.Apart from talks between the Gen Kiyani and Isaf commander Gen John Allen, US technical teams remained busy in talks with their Pakistani counterparts to work out the nitty-gritty of the potential deal Pakistan and Nato are struggling to conclude.Pakistan's ambassador Sherry Rehman was also busy with senior officials of the US State Department to achieve some grounds to move forward, while Pakistan is also pursuing an indirect diplomatic path through the United Kingdom in breaking the impasse in ties with US.Unconfirmed reports said Nato has agreed to send formal invitation to Pakistan for participation in the Chicago Conference that would discuss US and Nato's forces draw down plans. This would follow Pakistan's opening of Nato land supply routes to Afghanistan, paving way for a deeper Pak-US engagement to reset their ties.Sources were of the view that the US could provide Pakistan with more than $1 billion, which Islamabad badly needs for country's national budget for the year 2012-2013. Pakistan government has been saying that it would revisit bilateral ties in the light of parliamentary recommendations, calling for halt to drone attacks and an unconditional US apology over Salala boderposts attacks.But the US has not been forthcoming on both these fronts. "US respects the parliamentary recommendations but it is entirely up to the President Obama's Administration to decide which one of them was acceptable for mutual benefit and which one not", a US diplomat said.The US Embassy spokesman Mark Stroh remarked that good thing is that both sides were still talking to each other to reach a conclusion. Sources within the European diplomatic missions in Islamabad also sounded upbeat that serious talks were underway to break the ice between Pakistan and United States and that Pakistan would most likely be invited to the two-day Nato Summit on May 20-21.They were hopeful that Pakistan's Defence Committee of Cabinet would decide to reopen Nato's ground supplies in its Tuesday's meeting. According to informed sources, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani during his visit to the United Kingdom had also given such indications to the senior British government officials.In an official response, ISPR said about the Trilateral Commission meeting: "Talks focused on border control measures, and mechanisms put in place to avoid untoward incidents on both sides of the Pak-Afghan Border."On Saturday General Allen held preliminary talks with General Kayani on how to improve security in volatile areas bordering the two countries. The talks are the most significant Pakistan has hosted with the international military alliance and the Afghan military for nearly a year.After Monday's sessions Gen Allen said he was "very encouraged" by the talks. "There was agreement these meetings are important to achieving continued progress toward... a peaceful Afghanistan so that Afghanistan can no longer be a safe haven for terrorists," Allen said, according to an Isaf statement.
Pakistan Supreme Court calls for an “Arab Spring” uprising.
The opposition already calls him "the former prime minister of Pakistan." His country's Supreme Court has declared him "wicked"—a "criminal" seeking political "martyrdom through disobeying the law." It may be a good thing for Yousaf Raza Gilani that he claims descent from Sufi saints, since he'll certainly need the patience of one as pressure intensifies for him to step down.
The outcry reached an unprecedented pitch last week as the court issued a 77-page "detailed judgment" against Gilani, publicly exhorting the people of Pakistan to rise up against him and his government. "The recent phenomenon known as the Arab Spring is too fresh to be ignored or forgotten," wrote Justice Asif Khosa in an assenting opinion, citing "the responsibility of the people themselves to stand up for defending the Constitution and ... for dealing with the delinquent appropriately." Gilani's alleged crime was to disobey the court's order for him to request that Swiss authorities reopen old corruption cases against his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari. (Gilani and the Swiss both maintain that Zardari has immunity from criminal prosecution.)
With elections due early next year, if not sooner, the court's call to arms has drawn enthusiastic support from the right-wing opposition politicians Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan. In response, Gilani's ruling party is expected to argue that the court is favoring Sharif as a reward for his having bankrolled the Lawyers' Movement, a mass protest that erupted in 2007 after former president Pervez Musharraf, clinging desperately to power, sacked dozens of judges, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. With the movement's help, Chaudhry was finally returned to the bench in 2009.
For now, the prime minister says he will remain in office until he has exercised his legal options. He is appealing the verdict against him—and if it's upheld, the question of his potential disqualification from office will be decided by the speaker of the National Assembly, who of course belongs to the Pakistan Peoples Party, just like Gilani and Zardari, "I have done everything in good faith, with a clean heart and conscience to protect the Constitution," Gilani says. "What kind of prime minister would I be if I buckled under pressure and ran off?"
US, Pakistan, Afghan Military Hold Talks
The commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan met with the army chiefs of Pakistan and Afghanistan in Islamabad Sunday to discuss border security and anti-terror coordination.
The meeting of the Afghanistan-Pakistan-ISAF Tripartite Commission came as Pakistani civilian and military leaders are preparing for talks Tuesday on ending the nearly six-month blockade of NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, following a NATO air strike last November that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The meeting, the first in nearly a year, is a key component of the international community's engagement in Afghanistan and has offered the opportunity for discussion on issues of tactical, operational and strategic importance.
The ISAF commander, U.S. General John Allen, said he was "very encouraged" by the talks with Pakistani General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Afghan General Sher Muhammad Karimi.
General Allen said "there was agreement these meetings are important to achieving continued progress toward our shared goals of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan" so the country "can no longer be a safe haven for terrorists again."
After the deadly NATO air strike, already tense U.S.-Pakistani ties plunged into a diplomatic deadlock. Pakistani officials demanded an unconditional apology. But Washington refused and Islamabad retaliated by cutting off NATO ground supply routes to international forces in Afghanistan. In return, the U.S. withdrew as much as $3 billion of promised military aid.
Islamabad also demanded an end to drone strikes, arguing they are counter-productive because they kill civilians, exacerbate anti-U.S. sentiment and violate sovereignty.
Washington says the strikes are crucial to defeating al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Secret case against Pakistan officer
From his prison cell, a senior Pakistani officer accused of plotting with a shadowy Islamist organization to take over the military released his political manifesto: His call was for the army to sever its anti-terror alliance with the United States, which he contends is forcing Pakistan to fight its own people.
"This may help us redeem some of our lost dignity and we badly need that," Brig. Ali Khan writes in the six-page document obtained by The Associated Press. The U.S., he says, might retaliate by cutting military and economic aid, but "do they not always do this at will? ... Our fears that the heavens will fall must be laid to rest."
The manifesto reveals the ideological underpinnings of the most senior Pakistani military officer detained for alleged ties to Islamist extremists.
The accusations against Khan go to the heart of a major Western fear about Pakistan: that its army could tilt toward Islamic extremism or that a cabal of hardline officers could seize the country's most powerful institution, possibly with the help of al-Qaida or associated groups like the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistani leaders dismiss such worries as ungrounded.
Details of the case, made public for the first time by The AP, point to efforts by some Islamist groups to recruit within Pakistan's military, though their success appears mixed. They also give a rare look into the discontent among some in the military over the rocky relationship with the United States, currently on hold after American airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani border troops in November.
Khan, who was arrested a year ago, faces charges of conspiring with four other officers and a British member of Hizb ut-Tahrir to recruit officers to the group including the commander of the army's 111 Brigade, which covers the capital and has been historically linked to army coups.
One witness at his ongoing court-martial said Khan discussed sending an F-16 jet crashing into the army headquarters, though that allegation has been withdrawn, according to Khan's lawyer Inam-ul-Rahiem. Pakistan's army declined to comment on the trial, which is supposed to be secret.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in Pakistan and several other Muslim countries, professes non-violence and is not connected to terrorist groups like the Pakistani Taliban or al-Qaida. But the outfit makes no secret of its desire to penetrate the armies of Muslim countries, particularly Pakistan, and foment an "Islamic coup" to establish a global "caliphate."
In interviews, Khan's family and two of his army colleagues insisted he was innocent and has been targeted because of a falling out with senior officers and his political views — particularly his stance against the alliance with the U.S. Khan's lawyer has denied the charges and says no concrete evidence has been presented at the trial.
But one of the colleagues said Khan did meet with members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and tried to enlist other officers, though the colleague played down the importance of the contacts.
"He was easy prey," said the colleague, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was worried about prejudicing the case. "He walked into a trap. He was fed up with the government and (army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani."
But he said Khan walked away from the group when it was clear his fellow officers were not interested in joining. The colleague said that he himself had also been approached by Hizb ut-Tahrir, via a cousin, but had turned them down.
"Our brother is honest and outspoken," said Khan's younger brother Bashir Ahmed. "He may have spoken against higher authorities and they don't like people to speak that way. That's why they are holding him."
At a meeting with other officers days after the May 2, 2011, raid by U.S. commandos that killed Osama bin Laden, Khan spoke out against the operation, which he and others on the forces considered a national humiliation.
Khan was arrested on May 5 and his manifesto presents himself as a "victim" of the bin Laden raid.
His lawyer, Rahiem, sought to submit the tract to a government commission investigating the bin Laden incident, but it was rejected. Some of the passages were included in a letter he sent to Gen. Kayani some time before his arrest, Rahiem said.
The manifesto doesn't call for an armed insurrection, support Islamic militancy or mention Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Rather, it is a refutation of Pakistan army's alliance with Washington, along the lines of what is often espoused by right-wing, Islamist Pakistanis. It buttresses its arguments with conspiracy theories, including that the United States was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In Afghanistan, he recommends a U.N. force of mostly Muslim nations to replace the current U.S.-led one.
Pakistan's army has has long portrayed itself as a bulwark against extremism, even as it has to sought to harness militants to fight for its interests in Afghanistan and India. While many officers are secular or irreligious, a growing number are thought to have embraced a more conservative form of Islam over the last 10 years, like the country they are drawn from.
Khan was known to be a conservative Muslim. At army staff college, he had the nickname "Mullah Rocketi" — roughly "rocket cleric" — and was lampooned in a graduation skit as a cleric, said one of his colleagues.
At the same time, anti-Americanism has been rising, fueled by anger at U.S drone strikes in the tribal regions, the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in 2011 and the U.S. border post attack in November.
Some soldiers and officers have carried out occasional, but serious, terrorist attacks against the institution they once served. Militant sieges against army headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009 and against a navy base in Karachi weeks after the bin Laden raid are both alleged to have had inside help.
The 600,000-member army releases little data on its enrollment or makeup, so its hard to say whether it is undergoing Islamization. A study last year on what limited data found no evidence the force was recruiting disproportionately from conservative areas of the country.
Lt. Gen. Khalid Rabbani, who commands 150,000 troops in the northwest leading the fight against militancy, scoffed at the notion his men could become attracted to extremism. "This is absolute rubbish, leaps and bounds away from reality," he said. "We are as disciplined a force as the British or American or any other first class army in the world."
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country teeming with disgruntled Muslims, is a strategic priority for Hizb ut-Tahir, ex-members and analysts said.
A Britain-based spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is strong among British Pakistanis, declined comment on Khan. But he said the group has recruited officers and would continue to do so.
"We call on the people in the armed forces to use their authority and fulfill their Islamic duty of stopping the political and military leaderships' transgressions," Taji Mustafa said in an email.
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US, Pakistan in intense negotiations aimed at reopening NATO supply line into Afghanistan
The United States has been holding intense negotiations with Pakistan to get the country to reopen its border to supplies meant for NATO troops in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said Monday, a day before senior Pakistani decision makers are set to discuss the issue.
The clock is ticking ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21 that is largely focused on the Afghan war. Pakistan will likely only receive an invitation if it ends its nearly six-month blockade of NATO supplies.
A team of U.S. negotiators has been in the country for several weeks working out the nuts and bolts of a potential agreement to reopen the supply line, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The Americans met with their Pakistani counterparts all day Sunday and were scheduled to resume discussions Monday, the official said.
Pakistan closed its Afghan border crossings to the U.S.-led coalition at the end of November, in retaliation for American airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two small outposts in the northwest. The U.S. expressed its condolences, but that wasn't enough for Pakistan.
Pakistan's government then threw the issue to parliament, which used the opportunity to try to renegotiate the country's relationship with the U.S., a popular move in a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant despite billions of dollars in annual U.S. aid.
Passing the gauntlet to parliament was likely meant to provide the government political cover, but the lawmakers' stark demands have made it more difficult for Pakistani officials to maneuver.
Parliament demanded an "unconditional apology" for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers and an end to U.S. drone strikes in the country. Although it did not explicitly link these issues to reopening the supply line, they have complicated matters since the U.S. has refused both demands.
Analysts have speculated that the Obama administration is reluctant to apologize for the errant airstrikes because of potential criticism from Congress and Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney. Anger at Pakistan is high in the U.S. because of the country's alleged support for Islamist militants killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials have said in private that they have no intention of stopping covert CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, which they see as key to targeting militants in the country who pose a threat to the West. The strikes are immensely unpopular in Pakistan because many people believe they mostly kill civilians, allegations disputed by the U.S. and independent research.
The issue is complicated by the fact that Pakistan is widely believed to have supported some of the strikes in the past, although that cooperation has come under strain as the relationship between the Washington and Islamabad has deteriorated.
Pakistan has its own reasons for wanting to patch up the relationship with the U.S. In addition to an invitation to the upcoming NATO summit, Pakistan would like to free up over a billion dollars in U.S. military aid that has been frozen for the past year.
Also, other members of NATO, such as Britain, are unhappy with Pakistan's decision to block supplies for so long.
Pakistani Cabinet members and senior military officials are scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss whether to reopen the NATO supply line. That session is to be followed by a full meeting of the Cabinet on Wednesday.
Unless the U.S. softens its position on Pakistan's demands, the government will have to balance the benefit of reopening the supply line with the potential backlash at home from anti-U.S. politicians and activists who will inevitably accuse the government of selling out to Washington's interests.
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Thursday, 10 May 2012
Pakistan tests Hatf III ballistic missile
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan conducted a training launch of Short Range Ballistic Missile Hatf III (Ghaznavi), which can carry nuclear and conventional warheads to a range of 290 kilometers on Thursday, a statement issued by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said.
The launch was conducted at the conclusion of the annual field training exercise of Army Strategic Force Command (ASFC). The exercise was aimed at testing the operational readiness of a Strategic Missile Group.
The field exercise of the ASFC was witnessed by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Khalid Shameem Wynne, Director General Strategic Plans Division Lieutenant General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai (R), Commander Army Strategic Force Command Lieutenant General Tariq Nadeem Gilani, Commander Karachi Corps Lieutenant General Muhammad Ijaz Chaudhry, Chairman Nescom Muhammad Irfan Burney and other senior military officials and scientists.
Addressing the troops in the exercise area, General Wynne commended the troops on displaying a high standard of proficiency in handling and operating the state-of-the-art weapon system.
He said, "The nation has developed a strong nuclear deterrence capability and expects that the officers and men entrusted with the task of deterring aggression would continue to train hard and maintain professional excellence."
General Wynne said that Pakistan's armed forces were fully capable of safeguarding Pakistan's security against aggression.
The successful test was also appreciated by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who congratulated the participating ASFC troops, the scientists and the engineers on their success.
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