The Explainer - The Citizenship Amendment Act

 The Citizenship Amendment Act will be implemented before the Lok Sabha elections take place in May this year.

 Ever since it was brought out in 2019, the CAA has become a become a rallying point for the BJP's detractors across the political and non-political spectrum. 

The liberal cabal, also called the ‘secular brigade’, has accused the Modi Government of seeking to disenfranchise the Indian Muslims through the CAA. 

 Is this accusation true?

Highlights of the CAA

I have compiled the most important provisions of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which is an act further to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955. 

• Persons belonging to the religious minorities of Hinduism (Hindu), Jainism (Jain), Sikhism (Sikh), Buddhism (Buddhist), Zoroastrianism (Parsi), and Christianity (Christian) in the Islamic nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and who entered India on or before 31 December 2014 will not be treated as illegal migrants.
  
  
• Such persons shall be deemed to be citizens of India from the date of their entry into India.
   
• Under the Citizenship Act, 1955, the most important requirement for citizenship by naturalization is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, and for 11 years of the previous 14 years. The CAA relaxes this 11-year requirement to six years for persons belonging to the above-mentioned religions and the three countries.

As you see, there is nothing anti-Muslim here. Also, it has nothing to do with Indian citizens.

A Muslim from any country, including from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, can apply for Indian citizenship. However, she will have to come through the normal process, and not through the expedited process that will be available to non-Muslims from these countries.

The three countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have been explicitly mentioned because they are avowedly Muslim, with Islam as the state religion. It is an open secret that the persons from the religious minorities (Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, and Parsi) are greatly discriminated against, persecuted in every way possible, and denied basic freedoms.

In these three Islamic nations, forced conversions to Islam are an ugly fact of life while blasphemy laws are routinely used to harass and intimidate religious minorities in these countries.

At the time the CAA was passed, the BJP has been greatly lacking in ‘communication’. The party has several effective public speakers, yet they failed miserably in communicating to the Indian public, especially Muslims, that the CAA has nothing to do with Indian citizens.

This time around, the BJP has mounted an aggressive campaign to drive home the precise point that Indian Muslims have nothing to fear from the CAA. 

A Basic Understanding of NRC and the Assam Accord

A month back I wrote an article on the Citizenship Amendment Act. Today's article is on the NRC and the Assam Accord

What is the National Register of Citizens (NRC)
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) has become another political football. The BJP’s decades-old stand on the NRC has remained the same. From the party’s manifesto in the 1996 general election to the 2019 general election, the BJP has remained firm on completing an NRC to curb illegal migration into India, especially in the north-eastern states from Bangladesh.

In the 1996 manifesto, the party articulated three Ds: detection, deletion, and deportation – detection of illegal immigrants, deletion of their names from the electoral rolls, and deportation to the country of their origin.

In the 2019 manifesto, the party declared that: “There has been a huge change in the cultural and linguistic identity of some areas due to illegal immigration, resulting in an adverse impact on local people’s livelihood and employment. We will complete the National Register of Citizens process in these areas on priority. In future we will implement the NRC in a phased manner in other parts of the country. We will continue to undertake effective steps to prevent illegal immigration in the north-eastern states. For this we will further strengthen our border security.”

What is the Assam Accord?

The reader must note that the NRC idea is not the BJP’s baby. The NRC idea, first proposed in 1951, took root in the 1970s when the All Assam Students Union (AASU) launched a mass movement after its scrutiny of the local electoral rolls revealed names of a large number of illegal Bangladeshis. The AASU protested vehemently with its ‘Ds’ demand: detection, deletion, and deportation – detection of illegal immigrants, deletion of their names from the electoral rolls, and deportation to Bangladesh. The protest gained popular traction as it touched a raw nerve of the locals: they had been impacted adversely, especially demographically and economically, by the presence of illegal Bangladeshis.

However, it was only in August 1985 when the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress Government and the AASU signed the Assam Accord. The central feature of the Assam Accord were the 3 Ds: detection, deletion, and deportation – detection of illegal immigrants, deletion of their names from the electoral rolls, and deportation to Bangladesh.

Under the Assam Accord, the Citizenship Act was amended to include clause 6A that provided for the classification of immigrants in Assam: 

• those who came before 1966 (including Hindu refugees who fled East Pakistan during the 1965 war); 
• those who came between 1966 and 24 March 1971 (when war with Pakistan officially commenced); and 
• those who came after 25 March 1971 (war refugees and later illegal immigrants). 

Citizenship was to be given to all those who migrated before 1966 from east Bengal and east Pakistan. Those who came between 1966 and 1971 were to be disenfranchised and granted citizenship after due process. Those who came after 24 March 1971 were to be detected and deported.

Subsequent governments at both the Centre and in Assam failed to complete the NRC. Fed up with the indifferent attitude of the state government, the AASU knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court, which ruled that the NRC, promised under the Assam Accord, must be completed under its supervision.

Now, it is clear that the NRC in Assam was (i) a provision of the Assam Accord, to which the Congress was a party; (ii) held in the state after the Supreme Court of India called for its implementation and (iii) the central government has had no role in its completion.

The draft NRC in Assam registered 2,89,83,677 out of the state’s 3.3 crore population (census-based). The rest were left out; in other words, they could be classified as ‘illegal immigrants’. It is here that the Bangladesh Government comes in; in case, Bangladesh refuses to acknowledge these four million as its own citizens, they run the risk of being labelled ‘stateless’.

For now, the BJP’s flip-flop has only muddled the NRC debate. Things get murky when the ruling party does not lend clarity on its current stance, especially considering the several misgivings about documentation and proof of citizenship.

Identifying illegal foreigners – whose job is it?
The Central Government is vested with powers to deport a foreign national under section 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946. These powers to identify and deport illegally staying foreign nationals have also been delegated to the State Governments/ Union Territory Administrations and the Bureau of Immigration under the Foreigners Act, 1946. Detection and deportation of such illegal immigrants is a continuous process. Statistical data of cases regarding illegal immigrants is not centrally maintained.

I think the BJP should run a better PR machine with focus on three central aspects of the CAA: (a) that the CAA is an amendment to the existing Citizenship Act, 1955, (b) that it only speeds up the process of granting citizenship to members of certain communities, and (c) that it does not relate to the citizens of India.

The Explainer: Erdogan, Khashoggi, Gulen, & MbS

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has brought intense focus on Turkish leader Recep T. Erdogan's campaign against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. I will explore a couple of major reasons behind the purpoted angst of the Turkish leader.

Who was Jamal Khashoggi? Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian journalist and an insider in the Saudi royal court. He fled to the U.S after running afoul of

Jamal Khashoggi

the current royal administration in Saudi Arabia. A vociferous critic of the Saudi Arabian royal house, especially the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, he was a columnist for the Washington Post newspaper and head of an Arab news channel.

On 2 October 2018, he visited the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to collect documents pertaining to the dissolution of his marriage to a Saudi Arabian woman; the documents were necessary for him to get married to his Turkish fiancée. He was murdered inside the consulate by Saudi Arabian intelligence officials. Till date, no trace of his body has been found.

Read Who is Mohammad bin Salman?

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has since thrown West Asia into turmoil. The Khashoggi saga has embroiled Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a war of words, with the U.S. squeezed between its two important allies. The following are the major players in the Khashoggi saga: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Iran, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey directly implicated Saudi Arabia of carrying out the murder on its soil, even pointing a finger at the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman for his involvement. Turkish President Recep T. Erdogan claimed the possession of

Recep T. Erdogan (Source: from Wikipedia)

unimpeachable evidence of the involvement of the Saudi Crown Prince, suggesting that the order for the murder “came from the highest authorities in the Saudi administration”.

Why did the Turkish President get so worked up about the murder of a Saudi dissident? The answer to this seemingly distasteful question lies in the ‘great power’ ambitions of the two countries.

We know that Saudi Arabia is the de facto leader of the Muslim World; however, Turkey, under Recep T. Erdogan, wants to become the centre of the Muslim World, just like the Ottoman empire was before its eventual collapse in 1922. Erdogan, an Islamist, has a grand vision of becoming the voice of the Muslim World, and he has made no effort to conceal his ambitions.

Erdogan is a firm supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian extremist organization with a wide support base in the Muslim World. The Muslim Brotherhood is an anti-monarchy, pro-Sharia group. The Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt through its political party in 2012, a development that rang alarm bells in the capitals of the monarchies in the Muslim World.

The anti-monarchy, pro-Sharia core ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood raised the hackles of the Saudi monarchy who felt threatened by the hardcore Islamist who was now the president of Egypt, a neighbouring country. Alarmed by the spectre of the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Arabia royal house instigated the Egyptian army to oust the Muslim Brotherhood from power and take over the country. Thus, in July 2013, barely a few months after coming to power, the Islamist President of Egypt was ousted and jailed on charges of terrorism.

The Saudi Arabian involvement in the ousting of the democratically elected government in Egypt angered Erdogan, a die-hard supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi came in a blessing for him to put the Saudis on the mat. He leaked evidence of the involvement of the Saudi Crown Prince in the Khashoggi murder case in a calibrated manner; in fact, the method was so effective that it has been called “death by a thousand leaks”.

Saudi Arabia botched its response to the Khashoggi murder saga; from firmly denying its involvement to calling it a rogue intelligence operation without concurrence of the royal house, the Saudi Arabian government came across as confused and unprepared for the massive backlash from the international community.

There is another reason behind Turkey’s shrill campaign against Saudi 

Arabia: Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, a friend-turned-foe of Erdogan, lives in self-imposed exile in the United States. He runs a social and charity organization engaged mostly in education activities. His organization is widely popular across Turkey, with millions of members, with thousands of them in influential positions in the administration.

Erdogan accused Gulen of instigating the July 2016 military coup. Thousands of 

Fethullah Gulen

his followers were arrested while another 1.5 lakh were fired from their jobs in the administration, including in the military. Turkish jails are full of Gulen’s followers with allegations of vendetta flying thick.

Erdogan has demanded the extradition of Gulen from the U.S., a request Washington has repeatedly turned down, citing lack of credible evidence from the Turkish government.

It is believed that Erdogan is using the Jamal Khashoggi issue as a bargaining chip: Erdogan will stop badgering the Saudi Royal House (i.e., Crown Prince MbS) if the U.S. hands over Gulen to Turkey.

Why will the U.S. agree to this arrangement? A major reason could be the extraordinary pressure from Saudi Arabia on Donald Trump; Trump sees MbS as an important cog in the U.S. policy in the region.

If you have been following the Jamal Khashoggi saga, you would have noticed that the noise from Turkey against MbS has subsided considerably; maybe the Gulen factor is at play. We do not yet know.

Weekend Videos - Spies, Secrets of FB, & the Sun

Check out these videos to rev up your learning this weekend.

• Why our lives will keep revolving around the Sun (BBC Ideas, under 5 minutes)

• Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network (Al Jazeera, under 47 minutes)

• How British spies made a cyber immune system (CNN, under 4 minutes)

The Explainer: Violence Against & By Rohingya

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, is home to several ethnic groups. Chief among these are Burman (68%), Shan (9%), Karen (7%), and Rakhine (4%). In a diverse and multi-ethnic society, that is largely mired in poverty, the tension between the various ethnic groups, especially over their way of life and access to resources, often surfaces in violent clashes.

Rohingya – A Short Intro
The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine state of Myanmar. The Government of Myanmar does not recognize them as Myanmese citizens and as such views the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. Myanmar says it is ready to grant them citizenship if they identify themselves as Bengalis (i.e., Bengali-speaking migrants from Bangladesh), something that the Rohingya firmly refuse to accept. In this context, it would be apt to share one important fact: after the British annexed the Rakhine region in 1824–26, thousands of people (from what is today’s Bangladesh and some parts of northeast India) were encouraged to migrate to today’s Myanmar to work in agricultural fields.

Myanmar has maintained that the Rohingya are illegal migrants from India and Bangladesh and have refused to recognize them as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups. The Myanmese government has defended this approach, arguing that past secessionist movements indicate that the Rohingya never identified as part of the country (more on this later).

The Rohingya have accused the majority Buddhist community of discrimination and using violence to subdue them. As they are stateless, it is hard to quantify the exact population of Rohingya. However, because of the unending discrimination, thousands of Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh flee every year in a desperate attempt to reach mainly Muslim-majority countries, Malaysia and Indonesia (even in these countries, the Rohingyas are recognised as refugees and not granted citizenship).

Widespread Violence

Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims have been at loggerheads for several decades. Episodes of intense violence have been followed by periods of uneasy calm.

About six years back, violent clashes between the Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims erupted. Tens of people were killed and triggered a flood of Rohingya migrants, especially into neighbouring Bangladesh.

In October 2017, armed militants, especially from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Rohingya terrorist group, killed several police and military personnel in several coordinated attacks on security camps and check-posts. They also killed tens of people belonging to Buddhist and Hindu communities. In retaliation, the country’s police and security forces launched counter-terrorism operations against Rohingya Muslim militant groups. The Rohingya Muslims have accused the country’s security forces of extra-judicial killings, abuse of women, and destruction of property. Since then, about seven lakh Rohingya have fled Myanmar to escape the violence and persecution.

In a recently released report by Amnesty International, the leading human rights group accused Rohingya terrorists of killing Hindu men and children while forcing women to convert to Islam and sexually abusing them.

Rohingya and Terrorism

Myanmar has consistently accused the Rohingya Muslims of ties with radical Islamist terror groups, like the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida, from which flow both money and arms. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, (also known as Harakah al-Yaqin), the main Rohingya terror group, is led by a Saudi-based committee of Rohingya emigres. 

Let me cite Brahma Chellaney, one of the world’s foremost experts on conflict zones: “The external forces fomenting insurgent attacks in Rakhine bear considerable responsibility for the Rohingyas’ current plight. In fact, it is the links between Rohingya militants and such external forces, especially terrorist organizations like the IS, that have driven the Government of India, where some 40,000 Rohingya have settled illegally, to declare that their entry poses a serious security threat. Even Bangladesh acknowledges Rohingya militants’ external jihadi connections.

“But the truth is that Myanmar’s jihadi scourge is decades old, a legacy of British colonialism. After all, it was the British who, more than a century ago, moved large numbers of Rohingya from East Bengal to work on rubber and tea plantations in then-Burma, which was administered as a province of India until 1937.

“In the years before India gained independence from Britain in 1947, Rohingya militants joined the campaign to establish Pakistan as the first Islamic republic of the postcolonial era. When the British, who elevated the strategy of “divide and rule” into an art, decided to establish two separate wings of Pakistan on either side of a partitioned India, the Rohingya began attempting to drive Buddhists out of the Muslim-dominated Mayu peninsula in northern Rakhine. They wanted the Mayu peninsula to secede and be annexed by East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in 1971).

“Failure to achieve that goal led many Rohingya to take up arms in a self-declared jihad. Local mujaheddin [holy warriors] began to organize attacks on government troops and seize control of territory in northern Rakhine, establishing a state within a state. Just months after Myanmar gained independence in 1948, martial law was declared in the region; government forces regained territorial control in the early 1950s.

“But Rohingya Islamist militancy continued to thrive, with mujaheddin attacks occurring intermittently. In 2012, bloody clashes broke out between the Rohingya and the ethnic Rakhines, who feared becoming a minority in their home state. The sectarian violence, in which rival gangs burned down villages and some 140,000 people (mostly Rohingya) were displaced, helped to transform the Rohingya militancy back into a full-blown insurgency, with rebels launching hit-and-run attacks on security forces.”
 

Global Reaction

There are two sides to this story: (1) the use of violence against the Rohingya for being ‘different’ and (2) the use of violence by the Rohingya against the other ethnic and religious groups in Myanmar. The former has attracted global attention; several organisations/nations have (a) condemned the Myanmar Government for its failure in stopping the violence (some have described the situation as ‘ethnic cleansing’) and (b) revoked the honours/awards bestowed on Aung Saan Suu Kyi, the tallest and de facto leader of Myanmar.

However, the international community has turned a blind eye to the intense terrorist violence perpetrated by the Rohingya militants against Buddhists, Hindus and followers of other religions. The international community’s discriminatory attitude has only emboldened the Rohingya terrorists who know that the global spotlight is on the Myanmese military and not on their own use of violence against ‘others’.  

The Explainer: China's Xinjiang Problem

The chilling warning of the Islamic State issued to the Chinese government of launching terror attacks has turned spotlight on the ethnic cauldron that’s engulfing the Xinjiang province in western China. The dangerous conflict between the native Turkic Uighur and Beijing is symptomatic of the many dangers that China faces because of its demographic and political policies.

Read The Explainer: China, IS, & Uighurs

While Beijing blames the extremist Uighur Muslims for the terrorist violence, the latter have accused the former of repression and use of excessive force against them. They also blame the Chinese Government of resorting to demographic means of subverting the Uighurs by destroying their ethnic identity in their own ancient land. Also, they have charged the Chinese Government with economic discrimination. For several years now, the Uighurs have called for secession from China.

China launches ‘Go West’ policy  
Taking a serious view of the Islamists’ call for secession of Xinjiang from China, Beijing has used, and continues to use, demography as a controlling tool. To this end, they launched the ‘Go West’ policy to encourage the migration of Han Chinese, which is the biggest ethnic group in China, to Xinjiang.

The policy of increasing the presence of the Han Chinese in a traditionally Turkic Uighur-dominated province has paid rich dividends for Beijing. Such has been the impact of this policy that the Han Chinese, who constituted a mere 6 per cent of the total Xinjiang population in 1955, now make up about 40 per cent of the total population in Xiajiang!

Economic impact of the ‘Go West’ policy

The sharp rise in the population of the migrant Han Chinese has led to a massive loss of economic opportunities for the native Turkic Uighurs. Today, most of the provincial administrative jobs go to the educated Han Chinese; also, the Han Chinese own major business and economic resources while the Turkic Uighurs languish on the margins of the society.

Cultural impact of the ‘Go West’ policy

The Uighurs are ethnically closer to the Islamic traditions of Central Asia than to the cultural traditions of the ethnic Chinese groups. However, most Uighurs practice a moderate form of Islam, unlike the ultra-orthodox Wahabbi type (brought in from Saudi Arabia by religious extremists), which is followed by the more radical elements in Central Asia.

In Xinjiang, Beijing keeps a hawk’s eye on the mosques that dot the landscape of the massive province. The secret services, Beijing’s eyes and ears, are always on the prowl looking for secessionist and terror elements. Often, such is the control that Beijing extends over the mosques that whenever there is violence, they are asked to close down for an indefinite period. 

Muslims are barred from observing fast in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; in some extreme cases, people are forced to shave off their beards and ordered not to wear any garment that makes for public display of their faith (like burqa/yashmak/hijab).

China and War on Terror

The September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. and the subsequent launch of the War on Terror came in as a shot in the arm for Beijing. Soon after, in a master-stroke, Beijing labeled the radical Islamists, especially the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) members, in Xinjiang as part of Al-Qaeda network. As a result, the U.S. and major European nations banned the ETIM. By aligning its local fight with the international effort against the Islamists, Beijing won the sanction of the international community in its fight against the extremist members among the Uighurs.

In fact, Beijing cited the capture of 22 Uighurs, reportedly linked to Al-Qaeda, by the U.S. as evidence of the growing radicalisation of the Uighurs. However, Beijing suffered a major embarrassment when the U.S. released these 22 Uighurs, after a long detention period at the Guantanamo Bay prison, when it found that they were not terrorists!

Cutting the ethnic umbilical cord

Over the years, Beijing has strengthened diplomatic ties , especially economic ties, with Central Asian nations, which are linguistically and ethnically linked with the Uighurs.

To this end, it took initiative to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), whose members include Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan (all former Soviet provinces with majority Muslim populations). Over the years, its diplomacy has paid off as these countries have cut off potential sources of support for the Uighurs from radical sources in their territories.

The Pakistan Connect

In the recent past, China also said, for the first time ever, that the Uighur separatists underwent training in Pakistan’s numerous terrorist training camps. Given that Pakistan considers China as an all-weather friend, the accusations shocked the Pakistani establishment. However, this accusation is unlikely to change the relationship equation between the two countries, though it is widely believed that Pakistani leaders have been told by their Chinese counterparts in no uncertain terms that such terror camps which export extremists to fight the Chinese State should be shut down immediately.

My Take

China is increasingly worried over the developments in Xinjiang. It believes that if the Xinjiang problem is not tackled in the ‘right’ way, it has the potential to ignite similar fires around its vast peripheral areas.

It is a fact that political rights need economic contentment, because together they give a sense of belonging and empowerment to all involved. Appropriate management of the needs and aspirations of varied groups is critical to the State’s ability to ensure good governance and provision of security. In the light of this, the major challenge that China today faces is to absorb and resolve the clashes that may arise between contending interests between the Turkic Uighurs and ethnic Chinese groups.

The Explainer: China, ISIS, & Uighurs

                                                                                                                                                                                         Source: VOA

In its first-ever direct threat against China, the Islamic State’s Uighur fighters have vowed to return home to Xinjiang, a province in western China, to launch jihad against China. The Uighur extremists, in a video, have vowed to ‘shed blood like rivers’ against the Chinese State. 

The Islamic State (IS) is also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). For the sake of simplicity, I have used the name ‘Islamic State’ in this explanatory article. 

The Uighurs in China accuse the Chinese government of suppressing their voices and unleashing repression against them.

So, who are the Uighurs?

The Turkic Uighurs are a predominantly Islamic community with deep racial and ethnic ties to Central Asia. For centuries, the Uighurs have co-existed with about 12 other ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

Till about 1912, Xinjiang was a part of the Qing Empire. After the demise of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the status of Xinjiang has swayed between autonomy and complete independence. In 1933, Turkic insurgents broke free from Chinese control and established the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (also known as the Republic of Uighuristan or the First East Turkistan Republic).

The following year, China reabsorbed the region. In 1944, emboldened by the support of the Soviet Union, Turkic Uighur rebels once again declared independence to set up the Second East Turkistan Republic.

However, the Turkic Uighurs’ dream of an independent state was short-lived. In 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) came to power after establishing full control over the whole of China and creating the People’s Republic of China (PRC).  The same year, the Communists regained complete control of Xinjiang while in 1955, Beijing classified Xinjiang, which accounts for about 16 per cent of the country’s area, as an ‘autonomous region’ of the People’s Republic of China.

Today, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is home to about 2.3 crore people from thirteen major ethnic groups, the largest being the Turkic Uighur community.

Nostalgic of the times when there was an independent Xinjiang, some Uighurs see China’s presence in the province as a form of imperialism. The more radical among these, like those belonging to the extremist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), have called for secession from China.

Practice of Islam in Xinjiang
The practice of religion in a Communist State is either undercover, if such practice is illegal, or controlled by the State, if such practice is allowed. China practices the latter method; it tightly controls the citizens’ right to practice faith.

In Xinjiang, China keeps a hawk’s eye on the mosques that dot the landscape of the massive province. The secret services, Beijing’s eyes and ears, are always on the prowl looking for secessionist and terror elements. Often, such is the control that Beijing extends over the mosques that whenever there is violence, they are asked to close down for an indefinite period.

In 2014, the Chinese government banned Muslim staff from observing fasting and engaging in other religious activities in the Muslim holy month of Ramzan (also Ramadan).

The practice of one’s faith is a matter of personal choice, at least for folks like us in India; in China, it is a matter of State policy.

The second and concluding part of this article will appear tomorrow. 

Sunday Reads

"It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others." Read Justin Fox's brilliant piece on how "meritocracy is just another way of bringing you down" (Bloomberg). 

• The Feds brought down the world's biggest file-sharing website. (Foreign Policy)
• Educated terrorists and victimhood. (New IE)

And in the end...

Before bowling to (the visibly healthy) Mike Gatting in a test match, Aussie fast bowler Dennis Lille said, ”Hell Gatt, move out of the way... I can’t see the stumps”.

Sunday Reads

• Newslaundry, your fact-check on the PM's interview has been fact-checked. (OPIndia)
• The political resonance of the 'Game of Thrones'. (New Yorker)
• Bangladesh at crossroads. (BBC)
• Indian Muslim women fight to overturn Triple Talaq. (AlJazeera)

Check out this infographic on Job Interview Cautions here.

Sunday Reads

General Reads

• India's ISRO challenge Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with record launch (Bloomberg)
• Why not Trexit? Texas Nationalists look to the Brexit vote for inspiration. (Guardian)

Tech Read

• What is banned on Facebook (CNN)

Funny Read

• Suddenly holy - A Pakistani celebrity's spiritual awakening (Dawn) 

Sunday Reads

General Reads

• What happens in a university run by IS? (BBC)
• India cannot afford to lose the Chahabar test (New IE)

Controversial Read

• Like Ali, how many of our icons will take a punch for what they believe in? (Telegraph India)

et cetera

• Ramadan for non-Muslims: A etiquette guide (CNN)

Sunday Reads

This post comes after more than two months since the last post. 

General Reads

• Inside the Bubble: Aboard the Air Force One. (BBC)
• China's Mediterranean Odyssey (Diplomat)
• Increase your return on failure (Harvard BR)

Photo Gallery 

• Russia's Flourishing Capital (Der Spiegel)

Controversial Read

• All the People God Kills in the Bible (Vocativ)

Anecdote

"How's your wife and my kids?" asked Rod Marsh (Australia) from behind the stumps.

"The wife's fine," replied the England batsman, Ian Botham, "but the kids are retarded."

Sunday Reads

• Larry Summers interview on the global economy. (TIE)

• "I'm the biggest victim of intolerance." (Swarajya)

• Can India, Pakistan ever be normal neighbours? (New IE)

• Spread this JAM thick and wide. (Business Line)

Sunday Anecdote:

Ernst Eduard Kummer (1810-1893), a German algebraist, was rather poor at arithmetic. Whenever he had occasion to do simple arithmetic in class, he would get his students to help him. Once he had to find 7 x 9.  “Seven times nine,” he began, “Seven times nine is er – ah – ah – seven times nine is. . . .” 

“Sixty-one,” a student suggested.

Kummer wrote 61 on the board. 

“Sir,” said another student, “it should be sixty-nine.”  “Come, come, gentlemen, it can’t be both,” Kummer exclaimed. “It must be one or the other.”

  

Sunday Reads

• Tipu Sultan: Noble or Savage? (Open Magazine) Hat tip: Mohan Ramiah.

• Return of a topless model. (BBC)

• Dark matter and the dinosaurs. (Brain Pickings)

Paris Attacks: Putin's Bond Movie-like Command Centre & Best Cartoon Response to IS

No post in the last 25 days due to travelling and an otherwise busy schedule. 

In the light of the deadly Paris attacks, I am sharing some four five interesting pieces:

• Putin's James Bond movie-like war command centre. (WaPo)
  
• Gurumurthy on the Paris Mastermind. (New IE) Hat tip: Mohan Ramiah.

• Saudi funds fan ultra-conservative Islam in India. (First Post)

• Wedded to the organisation - How IS changed everything for three young women. (Telegraph India)
• Why Abdelhamid Abaaoud wanted to die. (FP)

The best cartoon on the Paris attacks is one by Deb Milbrath, of the Cartoon Movement. 

Sunday Reads

• Why we should defend the right to be offensive. (BBC) Also read Threat to free expression in Britain. (Economist)

• Amaravati: From mythology to reality. (Hindu)

• What will it mean if the Yuan gets Reserve Currency status? (Bloomberg)

The Explainer: The Syrian Refugee Crisis

The highly regressive version of Islam imposed on the region’s hapless people by the Islamic State has triggered a mass displacement of Syrians. 

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are a total of 41.8 lakh Syrian refugees. This figure includes includes 21 lakh Syrians registered by UNHCR in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, 19 lakh Syrians registered by the Government of Turkey, as well as more than 26,700 Syrian refugees registered in North Africa, as of the third week of October 2015.

Today Syria has the largest number of internally displaced people (IDP) in the world with over seven million people living away from home to escape the conflict zones. In addition, another four-and-a-half million Syrians have escaped from the region and poured into neighbouring Muslim nations and Europe where they have triggered the largest migrant crisis since the end of the Second World War. 

There has been intense criticism of the Muslim nations that have refused to open doors to the Syrian refugees; rich Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE have been indifferent to the plight of the fleeing multitude of Syrians.

On the other hand, Syria’s neighbours like Turkey and Lebanon have kept their doors open to the Syrian refugees, each taking at least one million of them while Jordan and Egypt have accepted substantial number of refugees.

However, it is the mass exodus of Syrians to Europe that has rang alarm bells in the region. Thousands of Syrian refugees are braving inclement weather, choppy seas, dishonest people smugglers, border fences, and hostile governments and local populations to reach Europe, especially Germany and France.

While the European Union has, on a general note, welcomed the refugees, there has been a backlash in several EU nations, like Hungary and Slovakia. In fact, the two countries have vowed not to accept any refugees even if the EU imposes any refugee quotas on its members. In a rather different twist, Slovakia agreed to take in 200 Syrian refugees only if they are Christian.

While Germany has opened doors to the refugees, the political leadership, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, is facing a domestic backlash for being too soft on migrants. There has been an upsurge in violence against migrants across Germany, especially in the wake of calls by anti-migrant organisations who allege that the influx of Syrians will destroy the religious character of their nation.

Sunday Reads

• Nine things successful people do differently. (Harvard Business Review)

• Who is a better strategist: Obama or Putin? (Foreign Policy)

• Inside Iran's revolutionary courts. (BBC)

• Zaheer Khan: The calm operator and the creator of doubts. (Hindu)

The Explainer: The Rise of the Islamic State

The Islamic State started off as a local offshoot of Al-Qaeda under the leadership of a Jordanian terrorist named Abu Musa Al-Zarqawi (who was later killed by American forces operating in Iraq). It was originally called Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQIQ). However, a faction broke away from the parent organisation and called itself the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).

After the Syrian civil war broke out in the first half of 2011, it expanded its theatre of operations to that country. In the following months, the ISI was engaged in a bitter battle with Jabhat Al-Nusra, a successor organisation to AQIQ which had declared its affiliation to Al-Qaeda.

In 2013, in a unilateral decision, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISI,

Source: bbcnews.com

announced the merger of ISI with Jabhat Al-Nusra; the new merged entity, he said, would be called the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS). (In the Arab world, Al-Sham is synonymously used for Levant, a name used to describe Syria and adjoining areas in the eastern Mediterranean territory. In that sense, ISIS is also called ISIL.)  However, Al-Nusra repudiated the merger, calling the ISI devious and anti-Islam. Al-Nusra asked the ISIS to focus on Iraq and leave Syria to it (Al-Nusra) but the ISIS leader disregarded the advice.

In 2013, the ISIS launched a series of attacks in several Iraqi cities; it did not help that the ISIS, a Sunni group which had openly declared war on Shia Muslims, was supported by the substantially large Sunni population in Iraq, which faced severe discrimination at the hands of the Shia-dominant Iraqi Government.

Soon after running over large parts of Iraq, including wresting control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, the ISIS changed its name to the Islamic State and declared the Caliphate in the occupied territories while it named its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as the new Caliph.

Several Muslim nations and organisations, including radical terror outfits like Jubhat Al-Nusra (and its parent organisation, Al-Qaeda) found it particularly galling that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi could declare himself a caliph (leader of Ummah or the global Muslim community) and ask Muslims worldwide to follow his dictate.

Muslim nations and organisations, which despise this radical terror group, refer to the IS as Daesh (Arabic for ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ – Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya Al-Iraq Al-Sham). However, IS hates this name as it carries a lot of negative connotations (for want of space, we will not go into the details).

Today, the Islamic State controls large swathes of both Iraq and Syria where it has declared a Caliphate. In Syria, the IS controls nearly 50 per cent of the country’s area. In areas under its control, the IS has imposed a strict version of Islam which it enforces through a network of fighters and mercenaries. The IS draws its cadre from mainly Syria and Iraq; however, it has attracted fighters not just from several Muslim nations, like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, and Turkey but from European nations as well. Tens of hundreds of Muslims from Britain, France and other EU nations have joined the Islamic State. It is believed that the IS has a cadre base of around 40,000 fighters. 

Sunday Reads

• Singapore's students ready to be entrepreneurs. (BBC)

• Everyone hates China's rich kids. (Bloomberg) 

• Neeb Karori Baba: The baba who has been magnet for tech honchos like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs (ET)