Indians turn to Hindu goddesses to help fight sexual predators

The Hindu goddess Durga (Save The Children India).

Can three Hindu goddesses help curb the rash of sexual assaults in India?

With the country in a full-blown crisis as each week brings news of another gang rape or despicable sexual assault, the non-profit Save The Children India is out with a new ad campaign that it hopes will prompt some aggressors to think twice. (The ad already has its critics, who argue the posters won't give anyone pause.)

The ads, created by Indian ad agency Taproot and described in a story by India Today, feature Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, learning and the arts; Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity; and Durga, a warrior goddess who is often pictured with a lion, holding a gold trident in one of her eight hands.

The goddesses are shown with black eyes and bruises, cuts on their cheeks, drops of blood tearing down their faces. (The ads creators might have considered depicting Durga using her weapon and lion to get some form of creative revenge on her attacker.)

The Hindu goddess Lakshmi (Save The Children India).

"The challenge that the agency faced was how to create a campaign that hit where it hurts the most?" India Today reports. "Inspiration came from the traditional posters that are seen and worshipped across the country. The idea was to take the images of the goddesses the people prayed to and turn them into something that would shock and bring to attention the reality of domestic violence against women."

The Hindu goddess Saraswati (Save The Children India).

India Today writes that the campaign "simply and effectively captured India's most dangerous contradiction: that of revering women in religion and mythology even as the nation remained incredibly unsafe for its women citizens--remember the December 16 Delhi gangrape and more recently, the Mumbai Shakti Mills gangrape, or the numerous cases of rape that are reported from across the country every day?"

Opinions of the new ads are mixed.

One reader named Padmanabhan Jaikumar writes: "These Bruised, battered... these images of goddesses will have no effect on rapists in India particularly persons like Asaram or Delhi and Mumbai gang rapist. If they get a chance wont hesitate to bruise and  molest a women in front of the Goddess too."

It's hard to say with certainty just how many women in India are forced to deal with the scourge of rape.

As Australian journalist Amanda Hodge points out in a recent column for The Australian newspaper, the India media typically give front-page treatment to the rapes of middle- and upper-class Indians, but more often than not overlook the sexual assaults of lower-class women.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Has military suppression of political Islam ever worked?

A friend shouts "Allah is the greatest" during a burial service for Ammar Badie in Cairo on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2013.(AP Photo/Manu Brabo)

As the death toll in the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown nears 1,000, aside from any criticisms of human rights violations and the crushing of civil liberties, questions are being raised on a more pragmatic level: Has military suppression of political Islam ever worked?

That’s the provocative issue raised by Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, whose Informed Consent blog is one of the most widely read Internet sources for comment and insight on the Middle East.

“It doesn’t work in the long run,” Cole concludes.

He notes that Saddam Hussein in Iraq attempted to crush Shiite religous parties such as the Islamic Call (Da’wa) Party, including making membership in the party punishable by death and executing thousands. Now the prime minister is from Da’wa and he in turn is fighting a bloody resurgence of  Sunni fundamentalists. 

In Tunisia, dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali tried to crush the Renaissance (al-Nahda) Party but it surged to power in the 2011 elections.

The Baath Party in Syria tried to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood back in the 1980s – but now, a civil war in that country sees radical Islamists tightening their grip in the parts of the country.

In Iran, Cole points the despotic Shah for decades tried to repress political Islam  -- but the Ayatollah came to power in 1979 and his followers still rule.

In Turkey too despite attempts to “forcibly secularize” the country, what Cole describes as the “Islamically tinged” Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 and has ruled ever since. 

“Algeria’s generals did in the 1990s to The Islamic Salvation Front exactly what [Egypt’s] Gen al-Sisi plans to do to the Muslim Brotherhood. 150,000 or more died, and the generals largely prevailed,” Cole says – but Islamist forces remain present, as recent terror attacks have shown.

Of course, in Egypt itself, the government banned the Muslim Brotherhood in 1948. But despite decades of jailings, repression and assassinations, “it always came back.”

“It seems to me that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that religiously based political movements are almost impossible to eradicate by force,” Cole writes. 

“So the Egyptian generals are likely trying something that can’t be done in the long term, and can only be accomplished in the short term by genocidal techniques.”

___________

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigatuive reporter with the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher.

In Pakistan, a new mosque to unite Sunni and Shia

Pakistani children pray with adults after breaking their daily fast during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in an unidentified mosque in Islamabad, July 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Forget for a moment about polarizing drone warfare, crippling electricity shortages, and Pakistan's other multitude of social and economic worries.

Pakistanis awoke this week to some good news.

A new mosque is being built on the outskirts of Islamabad that welcomes Muslims who are both Sunni and Shia.

That's no small development in a country that has convulsed with sectarian violence in recent months, so much so that the uptick in violence has even been a subject tackled by artists.

The majority of Pakistani Muslims are Sunni while about 20 per cent of Pakistan's population of 180 million are Shiites. Sunnis and Shiites coexist peacefully in many parts of Pakistan, including Karachi, the country's economic hub. But in other places throughout Pakistan, radical Sunni clerics stoke hatred against Shiites.

The split between Sunnis and Shi'ites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor.

The group now known as Sunnis chose Abu Bakr, the prophet’s adviser, to become the first successor, or caliph, to lead the Muslim state. Shiites, however, favoured Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law.

That difference has split Muslim populations and led some countries such as Iraq to the edge of civil war.

Over the last 18 months, there have been 203 reported incidents of sectarian violence in Pakistan resulted in 1,800 casualties, including 717 deaths, of which 635 were Shia, The Daily Times of Pakistan reported earlier this month.

Pakistan's newest mosque, Darul Iman Jamia Masjid Qurtuba, aims to curb the sectarian violence.

Under Pakistan's development rules, every mosque has to declare its sect following, before being granted permission to build. To bypass that procedure, and call the mosque sect-free, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reports, developer Zahid Iqbal registered a trust, and then sub-registered the $308,000 mosque under the trust’s banner: The Al-Kitaab Foundation Trust.

Iqbal has already found an Imam for the mosque, Qari Jehangir, who is currently doing his Master’s degree from the Islamic University, Dawn reports. The coordinator of the mosque is doing his MBA from Preston University. Both are young men in their twenties. The Imam and Khateeb are both from different sects – and the mosque administration says it will have no problem if a Shia Imam leads prayers.

“This is God’s house. Even non-Muslims are allowed to come and seek the light," Iqbal told Dawn, calling his prayer hall a "model mosque."

The mosque also has a separate section for women, and a library with books from all sects.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Canadian diplomat involved in Argo skeptical about Iran's new moderate president

A U.S. hostage is paraded by his captors in the compound of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in November 1979. (AFP/Getty images)

In the weeks before six American diplomats were snuck out of Iran on Jan. 28, 1980, using fake Canadian passports, fake identities had to be created, documents had to be forged, and nerves needed to be calmed.

The matter of teaching the Americans how to "talk Canadian" fell to Roger Lucy, ambassador Ken Taylor's political officer in Tehran.

"We covered everything from 'eh' to 'zed," Lucy said in an interview. "We were a bit lucky because all of the Americans came from the northern U.S. and their accents weren't that different from ours, with the exception of one woman who was from Virginia.

"We basically kept going over their cover identities, where they were from, where their visas were issued, stuff like that," Lucy said.

By now, the event that inspired the Oscar-winning movie Argo are well-known.

On Nov. 4, militants in Tehran broke into the U.S. embassy and six American diplomats escaped and sought shelter with the Canadians. The U.S. rescue mission, "Operation Eagle Claw," saw the Americans create a bold cover story in which their diplomats were given new identities as Canadian filmmakers scouting for a location for a new sci-fi movie.

Until they left the country two months later, the Americans were hidden by Taylor and his Canadian colleagues.

It's worth re-reading Jim Coyle's interview with Taylor about Argo's shortcomings and it's also worth noting that Argo director Ben Affleck didn't only offend Canadians with his Hollywood treatment.

Lucy was among the Canadian diplomats who spoke Farsi in Iran at the time. He spotted a mistake on the Americans' forged visas that could have been disastrous.

The Iranian new year begins with the spring equinox, meaning that while the western world considers June the sixth month of the year, it's usually considered the third month on the Persian calendar, Lucy said.

"It could have been a big problem for them at the airport," he said.

Lucy, now 65, is retired and living in Ottawa. After retiring from his government job in 2004, Lucy spends his time traveling and writing trade books primarily on old Canadian military vehicles.

"The one I'm working on now is on the Ram tank, a Canadian designed and made tank that went from inspiration in 1941 to production in 10 months," Lucy said. "It wasn't designed as a combat tank, but was a great armed personnel carrier and munitions carrier."

It's hard to imagine that there aren't many days when Lucy isn't asked about Tehran.

"The Americans left at about 7:30 in the morning and we found out later that morning that they had made it out okay, even though their plane had been delayed a bit," Lucy said. "The Iranians called me later that morning and asked if we could have a discussion about air negotiations since they were no longer allowed to fly to the U.S.

"I said I would love to but I was leaving on holiday to Europe and asked to re-book for the next week," he said. "We destroyed our cypher machines, met with a few other western diplomats who were in the know and left Tehran at about 4 p.m. the same day."

Lucy says it wouldn't "be prudent" for him to return to Iran but he still watches political developments there closely.

"I'm guardedly skeptical about its future," he says.

While Iran's newly elected president Hasan Rowhani has pledged a more moderate approach towards the west, Lucy said he's heard that message before.

"The real power there lies with the supreme leader and the security forces with the revolutionary guard," he said. "Frankly, I'm skeptical that we'll see real change."

Lucy said he thinks most Iranians support the government's pursuit of a nuclear program, in the same way most Indians supported that country's efforts in the 1970s.

"It's worth remembering during the Iran-Iraq war that Iran suffered from attacks from weapons of mass destruction to which they could not respond," he said.

Lucy is scheduled to give a speech on his diplomatic career on Thursday night at 8 p.m. at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

 

A vote for Zahra is a (protest) vote for peace and democracy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Courtesy vote4zahra.org)

 

Iranians go to the polls tomorrow to vote for a president and in a sea of grey, dour male candidates, Zahra's feisty campaign jumps out. 

Built on ideals of democracy and justice, she is not afraid to criticize the establishment, blaming them for mismanaging the economy, executing teenagers and throwing into prison anyone who disagrees.

As a mother whose son Mehdi disappeared in the Islamic republic’s prisons while protesting during the last rigged elections in 2009, her pain resonates with millions of ordinary people who tried to stand up to their government in 2009 but were punished severely. 

Unfortunately Zahra is a fictional character. She is the protagonist of an online, popular graphic novel called Zahra’s Paradise written by two American-Iranians, Amir and Khalil.

The title itself is a subtle criticism of the current situation in Iran – it refers to a large cemetery outside the capital Tehran where many opponents of the regime are buried, including Neda Agha Soltan.  

The virtual candidate's attempt at running for president is a form of protesting tomorrow's vote at a time when the violent crackdown on the 2009 post-election protests are still fresh in people's minds . 

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that in the run up to this year's elections authorities have arrested dozens of activists and journalists. Dozens of political prisoners remain in jail since 2009, the organization said. 


“The surge in recent violations underlines Iran’s continued and brazen flouting of human rights standards through its persecution of political dissidents and betrays the glaring absence of a meaningful human rights discourse in the election campaign,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme in a statement.

Two former presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a political activist have been under house arrest since 2011. 

READ MORE: Olivia Ward's Iranian election guide and why the country is at a crossroads 

Zahra's anger: A postcard created by authors of the graphic novel featuring Zahra which readers can download and send to the Guardian Council in Tehran which vets presidential candidates. (Courtesy: vote4zahra.org)

 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour 

The perils of travelling while Muslim

Is the mere fact that a person prays to Allah grounds for being held at gunpoint, handcuffed and repeatedly harassed while crossing from Canada into the United States?

That's the question a federal judge in Detroit is weighing after hearing arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed on behalf of four Muslim Americans in Michigan who allege they were religiously profiled by U.S. border agents as they returned from Canada.

Though U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn has yet to rule, he told court the allegations are "gnawing at me," suggesting they are "analogous" to the New York Police Department's controversial stop-and-frisk program, which disproportionately targets African-Americans and Latinos.

Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice deny there is a policy to that targets travelers based on religion and have filed a motion to dismiss the suit. FBI, Customs Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration officials also say there is no screening policy based on race or religion.

But Cohn's job now is to weigh those denials against the accounts of people like plaintiff Wissam Charafeddine, 36, of Dearborn. A father of two and former scoutmaster with no criminal record, Charafeddine alleges he was detained, fingerprinted and body searched every time he returned from Canada in the last three years while agents peppered him with questions about his religion.

"It really makes you feel humiliated," Charafeddine told the Detroit Free Press. "It doesn't make you feel like you're in America."

 Attorney's with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America's largest Muslim civil liberties organization, argue the issue is far larger than a single border crossing in Detroit, but rather it speaks to a pattern of reports from border stations throughout the country.

"CAIR has offices in several border states -- Seattle, Michigan, New York -- and for years we've gathered stories of Muslims getting pulled out of cars at gunpoint and subjected to intrusive questioning about their religion," said Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with CAIR's Washington, DC, office.

"While the U.S. government has broad authority to really do what it wants with people and possessions crossing the border, our argument is that there is no authority to ask people questions like, 'How often do you pray?,' 'Do you get up early in the morning to pray at the mosque?' or 'Do you pray five times a day?' 

"The concern here is the mindset behind those questions. It seems to infer that if a Muslim is so devoted to their faith that they are willing to wake up at dawn for prayer, then that's a person America needs to be worried about," Abbas told the Toronto Star in an interview after Wednesday's hearing.

"It isn't true. It's discriminatory on the face of it. And luckily, it's illegal. So we're hoping the court will see this as unlawful practise and counter-productive to legitimate national security concerns."

Since the Detroit lawsuit was launched in 2012, the U.S. has gained a critical advantage in data-gathering along the northern border thanks to a pilot project which gives U.S. agents unprecedented access to information collected on the Canadian side.

The pilot program, detailed last week in the New York Times, is aimed at tracking foreign-passport holders leaving for Canada, rather than U.S. citizens such as the four plaintiffs in the Michigan case.

But the program, which tracked an estimated one-third of border crossers to Canada since September, 2012, is regarded as a runaway success, giving U.S. authorities a real-time look at individuals "who overstay the terms of their legal entry into the United States," according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

By the end of June the program will expand to become a permanent element of border security data-gathering, covering nearly all land border traffic between Canada and the U.S.

Mitch Potter is the Star's Washington Bureau Chief, his third foreign posting after previous assignments to London and Jerusalem. Potter led the Toronto Star’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he won a 2006 National Newspaper Award for his reportage. His dispatches include datelines from 33 countries since 2000. Follow him on Twitter: @MPwrites

Protect women's chastity by sexually harassing them: author

A Saudi self-help author has urged his 97,000 followers on Twitter to sexually molest female cashiers to discourage them from working outside the home.

Abdullah al Dawood, who wrote ‘The Joy of Talking’ said his motive was to protect women’s chastity because they would be coming into contact with men, a Gulf News report said.

The hashtag #harass_female cashiers attracted plenty of ire from men and women. 

Dawood justified his reasoning by using a story from the early days of Islamic history in which a warrior who did not want his wife to leave the home to pray, hid on a dark street and molested her when she went outside. She ran back in, and vowed that she would not do so again because the world was corrupt, Gulf News said. 

Saudi Arabia’s conservative religious establishment is powerful but the government is not likely to approve of Dawood's call. To help the economy, in recent years the authorities have been trying to encourage Saudi nationals to do jobs considered menial which are typically filled by cheap labour from South Asia, such as working at check out counters. 

A lot of Saudi women do work outside the home but they tend to be in middle class professional jobs such as law, medicine and academia. And these are in all-female environments. The government is very slowly trying to introduce mixed gender work places but Saudis are divided. 

This amusing cartoon is circulating on Twitter as a response to Dawood: 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at he Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Balloons threaten Afghan culture and values: Taliban

Artist Yazmany Arboleda posted a photo on Instagram of Afghans being given balloons.

As peace initiatives go, it was never going to bring the 10-year Afghan war to an end but handing out 10,000 bright pink balloons on the streets of Kabul couldn’t hurt.

Residents of the Afghan capital, recovering from a shocking Taliban siege the day before, could do with forgetting about their troubles.

But New York artist Yazmany Arboleda who organized "We Believe in Balloons" still managed to earn the wrath of the Taliban. The insurgents’ official website denounced the handing out of balloons as a covert “war on our religious values.”

Qari Habib wrote on the Voice of Jihad website that the 100 volunteers were “without headscarves, with tight jeans and tops on and even with mini-skirts,” according to AFP. 

That last point about mini-skirts is highly improbable in a conservative city like Kabul.

“After distributing some balloons they wandered around Kabul aiming to break the culture of hijab,” he continued. 

For someone so concerned with outsiders changing Afghan culture that last word, ‘hijab’ is curious -- it’s an Arab word, not really used in Dari or the Taliban’s native Pashto.  Afghanistan has never had a ‘culture of hijab.’ Women tend to lightly toss a ‘chodar’ scarf over their hair, almost as an afterthought, like women in Iran, Pakistan or India. They don’t go for the more severe hijab seen on devout Arab women. 

But whether a culture is being broken is a moot point.

Arboleda told The Huffington Post that each balloon contained a message of peace from people around the world. 

"I see this project as a platform that transforms the single story of catastrophe that the world sees in Afghanistan into multiple narratives that highlight our shared humanity."

That is something that will certainly be lost on the literal-minded Taliban.

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

PHOTO: Devotees in Mumbai

Devotees walk on a pathway made of cement bags to offer prayers at a shrine along the Arabian Sea in Mumbai on Thursday. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Who are the Chechens? Behind the scary headlines

Ruslan Tsarni, uncle of the suspected Boston Marathon bombing suspects, in front of his home in Montgomery Village, Maryland, asked his nephew, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to turn himself in. (Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images)

The Boston marathon suspects “put shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity,” said their shocked uncle Ruslan Tsarni, as a massive manhunt for his surviving nephew continued on Friday.

It’s true that “Chechen” and “terrorist” are all too often linked in the headlines, giving the impression of a people hell bent on destruction. That may be because the vast majority of the small diaspora -- now spread over many continents after fleeing wars, repression and economic collapse -- lives quietly, blends in and attracts no media attention.

Few Canadians have met a Chechen, and those who have may not know it.

Q: Where is Chechnya?

A: It’s a tiny territory in southern Russia, flanked by the spiking Caucasus mountains. On the plains, you could drive from one side to the other in less than two hours.

Q: What’s the population?

A: About 1.2 million.

Q: Who’s in charge?

A: Officially, Russia. But it’s ruled by a regional president, Ramzan Kadyrov, backed by billions of dollars from Moscow to rebuild the decimated republic after two wars. The price: total submission to Moscow and Kadyrov. His brutal rule has sparked rebellions that have spread throughout the Caucasus.

Q:  Was Chechnya always part of Russia?

A: No, but Russia saw it as a strategic gateway to the Black and Caspian seas. From the early 18th century to 1860 it fought an expansionist war against fierce resistance from Chechen warriors. It staked a claim on Chechnya and neighboring Muslim republics. But the battle was never over.

Q: And earlier?

A: Chechens lived in autonomous clans, or taips. Noone is sure where they originated and they left no written history to explain it. Some trace their ancestry back to the fair-skinned Celts, pointing to the red hair of some families as “pure Chechen.” Others believe they were linked with ancient Armenia or the Fertile Crescent.

Q: What language do they speak?

A: Chechen is part of the Vainakh group of Caucasian languages. Chechens have used Arabic, Latin and Russian alphabets over the centuries.

Q: Are they Muslims?

A: They’re traditionally Sufis, a mystical strain of Islam. After the first Russian-Chechen war of the 1990s, Arab-backed extremists poured in money and weapons to convert them to radical Wahhabism. Kadyrov has tried to revitalize Sufism, but also imposed a stricter attitude to religion, including a ”virtue campaign” for women’s dress.

Q: Why did Chechnya fight two recent wars against Russia?

A: Chechens were subjected to massive, and murderous deportations during World War II, and even when they returned felt like second class citizens. Poverty and unemployment soared in the mountain areas.

When the Soviet Union crumbled, Nationalist Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev seized the chance to declare sovereignty, flaunted his independence and Russia invaded. A Chechen guerrilla leader's incursion into neighboring Daghestan, and accusations of a terrorist bombing, sparked a second war in 1999.  

Q: Are Chechens better off now?

A: Grozny looks like a glossy modern capital. But unemployment is massive and the oil industry hasn’t recovered from the wars. Russia keeps Chechnya on a tight financial leash and Kadyrov is in a power struggle with Moscow for more profits from its oil. Meanwhile ordinary Chechens battle poverty, corruption and repression.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Chechens have a famous code of hospitality to strangers. But if you aren’t offered a meal within 45 minutes of visiting a home, you know it’s time to leave.

Olivia Ward covered the first and second Russian-Chechen wars as the Star’s bureau chief for the former Soviet Union. She won a national newspaper award for her  reporting, and a film based on it, A Child’s Century of War, was listed for an Academy Award.