Daily Archives: July 25, 2022

Government and, by default, the Labour Party have a very efficient communications machine. Some see it close to that of a country where there is some form of dictatorship. The amount of propaganda that is dished out, on a daily basis, is almost asphyxiating.

Then, each time someone, somewhere, says something against the government, or which does not fit the narrative the administration wants to portray, the government or the Labour Party, or both, are quick to respond with an alternative version, one that seeks to immediately stifle the negative impact that such criticism brings about.

There have been occasions when the Nationalist Party holds a press conference and, even before this is reported on news websites or the PN itself issues an official statement about the proceedings, the PL or the government issues a press release with the counter-arguments. The idea is to have what the PN is saying smothered by the Labours side of the story.

Immediately, so as to limit the damage right from the start.

So when Labour remains silent on a news item that is, to many, of great importance, that news item must contain a strong element of truth which the PL finds hard to oppose. In such cases, the strategy is to ignore in the hope that it goes away quickly.

One recent development which Labour chose to disregard was the judgment given by Mr Justice Grazio Mercieca on a case filed by the PN against the Broadcasting Authority, Public Broadcasting Services, the government and the State Advocate. The PN complained of pro-government bias on PBS, which translated into little coverage of public statements made by the Opposition Leader.

The case was filed before the election, but the ruling came after. This delay was addressed by the judge in his sentence: Because of the very limited timeframe, even this court was not in a position to decide the case before the election. If there was an imbalance against the plaintiff, it could not obtain any remedy before the election, which was the time most fitting for a remedy.

In his decision, the judge ruled that pluralism is an important factor in the right to freedom of expression. The State does not only have the negative obligation, not to interfere or stifle freedom of expression, but it also has the positive obligation to create a legislative and administrative framework which guarantees effective pluralism.

But the judgment went beyond that.

At this stage, this court cannot fail to make a comment of a general nature in an attempt, even if it remains a solitary voice in the desert, to stop the oppression of the right to freedom of expression. It seems to have become an unwritten convention in Maltese politics that the winner takes all. The winner uses the power of incumbency to its limits, including broadcast media. The loser calls it shameful and every now and then protests, also through the courts. Then, when the page is turned (and the party in government changes), now victorious, it falls into shame by itself committing (the same) abuses. And so the story repeats itself. This game of cat and mouse must be eradicated once and for all.

The court is correct in every aspect of this ruling, except on one thing. It says that it is a voice in the desert, but it is not. The way PBS (and its predecessors) is used by the political party in power to subject its viewers and listeners to government propaganda has been harshly criticised for years on end, under different administrations.

Older generations, who remember the 1980s, will recall how then Xandir Malta was so controlled by the Labour government that not even the name of the Opposition Leader was allowed to be mentioned.

In todays age, we have not arrived at that stage, but it is true that the way news is reported by PBS these days is wrapped in Labour colours. It is being done more subtly than 40 years ago, but it is being done nonetheless.

It is shameful that public broadcasting is used in this way. PBS is sustained by taxes paid by all of us, and as such should provide a balanced and impartial service.

It does not.

And it does not happen only in news bulletins, in particular the 8pm slot where, day after day, and in particular when an election is approaching, the time is used to push the governments agenda down our collective throat while giving little importance to anything which could put the administration in bad light.

It also happens in current affairs programmes, and even in magazine shows, which should be providing light, educational and informative entertainment, but where the underlying message is that everything, in this country, is perfect.

Its not, and PBS has the duty to be unbiased.

But it is more likely that pigs fly.

Read more here:

TMIS Editorial: The judge, PBS and the silence that followed - Malta Independent Online

Rohingya people flee to nearby states to save their lives from official atrocities.

It was Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and elected leader of the country, who had represented the Myanmar case earlier. Judge Joan Donoghue, who was presiding over the court said that Gambia was a member of the Genocide Convention of 1948, and therefore jurisdiction in the case and as a member of the convention was obliged to act to prevent genocide.

Myanmar had presented the argument that Gambia had no standing to make a case against Myanmar, on behalf of the Rohingya.

The ICJ has ruled by 15 votes to one that Gambias application over the breach of convention against genocide was admissible because it is not necessary that Gambias nationals were victims of the acts of oppression by Myanmar.

Gambia has a right to stand up for any individual of any nationality.

The court noted that though Bangladesh had faced the brunt of the influx of Rohingya refugees into its territory, it does not preclude Gambia or any other state, which is a party to the convention from raising the issue against Myanmar.

The courts verdict is that Gambias application against Myanmar is admissible. Gambia had filed the case on November 11, 2019.

The proceedings of the case will take time, but it does establish an important precedent that it will not be possible for states and governments to say that other countries cannot interfere in the internal affairs of states.

Myanmar cannot invoke its sovereign status a State to say that it is not the business of other states to raise questions about Myanmars treatment of the Rohingya.

Though it is a welcome decision in many, the decision of the ICJ could open the proverbial Pandoras Box. Every state can file against every other state alleging genocide. But it will never be reduced to that frivolous level because members of the convention on genocide are not likely to raise issues with ulterior motives.

What is going to be a sensitive issue is the fact that the states, which have not brought the case against Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya might feel guilty that they have not raised the issue themselves.

Observers are sure to argue that the government of Syria should face charges, and that Palestinians, who face a dictatorial regime in the Israeli state, can also be brought to the ICJ.

It is indeed hypothetical because no case has been made against Syria or Israel so far, but it does open the door to human rights violations of the serious kind.

There is of course the case of Al Jazeera TV journalist Shireen Abu Shireen Abu Akleh, who has been shot dead by the Israeli security forces, is likely to come up before the International Court of Criminal Justice.

The legal, political and diplomatic problems involved in bringing cases to the ICJ over violation of convention of genocide or human rights are too complicated and too big, and they would need to be sorted out.

But the Gambia case against Myanmar over the issue of Rohingya under the genocide convention is a crucial development in the arena of international law.

It is true that powerful countries would not allow themselves to be brought before the ICJ for their rights violations.

What is needed is serious debate on international legal system and how it could be made effective to protect human rights everywhere.

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Myanmar in dock over action on Rohingya - Gulf Today

The Indian revolutionary movement, in its struggle against the mighty and oppressive British empire, churned out a rich number of poems and couplets expressing its dreams, desires and hopes for a future independent Indian nation. When we imagine the revolutionary movement through the lens of literary production, we remember the likes of Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Bhagat Singh, whose poems, couplets and slogans also became an integral part of the post-colonial peoples struggle in India.

The name of Chandrashekhar Azad does not figure in this list and he is primarily remembered as a gun-trotting, moustache-twisting person who fought the British till his last breath.

There is a pearl of unwritten wisdom in academic research that deep research often throws up surprises. And we indeed were surprised when in the course of our research on the Indian revolutionary movement, we stumbled upon a biography of Chandrashekhar Azad that contained two poems penned down by none other than Azad himself.

Published in June/July in 1931 in Varanasi and edited by Baldev Prasad Sharma, this book titled, Chandrasekhar Azad Ki Jivani was probably the first biography of Chandrashekhar Azad written after his martyrdom on February 27, 1931. The British government immediately banned the book and confiscated it.

Today, this book lies in the proscribed section of the National Archives of India.

That Chandrashekhar Azad wrote poems should not surprise us considering the fact that his compatriots consisted of accomplished poets like Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan, and lovers of poetry like Bhagat Singh, Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Batukeshwarr Dutt, and Bhagwan Das Mahore. How powerful this force of poetry-inducing habitus was can be grasped from the fact that it once compelled Rajguru to try his hand at poetry, though the fruit of that exercise angered Bhagat Singh who gave his pistol to Rajguru and asked him to either shoot him or never write again.

Reproduced below are first-ever English translations of those two poems eating dust on the shelves of history. Both these poems give us a glimpse of Azads revolutionary mind; a glimpse of revolutionaries self-understanding and their dreams; hints at how they understood their struggle and sacrifice in the larger schema of the freedom struggle and derived meaning from it.

Poem 1

He is the true martyr and the grace of the world,Who lays down his life on battleground for his homeland,Only his name remains and shines bright,Whose death brings tears to every eye;Wake up now, oh youth! From the total obliviousness,For only he is Azad whose arms have the strength;The only message this soul has for the world, now,My life is too little a price to pay if it feeds the poor.

Poem 2

We will show you the might of a complaining sigh,For, these chains of Azad could never be voiceless;Who dares to say that my blood will go in vain,When the dead ones build a world anew;How to fight the battles for the homeland,How to lay down the life for the homeland;I came to the world to tell you this only,Be happy, O my countrymen! Time to go, Vande Mataram!

These two poems apart from expressing the emotions and self-understanding of Azad are also meant to inspire the readers, especially the youth to join the revolutionary movement. Azad, like his other comrades, understands his role in the freedom movement as one of setting an example for the youth to follow. These poems attack pessimism and promise eternal glory for those who fight for their homeland.

The last line of the first poem My life is too little a price to pay if it feeds the poor shows how Azad saw his fight. For him, the purpose of his struggle, apart from expelling the British from Indian soil, was also to provide food to the poor. This clearly shows his socialist inclinations. In fact, the line, in its Hindi version Gareeb ko mile roti to meri jaan sasti hai has been a part of the socialist movement in India for a long time.

In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing, about the dark times.

These lines of Bertolt Brecht perfectly capture the mood of Azad as well as of poetry penned by other revolutionaries who were indeed living through a dark period where the chances of being captured and killed were very high. It was a time when Indians were not allowed to dream; a period when the judiciary was a pawn in hands of the rulers and there was no hope for justice; a period when Indians were not allowed to speak and express their opinions freely; a period when Indians had to fight even for basic human dignity.

When Azad and other of his comrades hoped that their deaths would serve to inspire the masses, they were writing about such a dark and pessimistic time when only blood sacrifice could instil in the masses a spirit to fight against injustice and oppression. At the same time, they were also giving meaning to their own lives or, more aptly, to their impending death through poetry.

These two small poems from the pen of Azad sing about those dark days and at the same time provoke us to dream about a more humane and just future.

Poems translated by Avinash Chaudhary, a research scholar at JNU.

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Two Poems on Dark Days and Hope From the Pen of Chandrashekhar Azad - The Wire

Dr. Shazia Malik is currently serving as head of Centre for Women Studies and Research, University of Kashmir. In the past, she has worked as Research Officer at State Resource Centre for Women for two years.

She has presented around 30 research papers in national and international seminars/conferences and her 20 papers and articles have got published in various newspapers, magazines and journals of India. Two of her papers have been awarded as best papers presented in 70thand 71stSessions of Indian History Congress.

She is also an author of a book-Women's Development Amid Conflict in Kashmir: A Socio-Cultural Study.Time and again she has made use of her abilities in writing and social activism.

While talking to Rising Kashmirs Feature writer, Insha Latief Khan she talks about her interest in the area of study as her primary concern is to investigate the impact of violence on womens development, and to draw out the differential consequences of violence for men and women.Her current research interests include Womens Agency and Gender Relations in Oral Traditions and Performative Practices in Kashmir.

How is the Centre for Women Studies and Research, University of Kashmiridentifying women issues?

The role of the centre is to transform the knowledge systems by breaking conventional academic boundaries. Broadly womens studies not only attempt to identify sources of womens oppression but it also tries to change the situation of women in a patriarchal set up. Teaching, research, extension activities and advocacy are thrust areas of our centre. We are doing extension activities with tribal women. We visit far flung areas. We are planning to expand such activities and offer them skill enhancement training in their own areas.

Also, the faculty has been doing small research projects in their own capacities with university or other major bodies who give some funds and we carry on research on major issues like domestic violence, issues of marginalized women of Kashmir with special focus on Hanji women and tribal women.

Women can be working or homemakers, married or unmarried, poor or rich, our issues are different and that is something which is being deeply discussed by the women studies forums. We try to bifurcate the categories into class, caste, regional and try to see their issues and concerns separately. We also do workshops on menstrual health, health and hygiene, gender sensitizations, sexual harassments, mental health issues of women etc.

What courses are offered by the centre? What new courses are coming up?

We offer a full-fledged Masters Programme in gender studies, which has courses on major feminist perspectives and theories, contemporary global and Indian feminist issues, linkages of feminism with disabilities, religion, peace and conflict, media, capitalism etc. Centre also offers a certificate course on Women and Law. Till now, two batches of PG gender studies have been given degrees. Moreover, the centre has been offering eight open and generic electives for the students of other departments since 2017.

Our students have been placed in good NGOs, universities and other government functionaries related to womens development. In the coming future, we will start Ph. D program also. We are at it.

Since you have taken the charge as head of the centre, what are your concerns?

My basic concern is to develop and restructure the curriculum so that new challenges for women can be identified. The goal is to frame the curriculum in such a way that we understand political science, literature, linguistics, history, economics, anthropology, science and technology and other major disciplines through feminist perspectives. I believe the issues at global level converge with the issues of women so we have to think that way.

We also have generic and open electives from other departments. They have other major courses but they chose one subject from our centre. Those students are more important to me. The courses should sanitize the students from other departments who can break the chain of bad attitude towards women and as citizens be good towards women which is my aim to attain.

Channelling the power of collaborations in Research and extension activities is our major tool to bring about changes in the status quo.Womens studies is something which has a large ambit. We are looking for recognized NGOs and activists who have worked on women centric issues. We want direct collaboration with government organizations, collaborations with other academic departmentslike science and biology. We often talk about the distinction between sex and gender but very few people from science contributeto this debate. People from other departments should join hands with us so that we can work together in dealing with womens issues.

In Kashmir a good number of feminist activists emerged in last few years, but their campaigns have largely been ineffective. I believe if activism is not connected to us then we will not be able to build theoretical understandings. This is beneficial for them as well. They will need women's studies to know how to deal with womens oppression. Unless there is no link, its impossible to do something for women. Linkages are very important.

As far as research in the field of women studies is concerned, how much is your focus on it?

As women we may belong to different cultures, and atmospheres, we need to have our own theories and concepts. In order to achieve such excellence, the center needs to focus on research-oriented work. Though we have been able to carry out some small research, the center lacks enough resources to do well in this area due to restricted flow of funding towards all womens studies centers in India.

Further our focus is also on formulating a state level policy for women. The policies that the state makes as of now for women doesnt work satisfactorily. We still dont have a shelter home for women. It's only on paper. So, our centre can work on these things and provide the government with data and suggestions about the policies. They may implement such policies which would be informed with the real ground situations.

Things have to change and now we have an honorable female Vice Chancellor, now we are hopeful that things will change. There will be more authority given to the centre and the women issues of the other departments will be highlighted.

What problems do you have to face while reaching your goals?

Though women's studies has a lot of scope. Majority have problems with the name of the centre. They are hesitant in getting associated with it because of the presence of name women in the nomenclature of the centre. Call it gender studies or women studies, it's the same because when we talk about women, it's automatically talking about men too. I would want to retain the word women because it shows the presence of women as women are important stakeholders.

Another thing is women centers across India are facing the problem that people dont give enough recognition to it as a discipline.It is not taken as other disciplines like social sciences.

How are you getting engaged with the younger lot in changing the attitude of people towards women?

UGC has asked universities to nominate gender champions. We have to choose students from colleges and universities who will play the role of gender champions and work on various women related issues and create awareness. Gender Champions are expected to facilitate an enabling environment within the university/colleges where girls are treated with dignity and respect.We sensitize these champions and they will be the ambassadors in the future. Every year a lot will be selected. When they leave their institutions, they will be sensitized enough and contribute in transforming the society.

In the coming future, what other things will be offered by the centre?

We are introducing a compulsory course paper on Gender Sensitization for the students of all the departments of our university, as recommended by NAAC 2019.

With New Education Policy, gender studies will be in colleges also as major/minor subjects that will also make an impact. The more students will study it, the more improvement we will see in the situations of women.

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'Good number of feminist activists emerged in Kashmir in last few years' - Rising Kashmir

The worlds leading exhibition of contemporary art, Documenta in Kassel, which takes place every five years, has been attacked for its socially critical content several times in the past. Five years ago, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Hesse, the state where the exhibition takes place, even termed an obelisk dedicated to the fate of refugees distorted art, so placing itself in the crudest manner in the Nazi tradition of opposing degenerate art.

But this year, these attacks escalated into a hate-filled vendetta. Politicians from various parties, along with German and Israeli government officials, seconded by the major media, forced the Documenta management to cover up a huge mural by the Indonesian artists group Taring Padi shortly after the opening of the art show and then to take it down in an aggressive anti-Semitism campaign.

The Hesse AfD even called for the closure of the entire Documenta. The Israeli embassy declared that some of the exhibits were reminiscent of Goebbels propaganda and had shattered all red lines. The executive director of the Central Council of Jews, Daniel Botmann, raged against the mural, saying it was Jew hatred in its purest form, and called for the resignation of Documenta director Sabine Schormann (who has now, in fact, stepped down). The public prosecutors office in Kassel intervened and declared that it was reviewing the large-scale image for criminal content. And finally, on Thursday, at the request of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), the issue even became the subject of a debate in the Bundestag (federal parliament).

What is involved in this censorship? This years Documenta is being hosted by the Indonesian curatorial collective Ruangrupa, which is considered left-wing in its home country and focuses on art by oppressed peoples and minorities in the global South. More than 1,000 artists have been invited from Trinidad, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Vietnam, among other countries.

Even before Documenta 15 opened, Ruangrupa was attacked as anti-Semitic, in part because it also invited Palestinian artists and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. A 2020 Bundestag resolution condemned this anti-Zionist campaign, which many Jewish artists have also joined, as anti-Semitic, amid protests from numerous cultural figures.

At the end of May, there was a break-in at an exhibition space of the Palestinian collective The Question of Funding. The intruders caused considerable property damage and left behind writings that included the number 187, a reference to Californias Penal Code for murderi.e., a death threat.

In January, right-wing, pro-Zionist groups belonging to the so-called Antideutschen (Anti-Germans), such as the Ruhrbarone, railed against the Documenta curators. In April, the facade of the Ruruhaus in Kasselthe headquarters of Ruangrupawas covered with racist stickers apparently by the same forces. On them could be read: Freedom instead of Islam! No compromise with barbarism! Fight Islam decisively! Another sticker called for Solidarity with Israel.

After Documenta opened in mid-June, accusations of supposed anti-Semitism focused on the Indonesian collective Taring Padis Wimmelbild (Hidden Object), which covers more than a hundred square meters and is titled Peoples Justice, painted on a banner of cotton fabric in the manner of Mexican murals. The painting was created back in 2002 by more than a dozen members of the artist group, which was formed in 1998, and has since been shown in several countries, including Australia, without causing offense. Upon closer inspection, however, the more than one hundred figures in the painting do include two that employ anti-Jewish stereotypes.

For example, in a row of marching soldiers or policemen, one sees a figure that is supposed to represent an Israeli soldier or policeman. This one is drawn with a pigs face, a scarf with a Star of David and a helmet with the inscription Mossadthe name of the notorious Israeli foreign intelligence service.

The second figure, a man in a suit and tie with shark-like teeth, a cigar in his mouth and suggested temple curls, his hat emblazoned with an SS rune, fatally resembles Nazi caricatures of Jewish capitalists.

The Taring Padi artists collective apologized for the fact that these figures obviously caused offense in Germany because of the crimes of the Holocaust. However, it rejected the accusation of anti-Semitism. Its installation, it said, was created in 2002 as part of a campaign against militarism and violence in Indonesia. The legacy of Haji Mohamed Suhartos bloody 32-year military dictatorship, which was only overthrown in 1998, continues to have an impact today.

All the figures depicted on the banner refer to symbolism common in Indonesias political context, such as the corrupt administration, military generals and their soldiers, who are symbolized as pigs, dogs and rats to criticize an exploitative capitalist system and military violence, Taring Padi said.

In a July 7 interview with the news weekly Die Zeit, representatives of the collective stressed that their theme was class, not race. The message of anti-militarism and anti-capitalism was very important to us, they continued, stressing that they opposed all forms of racism and discrimination. They referred to the popular uprising that ultimately brought down the Indonesian dictatorship, a system that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The massacres conducted by the Indonesian military killed millions of people, mostly Communist Party members and others on the left.

The banner was also about Western democracies support for the rise of the Indonesian military dictatorship under Suharto in the context of the Cold War, Taring Padi representatives added. The figures objected to were intended to indicate the support of foreign military and intelligence agencies for the Suharto regime ... including, among figures from other intelligence agencies, the support of Israel.

Indeed, the extent to which Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was involved in supporting Indonesias brutal Suharto dictatorship, alongside US and British intelligence agencies, has been documented. In the autumn 2019 edition of +972 Magazine, Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack described the ties Israel had forged with the military and anti-communist groups in Indonesia even before the overthrow of the parliamentary Sukarno government in 1965. He cites documents proving that Mossad was privy to the mass murders.

Even though Mossad knew that Suhartos military regime had massacred hundreds of thousands of citizens, it forged economic and security ties with the Indonesian generals, says Eitay Mack, who is one of the advocates of a peaceful relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.

The campaign against Documenta under the slogan of fighting anti-Semitism is more than hypocritical.

Firstly, it is grotesque when politicians of all stripes now drape the banner of the fight against anti-Semitism around themselves. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, these same politicians have been working with outright right-wing, pro-fascist forces, such as the former Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk, who praises Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and the murderous anti-Semitic OUN as heroes, even trivializing the Holocaust. And day in, day out, the same politicians are beating the drum for delivering heavy weaponry to Ukraine, even though it has been proven that the Ukrainian army is teeming with fascist elements and right-wing mercenaries from abroad.

Secondly, freedom of opinion, invoked everywhere as the basic framework of democracy, is nullified the moment opposition to dictatorship, exploitation and oppression is directed against the crimes of regimes with which German imperialism cooperates, such as Israel, but also the so-called Western democracies of the NATO states. Germany also maintained close political and economic relations with the Suharto dictatorship. In 1970, less than five years after the bloody massacres, the dictator was received in Germany for an official state visit. Helmut Kohl (CDU), who governed Germany from 1982 to 1998, called Suharto his dear friend.

If anti-Jewish stereotypes are shown in the works of a group of artists from Indonesia, then one can and should condemn this. But this requires, above all, fighting against the confusion that equates the Zionist state with Judaism and Jews. The crimes of the Holocaust are used by the Israeli capitalist regime to justify its own crimes and oppression. These affect not only the Palestinians, but also its own population.

The Israeli government does not represent the democratic and social rights of the Jewish population, which today faces exploitation, social inequality, and police oppression as in any other capitalist country. Zionist ideology is itself a racist, nationalist ideology that serves the interests of a super-rich capitalist elite in Israel and its imperialist allies. It is no accident that Israels government maintains excellent relations with extreme right forces.

Thirdly, the German government and the establishment parties in the Bundestag are trying to introduce political censorship in art by attacking Documenta. The state arrogates to itself the right to decide what art is permittedor, as the AfD has already put it, what art is to be treated as distorted. The Documenta debate must therefore be understood as a warning. The current development of war is accompanied by increasing attacks on democratic rights.

Hands off Documenta! This demand should be raised by everyone who stands up for the defence of democratic rights. The oppression of the Palestinians, which is also rejected by large parts of the Jewish population of Israel, can ultimately only be ended in the joint struggle of Jewish and Arab workers. The defence of Jewish citizens against renewed discrimination and the crushing of anti-Semitism, like the defence of Palestinian rights, ultimately requires the mobilization of the working class worldwide against the bankrupt capitalist system that once again threatens humanity with wars and dictatorships.

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Hands off the Documenta exhibition: No censorship of art! - WSWS

A potentially historic political shift is currently taking place within an unexpected group of Americans: evangelical Christians. In the wake of Donald Trumps presidency, strains within the evangelical community, especially among people of color, have resulted in significant numbers of people defecting from the right and opening themselves to social justice stances on issues of race, immigration, climate and economic fairness. Should the trend escalate, it could send tremors that extend well beyond the religious community and reverberate throughout U.S. politics.

While the future of evangelical politics remains uncertain, the divisions forming in religious spaces are creating significant opportunities for those interested in promoting progressive change. Moreover, organizing among evangelical dissenters is providing important lessons in how those working on social justice issues might find fertile ground in communities outside their circles of usual suspects provided they can relate with people who do not identify as belonging on either side of the traditional divide between the political right and left.

Due to the various ways in which the term evangelical is defined, it is difficult to put an exact percentage on the number of evangelical Christians in America today. A 2016 survey by Wheaton College, a private religious university, estimated about 90 to 100 million people in the United States are evangelical. Today, it is generally taken for granted that this constituency is one of the most rock-solid pillars of the Republican coalition and there is good reason to see things this way: In 2016, 80 percent of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump, with two-thirds of self-identified evangelicals saying their faith influences their political beliefs.

Such far-right identification, however, has not been forever locked in place. As recently as the early 1970s, evangelicals were considered a largely apolitical group. To the extent they formed a voting bloc, they were considered divided and persuadable a constituency that could be won over by Democratic politicians such as Jimmy Carter. Indeed, since Carter was himself a born-again Christian, Newsweek magazine dubbed 1976, the year of his election, the Year of the Evangelical.

A concerted campaign by conservative groups such as the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family made certain that future mentions of evangelicals in politics would definitely not refer to Democratic presidential wins. In social movement terms, the decades-long project by the New Right to transform the evangelical community from a muddled and sometimes apathetic bloc into one of the most die-hard conservative demographics represents an unprecedented organizing accomplishment.

While conservatives have provided a textbook example of how a constituency can be polarized in order to strengthen allegiances and move indecisive moderates into a political camp, the continuing polarization that occurred under Trump began creating a backlash. On the one hand, Trump was a master at energizing religious conservatives and solidifying their identification with him. Analysis from the Pew Research Center suggests even some non-churchgoing white conservatives are now adopting the evangelical label not to show religious identity, but to express a political orientation and demonstrate support for the party of Trump.

On the other hand, a predictable consequence of polarization is that, even as many supporters grow more passionately partisan, others will start to become alienated. When forcing people to take sides, you may draw many into your fold; however, you risk losing a fraction who are turned off and unwilling to make the leap. Signs of such a backlash can currently be seen among evangelicals particularly people of color.

No one would argue that the right has lost its command over the evangelicals as a whole, as white evangelicals remain among the most fervent supporters of former President Trump. At the same time, the reaction of evangelical leaders to mass protests around racial injustice, COVID, and #MeToo along with sexual impropriety and scandals in many churches have started driving people away in significant numbers. In some cases, those who are leaving are now looking for new expressions of their faith that are aligned with social justice expressions that sometimes put them squarely at odds with white evangelical Trump supporters.

Even if only a limited fraction of evangelicals are moved to embrace more progressive stances, the impact on the electorate as a whole could be profound. For this reason, understanding the divisions that are forming and analyzing the opportunities they present is a pressing task.

In recent years there have been many news stories about how the ardent right-wing identification of the evangelical community has begun to produce increasing numbers of defectors. Primarily, this has been reported in terms of people leaving their churches.

The percentage of Americans who identify as Christian (once well over 90 percent of the population) has steadily fallen since the 1960s, with the decline accelerating in the past 10 years. Among the subset of people who identify as white evangelicals, the drop-off has been particularly marked. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 23 percent of Americans were white evangelical Protestants in 2006; by 2020, that number had decreased to just 14.5 percent. Some part of this trend can be attributed to a general waning of public religiosity, as an increasing portion of the population checks none on surveys when asked about religious affiliation.

But it would be wrong to underestimate the connection between evangelicals diminished share of the population and disaffection with the conservative extremism that pervades many congregations. Following Trumps election in 2016, the #Exvangelical hashtag became increasingly popular, as many white evangelicals deserted their churches, citing Trumpism among faith leaders and their hard-right political platform as a primary concern.

This exodus from evangelicalism has been highlighted by the exits of prominent individuals within the movement. One such figure was Peter Wehner, a political operative who served in three Republican administrations. In a popular op-ed for the New York Times titled Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican, Wehner wrote about no longer feeling comfortable with the designation evangelical after witnessing continued support among fellow conservative Christians for Roy Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court Justice and Republican nominee in a 2017 U.S. Senate race who was accused of sexual misconduct by nine women.

In a similar move, Bible teacher and conservative Christian Beth Moore (no relation to Roy Moore) left the Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC. She cited, among other issues, the failure of her church to condemn Trumps Access Hollywood tape. Meanwhile, the shifting political climate has also riven institutions such as World Magazine, a prominent Christian news organization, which lost editor-in-chief Martin Olasky and several journalists who protested that the publication was becoming less a respected news source and more a conservative opinion outlet.

Such developments are symptomatic of a larger splintering within the evangelical church, in which many are questioning whether or not they ideologically belong in the community they once considered home. They are witnessing increasing divisions not only over Trump, but more generally over issues such as sexuality, #MeToo and the public response to the COVID pandemic. High-profile scandals have further exacerbated tensions and spurred the departure of many parishioners. Megachurches from Seattle to Illinois to Alabama and beyond have witnessed resignations from well-known pastors after allegations of sexual misconduct or infidelity and investigations such as the major report on sexual abuse in the SBC released in May 2022 have documented the endemic mishandling of sexual abuse claims.

In a February 2022 article for the Christian magazine First Things, Evangelical writer Aaron Renn argued: Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself. Not only prominent leaders, but rank-and-file pastors are departing in significant numbers. According to a 2021 poll by the Christian polling firm Barna Group, 38 percent of pastors said they had considered quitting full-time ministry. Scott Dudley, a pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church, told The Atlantic that many pastors have not only left their churches, but are deciding to pursue entirely different careers. They have concluded that their church has become a hostile work environment where at any moment they may be blasted, slandered, and demeaned in disrespectful and angry ways, Dudley said, or have organized groups of people within the church demand that they be fired.

In a widely circulated February 2022 opinion piece for the New York Times, columnist and author David Brooks examined this tension within the evangelical community. The turmoil in evangelicalism has not just ruptured relationships; its dissolving the structures of many evangelical institutions, he wrote. Many families, churches, parachurch organizations and even denominations are coming apart. I asked many evangelical leaders who are wary of Trump if they thought their movement would fracture. Most said it already has.

Perhaps as much as any other issue, the question of race has created schisms within evangelical communities. In his article, Brooks cited attitudes about race relations as one of the primary factors that has driven Christian evangelicals apart. Its been at times agonizing and bewildering, Thabiti Anyabwile, who pastors the largely Black Anacostia River Church in Washington, D.C, told Brooks. My entire relationship landscape has been rearranged. Ive lost 20-year friendships. Ive had great distance inserted into relationships that were once close and I thought would be close for life. Ive grieved.

In an April 2017 special report for Religion Dispatches titled Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads, reporter Deborah Jian Lee profiled several women of color who left their churches after the Trump election. Alicia Crosby, who is a Black social justice advocate, felt betrayed by white evangelical support for Trump and left her church to found the Center for Inclusivity. Crosby has spoken out on numerous podcasts about her experience leaving the evangelical church and finding Christian community elsewhere. In 2019, she wrote: In this moment, its not enough to ask how Christians can be more justice-minded, it is necessary to ask them to consider how their tradition and lived out faith practices are complicit in creating conditions for harm, regardless of what shapes their personal moral code.

Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a professor of practical theology at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, left the majority-white church where she had been on staff. People of color [have been] willing to fit themselves into these white evangelical spaces even when it was uncomfortable, she told Religion Dispatches. But for her and many colleagues, the dissonance became too extreme: One friend said the [2016] election was the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with the evangelical church, Walker-Barnes explained. I dont know if Im doing a full divestment from evangelical spaces, but Im definitely pulling back.

Racial tensions are not new, of course. That said, a March 2018 article by New York Times reporter Campbell Robertson highlighted how the right-wing polarization of the past decade has undone initiatives to create multi-racial church communities. A 2012 National Congregational Study showed that two-thirds of those attending majority-white churches were worshiping alongside at least some Black congregants, an increased level of church integration since 1998.

However, after the 2016 election, when white evangelicals supported Trump by a larger margin than they had voted for any other presidential candidate, churches began to resegregate, reversing previous efforts. Speaking about Trumps open hostility towards people of color and immigrants, Walker-Barnes told Robertson, [S]omething is profoundly wrong at the heart of the white church.

Everything we tried is not working, added author Michael Emerson. The election itself was the single most harmful event to the whole movement of reconciliation in at least the past 30 years, he said. Its about to completely break apart.

Subsequently, the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and a renewed wave of Black Lives Matter protests further heightened tensions. At a time of national reckoning, many evangelicals of color no longer felt that their congregations adequately supported them or reflected their values. Two prominent Black evangelicals, Chicago pastor Charlie Dates and Atlantas John Onwucheckwa both left the SBC due to concerns about racism within the organization. For Dates, the final straw was when all six SBC seminary presidents issued a statement in November 2020 that rejected critical race theory, calling it incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message and not a biblical solution.

In a December 2020 opinion piece for Religion News Service, Dates asked: How did they, who in 2020 still dont have a single Black denominational entity head, reject once and for all a theory that helps to frame the real race problems we face? Dates calls for a new vision and new standard, one which will not be led in full by white men and which speaks justice courageously to the government and cares gently for the oppressed, marginalized and women. A little over a year after Dates public exit, in February 2022, the SBC appointed Tennessee Baptist pastor Willie McLaurin as interim president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee; McLaurin is the first and the sole Black person to assume an Executive Committee role.

For his part, Onwuchekwa named four reasons for leaving the SBC, including the destructive nature of a disremembered history (the SBC failing to address the ways the organization participated in slavery), racial repair (the denomination has not denounced racism), unhealthy partisanship (allegiance to the Republican Party), and shallow solutions where they should be putting on scuba gear (a focus on unity rather than structural solutions to racial injustice). The SBC liked me, Onwuchekwa wrote in his public goodbye letter, but I feel like theyve failed people like me. Id rather give myself to serving that overlooked and under-resourced demographic than merely enjoy the perks of being treated as some outlier.

Although there are signs that new political possibilities may emerge within evangelical spaces that have experienced polarization and division, there is no widespread agreement about what form these may take and how radically they might break with the orthodoxy of the religious right.

Some dissenters, while perhaps falling in the Never Trump camp, remain hardline conservatives, simply wanting a more sedate, family-values Republicanism. As Rachel Stone, a lifelong evangelical and former evangelical writer, wrote in response to the David Brooks article, Mr. Brookss alleged dissenters depart from evangelical orthodoxy by not bowing to Donald Trump; otherwise, theyre typical evangelical gatekeepers. As an example, Stone noted that one of the Never Trumpers cited by Brooks, Christian professor Karen Swallow Prior, supports highly restrictive abortion legislation, among other conservative public policies. Other evangelicals want to make their churches less political, but not necessarily more progressive, putting forward calls for unity that attempt to paper over existing strains.

In June 2021, Michael Graham, who regularly communicates with evangelical pastors around the country, created a typology to explain these changes within the evangelical community. In an article titled The Six Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism, Graham divided the community into a half dozen distinct groups. He sees three groups (the Post-Evangelical, the Dechurched, but with some Jesus and Dechurched and Deconverted) as having cut ties with the faith. Among those who have remained, he sees three further factions: Neo-fundamentalist evangelicals (who have a strictly orthodox worldview), Mainstream evangelicals (who may show concern for the destructive pull of Christian Nationalism but are far more concerned by the secular lefts influence), and finally Neo-evangelicals (who are highly concerned by the acceptance of Trump and failure to engage on issues of race and sexuality within the evangelical community). Of these, only the last group would truly represent potential for political realignment.

Nevertheless, Graham sees major changes afoot. He questions whether big tent evangelicalism will survive, given the highly visible and even fatal divides between fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals. He believes new models of churches will emerge and are already emerging to offer compromises to those who fall between categories, or who are still deciding where they belong. We will see a rising tide of justice-minded churches, he writes, which is likely to draw in those who are turned off by the right and have interest in the social gospel.

The values and experiences of a younger generation are also driving change. Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Seminary, says that some younger members of the church want to build communities that are smaller, intimate, authentic, which can often fit in a living room. They see faith as inseparably linked to community service with the poor and marginalized. Theres a general interest in getting away from all the bitterness that has devoured the elders and just diving back into the Bible.

Likewise, as Cylde Haberman reported in the New York Times, A younger cohort of evangelical Protestants is increasingly Black and Latino. Ethnicity aside, they resemble other young Americans in not automatically sharing their elders hostility to same-sex marriage, abortion, or gay and transgender rights. David Bailey, a Black evangelical in Virginia whose own church is racially and socioeconomically diverse told David Brooks he sees that Christians who are millennials and younger have different views on things like LGBTQ issues and are just used to mixing with much more diverse demographics.

Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and a leading evangelical thinker, sees a younger evangelicalism rising with a politics that cannot be easily characterized as right or left. The enormous energy of [evangelical] churches in the global South and East has begun to spill over into the cities of North America, where a new, multiethnic evangelicalism is growing steadily, he wrote in a 2017 New Yorker article. In my view, these churches tend to be much more committed to racial justice and care for the poor than is commonly seen in white Evangelicalism. In this way, they might be called liberal. On the other hand, these multicultural churches remain avowedly conservative on issues like sex outside of marriage. They look, to most eyes, like a strange mixture of liberal and conservative viewpoints, although they themselves see a strong inner consistency between these views.

The vehemence of support for Trumps white nationalism in many evangelical spaces has prompted some Black evangelicals to leave or to find Black churches rather than remaining in majority-white spaces. Others, however, are remaining steadfast in their church communities, advocating for a mission-centered approach. As Deborah Jian Lee wrote for Religion Dispatches, some are reframing the evangelical world as a mission field as opposed to a place for spiritual nourishment, creating ethnic safe spaces or staying firmly planted in evangelical community to combat racism from within.

Ra Mendoza, who works as a national program director at Mission Year, an urban ministry with evangelical roots, is a Mexican-Latinx evangelical who has been working to create ethnic safe spaces. Mendoza told Jian Lee that evangelicals in Mission Year looked to her to call things out but that these groups never invited her to create something that actually corrected the problems she called out; they listened to her critique and they thought that was enough. Despite this, Mendoza stayed at Mission Year, hoping to create what she described to Lee as new space that doesnt perpetuate whiteness and sexism and all the stuff that was built into our DNA for the last 20 years. Mendoza created a Facebook group to mobilize churches to protect trans and non-binary people of color.

In a December 2018 article for the New Yorker titled Evangelicals of Color Fight Back Against the Religious Right, Eliza Griswold wrote about the Black evangelicals taking action to affirm social justice in their church communities. Griswold profiled Lisa Sharon Harper, a prominent evangelical activist. Harper is the former mobilizing director of a Christian social justice organization called Sojourners and the current president of Freedom Road, a consulting group that trains religious leaders in social action. After the murder of Michael Brown, Harper organized evangelical leaders and their followers against police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri. She also organized a trip to Brazil to unite against far-right President Jair Bolsanaro. Sociologically, the principal difference between white and Black evangelicals is that we believe that oppression exists, Harper stated.

For his part, David Brooks wrote of dissidents who are working within their churches to heal from divisions caused by Trumpism. Many of these dissenters have put racial justice and reconciliation activities at the center of what needs to be done, he wrote. [T]here are reconciliation conferences, trips to Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, study groups reading Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Thurman. Evangelicals played important roles in the abolitionist movement; these Christians are trying to connect with that legacy.

By organizing within marginalized communities, Black evangelicals diametrically oppose Trumps ethno-nationalistic coalition. And given that people of color are the fastest-growing demographic within evangelicalism, their organizing has the power to influence the wider political orientations of the community. (A 2015 Pew Research study predicted people of color will make up the majority of the Christian population by 2042.) Evangelicalism has been hijacked by the religious right, Harper told the New Yorker. We come from the arm of the church that is so toxic, we understand it and we can offer a solution. Her solution is that Black evangelicals propose an alternative rooted deeply in faith and vehemently jealous for the human dignity of all people.

One example of organizing that uses this new missional approach focused on racial justice and reconciliation has emerged in Phoenix, Arizona. There, a group called the Surge Network, which is connected to a nation church renewal movement co-founded by Tim Keller, has dramatically reshaped the composition of its leadership team in recent years to be primarily led by women and people of color. In terms of activating its evangelical constituency, it has been a key force in mobilizing interfaith responses to the murder of George Floyd and organizing religious people to join Black Lives Matter protests.

In one instance, Surge turned out 3,000 people from 200 churches to join a march through downtown Phoenix toward the Arizona Capitol, where ministers led a public prayer. As the crowd knelt, Melissa Hubert, a deacon at Redemption Church Alhambra, read the names of people killed by police. Among the protest signs, one placard invoked Hebrews 13:3: Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Beyond such public-facing mobilization, Surge leads a religious education program called the Neighbors Table, which prompts local parishioners to lean into hard conversations about criminal justice reform, immigration and Islamophobia through discussion and meals with neighbors directly impacted by these issues.

What will the future of evangelical politics be? This remains to be seen. But the current juncture has created a moment loaded with potential, in which the unprecedented alignment of evangelicalism with the Republican right is being shaken at least at the margins and new possibilities are emerging. Although white evangelicals may remain conservative loyalists, the ranks of people who might once have been among their fellow parishioners, but who have since been alienated by their intolerance and are now seeking new identities aligned with social justice, could well number in the millions.

Those millions are people that no movement interested in changing the world for the better should want to ignore.

Research assistance provided by Celeste Pepitone-Nahas.

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Political Polarization Is Pushing Evangelicals to a Historic Breaking Point - Truthout

Australian activist Drew Pavlou has been arrested in the UK over a false bomb threat delivered to the Chinese embassy in London that he claims came from a fake e-mail address designed to frame him.

Pavlou said the absurd e-mail claimed he would blow up the embassy over Beijings oppression of its Uighur Muslim minority, but that it was fabricated by the embassy to have him arrested.

Pavlou said he held a small peaceful human rights protest carrying a Uighur flag outside the Chinese embassy in central London, adding that the embassy reported him to police as a terrorist in retaliation.

The fake e-mail allegedly said: This is Drew Pavlou, you have until 12pm to stop the Uighur genocide or I blow up the embassy with a bomb. Regards, Drew.

Pavlou, a longstanding and vociferous critic of Beijings oppression of Chinas Uighur minority, said the email was allegedly sent from the account drewpavlou99@protonmail.me.

The Metropolitan police confirmed it had received a report of a bomb threat made by e-mail, and had arrested a man outside the embassy because of his suspicious behavior, and that he had attempted to glue his hand to the embassy.

Pavlou said the e-mail account is fake, and he had no involvement with it and had never sent any threat.

The UK police arrested me. They said the Chinese embassy had reported me as a terrorist, as a bomb threat. I was so shocked. Ive always been a peaceful protester, Pavlou said. Theyve made up this e-mail claiming that I sent in the bomb threat. Its just absolute insanity. Why would I throw away my life like that?

I miss my family, I cant leave the country, theyve threatened to arrest me at the border, he said. Ive done nothing wrong. I just wanted to peacefully protest and the Chinese embassy have invented this narrative that Im a terrorist. Its insanity.

Pavlou said online that he was arrested by the London Metropolitan Police Service and detained for 23 hours without access to a lawyer.

UK police handcuffed me in stress position and held me incommunicado for 23 hours with no access to lawyers. Facing seven years in prison, he wrote on Twitter.

They wouldnt let me talk to anyone on the outside, no one knew where I was, he added.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Pavlous arrest.

It has offered consular assistance to Drew Pavlou, an Australian who was arrested, and subsequently released, in the United Kingdom, the department said in a statement.

Pavlou has consistently protested Chinas authoritarian regime, in particular Beijings treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority.

Last month, he was ejected from the Wimbledons mens singles final after holding up a sign that said: Where is Peng Shuai?

Shuai () is a retired Chinese tennis player who alleged she had been sexually assaulted by a senior Chinese Communist Party official before disappearing, later retracting the allegation in a series of carefully stage-managed interviews.

In June, Pavlou interrupted a speech in Sydney by Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian (), saying: Stop platforming murderers, this is a representative of a dictatorship with 1 million Muslims in concentration camps.

Pavlous protest campaign rose to prominence at the University of Queensland, where he studies, and where he demonstrated against the influence of the universitys Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute.

Xinjiang, in Chinas northwest, is the site of a years-long crackdown by Chinese authorities on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. An estimated 1 million people have been incarcerated in a vast network of detention and re-education camps, which Beijing insists are vocational education and training centers.

Document leaks have revealed that thousands have been arrested or jailed for alleged crimes, including studying scripture, growing a beard or traveling overseas, and that authorities have established shoot to kill policies in response to attempted escapes.

Human rights groups and several governments have labeled the campaign a genocide or crime against humanity. Beijing denies all allegations of mistreatment and said its policies are to counter terrorism and religious extremism.

Comments will be moderated. Keep comments relevant to the article. Remarks containing abusive and obscene language, personal attacks of any kind or promotion will be removed and the user banned. Final decision will be at the discretion of the Taipei Times.

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Threat to Chinese embassy fake retaliation -

DetailsBy Levi RickertJuly 24, 2022

Opinion. About thirty years ago, I made a deal with myself to read at least one book a year written by a conservative right-winger so that I could try to understand the rationale behind their positions on race relations and governmental policy. As the years flew by and the United States became extremely polarized, I stopped reading conservative writings because I found many of their arguments lacked merit and were, quite often, mean-spirited and laced with paternalistic attitudes towards people of color.

So this past Monday when one of my business partners sent me a link to an article entitled Stirring Up Hatred Against Indian Boarding Schools: The Interior Department joins the movement to rebrand education as cultural genocide, I read it with some hesitation. Published by The American Conservative, the article was written by one of the magazines senior editors, Helen Andrews.

Andrews takes issue with the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report that was released on May 11, 2022. She accuses the U.S. Department of the Interior of making a big deal out of nothing.

This attempt to create a national scandal over Indian boarding schools is a thoroughly political scheme contrived by activists to stoke outrage regardless of the facts. No surprise there, because that is what the issue has always been, from the very beginning, Andrews writes.

The strange thing about the residential schools outrage is that for decades the issue simply did not exist, she continues.

Andrews is dead wrong. Native Americans have known the boarding school issue existed for more than a century. In most tribal communities and Native families, people knew about the wreckage caused by Indian boarding schools, but simply did not speak openly about it.

Its worth noting that when the news first broke about the graves of Native childrenat the Kamloops residential school last May, Native News Online decided to wait until Tuesday to report on it. At the time, my business partner, who is not Native, questioned me and our managing editor at the time (a First Nations citizen) why we did not have a sense of urgency about the story.

We told him that it was not really news to us. We have known about Native children buried in unmarked graves at Indian boarding schools for years.

History has proven my news judgment on that day was wrong. The Kamloops story woke up the world to the atrocities committed against Native children by the federal governments of Canada and the United States. The story of Indian boarding schools and the generational trauma they caused a story that was largely unspoken by Native people for decades and mostly unknown by non-Natives for just as long was suddenly front page news. For the first time in my life, both Natives and non-Natives were talking about boarding schools and their effect on Indigenous communities and families.

Ignoring most of this, The American Conservatives article is long and dissects various aspects of the Indian boarding schools, mostly portraying them as a means to fast-forward our ancestors into American society through assimilation. The justification of the piece seems to be: Indian boarding schools were needed to bring Native Americans in from the dark ages.

Native News Onlines Senior Reporter Jenna Kunze, who has reported about half of the 120-plus stories weve written about Indian boarding schools over the past year, read Andrews article as well. On Friday, she wrote me,Andrews writes from an ethno-centric point of view that assumes the behavior of the government had the best interest of Native American kids, and that the conditions of the schools were objectively better for the childrenremember we're talking about five-year-olds taken away from their families.

Her critique on the delay of the movement from the time boarding schools were closed (she says most were closed in the 1930s, but many were open through the 1970s) does little to account for systemic oppression against Native Americans in this country, the psychological impact and code of indoctrination and/or silence boarding school instilled in its children, and the fact that the United States was not positioned to reckon with this history until very recently."

I also reached out to Aaron Payment (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe), an Native American education scholar, who has his doctorate in education, to ask what he thought of Andrews writing.

The investigation into the experience of American Indians forcibly removed from their homes and subjected to assimilation mills that used brainwashing tactics to strip away culture, language, spirituality, identity, and make no mistake treaty and trust obligations is not about blame but about reconciliation and healing, Dr. Payment told me. This political hate movement of anti-critical race theory is a dog whistle and attempt at moral and ethical absolution of the past. Manifest destiny was used to justify raping the land and stealing from the indigenous people as Gods will. We all own a piece of our past and all own the responsibility to learn from it so we can truly live in a free and just society.

While conservatives often crow loudly about freedom and individual liberties, they seem to want no part in discussing freedoms and liberties that were stripped from Native Americans over the course of two centuries. The Indian boarding school discussion evidently makes some conservatives, like Andrews, uncomfortable. I dont know the author; nor does she know me. However, after reading the article, it is safe to assume she knows few, if any, Native Americans.

Rather than sitting in an ivory tower and writing an article that tries to erase our history, perhaps Andrews should come down to Indian Country, talk to some of our elders who attended boarding schools and seek to understand the other side of the story. She will hear truth in each of their stories.

I often say it is time for Native Americans to tell our own stories because we have not always been happy with how they are told by non-Native people. From Hollywood to history books, American Indians and Alaska Natives have been misrepresented at best and erased at worst.

If the narrative about Indian Country is ever going to change, we must tell our own stories. We cant let them be told by people with political agendas who want to whitewash our history. We must fight back against those who seek to squelch the truth so that our tribal communities and Native families can heal.

Do you appreciate a Native perspective on the news?

For the past decade-plus, weve covered the important Indigenous stories that are often overlooked by other media. From the protests at Standing Rock and the toppling of colonizer statues during the racial equity protests,to the ongoing epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) and the past-due reckoning related to assimilation, cultural genocide and Indian Boarding Schools, we have been there to provide a Native perspective and elevate Native voices.

Our news is free for everyone to read, but it is not free to produce. Thats why were asking you to make a donation this month to help support our efforts. Any contribution big or small helps us remain a force for change in Indian Country and continue telling the stories that are so often ignored, erased or overlooked. Most often, our donors make a one-time gift of $20 or more, while many choose to make a recurring monthly donation of $5 or $10. Whatever you can do, it helps fund our Indigenous-led newsroom and our ability to cover Native news.

Donate to Native News Online today and support independent Indigenous journalism. Thank you.

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Indian Country Must Push Back on Conservative Attempts to Whitewash Boarding School History - Native News Online

Some view the Republic of Ireland as the most anti-Israeli country in Europe, depending on who you ask. I like to view Ireland as the State of Palestines only ally; not just in Europe but probably worldwide. Ireland recently piqued my interest with its stand and comments regarding the Ukraine- Russian conflict. They were the first and only nation during the EU emergency meetings at the European Parliament in April 2022 to remind people that refugees and the Palestinian people have endured humanitarian and war crimes for much longer, as the world remained silent.

Why is this article important? Over the years, especially recently, we have seen the countrys policies shift to a more hostile approach towards Israel. This is incredibly heartening to the Palestinian people as they receive less and less support from neighboring Arab nations. While these countries may have held their ground initially (like Turkey and Saudi Arabia), there now seems to be a trend in the normalizing of relations with Israel. Knowing countries are calling out Israel and fighting for Palestinian rights gives hope that the world has not fully turned its back on Palestine.

Maintaining relationships and respecting allies was a practice followed by the Prophet . The Prophet once wanted the help of Safwan bin Umayyah , who was a non-Muslim at the time of the battle of Hunayn. When the Prophet asked Safwan to lend him weapons -when he was still under his cousins protection and had not yet embraced Islam-, he asked the Prophet , To take by force, Oh Muhammad? To which the Prophet replied, No, a secure loan (i.e. we guarantee we will return them or their value). [related by Abu Dawud, 3526]

Alhamdulillah, we're at over 850 supporters. Help us get to 900 supporters this month. All it takes is a small gift from a reader like you to keep us going, for just $2 / month.

The Prophet (SAW) has taught us the best of deeds are those that done consistently, even if they are small. Click here to support MuslimMatters with a monthly donation of $2 per month. Set it and collect blessings from Allah (swt) for the khayr you're supporting without thinking about it.

Malik Ibn Anas said, There is no harm in seeking their (non-muslim) assistance in a time of need. [At-Tahrr wat-Tanwr of Ibn shr 1/74] Another example of allying or building relationships with non-Muslims is in that of the time after having migrating to Madinah, the Prophet created an agreement with the Jews of Madinah. It was a deal of being neighborly to another and not violating each others rights. Giving credit where credit is due and honoring those that stand with us is the least we can do. It is clearly stated in the Quran:

Allh does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who did not fight against you on account of religion and did not drive you out of your homes. Verily, Allh loves those who deal with equity. [Surat Al-Mumtaanah: 60;8]

In 2000, Ireland established a representative office in Ramallah, and Palestine has a representative office in Dublin. Ireland is giving us real-life examples that Muslim countries could learn from. Here are four more examples of how Ireland stands by Palestine as an ally:

1. Anti-Occupation BillIn 2018 an Irish senator, Senator Frances Black, introduced the Occupied Territories Bill, where Ireland would ban all Israeli settlement goods in their country. The bill sparked outrage from Israel, saying that Ireland is targeting the only democratic nation in the Middle East. Their response was noble and true. Senator Frances Black tweeted regarding Israels statement, Ireland will always stand for international law + human rights, & were one step closer to making history. Onwards! Those found guilty of importing or selling goods from Golan Height, East Jerusalem, or the West Banks illegal settlements would be fined 250,000 euros (roughly $284,000) or face five years in jail. This bill passed the first stage of five in 2019, and although today it is not yet a law, it has generated tremendous dialogue around the illegal occupation.

2. Raising the Palestinian Flag

In 2017, Dublin raised the Palestinian flag at their city hall to mark the 50 years of the Israeli occupation. It won majority approval and was raised for a month despite criticism and complaint made by Israel regarding the flag being raised.

3. Funding of humanitarian projects in Gaza.

Ireland is funding multiple developmental and humanitarian projects in the Gaza strip. For those unaware, the Gaza strip has been described as the largest open-air prison in the world, where over two million Palestinians are sieged. The projects Ireland is funding include water desalination, solar energy projects, and medical facilities. The Irish government has even visited Gaza to oversee the implementation themselves. These initiatives are a great effort by a nation to help and support the Palestinian people and raise them from the humiliating situation they are in.

4. Most Irish people are Pro-Palestinian

Let us not forget that Ireland is a victim of British colonialism, and it is this experience that makes them ally with the Palestinian people. Here is how the Irish relate to them based on past experiences:

At the League of Nations, Prime Minister Eamonn De Valera criticized the carve-up as inhumane and oppressive, a resentful repeat of Irelands division by the British 15 years earlier. The Irish political opinion saw the shift of its attitude towards Zionism very much through the focus point of the British. If the Zionists and the British are on the same side of the partition, then we cant support the Zionist settlement.

Once the Zionist movement accepted the division of Palestine, the Irish began to draw unflattering similarities between Israeli policies and their divided reality. To many of the Irish, the Jewish state now looked less like a besieged religious society struggling courageously for its natural rights and more like a colony illegitimately installed by the British army with the intent of imposing itself on the indigenous population.

During the Lebanese Civil War, Israels practices -where 30,000 Irish soldiers served as peacekeepers-, soured attitudes even more. The deaths of several Irish soldiers by Israeli forces were why Dublin did not open an Israeli embassy until 1993. Ireland was the first to acknowledge the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 80s. By recognizing the PLO, other nations started to do the same.

The Irish government can use its pull in the EU and the UN to convince other states of its position towards Palestine. They do sit on the security council. They can be an ally for Muslims for the sake of Palestine. We must recognize how important it is to have partners in various positions in various parts of the world. There is an emotional connection with the Palestinian people, a connection that every oppressed group around the world should feel. Oppression is evil regardless the race, religion, or gender. You would think more people worldwide would sympathize with Palestine, given the horrid nature of our history. How many genocides, massacres, wars, and ethnic cleansing has happened since World War 2?

When will Muslim nations follow the lead of Ireland and build that hospitable relationship with Palestine? Most Muslim countries have also endured hardship through colonization. The population in Muslim countries understand what it means to be seized by a foreign power. Besides the fact, they are our Muslim brothers and sisters in Islam. There are multiple reasons to stand with the Palestinian people and not forget them.

This idea may seem simplistic, and one might argue that they are being pressured to be pro-Zionist in trade and policy. That might be the case for the impoverished, but not for many influential and wealthy nations that chose to support relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia is a country that supported the Palestinian cause and shut the oil valve on the US, and brought America to its knees. Today they are building positive relationships with Israel at the expense of our Palestinian brothers and sisters.

The same goes for Turkey, a country voluntarily choosing to develop relations with Israel. These nations, and those like them, are only looking out for their interests at the end of the day. If that means making a deal with the devil, then so be it.

Some woke to the horrific news of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh killed by Israeli forces, then another journalist shortly after. World leaders stood silent as Irish MP Mary Lou McDonald said this, There is a long-established pattern of the Israeli State targeting journalists who are covering the brutal occupation of Palestine. And this systematic targeting has resulted in complaints being filed with the International Criminal Court and with the United Nations.

Micheal Martin said: I condemn the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the media freedom and the safety of journalists must be protected and as an extra obligation on State forces to ensure the protection of journalists and we express our deepest condolences to her family.

Ireland sees the obvious, unlike its European counterpart. While the world is pushing for peace talks. Few know the reality that surrendering is what Israel wants, not a solution. Their version of peace is complete control of the region. A conversation between the Israeli government and the Palestinian people is equivalent to a dialogue between the colonists and the liberation movement.

I strongly respect Ireland for its understanding of what is at stake regarding its global presence, and helping the Palestinians regardless; reminding other nations too that what is on the line is an independent country and its people deserving of dignity, respect, and human rights as with any other. Anything less is not acceptable. Despite thousands of Palestinians misery, pain, destruction, and death, their spirit is as straight as an arrow. I wish more governments could see what Ireland sees and how it is standing up for the rights of the State of Palestine.

Related reading:

Why Israel Should Be Singled Out For Its Human Rights Record

Why Israel Should Be Singled Out For Its Human Rights Record

Palestine in the Islamic Consciousness

Palestine in the Islamic Consciousness

See the article here:

Ireland: A Stalwart Ally Of The Palestinian People - MuslimMatters

The situation in Syria is worse now than ever for women and girls, the United Nations Population Fund (U.N.P.F.) reported in May. This worrisome message has become a refrain over the past few years.

After over a decade of fighting, war has become the face of Syria. What began as a revolution for progress in 2011, similar to other countries participation in the Arab Spring, soon became a whirlwind of never-ending violence. Around 26.5 million people are in need of assistance, and an estimated 11.7 million remain internally displaced or refugees in neighbouring countries.

Beyond casualties and displacements, gender-specific issues are also on the rise, particularly pertaining to insufficient sexual and reproductive health (S.R.H.) services. According to U.N.P.F., there are 1.7 million women in need of S.R.H. services. As the conflict has sent a devastating majority into poverty, the number of children forced into marriages in exchange for money and relative protection has risen exponentially as well.

Overall, the conflict has put women and girls at increasing risk of sexual violence and exploitation: in urban areas, shelters, and refugee camps. In these settlements, women often fall victim to sexual exploitation and, having limited mobility, cannot escape who hurt them, Women of Influence explains in a 2021 article. Sexual violence, W.O.I. says, is a weapon of war, used by parties complicit in the Syrian conflict, [and] serving to demonstrate who holds more power.

[In] a country where the honour of a woman is considered sacred, rape is being used to cause unrest amongst the population, the W.O.I. article says. When a womans honour is violated, entire families experience stigma and social exclusion. Hence, in Syria, women are being killed for allegedly bringing dishonour upon their families.

Syrian womens human rights and basic needs are disproportionately neglected, without a doubt, and they, like all women, should be able to enjoy their rights as stated. What is happening in Syria is a tragedy, and the numbers above are a slap in the face of womens emancipation. However, it is critical to phrase such statements with utmost caution, because another number that has risen is the stereotypical perception of the Middle-Eastern woman that women in the Syrian refugee diaspora bear.

Those who are not present in the conflicted country receive their information from whats scattered through the media. Thus, journalists must take care not to feed such impressions with statistics and headlines that lack a broader context.

Western aid organizations and feminist organizations have a history of addressing humanitarian issues in the third world or developing countries from a narrating approach instead of a collaborating one. These groups often write about situations from a distant, third-party perspective that fits their ideas, as outsiders, of what the situation looks like on the ground, depriving locals of their agency and creating a phantasm that all third-world women suffer from the same oppression which the Western world can save and protect them from.

For example, the W.O.I. article. Although its statements about women being killed for bringing dishonour on their families are not entirely untrue, this phrasing both relies on and reinforces pre-existing stereotypes about Syria being a backwards, conservative, and unemancipated country.

The danger in stating that humanitarian responses to those affected by the war need to be altered to provide Syrian women and girls with better protection lies with the fact that it merely victimizes women. There is no space for active engagement with the women that are supposedly in need of protection.

Advocating for protecting and empowering Syrian women does not deal with the problem at its root. Why is sexual violence happening in Syria, and what are local actors and internal movements doing to take on the problem? Rather than trying to protect Syrian women as outsiders, humanitarian aid groups should ask these questions and provide local groups with the tools to realize their goals.

There is an abundance of articles like this one, and too few about Syrian womens achievements. However, Al Jazeeras 2021 article How Syrian Women are Fighting a War And Patriarchy is an example of the latter, focusing on Syrian women who have taken on active roles in the Revolution the women who Lina Sergie Attar, Syrian-American architect and co-founder of a refugee foundation, calls the invisible warriors of the war and how the fight has affected them. But it also discusses womens lack of voice. [W]ithout their voices being heard, the article asks, how will womens rights be protected in the development of their countrys future?

[The] main problem in Syria is that men are in control of everything, from civil society to humanitarian organizations, said Ghalia Rahal, a 47-year-old who converted her hair salon to a vocational training center for women in 2013.

Despite womens great participation in the Revolution, protests, organizations, and as individual agents of change, they are severely politically underrepresented. Amnesty International stated in 2019 that womens participation in political processes is fundamental for achieving gender equality and human rights for all. The international community, it said, must consult with women and ensure that they are represented effectively in peace talks, negotiations, the drafting of the constitution and other peace-building processes.

Besides the absence of institutionalized mechanisms to ensure the protection of women and vulnerable groups, the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.) also notes the very limited representation of women in Syrian institutions and media. The W.I.L.P.F., a non-violent movement that works closely with local and involved partners, launched the Feminist Movement for Change together with 24 Syrian organizations in 2017. (The project re-launched in 2021.) They are focused on fitting Syrian womens needs to their beliefs, de-victimizing them, re-defining them from woman- or wife-status, and generally providing an alternative look at a justice process.

Syrian women are individuals, not a monolith, just like women from any other arbitrary country. And not every woman aspires to a Westernized ideal of emancipation. Being the voice that changes a country, filling a government chair, or breaking with traditional gender roles are not the only ways to be empowered. Empowerment is the freedom to choose ones own path regardless of what others believe that path should look like.

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Risks For Syrian Women And Girls Increase And So Do The Stereotypes - The Organization for World Peace