Category Archives: India

Mothers kill daughters all for honour

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From The Hindu:

 

Lucknow: In yet another case of honour killing, two Muslim girls were allegedly killed by their mothers for eloping with Hindu youths in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district.

Teenaged Zahida (19) and Husna (26), both residents of Mughalpura, were allegedly tied to the cots and strangulated on Thursday night, police said.

The two girls recently eloped with two Bihari youths and got married, the police said.

They came back to their locality on May 10 and approached the police for security.

However, their mothers gave some undertakings in this regard and the two girls were sent back to their homes by administration officials.

“The two girls had been killed by their mothers along with a woman,” SP Pritinder Singh said.

Both Khatoon and Subrato, mothers of Zhadia and Husna respectively, had been arrested.

“It is suspected that a few more people may be involved in the killing and the case is being investigated,” the SP said. — PTI

Muslim population in Western Europe rising

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IB NEWS… The population of Muslims in Western Europe has been steadily rising in recent decades, largely due to immigration from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.

In Southeastern Europe, much of which once formed part of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims have been present for many centuries, but they are a relatively new phenomenon in the western part of the continent.

On the whole, Muslim’s represent about 5 percent of the population of the EU 27.

Far-right politicians in Europe have long warned that the Muslim numbers will continue to grow due to higher birth rates. Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s anti-immigrant National Front party, who openly discusses the rising number Muslims in France, could conceivably win next year’s presidential election, according to polls.

While the percentage of Muslims as part of the overall population of western European nations are in single digits, a 2009 study by the Telegraph newspaper in the UK estimated that by 2050, Muslims will account for 20 percent of the European Union’s populace. Long before that, Britain, Spain and The Netherlands will reach and surpass that figure. Continue Reading →

Pakistan Airforce on Red Alert. Says ‘India Seeking Scapegoat’

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News Outlook India:

Pakistan continued to be confused, defiant and in denial. But despite mounting pressure from around the world to take immediate action against terrorism,  it stuck to its old chant of “no proof”.

But even as Pakistan’s Prime Minister said that he did not foresee a war, Pakistan put its air force on red alert and warplanes conducted “emergency scrambles” from four key airbases, in what has been described as whipping up war-hysteria to mount pressure on the West.

Soon after the Pakistan Air Force went on red alert, emergency scrambles were conducted at the Lahore, Rawalpindi, Sargodha and Mianwali airbases, sources were quoted as saying by the private NNI news agency.

F-16 and Mirage combat jets carried out aerial surveillance of the Chashma nuclear power plant complex and other sensitive sites, sources said.

Residents of Mianwali in Punjab province shouted slogans against “Indian aggression” as they watched the jets soaring through the skies over the city, the report said.

The Civil Defence Organisation informed people about safety measures to be observed in the event of air strikes. Siren exercises will be conducted in the city for people to observe a black out, the sources said.

The PAF began conducting sorties over major cities, including the federal capital, on Monday in a show of enhanced vigilance following the escalation of regional tensions.

The contradictions however were apparent in the shifting stance by its various various luminaries. What came up with just in the course of the last 24 hours makes for fascinating reading:

‘They Want To Make Someone The Scapegoat’

Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was the one who perhaps summed up the Pakistani response in its totality:

“The government and armed forces of Pakistan are prepared for all eventualities in the face of mounting tensions between the two countries. The armed forces of Pakistan are assessing the situation but I do not think there will be a war. If they (India) try to indulge in any adventure of this kind, the people and institutions of Pakistan are united to defend the country and its territorial integrity. While the operational preparedness of our armed forces is at an optimal level, nobody wants tensions on the borders. We are moving responsibly and with caution..The government is aware of the situation in the region and will act as things move. Continue Reading →

American Thinker: Jihad has come to India

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An article on American Thinker by By Richard L. Benkin

Jihad has come to India.  The Obama administration and the State Department will tell you that it is nothing more than isolated acts by individuals.  The government in New Delhi will say you are stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment.  The mainstream media will ask how you can say that when we are hearing nothing about it from them.  But it is real, and it is happening now.  I have seen it first-hand.  The Obama administration’s studied denial will find us caught as flat-footed in India as we were in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere.  The difference is that India is an economic and military giant, with nuclear weapons, and could be a cornerstone of any effective fight against radical Islam.
For several years, I have been talking about the progressive radicalization of Bangladesh.  Although it is the only country that ranks among the ten most populous and the ten most densely populated, as well as being the second largest Muslim-majority nation, events there do not capture people’s imagination.  When you talk about India in the same context, however, people take notice.  The thought of an Islamist dominated India scares the heck out of them and should.  While our own strategic thinkers concentrate on internecine struggles in the Middle East, their obliviousness to the significance of an Islamist India has enabled our enemies to further their agenda.
I have spent several years along India’s 2545 mile-long frontier with Bangladesh, and have seen the impact Bangladesh’s radicalization has had on its giant neighbor to the west.  Amitabh Tripathi, who has been fighting against what he calls his country’s “soft policies,” noted that Bangladesh’s Muslims “are not radicalized but their institutions are.”  That radicalization and a level of corruption on both sides of the border that makes my fellow Chicagoans look like amateurs has already produced demographic change in many strategic areas of India.  It also has given Muslim activists carte blanche throughout the entire country.  The process is deliberate, has been going on for decades, and should send us a screaming warning signal, not only because of what it bodes for India, but also because of what sort of future the Obama administration’s soft policies and tolerance for an open border to our south mean for the United States.
Each year in districts like Uttar Dinajpur and North and South 24 Parganas directly across from the Islamic state, my colleagues and I find that more and more villages which once had mixed Hindu-Muslim populations are now all Muslim or Muslim-dominated.  Gone are the roadside temples characteristic of places where Hindus practice their faith openly; gone are the sights of Hindu women dressed in their colorful saris and other vestments.  They have been replaced by mosques and burqas. Last year, Tripathi and I met with Bimal Praminik, Director of the Kolkata-based Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relations and arguably the foremost authority on these population changes.  He is convinced that this population shift is a deliberate and an integral element the jihad that threatens all of us:  “Bangladeshi infiltration with Pakistani ideas… trying to ‘Pakistanize’ the entire region,” he said adding that that the dominant culture for South Asian Muslims has become more “Arabic,” than South Asian.
In 1947 when the British left, they partitioned the Indian subcontinent into Hindu and Muslim states.  West Bengal went to Hindu India, and East Bengal (now Bangladesh) became part of Pakistan.  While Hindu and Muslim majorities respectively, remain, exhaustive studies by Pramanik and others hold out little hope that things will continue that way.  During the second half of the 20th century, the Muslim proportion of West Bengal’s population rose by 25 percent and its Hindu population declined by nine, a process that has continued into the 21st.  At the same time, Bangladesh’s Hindu population dropped from almost a third to nine percent.  The process has not been pretty and has involved murder, gang rape, abduction of women and children, forced conversion to Islam, and legalized thievery of ancestral Hindu lands under Bangladesh’s anti-Hindu Vested Property Act.  And now it is happening in India.
Between 1981 and 1991, Muslim population growth in West Bengal actually exceeded its growth in Bangladesh.  The South Asia Research Society concluded that Hindus have been fleeing Islamist persecution in East Bengal since the partition; but that since Bangladesh’s emergence as an independent nation in 1971, “there has been large scale voluntary infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims…to West Bengal and other parts of India” as well.  The actual Muslim population growth exceeded Indian government projections that were based on demographic factors (fertility and mortality), internal migration, and the influx of Hindu refugees; thus, there had to be another element driving the change.  Pramanik identifies it as “illegal immigration from across the border.”  Islamist plans have been so detailed and longstanding that since 1951 the Muslim growth rate exceeded that of Hindus in each individual district of West Bengal.
Statistics might be the “smoking gun,” but jihad’s impact is far more powerful in the testimony of individual non-Muslim residents who are its victims.  One elderly woman in the Howrah district told us how Muslims are taking over her property piece by piece.  She even showed us a wall with a star and crescent on it that local Muslims built to identify it as dar al Islam.  In another village, residents showed us the remains of a Hindu temple that Muslims recently destroyed after urinating on its holy objects.  Most poignant was the testimony of a crestfallen mother whose 22-year-old daughter was abducted weeks ago by local Muslims.  Abduction of Hindu women and girls in the name of Islam has been common in Bangladesh for years and is a key element in jihad: eliminating females of childbearing years from the gene pool and forcing them to “produce” Muslim offspring instead.  It is now happening in India, according to victimized parents who told me about it in India’s North and Northeast.
Residents of Deganga, only 40 kilometers from the West Bengal capital of Kolkata, lived through an anti-Hindu pogrom last September.  The pogrom started — as these things are wont to do these days — with a fabricated land dispute in which Muslims claimed a wooded area off the region’s main road that Hindus own and on which sits a Hindu shrine that is considered very sacred.  As the 2010 Islamic observance of Iftar came to an end, a large group of Muslims attempted to seize the land until local Hindus stopped them.  It was then that they started attacking Hindu households and shops indiscriminately, forcing many to flee the area with little more than the clothes on their backs.
I returned to Deganga last month to find that while many homes and shops have been rebuilt, a sense of security by Hindus in their ancestral land has not.  Most of the residents spoke about leaving the area; others talked about being fearful of attack, their children unable to attend school, and Hindu women being harassed whenever they go to the market or other places in the area.  Many of them showed us charred pieces of their former residences; in other cases we were able to see signs of it bleeding through a new coat of paint.  Hindu women and girls showed us where they hid during the attack to avoid being raped or abducted and made concubines; a fate that likely has befallen the missing 22-year old daughter of the mother above.
In every single one of these cases, local authorities have refused to take action.  In fact, during the Deganga pogrom, they arrested the community’s wealthiest Hindu on the false charge of firing on the jihadis. In the past, this official inaction has been purchased; but it is also a product of the alliance between Islamists and Communists in India.  That alliance was announced publicly at a meeting in the south Indian state of Kerala; and it has been policy for West Bengal’s three-decade old communist government.  Wherever we spoke with these villagers, Muslim neighbors would gather menacingly in an attempt to intimidate our informants.  In some cases, they attacked after we left — again with no action by the authorities.

Supreme Court orders Ayodhya mosque verdict postponed

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By C.J. Kuncheria

NEW DELHI | Thu Sep 23, 2010 4:39pm IST

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the Allahabad High Court to delay a potentially explosive verdict on whether Hindus or Muslims own land around the demolished Babri mosque in Ayodhya.

The deferral of the verdict, which many fear could have sparked off religious riots, will be a relief for the government, which already has its hands full dealing with a rebellion in Kashmir and rushing against the clock to set right preparations for the Commonweath Games.

(For slideshow: Ayodhya braces for court Verdict, click here)

The decades-old case over the 16th century Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh state is one of the biggest security challenges in India this year, along with a Maoist insurgency and a Kashmiri separatist rebellion, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said.

Hindu mobs demolished the mosque in the town of Ayodhya in 1992, claiming it was built on the birthplace of their god-king Rama. The demolition triggered the worst religious riots since partition in 1947, and some 2,000 people died. Continue Reading →

India: 11 Killed In Protests In Kashmir

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September 13, 2010 STRATFOR

At least 11 people were killed Sept. 13 during Koran demonstrations and anti-government protests across Indian Kashmir, according to police officials, Reuters reported. The incident marks the largest single death toll from protests in Kashmir in years, the police said. Seven people were killed when police fired on a group of Muslim protesters denouncing reports of Koran burning in the United States.

India: March Erupts In Violence In Indian Kashmir

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September 11, 2010 STRATFOR SITREP
Tens of thousands of Muslims marched through Indian Kashmir’s main city on Sept. 11, setting fire to government and police buildings in the latest of the largest protests in two years against Indian rule, Reuters reported. Police fired tear gas and live ammunition into the air to disperse crowds in Srinagar, the location of the main demonstration led by senior separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Police said Farooq incited the situation by taking advantage of an Eid celebration taking place in Srinagar.

India says no to Islamic banking

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The Union Government today informed the Kerala High Court that it was not legally feasible for banks in India or its branches abroad to undertake Islamic banking activities.

In a counter affidavit, M M Dawla, Under Secretary in the ministry of Finance informed the court that this had been the stand of the Union Government even while giving replies to questions in Parliament as well as in response to various VIP correspondence on the subject.

The counter was filed on a petition by R V Babu of Hindu Aikya Vedi against an Islamic banks proposal .

Earlier, Janata Party leader, Subramaniam Swamy, had also filed a PIL against the establishment of the financial institution to be run on the model of Islamic banks with the support of Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC).

The stand of the government is that Non Banking Financial Companies (NBFC) should should basically commence or carry on the activities in accordance with provisions of RBI and directions issued there under.

Government said that even though the relief sought for by the petitioner is not directly connected with the Union of India, the affidavit is filed for the purpose of clarifying the stand of the central government on the issues involved.

The High court had in April this year directed the state government and its institutions not to participate financially or otherwise in the financial company modelled on the lines of Islamic bank.

Pakistan: ISI Paid For Boat To Transport Mumbai Attackers

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Interesting STRATFOR SITREP. So, back in the days of the Bay of Ton Kin (sp) this would most certainly have meant war. Of course, so would the sinking of the Chon An not long ago. It seems the whole idea of letting rogue states aquire nuclear weapons is that they can then make random harsh hits on their ideological enemies for no actual direct gain and everyone is afraid to act in retaliation as they may get nuked for it.

I hope people think this through before Iran is permitted to get the bomb.

From STRATFOR:

July 16, 2010
David Headley said Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) gave Lashkar-e-Taiba 2.5 million rupees ($53,000) to buy a boat to carry the Mumbai attackers from Karachi, The Times of India reported July 16. The terrorists then hijacked an Indian fishing boat at the Pakistani maritime boundary to reach Mumbai. Headley has identified two ISI officers who handled the attackers through a voice sample, and Indian investigators have information indicating that ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha met one of the handlers, Sajjid Mir, who is currently held in a Pakistani jail. All of the information has been shared with Pakistan, an Indian source said.

STRATFOR: Pakistan intel agency central to Mumbai attack

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India: ISI Behind Mumbai Attack – Home Secretary STRATFOR
July 14, 2010
India has obtained evidence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate played a more significant role in the planning and execution of the November 2008 Mumbai attack than had previously been thought, according to Indian Home Secretary G. K. Pillai, Indian Express reported July 14. Pillai said information gathered from interrogations of David Headley, a U.S. citizen accused of helping plan the attack, indicated the ISI had planned the attack with Lashkar-e-Taiba militant Hafiz Saeed “from beginning to end.” He added that the ISI was not a peripheral player, but was controlling and coordinating the attack, and that Saeed also knew everything about the attack.

Kerala, hand severed of Christian Professor accused of blasphemy

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by Nirmala Carvalho from ASIA NEWS (More from the Times of India)

The victim is a college professor who “insulted Muhammad” in an exam questionnaire. Islamic extremism is growing in Kerala: many schools face pressures on the use of the veil. The condemnation of national Muslim organizations. Sajan K. George: Sharia is not law in India.

Ernakulam (AsiaNews) – A group of unknown assailants severed the hand and the right arm of a university professor accused of defaming Mohammed months ago. The execution took place yesterday morning in Muvattupuzha, Ernakulam district (Kerala). Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians condemns this “barbaric act” and recalls that “Sharia is not the law of India.”

According to the police, Prof. TJ Joseph, was returning with his family from Sunday service when a group of people in a Maruti Omni van drew up beside him stopping him close to home. After forcing Joseph to get out of his car, they attacked him with knives and swords, then cut off his hand and right arm throwing them away after about 200 meters.

The professor was immediately transported to a hospital in Muvattupuzha and then to another specialized in surgery, where doctors are trying to mend his severed hand. The professor has also suffered deep wounds to his body and is in need of plastic surgery.

Joseph, Kerala, a professor at Newman’s College, Thodupuzha, is free on bail. Last March he had prepared a questionnaire for examinations in the private college and according to the Muslims had included questions offensive to Muhammad.

Due to a series of protests by Islamic groups, he was suspended from school. Later, Joseph publicly apologized for his “unintentional error”. Joseph’s mother said that in recent months her son continued to receive threats.

Meanwhile, the police found the van of the attackers, empty, and “the vehicle registration number is false,” said police inspector P.P. Shams. Some of the detained are activists of the Popular Front of India, a right wing Muslim group, formerly called the National Development Front, which is very strong in Kerala.

Joseph’s sister, Mary Stella, says that “the assailants destroyed the window of our car and pulled out my brother to execute him. My poor mother, who was in the car with us, witnessed the crime”.

The Minister of Education, M.A. Baby has condemned the incident, expressing his displeasure because some have turned the issue of the exam questionnaire into a matter of religious conflict.

Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of India (Gcoi), condemned the “barbaric act” and demands that “the attackers are brought to justice soon. I hope that – as usually happens – the complaint will not disappear in police records because of threats from Islamic militants in Kerala. ”

Sajan K. George gives voice to the whole civil society which “expresses sorrow for these attacks by Muslims against Christians in Kerala. It should be noted that Islamic law is not the law of our country”.According to the Gcoi president Kerala is witnessing a growth of Islamic extremism: “Christian schools are often targeted on the headscarf issue or another issue and unfortunately many schools succumb under pressure. The design of these militants is to provoke peaceful Christian communities and provoke a civil war. The rapid growth of the Muslim population and their influence in elections is increasing safety concerns for Christians throughout the country”.

The attack against Joseph has been condemned by several Muslim organizations, including the Indian Union Muslim League (Iuml) and the Jama’at-e-Islami, which calls for a significant response against the culprits. Panakad Hyderali Shiyab Thangal, supreme leader of Iuml, has asked that the perpetrators be prosecuted harshly. And referring to the questionnaire compiled by Joseph, said: “An error can not be corrected by another mistake”.

The indicted questionnaire however did not include anything that could be construed as against the Muslim religion. The authorities of Newman College, told AsiaNews that in the test, Prof. Joseph tells the story of a fishmonger who, despite hard work, becomes increasingly poor. The monger’s name is Mohammad In his desperation, he spoke to God and also asked his brother why his fortunes were dwindling. His brother told Mohammed:”Why are you calling God, God, God….” Students were asked to specify the punctuation of the narrative.

STRATFOR: India: Blast Derails 13 Express Train Coaches

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May 27, 2010 STRATFOR
Heavy casualties were feared after an early morning blast caused 13 coaches of a Mumbai-bound express train to derail, PTI reported May 27. The blast hit the railway lines around 1:30 a.m. local time, causing the Howrah-Kurla Lokmanya Tilak Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express to fall onto the down line where it was hit by a goods train in West Midnapore district, between Khemasoli and Sardiya stations.

More from NGNEWS:

CALCUTTA, India – Indian media reports say heavy casualties are feared after a passenger train was derailed by an explosion then hit by another train as it travelled through a rebel stronghold of eastern India.

Press Trust of India news agency reports that 13 passenger coaches on a Mumbai-bound train derailed after an explosion early Friday on the railway line. Those coaches were then hit by a cargo train coming from the other direction.

The passenger train, which had left Calcutta, was passing through an area that has faced repeated attacks by India’s Maoist rebels.

Railways officials told the agency that “heavy casualties” were feared.

Al Jazeera:
Deaths in India train collision

Officials say an explosion derailed one train pushing it into the path of an oncoming goods train

At least 15 people have been killed and dozens more injured after an explosion derailed an overnight passenger train in northeastern India, flinging its coaches into the path of an oncoming goods train.

A spokesman for Indian railways said sabotage was suspected as the cause of the collision.

The incident occured early on Friday in an area of West Bengal state known to be a stronghold of Maoist fighters.

Reports from the site described a scene of chaos with several passenger cars badly damaged and many dead and injured.

The Press Trust of India reported that 15 people had been killed, but other reports quoted higher figures. Continue Reading →

U.S. warns of potential new terrorist attacks in India

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From STRATFOR

India: U.S. Warns Of Terrorist Attacks In New Delhi
April 21, 2010
Indications suggest terrorists are planning attacks in the Indian capital, according to a U.S. Embassy warden message released April 21. The message warned that terrorists have tended to target areas often visited by Americans or Westerners and specifically mentioned markets in Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place, Greater Kailash, Karol Bagh, Mehrauli and Sarojini Nagar as attractive targets.

***** UPDATE *****

April 22, 2010
The U.S. Embassy reported April 22 that there are “increased indications that terrorists are planning attacks” in New Delhi. In the past, targets included places where U.S. citizens or Westerners are known to congregate or visit. Markets, such as those located in Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place, Greater Kailash, Karol Bagh, Mehrauli, and Sarojini Nagar, can be “especially attractive targets for terrorist groups,” according to the alert.

*** Indian forces open fire at border of Pakistan ***

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From STRATFOR:

April 19, 2010
Indian troops opened “unprovoked fire” at the Pakistani border in Shakargarh Sector, ARY News reported April 19. For more than 30 minutes, Indian forces fired at least 90 rounds and mortar shells at the boundary area. No casualties were reported.