Habib Siddiqui

On March 26 the Bangladeshi community in Philadelphia celebrated the Independence Day to commemorate the country's declaration of independence from   Pakistan   in the late hours of 25 March 1971 by the "Father of the Nation" Bongobondhu   Sheikh Mujibur Rahman   before he was arrested by   Pakistani forces. It has been more than 43 years that   Bangladesh has emerged as an independent state after a nine-month long bloody civil war (more popularly called the War of Liberation) when Pakistan military forces surrendered on December 16, 1971 to joint Bangladesh-Indian forces.   Pakistan   was dismembered and its eastern wing – East Pakistan – became   Bangladesh   and it soon became a member of the United Nations. The country has a rich cultural and historical past, the product of the repeated influx of varied peoples, bringing with them the Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Mongol-Mughal, Arab, Persian, Turkic, and European cultures. While ...

In a country that has been infested with the blight of unfathomable racism and bigotry for decades, rumors are enough to trigger communal riots. And if the press, priests, public servants and people’s representatives are all working in cahoots as a party to a very sinister program – which I have been calling a ‘national eliminationist project’ – one does not have to be Einstein to understand the impact of such false rumors. And that is what happened to Mandalay in central Myanmar (formerly Burma ) in July of last year when we witnessed anti-Muslim violence there. It was all part of a highly orchestrated criminal program with deep support at every level of the local and central government. On July 3, 2014, U Soe Min, a Muslim man, was walking to morning prayers (Fajr) at a nearby mosque when a man with a machete struck him dead with a deep blow to his skull. The 51-year-old Mandalay resident, who ran a bicycle shop, was one of two innocent victims that day of communal violence...

There are some experiences that stick with you throughout your life. They always stay with you like a nightmare and sometimes are like debts on your shoulders. The experience at Hashimpura Massacre was such an experience for me , says Vibhuti Narayan Rai, then Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad, UP, India.  On 22 May 1987, in Hashimpura, a locality in the Meerut City of Uttar Pradesh (UP), India 42 innocent Muslims were killed in cold blood by the personnel of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). The night of 22-23 May 1987 , which I spent in the wild undergrowth along the stream flowing through the Makanpur village situated on the Delhi Ghaziabad border looking for any living souls amidst the dead bodies covered with blood in the dim light of my torch- everything is engraved in my memory like a horror movie. I had returned to Ghaziabad from Hapur at around 10 30 pm. District Magistrate, Nasim Zaidi was with me. So, I dropped him at his house before reaching the residence o...

Last year in July, Mandalay in central Myanmar witnessed the lynching of Muslims by Buddhist terrorists. It was part of a highly orchestrated program with deep support at every level of the local and central government. First there was the rumor that two Muslim men had raped a Buddhist woman. This was absolutely false news but a serious one to agitate the Buddhist majority.  You can read more about this by clicking here . On July 3, 2014, U Soe Min, a Muslim man, was walking to morning prayers (Fajr) at a nearby mosque when a man with a machete struck him dead with a deep blow to his skull. The 51-year-old Mandalay resident, who ran a bicycle shop, was one of two innocent victims that day of communal violence sparked by reports – later proven to be false – that a Buddhist woman had been raped by two Muslim brothers. Daw Phyu Win at her home in Mandalay. (Stuart Alan Becker/The Myanmar Times) Hours after U Soe Min’s killing, his mother Daw Phyu Win, widow Daw Tin Ti...

India has a long history of anti-Muslim riots in which tens of thousands of Muslims have died. Muslims don't get justice in the Indian judicial system for such crimes perpetrated against them. As noted by Senior Advocate Vrinda  Grover, who told TCN, “In this country [India] political parties remember Muslims only at the time of election and use them as vote bank, however, when it comes to justice for them, all parties, whether it is BJP, Congress, BSP or SP, pay lip services.” Here below is an  EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW of Vibhuti N. Rai BY TEESTA SETALVAD, CO-EDITOR, COMMUNALISM COMBAT: =================== Biography of  Vibhuti N. Rai : He is as IPS officer whom the saffron brigade loves to hate. Based on his personal experience as a junior officer during the 1980 communal riots in Allahabad he wrote a novel "Shahar mein curfew" in 1989. On the eve of his promotion as the superintendent of police (SP) of the same city in U.P Ashok Singhal, the general secretary of the...