Habib Siddiqui

A 2017 military campaign against the Muslim Rohingya expelled more than 700,000 from Rakhine State into Bangladesh. by Chris Wilson L ast week Aung San Suu Kyi took the stand at the International Court of Justice to defend Myanmar against charges of genocide . A 2017 military campaign against the Muslim Rohingya expelled more than 700,000 from Rakhine State into Bangladesh . Survivors recounted numerous mass executions, rapes and other atrocities. The ferocity and scale of this violence is based on longstanding denial of the Rohingya’s right to belong in Myanmar. Nationalists have long derided the Rohingya as illegal Bengali immigrants. A 1982 citizenship law excluded them from a list of “national races” because they had not arrived in Myanmar before 1823. The seeds of a similar situation have now been planted in India under an increasingly nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Like in Myanmar, the likely epicentre of a  violent contest over who belongs ...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The protests outside New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University on Thursday started out small and relatively low-key - another show of anger by students who oppose a citizenship law they say discriminates against Muslims. An unidentified man brandishes a gun during a protest against a new citizenship law outside the Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi, India, January 30, 2020. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui But that quickly changed when a young man brandishing a rudimentary pistol appeared on the road between around 1,000 protesters and dozens of riot police facing them. Waving the small handgun in the air, he taunted the demonstrators, and as both protesters and police converged towards him to try and calm the situation, he fired a single shot at a man later identified as Shadab Farooq. Farooq was wounded in his hand, police said. “As the protests started, there was no immediate threat so I was moving towards the police line and it was just like a regular day,...

Washington (AFP) - Jimmy Carter said Thursday that President Donald Trump's Middle East plan would violate international law and urged the United Nations to stop Israel from annexing Palestinian land. "The new US plan undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians," the former US president said in a statement. "If implemented, the plan will doom the only viable solution to this long-running conflict, the two-state solution," said Carter, who brokered the landmark 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt. He urged UN member-states "to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions and to reject any unilateral Israeli implementation of the proposal by grabbing more Palestinian land." His office said in a statement that Trump's plan, unveiled Tuesday, "breaches international law regarding self-determination, the acquisition of land by force, and annexation of occupied territories." ...

Nearly 14 years ago I wrote an article on the similarities of the neo-nihilistic activities of some Muslims with the so-called Hashishin of the old days. You can view my piece by clicking here: https://www.mediamonitors.net/understanding-osama-bin-laden-through-the-lenses-of-the-past/   Today, I came across an article in the National Geographic (pub. Nov. 2018) on the old Hashishin. I share excerpts of the article below: ================= HISTORY MAGAZINE The original 'Assassins': Medieval warriors of Alamut High inside a secretpower for just 300 years, but their impact would last for centuries. Alamut, the Assassins’ fortress, now in modern-day Iran, was a place that induced terror in the hearts of Sunni Muslim rulers. Related to eagles, the name Alamut conveys its majestic height and impregnability. BY VICENTE MILLÁN TORRES PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 21, 2018 Conrad of Montferrat, an Italian  crusader , was preparing for his coronation ...

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — T estimony at Guantanamo Bay’s war court by the architect of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program shed light on what the government paid his company more than $80 million to do. Speaking under oath in open court for the first time last week, former Air Force psychologist Dr. James Mitchell was pressed by defense lawyers representing alleged plotters of the 9/11 terrorist attacks about his major role in assisting the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program. The program involved at least 119 detainees held in agency black sites following the deadly attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mitchell was hired in April 2002 as a short-term contractor to consult on the overseas interrogation of captured al Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah, but by June of that year, the CIA asked him to help design and take part in the interrogation program . He and his business partner, Dr. Bruce Jessen, became two of the CIA’s three official wat...