Habib Siddiqui

  A hate crime had struck close to home. On the TV screen, more than four dozen police cars, blue lights swirling in a cold, mechanical rhythm. The news ticker crawled across the bottom of the TV screen, sanitizing horror into a newsbreak: police responding to an “incident” in San Diego’s Clairemont Mesa neighborhood. An incident. I didn’t think much of it at first. Then my phone rang. A friend. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Moments later, a text came through, cryptic, short, and to the point: “Check on the Imam, shooting at the Islamic Center.” The world stopped. I scrolled through my contacts, found the number, and dialed. My heart hammered against my chest with every ring. Then his voice. I closed my eyes. “We are okay. The school children are safe. We evacuated the mosque,” Imam Taha said. I let out a breath I did not know I had been holding. But okay, I would learn in the minutes and hours that followed that was not the whole story. Three men who had been okay that mornin...

  Last week, Israel and Lebanese authorities agreed to extend by 45 days a so-called ceasefire that was supposed to take effect in mid-April, but in practice never has. Israel never stopped attacking Lebanon and occupying parts of its territory, carrying out near-daily massacres including one in the village of Deir Qanoun al-Nahr on Tuesday that killed at least 12 people in a single house, at least three of them children. The death toll from Israeli attacks across the country since 2 March has now passed 3,000, including more than 800 people killed since the start of the so-called ceasefire. More than a million people are still displaced and in recent days another 100,000 were forced to flee their homes. On today’s program we will speak with Roqayah Chamseddine . She is a southern Lebanese researcher and reporter and co-host of the Delete Your Account Podcast . She is a media associate at The Cradle and is currently forcibly displaced from the Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburb. Jo...

  The Hidden Toll of Local Revenue: How Bangladesh’s District Administration Is Forced Into Corruption By Habib Siddiqui (Based on information shared by senior public servants who requested anonymity) Bangladesh’s citizens often imagine the Deputy Commissioner (DC) as the state’s most powerful local guardian – the custodian of land, the protector of consumers, the first responder in crises. But behind this idealized image lies a quiet, corrosive truth that few outside the bureaucracy fully grasp. A senior Bangladeshi diplomat recently wrote to me with a stark warning: corruption at the district level is not merely tolerated – it is structurally incentivized. His testimony echoed what a retired Police District Commissioner, who later went on to become Deputy Inspector General of Police, once told me: “The government does not even provide money for an extra chair or table in an office, let alone tea and biscuits for visitors. Everything must be arranged locally.” When public ...

  T he Minister of Home Affairs of Bangladesh, Salahuddin Ahmed, has made urgent appeals to international donors in order to resume aid for more than 1.18 million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, stating that there has been a drastic decline in global aid which is jeopardizing the welfare of one of the largest groups of refugees in the world. In conversations held with UNHCR Country Representative Ivo Freijsen on May 5th and Australian High Commissioner Susan Ryle on May 6th, Ahmed emphasized that there has been a 50 percent decrease in the budget allocated by the United States to help Rohingya refugees. “Bangladesh cannot bear the responsibility of housing such a large number of people without global assistance,” stated the minister. These appeals precede the May 20th, 2026 launch of the next Joint Response Plan for Rohingya refugees. In his meeting with Freijsen, Ahmed warned that the Rohingya crisis must not be overshadowed by other global emergencies, urging the United Nations...

Ali Asif Shawon Nearly nine years after the Rohingya influx began, Bangladesh’s refugee crisis is entering what aid agencies warn could become its most dangerous phase yet -- shrinking international funding, fresh arrivals from Myanmar, worsening camp conditions and fading hopes of repatriation are colliding at once, raising fears of deeper instability inside the overcrowded camps of Cox’s Bazar. On Wednesday, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners launched the updated 2026 Joint Response Plan (JRP), seeking $710.5 million to support Rohingya refugees and vulnerable host communities. But even the new appeal reflects a major contraction in aid rather than an expansion of support. The 2026 appeal is 26% lower than the revised 2025 plan and, according to the UN itself, represents only the “bare minimum required” to sustain the humanitarian response. The warning comes as the Rohingya population in Bangladesh has swelled to nearly 1.2 million, including an estimated 150,000 new ar...

  A Global PR Campaign Cannot Hide India’s Rising Hate By Habib Siddiqui In recent months, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – has intensified its outreach efforts in the United States and Europe. Senior RSS functionaries have been meeting lawmakers, think-tank analysts, and diaspora groups in Washington, London, Berlin, and Brussels. The timing is not coincidental. It reflects a strategic attempt to shape global perceptions at a moment when India’s democratic credentials are under unprecedented scrutiny. At the heart of this campaign lies a simple question: What is the RSS trying to achieve abroad while the situation for minorities at home continues to deteriorate? The answer begins with the growing international concern about India’s human-rights trajectory. For the sixth consecutive year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has recommended that India be designated a Co...

  I want to thank the 22 readers who donated to the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS palestinenature.org/donations ) in honor of my birthday in the past week. PIBS looks for donations (of all sizes) AND volunteers to advance work towards sustainable human and natural communities in Palestine (brief/6 minute video of our work https://youtu.be/qt8OTGoS198 ).  On 7 October 2023, I received an email from a Zionist who said I should go to Jordan since the will take teh West Bank after they clear Gaza. I did not respond but te next day he sent another message saying "in retrospect: go the US where you lived because we will take Jordan". I responded then that they have already "taken" the US so no logic in moving from one Israeli  (Zionist) occupied territory to another. I had left the US (and a six figure income as a medical geneticist) to go back to Palestine in 2008. My wife and I are very lucky to be able to work as volunteers 15 hours a d...

Dr. Serajul I. Bhuiyan   May 21, 2026 H owever, the political shift after the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s administration in August 2024 has changed the entire political landscape of Bangladesh in unforeseen ways. The main protagonist in this political shift is none other than Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who, in the guise of the interim leadership, soon found himself both recovering from the chaos and engaged in one of the greatest political struggles of all time. The simple politics, which started out as a solution to restore order, soon took an unexpected turn. Although the smear campaigns launched against Dr. Muhammad Yunus seem like regular political attacks at first glance, they actually signal a broader effort to discredit a new model of leadership grounded in reform, accountability, renewal, and sovereignty. Indeed, as history shows, leaders who transform their countries’ systems are often subject to smear campaigns because they seek to undermine the old model of ...