Blasts in Ahmedabad

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shiv
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

Avinash R wrote:shiv if by the pig heads been thrown you are refering to the b'lore incidents then you will be surprised to know who threw them. i think you live in b'lore. so just visit any one of the 2mosques on friday and ask the people there who threw the pig heads.
they will even tell you from which pig rearer the pigs werebought, in which lane the pigs were cut and who were 6 people who threw them.
I have been hearing the cricket match story for 43 years now since 1965. Nowadays you can't buy a cellphone without a camera. Why not take a video and put it up on YouTube?

Wait! I know. It can't be done because its too scary to go into Muslim areas.

See?

It happens, but it can't be seen. It can't recorded. It can't be proved. "You'll just have to trust me". If this isn't rumor, what is it? Oh yeah. The rumor may be based on facts. But who's to know otherwise?

So many pregnant women's bellies cut up. Not one picture. And no post mortem reports. Oh sorry - I know - its always Hindu policemen at hand to cover up evidence. The ripping open of bellies does occur. I can't prove it. "You'll just have to trust me".

Anything can be said empirically. Asking anyone to provide a shred of evidence has a second layer of excuses to avoid proving the first set of accusations

1) It's all Hindu policemen
2) The bodies were burned after the Hindus killed them
3) It's too scary to go into Muslim areas at those times when they are celebrating.

Murderers get away for lack of evidence because "evidence=accusation" in India. Unfortunately accusation is also="needs proof"

No proof and the accusation cannot stick. Heck cricket matches have been on TV for decades now. Is there one TV scene of Muslims in india celebrating. Most of the time it is secular people cheering Pakistan.

For us if a Hindu cheers Pakistan - he is being sportsmanlike. If a Muslim cheers - he is a Pakistan supporter. The real facts are that we fundamentally believe that all Muslims are Pakistanis at heart and therefore we see their support to their Pakistan in everything they do. We believe that Hindus cannot support Pakistan - so when Hindus cheer it is "sportsmanship".

Instead of whining and complaining that Indian Muslims support Pakistan at cricket matches why not merely say 'I think Indian Muslims are Pakistan supporters". That way you are stating an opinion and you will not be asked by irritating people like me for video proof of a silly claim that you cannot prove. Why must we try and pass our hands behind and around our heads to reach our mouths?
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by John Snow »

'Where Intelligence is absent failure is always present'
Spinster

The recurrence if the same events is the hall mark of

'When politians step in security administration itelligence absconds from the scene'
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Rupesh »

'The Rise Of Jihad, Revenge Of Gujarat'

The edited text of the impugned email that was sent to various media outlets minutes before the blasts in Ahmedabad by a group that intelligence agencies are calling a front to deflect attention away from ISI and other non-India groups
INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN
Intelligence sources have claimed that the 408 Detachment of ISI based in Karachi -- which oversees terror operations in Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat -- is behind the floating of this 'Indian Mujhaideen' -- a deliberate ploy with specific passages to insist that the blasts are the handiwork of Indians and that foreign (read Pakistani or Bangladeshi) groups are not involved. After taking due counsel and thought as to the inflammatory potential and the readers' right to be informed about the contents of this email, we decided to publish the following edited extracts:

--



Text of the email:
Subject: AWAIT 5 MINUTES FOR THE REVENGE OF GUJARAT

In the Name of Allah The INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN strike again! – Do whatever you can, within 5 minutes from now, feel the terror of Death!

--

Edited text of the attachment



Target these evil politicians and leaders of BJP, RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal, who provoke the masses against you. Target and kill the wicked police force who were watching the "fun" of your bloodshed and who handed you to the rioting sinful culprits. Target their hired informers and spies even if they are the disloyal and betraying munafiqeen (hypocrites) of our Ummah. O Muslims of Gujarat! If a petty population of Rajasthani Gujjars can use force for fulfilling their needs, then are we even more subjugated than these backwards?

With these triumphant attacks, we send our message to all those faithless infidels and their hypocrite allies from amongst the so called Muslims like Arshad Madni & Mehmood Madni who have bartered their faith in return of just one seat in the Parliament and we hereby declare an ultimatum to all the state governments of India, especially to those of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra to stop harassing the Muslims and keep a check on their killing, expulsion, and encounters. We warn you of your foolish plots that you plan against us, thinking that you can curb our missions and foil our targets. Here are our demands that you must fulfill if you hope for your well being.

a) You agitated our sentiments and disturbed us by arresting, imprisoning, and torturing our brothers in the name of SIMI and the other outfits in Indore, Ujjain, Mumbai, and in other cities of Karnataka. We hereby notify you, especially the ATS and the STF and the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, to release them all, lest you become our next targets and victims of our next attack. Don’t consider us heedless about the crimes you have committed in recent Indore riots and all this will be, Insha-Allah brought to account very soon.

b) We warn the Andhra Pradesh government, specifically the Hyderabad Police, to release the imprisoned Muslim youth immediately, and to be wise with yourselves. We are watching you, and our ground-work to gun you down has already begun. Insha-Allah, we will be rid of you very soon.

c) To the Maharashtra government and the rascals like Vilasrao Deshmukh and R.R. Patil, we announce the deadline to take heed before it is too late. Don’t think we are unaware of the SRPF attacks on our Masjids and our homes, the insult of our Qur’an and your enmity with the Muslims in Digras and the nearby areas in Yavatmal and of the burning alive of three Muslims in Jalna with the backing of police. Yes! It is all being recorded and you will face the ill consequences thereof.And also the troubles faced by the Madrasa students and Muslim women in Mumbai Western Railways. We wonder at your memory. Have you forgotten the evening of 7/11/2006 so quickly and so easily?

You try to fool us in the name of fast-track courts made for ’93 riot cases, through which you wish to free the actual Hindu culprits like Madhukar Sarpotdar who was caught red-handed with illegal firearms while the innocent Muslims arrested in the bomb blast case are being tried in the courts for years and years. Is this the hellish justice you speak of? I urge all the Muslims of Maharashtra to denounce those Muslim MLA’s who prove themselves to be the loyal dogs of Congress and NCP. Beware! O you criminals! you are already on our hit-list and our cross-hair now! We also alert Mukesh Ambani to think twice before usurping and building a citadel on a land in Mumbai that belongs to the Waqf Board, lest it turns into horrifying memories for you which you will never ever forget.

d) The news of the lawyers of the Bar Council in UP denying to fight the cases of our Muslim brethren has already reached us. Remember, you are provoking us to repeat the same blasts in civil courts that blew up your bodies into pieces.

e) Lastly, we intimidate and threaten the Media and the News channels, especially the TIMES OF INDIA and the TIMES NOW to be extra cautious in their propaganda war against the Muslims. Your biased and impartial approach to the news and the noise and the politics you make of ‘Islamic Terrorism’ indicates your hostility, hatred and fear that you grudge against Muslims and your loyal allegiance to the cunning ones who call themselves the "Intelligence Bureau". You become dumb when it comes to the oppression and torture of the Muslims, faced in riots, firing, encounters, police custodies, remand homes and civil courts and your propaganda turns violent to project the ‘brutality’ of ‘Islamic terrorists’ and their ‘ruthlessness’ and their ‘merciless mentality’ and so on. We warn you to end this hypocrisy or get ready for a bloody slaughter.

The Indian Mujahideen hereby claim the sole responsibility of the Gujarat serial blasts, planned and executed by Indians only and it is our request to Lashkar-e-Toiba and other organizations, for the sake of Allah, not to claim the responsibility for these attacks.

Al Arbi
Guru-Al-Hindi

http://www.outlookindia.com/
enqyoob
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by enqyoob »

... and no BENIS dhaga to analyze that masterpiece! :oops:

- from "Faithphooll Infidel"

Example:
especially the TIMES OF INDIA

OK, now we have a good idea who is behind this.
shiv
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

Rupesh wrote:'The Rise Of Jihad, Revenge Of Gujarat'

'Indian Mujhaideen'

Target their hired informers and spies even if they are the disloyal and betraying munafiqeen (hypocrites) of our Ummah. O Muslims of Gujarat!

If a petty population of Rajasthani Gujjars can use force for fulfilling their needs, then are we even more subjugated than these backwards?

Don’t consider us heedless about the crimes you have committed in recent Indore riots and all this will be, Insha-Allah brought to account very soon.
release the imprisoned Muslim youth immediately, and to be wise with yourselves. We are watching you, and our ground-work to gun you down has already begun. Insha-Allah, we will be rid of you very soon.

Don’t think we are unaware of the SRPF attacks on our Masjids and our homes, the insult of our Qur’an and your enmity with the Muslims in Digras and the nearby areas in Yavatmal and of the burning alive of three Muslims in Jalna with the backing of police. Yes! It is all being recorded and you will face the ill consequences thereof.And also the troubles faced by the Madrasa students and Muslim women in Mumbai Western Railways.

the innocent Muslims arrested in the bomb blast case are being tried in the courts for years and years. Is this the hellish justice you speak of? I urge all the Muslims of Maharashtra to denounce those Muslim MLA’s who prove themselves to be the loyal dogs of Congress and NCP. Beware! O you criminals! you are already on our hit-list

We also alert Mukesh Ambani to think twice before usurping and building a citadel on a land in Mumbai that belongs to the Waqf Board,

d) The news of the lawyers of the Bar Council in UP denying to fight the cases of our Muslim brethren

e) Lastly, we intimidate and threaten the Media and the News channels, especially the TIMES OF INDIA and the TIMES NOW to be extra cautious in their propaganda war against the Muslims. Your biased and impartial approach to the news and the noise and the politics you make of ‘Islamic Terrorism’ indicates your hostility, hatred and fear that you grudge against Muslims and your loyal allegiance to the cunning ones who call themselves the "Intelligence Bureau". You become dumb when it comes to the oppression and torture of the Muslims, faced in riots, firing, encounters, police custodies, remand homes and civil courts and your propaganda turns violent to project the ‘brutality’ of ‘Islamic terrorists’ and their ‘ruthlessness’ and their ‘merciless mentality’ and so on. We warn you to end this hypocrisy or get ready for a bloody slaughter.

Al Arbi
Guru-Al-Hindi

http://www.outlookindia.com/
Hmm. Terrorists can be from any religion.

No. In fact they have no religion.

I would hesitate before blaming anyone :roll:
chetak
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by chetak »

pradeepe wrote:
NEW DELHI: Gujarat continues to remain tense a day after 18 bombs were defused in Surat.
Btw, I guess I dont know what tense means. Remember the pictures yesterday, police poking around the bombs and aam junta standing just about 30-40 feet away from another, some even strolling by, I even saw a guy on a motorbike still going through the same lane - which obviously isnt even cordoned off.

I have seen wider berth given to some of the larger diwali day "atom bums".

For the first time ICs have been used in explosive devices, say experts.

The failed ICs have now become the core of the entire investigation and also a puzzle for the FSL experts.
So a defective batch. That to me is a lot more scary. It means, first class co-ordination on methods and general approach, but also independent sourcing. Not one, but multiple accomplished tier x? graduates.

Guys, look carefully at the pictures of the bombs in Surat being shown on TV
These are SHAPED CHARGES, meant to focus the blast and create maximum blast damage.
Even the cement pot container explosive device recovered at Bangalore is a shaped charge.
These are very sophisticated IEDs of a complexity not seen before.
Seem to be covered in green plastic to waterproof because of the ongoing rains (also symbolic green.)
Not the usual abdul type job.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Avinash R »

shiv wrote:Instead of whining and complaining that Indian Muslims support Pakistan at cricket matches why not merely say 'I think Indian Muslims are Pakistan supporters". That way you are stating an opinion and you will not be asked by irritating people like me for video proof of a silly claim that you cannot prove. Why must we try and pass our hands behind and around our heads to reach our mouths?
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
first i did not write anything about cricket matches or muslims or pakistan. i dont know why you directing your harsh comments against me.
In some of your previous post you said something of the pig incident. i had some information that you could find useful so wrote here. instead i get a lecture on whining and usage of video cameras. :D it seems my previous policy of behaving like dhimmi and keeping silent was a good one. back to good dhimmi mode.
shiv
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

Avinash R wrote:
shiv wrote:Instead of whining and complaining that Indian Muslims support Pakistan at cricket matches why not merely say 'I think Indian Muslims are Pakistan supporters". That way you are stating an opinion and you will not be asked by irritating people like me for video proof of a silly claim that you cannot prove. Why must we try and pass our hands behind and around our heads to reach our mouths?
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
first i did not write anything about cricket matches or muslims or pakistan. i dont know why you directing your harsh comments against me.
In some of your previous post you said something of the pig incident. i had some information that you could find useful so wrote here. instead i get a lecture on whining and usage of video cameras. :D it seems my previous policy of behaving like dhimmi and keeping silent was a good one. back to good dhimmi mode.
My bad. I quoted something you said. That was a mistake _ I was talking about what darshan said. His views are valid as his viewpoint even if he thinks some or all Indian Muslims support Pakistan - because he has personally seen people cheering for Pakistan That is his view and his experience - nobody is going to question that. The problem comes when he starts spreading his experience around as a common denominator for all by suggesting that I, in my ignorance, should visit Gujarat during a cricket match to validate his opinion. No such validation is needed as long as it is his opinion and not a law to be imposed like "Allah is only God"

I have a very serious reason for harping on this. In this case (Pakistan cricket support) the viewpoint is convenient and happy for Hindus. Wait for an incident after which the Teestas start finding pregnant women with ripped bellies and saying "You should have been there. I saw it with my own eyes" - and seeking to make a general law that Hindus are the only and sole belly rippers to be recognized" like "allah is only God"
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by SSridhar »

Mastermind of TN terror module held

Although the above report doesn't mention that, vernacular press is reporting that at the bombed out sites, a lot of Tamil newspapers, half-burnt, were found. It appears that the timers were made at Tirunelveli, deep south.
shiv
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

Abdullah tried to destroy vital evidence by chewing two SIM cards when police raided his cell a few days ago. Police are now trying to retrieve data from the SIMs, sources said.
HUMAN RIGHT VIOLATIONNNNNN! :eek: :eek: :-o
The poor prisoner had to swallow his SIM cards!!

But more seriously how the hell was this terrorst allowed to have a cellphone in the first place? Obviously he bribed some prison cop. And now 50 people dead in Ahmedabad. Must be a Muslim cop eh ? wink wink No Hindu cop would get bribed by a Muslim terrorist. I am sure.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Pulikeshi »

Can we get off this "Hindu-Muslim" blinder that we get into every time there is a blast?

Here is a likely scenario:

Context: Earlier this month Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul by ISI Abdul pisses off RAW Rao

RAW Rao: "We must share evidence with our U.S. and U.K. counterparts on ISI Abdul's involvement"
GOI: "Thatastu!"

Agencies of U.S./U.K. fly to TSP
: "ISI Abdul, you will now be under civilian control."
"We know your game and we have evidence of your linkages to these $#*@&"

TSP Pilitary: "ISI Abdul katharey mey hai, Geelani free ISI Abdul or face the hangman"
TSP PM Geelani: "Bush mai bhap, Allah key nam pe kuch deydey bhaba!"
Bush-ullah:"Saala, Yeh lo solah!" "Aur IAEA mey chup bait!"

ISI Abdul: "Does RAW Rao think himself that smart. I got some bums right under his noses. Lets me make some calls"

Bums go off in B'lore, A'bad and almost in Surat

Secular Kabir looks at Desi Ram and Desi Abdul are pointing fingers at each other and cooking a fight! :evil:

BRF Jingoes: "Let us psy-ops each other to boredom!"

ISI Abdul: "Laughs evil maniacal laughter!" "Hahaha, Hoowaahhaaaaa..."
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by CRamS »

Here is evidence of TSP involvement. Now, of course starting with TSP, their allies in India, and of course the hypocritical west will dismiss this evidence. But tell me will the west produce anything more to begin with when they make their standard accusations? Its for India now (I am not holding my breath, MMS is surely busy with more important issues like strengthening the 'peace process' with TSP) to act forcefully (which is the west would do), put TSP on notice, and then more will follow. Not only that, a dynamic in court of international opinion will be set in motion to show TSP involvement. Thus, there is no such thing as 'fool proof', mathematical Q.E.D type evidence when it comes to state-sponsored terror; and that too terror by TSP against India which they have mastered.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Shivani »

Abdullah tried to destroy vital evidence by chewing two SIM cards when police raided his cell a few days ago. Police are now trying to retrieve data from the SIMs, sources said.
What is wrong with the police they can't even organize a raid in prison properly. Prison staff must be working for this person because of bribe and perhaps threat to family members. If people try to swallow evidence just get a knife and open them up right then and there to retrieve the contents .
Getting extremely frustrated here.....
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by prashanth »

Shivani wrote: If people try to swallow evidence just get a knife and open them up right then and there to retrieve the contents .
Getting extremely frustrated here.....
Hope the police do what is expected, extra judicially if required.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by enqyoob »

Ah! Now I understand. "Cell-Phone" is the phone that prisoners are allowed to have in their cells. I wonder if they have "cell-TVs", cell-refrigerators, cell-sofas, cell-massage-chairs, etc. as well.

It's really incredible that a terrorism convict (or is this a life-time "undertrial"?) is allowed to have a cell-phone. Do they use this to collect info on who calls him? Well... it's great that after hundreds of deaths, someone decided to go ask him about it, and help him "digest" it. Some "guards" may need to hang.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by JwalaMukhi »

Ah! If one has right strings one can even get Ayurvedic Massage too, while lodged in cell with all other amenitites.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/9248.html
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by saip »

Abdullah tried to destroy vital evidence by chewing two SIM cards when police raided his cell a few days ago. Police are now trying to retrieve data from the SIMs, sources said
Cell here might mean 'terrorist cell'
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by ShivaRaj »

Indian inteliigence agencies are a joke. Or may be they are pretending to fumble on the master's command. There are six types of jihadi terror attacks in India:

1) by naxals instructed by missionaries, cIA-funded-ngos when actions are taken against illegal coversions, foreign funds, undercover cia agents working as church priests are arrested. Targets local law enforcement police, army commandos etc

2) by bangla jihadi cells instructed by huji instructed by isi to divert attention from horrors in pak e.g. jaipur, zaveri-bzr

3) by joint paki and indian muslim jihadi cells instructed by isi directly to actually cause social tensions, economic damage to India. horrific carnage, e.g. 711, ayodhya

4) by abandoned local indian muslim jihadi cells to vent out frustration when caught. e.g. UP court, IISc, Hydrabad, Ajmer

5) by local blind indian muslim jihadi cells used by indian sickular political parties (gress,sp,nc-hc) to achieve social divisions for political reasons, avenge national embarrassments e.g. amdabad-bglr

6) by unknown foreign nationals (most likely afgani, uzbeks etc) instructed by ISI instructed by CIA or Chinese to achieve psy-ops on Indian public. e.g. Kandahar, parliament, Akshardham

Please don't forget ISI being pet of both china & cia has upper hand over Indian Intel. Please remember who benefits from war between India-pak and social tensions in India. USA-weapon sales, china-weaken India, Congress-gain back scared muslims. It is a big game. Pak-isi-jihadis are doing contract work for BIG players. Mayawati beware.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by archan »

It is amusing how people come and write with conviction about
the great game
etc. etc. as if they were the fly on the wall when the players were discussing "the game". They don't even say "I feel it is a game between X Y and Z". They are like "I know that X Y and Z are involved. We are way behind them in our planning. We are doomed. Beware!"
Sometimes I feel we might just be giving unkil more credit than he deserves. Maybe...just maybe not everything goes according to unkil's plans. Maybe he gets his share of surprises and disappointments too. Maybe not eveyone has sold out.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by John Snow »

So IB now certifies all Terror in India is Indian made.

I have been harking on this for the lasst 10 years.`

Till recently we were saying IM is model society for Muslims through out the world for not partcipating in terror.

Those were day my friend we thought would never end...

I wonder how great IB is post facto, never pro active. Jokers aglore
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by SK Mody »

Don't know if this has been posted before, from nightwatch
India: At least two persons died and six were injured when eight explosions triggered by a timer device detonated in Bangalore’s central business district and other areas housing the headquarters of international information technology (IT) companies. Police said that the attack bore some hallmarks of the Bangladeshi militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad Al Islami (HUJI).
India: Over the weekend, at least 16 bombs exploded in Ahmedabad in Gujarat State on Saturday, killing 45 people and wounding 150. These followed by one day another set of blasts in Bangalore that killed a woman. Authorities found and defused two bombs in Surat today, one of the world's biggest diamond-polishing centers and also located in Gujarat State. Security forces in all major Indian cities are on highest alert.

A little-known group that identified itself as the "Indian Mujahideen" claimed responsibility for the Ahmedabad attack. The same group said it carried out bomb attacks that killed 63 people in Jaipur in May. The group made its claim by an e-mail sent to a newspaper. This email has no significance. It does not signify.

Indian security officials suspect militant Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are responsible for the bombings. Some entity or entities are trying to undermine internal stability in India.

Whenever sectarian/communal passions break their restraints, thousands of Muslims die in India, especially in Gujarat. In the Gujarat riots of 2002, 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Hindus … in Ahmedabad. The only entities that benefit from an Indian government fixated to calm communal violence are Bangladesh and Pakistan. Bangladesh is reasonably stable under military-backed government. Pakistan does not have a workable government, which identifies it as most likely to benefit from internal troubles in India.

The historic pattern is that Pakistani intelligence services encourage and support proxies to incite communal tension in India whenever Pakistani governments are vulnerable and indecisive. These bombings appear to be the work of trained professionals. In South Asia, aside from India’s intelligence services, only Pakistani intelligence and its client service in Bangladesh have the know-how to teaching explosive handling in this fashion.

The NW hypothesis is that Pakistani intelligence agents are acting reflexively to destabilize India in Kashmir and in other states that have a history of communal tension as a means of protecting the weak government in Islamabad. The old mantra is that India will not attack Pakistan when there is communal tension in India. This is old thinking but it appears to pervade Pakistani intelligence leadership.

Other potential culprits could be responsible, to be sure, but Hindu groups attack other Hindus over policy differences, disdaining the idea of cooperating with Muslims. In India when Muslims attack fellow Muslims, it always means some outside agency in Pakistan or Bangladesh is engaged in mischief.
India-Pakistan: Security incidents along the Line of Control in Kashmir are increasing in frequency and number. The Indian Army leadership said it considers the Line of Control and the ceasefire since October 2003 to be under severe stress.

According to an Indian Army spokesman, between 10 and 12 Pakistan soldiers crossed 200 meters (650 feet) into Indian territory to “object to the setting up of a post by Indian army soldiers”. The infiltration took place at 3:00 pm (0930 GMT) in a mountainous area northwest of Srinagar. The Pakistan leader was carrying a white flag. After a verbal exchange they shot dead an Indian soldier

Indian army spokesman Brigadier Gopala Krishnan Murali described today’s incident in the Kupwara sector in northwestern Kashmir as a “brazen violation of ceasefire.” In a continuing exchange of small arms fire, one Indian soldier was killed and the Indians estimate “three or four” Pakistani soldiers were killed in “retaliatory fire.”

Indian press reported two other incidents occurred during the night of 27 July. The Indian Army reported it thwarted an infiltration attempt killing four militants, also in the Kupwara sector, which is an infiltration route from Pakistan to Indian Kashmir. The second incident was an exchange of gunfire with militants in a separate location. Pakistani press has not reported on these two. Pakistan Army information chief Major General Abbas told the press he had no information about the incidents but would check.

The Indian explanation of what transpired seems incomplete, omitting facts such as raised tempers and angry gestures. Nevertheless, the shooting as reported looks like a trap. Including the three incidents in the past 24 hours, seven have taken place in the last 11 days. Indian press dates the resumption of security incidents along the Line of Control to May, but they were isolated.

Seven incidents in less than two weeks is the highest total for any comparable period in the last five years since the ceasefire began. They indicate a pattern of provocation to increase tension with India and evidently to embarrass Pakistan’s parliamentary government, which must contend with violence on both borders. Mortar fire, machinegun bursts and artillery exchanges are the next escalation steps. If those occur, India’s patience will be exhausted quickly, unless honest brokers intervene to keep the peace.
India: The high alert in Indian cities has helped avoid additional bombings since Saturday’s deadly attacks in Ahmedabad and Bangalore. In Surat, Gujarat State, authorities have found and disarmed 23 small bombs in various public gathering places since Saturday.

'It's been only because of a vigilant public that we managed to reach in the nick of time and defuse them. We have asked people to avoid crowded areas,' said the city's police commissioner R.M.S. Brar. Brar ordered all movie theaters, colleges, schools, malls and parks closed for the day. He also asked leaders of the textile industry and diamond market associations to keep their businesses shut Wednesday.

Concerning the clash in Kupwara District along the Line of Control in Kashmir, senior officers from India and Pakistan met today. They accused each other of starting the shooting incident, but no other results emerged.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Sumeet »

shiv wrote:
Avinash R wrote:shiv if by the pig heads been thrown you are refering to the b'lore incidents then you will be surprised to know who threw them. i think you live in b'lore. so just visit any one of the 2mosques on friday and ask the people there who threw the pig heads.
they will even tell you from which pig rearer the pigs werebought, in which lane the pigs were cut and who were 6 people who threw them.
I have been hearing the cricket match story for 43 years now since 1965. Nowadays you can't buy a cellphone without a camera. Why not take a video and put it up on YouTube?

Wait! I know. It can't be done because its too scary to go into Muslim areas.

See?

It happens, but it can't be seen. It can't recorded. It can't be proved. "You'll just have to trust me". If this isn't rumor, what is it? Oh yeah. The rumor may be based on facts. But who's to know otherwise?
Shiv actually there is a video proving the point otherwise, meaning IMs are patriotic towards India during a indo-pak cricket match. Do read some comments from viewers. Check video here:

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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by archan »

I am sorry, but videos like these, while nice and all, don't prove anything. Anyone who has lived in India long enough knows that most IMs are patriotic. It is always some sections that behave on the contrary. Simple as that.
After watching this video, a critic could say "well when there is a camera on your face and your comments are being recorded, you are not going to say anything that could put you into trouble later". Having said that I do not doubt the patriotism of any of the people interviewed above. I have no reason to. Doubting IM's patriotism only serves to distance them further from the mainstream.
I have a IM expat friend in the US. Talk to him and he will sound like you and me. While there is another guy who holds Indian passport but does not care much for India. He is against the 'Indian occupation' of Kashmir. After an Indo Pak match which India won he had a slip-of-the-tongue moment when he said "our bowlers did not bowl in the right areas". He had a red face when we reminded him that India in fact bowled well and won the match.
So it depends on person to person. No point generalizing it over the whole community.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by John Snow »

It is sad to see BRF discuss the integrity of entire block of citizens rather talk about the moralb degradation of our institutions as witnessed during the no confixence mtion.

The CBI RAW DRI have not prosecuted even a single high profile terrorism actors or scams. Talk of being super power.

Even in our forum some of admins themselves resort to distortion of post to impute conclusions which are no where to be seen.
Ofcourse the PM or any establishment is beyond criticism in the regime of new BRF.

Member on member accusations off the cuff remarks editing of post
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by enqyoob »

I would like to pose a question to all these postors.

Suppose we were to stipulate (just for purposes of argument), the following:
Most people of "another community" are basically full of hate towards most of humanity, have no feeling of community with people who are of the "one community"


So what? Unless you advocate the "MooMoo Solution", which would rightfully get your ass kicked out of BRF and anywhere else that civilized people frequent, do you really see any easy solution to the security threats?

Unless the answer is "yes", I strongly suggest that it is a gross, irritating waste of forum space to keep ranting about how "another community" is bad.

Note that I am simply not going to argue that "most people are decent" etc. and may in fact agree that this is not the case.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Rahul M »

what exactly is the "moomoo solution" ??
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Muppalla »

I guess (just guess) bigotry and genocide as solutions.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

archan wrote: No point generalizing it over the whole community.
Well said. But herein lies a useful tool to manipulate entire communities. This is a game that we "rational, educated" people do not normally play - but it is normal for certain people - like politicians or religious leaders to do that, and the "great game players" are masters at the art because they think in this way

If your aim is to create a cleft between two groups of people, the best time to do that is in the middle of an event that makes a lot of people worried or suspicious of the other group. If that event happens as a chance event - that is fine. But even apart from that - events can be manufactured. Once there is a degree of suspicion about the "other" group - the rumors start floating around easily and spread to all sorts of places. You may not normally tell your son that "Muslims cheer for Pakistan". But after such an event, the story rolls off easily and he remembers it forever. Similarly, a Muslim may not normally go around saying "Hindus split open bellies of pregnant women" - but after an event that creates fear and suspicion - the story goes around easily.

At such a time a random Muslim meeting a random Hindu sparks thoughts in each persons head that do not normally come up. The Muslim may think " Could this guy be a belly splitter or be a relative of one?". And the Hindu may think "This guy could be one of those rabid Pakistan supporters". Instead of a one-on-one meeting. If a crowd of young Muslims meets a crowd of Hindus, maybe one young man hiding his face in the back of his own crowd will shout "Pakistaniyon ko maaro". This is just the sort of think that sparks a fight and a riot, and feeds the rumor mill.

Of course Police forces figured out these things long long ago. Why do you think "curfew" is imposed and no more than 2 people are allowed to be seen together at any given time?

But imposing curfew is too little too late. The police need intelligence long before anything happens. That means that the police need informers on both sides. For that the police need to have good relations with all communities. Just like women police are seen as more sympathetic and friendly by women, the number of Muslim police officers will have to be increased. And the morale and training of our police has to be vastly improved. We have a corrupt police force who are at the beck and call of politicians to to their petty dirty work. While politicians call for "calm and communal harmony" they fail to take the steps to improve the police. "Improving the police" often means that a lot of less than legal stuff done by the wealthy and influential will start getting noticed and recorded.

Let's face it. The potential for Islamic terror is pretty high in the UK and France as well. How do they do so well in foiling attacks? How long are we going to say "It is our fate. we are like that only". It is neither our fate, nor do we have to be "like that onlee".
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by enqyoob »

Shiv: Consider another aspect. What has really sent the US and UK into a tizzy is that the fundamental premise of law and order and internal security has been toppled. Let me explain.

The way that modern "free societies" try to maintain freedoms is to ensure respect for law and order. This respect was enforced by teaching everyone that "Scotland Yard" (FBI) always get their man (woman)". The "long arm of the law" will reach criminals, with no possibility of forgetfulness. It may take 2 days or 20 years, but the Law never gives up.

So the idea is, you do the crime, you do the time. In time, the "time" became very long - you see that people get sentenced to say, 300 years in the US. For most national security offenses, the prison terms are essentially life terms with no parole. In fact, the US system is that they get you to sign "under penalty of.." on everything you say. If you failed to tell them something, they can (and really DO) come after you for "perjury" and put you in federal prison for loong times. This is so scary that it makes people who coolly ignore speed limits, and indulge in casual sex and smoke pot and eat raw fish, to pay taxes on time and otherwise obey the Law.

This is what allowed the "free" system where they breezily wave you through airport immigration or the gates of military facilities, and used to give a passport in 5 days flat. Also, allowed the credit card system and many other things. In most things, they never bothered to check - no Police Verification, no Character Certificates, nothing.

Enter the Islamic terrorist. This whole idea is completely upset by the Houristan proposition. If the perpetrator expects to die, and is wacko enough, then the entire premise of security (law "ENFORCEMENT") becomes irrelevant.

Difference is this: NOW IT DOES NO GOOD TO FIND THE PERPETRATOR LATER - BECAUSE S(HE) DOESN'T EXPECT TO BE AROUND ANYWAY. 40-year sentences mean nothing (yes, of course they do to the individual, but the organization encourages the terrorist to seek martyrdom and includes that in the metric for success. The terrorist is considered dead when s(he) goes out on the mission. The video is already recorded, and Hafeez Saeed has already put the 2-b-widow in his "care" harem.

India has not quite realized this, and the law enforcement system is still stuck in the age of the scary moustachioed Police arriving with loud jeep noises etc. People are trained to think that arrest == crime solution.

None of this does anything to DETER terrorism, and it most certainly does not PREVENT or Pre_EMPT terrorism. Those things take immense effort, to stay 5 steps AHEAD of the terrorist.

India's only way out is pre-emptive hits on the Paki terror camps, and immense data-analysis and humint reception, and very fast action to hit the places where terrorists are trained.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by John Snow »

The cost of promoting terror in India is zilch for ourwest and east neigbors.

Mean PRC silently execute every suspected Ughir muslims with no questions asked.

Is there a lesson in this?

The terror central is in nai delhi.
How so?

a) Not acting against illegals from Bdesh
b) not going after Money leads by DRI
c) Not acting on proven terrorists in custody
d) not acting on Monica bedi like cases where fake passports were used
e) politicising CBI RAW and every govt agency
f) No accountability by NSA head except for garbage excuses.

and the list goes on.

Remember what FM Cariappa said to Nehru, "if all my soldiers pee pakistan will be half submerged in Arabian sea'

We now have three countries sheltering all kinds of terrorists

1) Nepal
2) Bdesh
3) TSP

If you cant act against terror you are abetting terror.
Simple
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by archan »

Kudos JS. Very well said. Don't know how many more lives it will take for the establishment to finally wake up.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Kaushal »

I am slowly coming around to the view that the Indic (euphemism in this instance for hindu) is paralyzed by fear of the (jihadi ) Muslim. In fact i have been told that 'they' will kill me sooner rather than later, if i don't desist from telling what i regard to be the truth. But my riposte to that when it is my turn , it will be with my head held high . The person who was advising me thus, did not realize the incongruity of what they were advocating. They were advocating that i give up my freedom of thought and expression so that the forces of evil can have the freedom of committing jihadi acts. Nevertheless i refuse to believe that Hindus are cowards, but in twenty five years, what i think or express may be a moot point
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Singha »

4 people were arrested in blr yesterday in the pigs head throwing case. not reported yet why
it was done.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

John Snow wrote:T

a) Not acting against illegals from Bdesh
b) not going after Money leads by DRI
c) Not acting on proven terrorists in custody
d) not acting on Monica bedi like cases where fake passports were used
e) politicising CBI RAW and every govt agency
f) No accountability by NSA head except for garbage excuses.
a) Not acting against illegals from Bdesh: You lose a vote bank. You will accused of being anti-Muslim.

b) not going after Money leads by DRI: If Dubai residents individuals were not there how would a politician's hawala money come back into India? Terrorist money is hardly 2% of the Indian black money that is coming in via Dubai. You are an anti-national if you want to destroy 98% to remove 2%

c) Not acting on proven terrorists in custody: Why you want to be anti secular? You should hang one Hindu terrorist for every Muslims terrorist you hang.

d) not acting on Monica bedi like cases where fake passports were used: OK OK. All these ideas are good. But what if you need a fake passport when you have surrendered your own passport to a court and you, as a neta must go abroad for sister's daughter's wedding in Oklahoma? Who will supply you with a new passport if we shut down the system?

e) politicising CBI RAW and every govt agency: CBI and RAW have no work. They are simply government servants taking home a salary for free. After all where is the war between India and China or Pakistan. There is peace on one side and piss process on the other side. So they should be given political work

f) No accountability by NSA head except for garbage excuses. Terrorism cannot be prevented. We must maintain calm. The guilty will be punished.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by shiv »

Kaushal wrote:I am slowly coming around to the view that the Indic (euphemism in this instance for hindu) is paralyzed by fear of the (jihadi ) Muslim.
Yes and I believe there is both a remote and a relatively recent genesis to this. I have written about (my views on the) the relatively recent genesis and its effects in an article that I have sent for BRM.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by John Snow »

Kaushal garu namasthe. Even though your message is stark and very disturbing, I am glad to hear from you in this forum.

I am unable to rationalize the GOI inept administration.
Even if you consider the ruling coalition to be thugs and mafia, should they not protecct the territory which they rule? Every mob protects its turf and brooks no encroachments.

Are these guys not even half as protective of the turf the own?

contrast this with any other country og G8 in which we seek membership.

Ruby Ridge incident
Waco texas incident

where in Law officers shot first the asked question as soon as law officials were activated.

We have naxals on rampage, we had veerappan on the lose till mother nature recalled him.

We have LLTE cadre running the show in Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli.

Parts of AP, MP, Orissa are in naxal grip
Pundits are refugees in their own country,

you name it ...
We had serious dicussions about is India a soft state in the late 90s and early 2000, Now the discussions ought to be is India a softer state?
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by svinayak »

Congress has created a artifical political ideology which promotes these policies.
After analysis it looks like these policy were in response to the policies of the previous govt.
The selection of the speaker from a far left party mirrors the speaker in the previous govt.
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Re: Blasts in Ahmedabad

Post by Singha »

here is the article I referred to:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/poli ... 60936.html

an excerpt...pls read the entire link above:

Muslim society, classically, is tribal society. Muhammad’s achievement was to meld the desert tribes of Arabia into an irresistible force for the spread of Islam. To this day, in fact, tribal identity remains politically relevant, not only in the arid territories of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, but even in settled Muslim states like Iraq. This is a distinctive characteristic of social life in the Middle East. Historically, it is unusual for states and tribes to coexist for long within a single territory, and rare as well for tribal peoples to found dynasties (as they have throughout Muslim history). In Europe, for example, the German, Celtic, and Gothic tribes that overran a collapsing Roman Empire quickly lost their tribal identities. The same fate awaited the great tribal dynasties that conquered ancient China. But in the Middle East, tribal identity persists.

Middle Eastern tribes are organized into what anthropologists call “segmentary lineage systems.” Simply put, segmentary lineages allow a society to operate strictly on the basis of kinship ties, without the need for a central government. If a man is attacked, for example, he’ll be defended not by police, but by members of his lineage, who will be pitted against the lineage-mates of his foe. And what if a man is attacked by one of his own lineage mates? In that case, his lineage will simply break apart (segment), and those most closely related to him will be opposed to those most closely related to his attacker. The system works through an almost infinite capacity for either segmentation or unity. Tribes can easily be split by internal disputes, yet can just as easily combine in the face of an alien enemy.

Muhammad’s achievement was to unify the tribes of Arabia under the banner of Islam, in the process replicating and extending to Islam itself the tribal ethos of militance and pride. By creating a kind of tribal feud between all of Islam and the outside world of infidels, Muhammad was able to launch a successful military campaign that unified and deployed the existing tribal structure against the enemy. In later battles against the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, tribal regiments united by bonds of kinship maintained a cohesion that state-employed mercenary armies could not. The Muslims swept the field.

--------
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OW ... A0MGM0YmY=

Marriage and the Terror War
Better learn up on your anthropology if you want to understand the war.

By Stanley Kurtz

Why is the United States engaged in a war against Islamic terrorists? The Left blames the war on American foreign policy, while the Right holds that America is being scapegoated for the Muslim Middle East’s own failure to modernize. In his controversial new book, The Enemy at Home, conservative social critic Dinesh D’Souza rejects both of these explanations. Islam is perfectly compatible with modernity, argues D’Souza. The real root of the terror war, says D’Souza, is that, like many other traditional peoples throughout the world, Muslims are being shocked into anti-Western radicalism by the decadent post-Sixties culture nowadays aggressively spread across the globe by the secular Left.


In “War of Cultures,” I take issue with D’Souza, arguing that the contemporary cultural Left merely aggravates a profound and already-existing conflict between Islamic society and modernity — a clash between tradition and modernity more thorough-going and prone to violence than in any other part of the globe. D’Souza’s theme of cultural incitement, rightly understood, I argue, points toward a deeper incompatibility between Islamic society and the demands of modern life — an incompatibility that has a great deal to do with the widespread Middle Eastern practice of cousin marriage. If this is so, then we are led to take up the fundamental question of the causes of the terror war in a new light.

The distinguished historian Bernard Lewis and political scientist Samuel Huntington have together popularized the notion that Muslims are scapegoating the West because of an underlying incompatibility between Islamic society and modernity. Lewis roots this incompatibility in the Muslim seclusion of women and also in the failure of Islam to separate church and state. Yet, in “Root Causes,” I show that the Muslim seclusion of women, and even characteristically Muslim church-state relations, are part and parcel of a distinctive kinship structure built around a preference for the marriage of cousins. Huntington highlights the significance of these “traditional clan ties,” while saying relatively little about their actual content.

In this first in a series of essays on Muslim cousin-marriage, I want to begin to make the case that Muslim kinship structure is an unexamined key to the war on terror. While the character of Islam itself is unquestionably one of the critical forces driving our global conflict, the nature of Islamic kinship and social structure is at least as important a factor — although this latter cluster of issues has received relatively little attention in public debate. Understanding the role of Middle Eastern kinship and social structure in driving the war not only throws light on the weaknesses of arguments like D’Souza’s, it may also help us devise a new long-term strategy for victory in the war on terror.

Self-Sealing Society

Think of the culture of the Muslim Middle East as “self-sealing.” Muslim society has a deep-lying bias toward in-group solidarity, the negative face of which manifests itself in a series of powerful mechanisms for preventing, coercing, or punishing those who would break with or undermine the in-group and its customs. This bias toward in-group solidarity serves to shelter Muslim society from interaction with the forces of modernity, and also explains why Muslim immigrants so often fail to assimilate. Of course, no society can function without some sort of “in-group solidarity.” Yet the Muslim world is truly distinctive on this score. When it comes to the core principles of kinship, Muslim practices strengthen and protect the integrity and continuity of the in-group in a way that sets the Middle East apart from every other society in the world. To appreciate this fact, we’ve first got to understand some fundamental things about the nature of kinship.


For the greater part of human history, nearly every society has been organized into units based on kin ties. Modern life greatly reduces the significance of these ties, since capitalism tends to allocate jobs based on ability (instead of who your father is), while democracies apply laws, and assign benefits, on the principle of equal citizenship (not birth). By contrast, in most traditional societies, a man’s security, health, prosperity, and religious standing all depend, first and foremost, on his relatives. So to understand the kinship structure of a traditional society is to make sense of a good deal of life there. Unfortunately, our contemporary thinned-out notion of kinship has made it tough to recognize just how profoundly societies are shaped by variations in marriage practices. That’s why we’re far more comfortable making sense of the war on terror through the lens of a familiar phenomenon like religion, than in the light of something alien, like cousin marriage.

The anthropological study of kinship is famously abstruse, even for many anthropologists. The terminology can be eye-glazing, and as I’ve been arguing, it’s tough for modern Americans to believe that the problem of who-marries-whom can actually make much social difference. Suffice it to say that generations of anthropologists who actually travel to non-Western societies keep coming back impressed by how important the question of kinship is. As I’ll detail in a future piece, British scholars have lately discovered just how critical cousin marriage is for understanding the problem of Muslim assimilation in Europe. If the study of kinship can be exotic, difficult, and puzzling, so is the problem of modern Muslim rage. These problems, I argue, are related. So fasten your seatbelts. For the sake of making sense of America’s number one challenge, we’re about to take a plunge into the famously abstruse topic of kinship.

Short Course in Kinship

In the late nineteenth century, British anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor developed the founding insight of the modern study of kinship. Tylor cited exogamy, or “marrying out,” as the key to human social progress. In Tylor’s scenario, early human groups, in danger of killing each other off through inveterate competition, discovered intermarriage as the path to social peace. Women who were related to one clan as sisters and to another clan as wives tended to discourage feuds between otherwise competing groups. As Tylor famously put it: “Again and again in the world’s history, savage tribes must have had plainly before their minds the simple practical alternative between marrying-out and being killed out.” And for Tylor, “cross cousin marriage,” a particular form of cousin marriage favored by many “primitive” societies, was the earliest and most fundamental form of clan exogamy — or “marrying out.”

So what exactly is “cross cousin marriage”? Well, in anthropological parlance, descendants of same-sex siblings are “parallel cousins,” while descendants of opposite-sex siblings are “cross cousins.” That is, if a man marries his mother’s brother’s daughter, he is marrying a cross cousin. If, on the other hand, a man marries his father’s brother’s daughter, he is marrying his parallel cousin.

Yes, this sort of terminological arcana has been the bane of generations of anthropology students. But let me put my larger point in the form of a threat: Sit still for this brief basic account of anthropological kinship theory...or lose the war on terror.

All right, let’s say we have a society made up of clans organized by descent through the father. (Imagine a grander version of your own father’s family line, or something like the Hatfields and McCoys.) In any given clan, the men all trace their descent from a common male ancestor. In such a society, a rule or preference for cross-cousin marriage would create a systematic form of exogamy. In other words, if every man in a patrilineal, clan-based society were to marry his mother’s brother’s daughter, every man would be marrying someone from a different clan. (For example, if you were to marry your own mother’s brother’s child, you would be marrying someone from outside of your father’s family line.) Since every man’s mother in our imaginary society is born into a different patriclan than his own, when a man marries the daughter of his mother’s brother (i.e., his cross cousin) he is renewing an alliance with another patriclan (i.e. his mother’s birth clan) by bringing a woman from his mother’s birth clan into his own clan as a wife, just as his father did before him.

On the other hand, in a society made up of competing patriclans, a rule or preference for parallel-cousin marriage would have exactly the opposite effect. Parallel-cousin marriage would seal each and every clan off from all of the others. If, say, every man in a society made up of patrilineal clans was to marry his father’s brother’s daughter, every man would be married to a descendent of his own birth clan. (For example, if you were to marry your own father’s brother’s child, you would be marrying someone from within your father’s family line.) That would be a very strong form of endogamy, or “marrying in,” which, according to Tylor, would encourage social isolation, cultural stasis, rivalry, and high levels of conflict between clans.


Although modern social anthropologists largely jettisoned the speculative historical reconstructions favored by nineteenth-century scholars like Tylor, they held onto Tylor’s central insights into the political significance of exogamy and cousin marriage. For example, building on Tylor, the great modern anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss argued that the incest taboo was the foundation of human social life. By prohibiting sexual ties among close relatives, Levi-Strauss claimed, the incest taboo effectively forces human beings to create alliances with strangers, through marriage. The prevalence of cousin marriage in many traditional cultures seemed to contradict this claim for the significance and function of the incest taboo. Yet Levi-Strauss’s brilliant, Tylor-inspired, analysis of the many political alliance systems created by cross-cousin marriage proved that even societies that encouraged the marriage of close cousins were in fact practicing a form of exogamous alliance-building. In the wake of Levi-Strauss’s achievement, some anthropologists even returned, in a more sophisticated mode, to Tylor’s original historical thesis, suggesting that the early discovery of exogamous marriage may have played a critical role in the evolution of modern human beings. (See Robin Fox’s Kinship and Marriage and The Red Lamp of Incest.)

Well, maybe exogamy played a central role in human evolution, or maybe it didn’t. However theoretically sophisticated, those sorts of historical reconstructions are nearly as speculative today as they were in the nineteenth century. In any case, early history aside, there is a critical flaw in Levi-Strauss’s theory of contemporary human kinship. Levi-Strauss did indeed show that the widespread practice of cross-cousin marriage confirms, rather than contradicts, the leading role of exogamy in human social life. Unfortunately, Levi-Strauss almost entirely failed to deal with the single great exception to his rule. Although the vast majority of societies with a preference for close-cousin marriage favor the marriage of cross cousins, a significant minority of such societies favor the marriage of parallel cousins.

And as we’ve already seen, parallel-cousin marriage has an effect precisely the opposite of the alliance-building interchange encouraged by cross-cousin marriage — and praised by Tylor and Levi-Strauss.
Instead of encouraging cultural exchange, forging alliances, and mitigating tensions among competing groups, parallel-cousin marriage tends to wall off groups from one another and to encourage conflict between and among them. However strong the urge among anthropologists to identify the cooperative advantages of exogamy as a core characteristic of human nature itself, the hard fact of the matter is that a significant minority of human societies have chosen to organize themselves according to principles quite the opposite of alliance-based exogamy. Care to hazard guess as to exactly where in the world those societies might be?

While the vast majority of societies that practice cousin marriage favor the marriage of cross cousins, the relatively small number of societies that encourage parallel-cousin marriage can be found in the Islamic cultures of North Africa and west and central Asia. Russian anthropologist Andrey Korotayev has shown that, while the region that practices parallel-cousin marriage does not map perfectly onto the Islamic world as a whole, it does (with some exceptions) closely resemble the territory of the eighth-century Islamic Caliphate — the original Islamic empire. So there is one great exception to the claim that human society — and even human nature itself — are built around the principle of extra-familial marriage. Almost every known contemporary case of preferential parallel-cousin marriage is the result of diffusion from a single source: the original Islamic Caliphate. And while parallel-cousin marriage may not be Islamic in any strict or formal sense (in fact, the practice apparently predates Islam in the region), as Korotayev puts it, “there seems to be no serious doubt that there is some functional connection between Islam and FBD [father’s brother’s daughter — i.e., parallel cousin] marriage.” Sounds like we’d best find out what that “functional connection” is.

...Proves the Rule
Once you give up the idea that every human society depends in some fundamental way on the practice of marrying out, it’s fairly easy to see the other side of the coin. If in-marriage stifles cultural development and change by walling society off from outside influences, then strong endogamy also has the corresponding benefits of heightening social cohesion and preserving cultural continuity. That is precisely the argument of Kansas State University anthropologist Martin Ottenheimer, who notes that parallel-cousin marriage among Pakistanis in Great Britain tends to reinforce cultural continuity in Muslim immigrant communities. Ottenheimer’s study, Forbidden Relatives: The American Myth of Cousin Marriage, was published in 1996, several years before it became apparent that reinforcing the “cultural continuity” of immigrant Muslim communities in Britain might have a down side. (See especially chapter 7.)

Determined to puncture the American “myth” that cousin marriage poses any sort of problem, Ottenheimer explains that the bans on cousin marriage adopted by many American states between the 1840s and the 1920s were the product of a biased and decidedly non-multicultural nation. As Ottenheimer sees it, given the foolish determination of our forbears to assimilate immigrants, Americans used intermarriage (a modern form of exogamy) as a tool to help break up ethnic communities and encourage a sense of national unity. Laws against cousin marriage fit right into that strategy, helping to break down in-grown traditional cultures and encouraging a shared sense of American identity (even if America never faced anything quite as in-grown as Muslim parallel-cousin marriage). Multiculturalist that he is, Ottenheimer prefers the “cultural continuity” fostered by parallel-cousin marriage among British Pakistani Muslims — a continuity facilitated by Europe’s permissive marriage laws — to America’s tradition of immigrant assimilation.

Ottenheimer has a point. Tylor and Levi-Strauss were mistaken to identify the functional gains of exogamy with human nature itself. The pattern of social adaptation, developmental flexibility, and relative peace achieved through intermarriage isn’t the only social game in town. Although a strongly in-marrying society may sacrifice these advantages, functionally speaking, intense social solidarity and unbreakable cultural continuity are the powerful payoffs received in return for the rejection of exogamy. Of course, the fly in this ointment (invisible to Ottenheimer in 1996) is painfully obvious today: Intense social solidarity and unbreakable cultural continuity in immigrant Muslim communities (and in the Middle East itself) are exactly what have been getting us into trouble. This means that any a long-term strategy for winning the war on terror will have to undercut, counter-balance, or reverse the functional “advantages” (cultural stasis and isolation) accruing to Muslim society through the ongoing practice of parallel-cousin marriage.

So the one great exception to the anthropological maxim that human advancement and peace require a certain minimal level of exogamy turns out to prove the rule. Islamic society has found a way to turn a uniquely intense form of in-marriage to its advantage (if advantage is defined strictly in terms of cultural survival, rather than adaptive change). Unfortunately, from the perspective of the rest of the world, the cultural stasis and isolation promoted by Muslim parallel-cousin marriage is now a serious problem.

We still need to discover the “functional connection” between Middle Eastern parallel cousin marriage and Islam. Find that link, I argue, and you will see what stands between the Muslim world and modernization. Grasp the connection between Islam and Middle Eastern kinship, and you’ll have a far better chance of devising a long-term strategy for winning the war on terror. These are the questions we’ll pursue in Part II of “Marriage and the Terror War.”
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Marriage and the Terror War, Part II
Protecting the honor of the family; protecting the honor of Islam.

By Stanley Kurtz

For the greater part of human history, almost every society has been structured around the bonds of marriage and kinship. A man’s security, health, prosperity, and religious standing all traditionally depended on his relatives. We moderns continue to marry and trace our descent through our parents, especially our fathers. Yet in comparison to societies in other times and places, the bonds of kinship are now thin and watery things.

The Muslim world is different. Guided by powerful cultural rules and preferences, Muslims commonly arrange the marriages of their children. A Muslim family’s economic well-being, social standing, and much else typically depend upon those arrangements, and as we learned in “Marriage and the Terror War,” large sections of the Muslim world prefer to arrange marriages between “parallel cousins,” cousins who are members of the same paternal family line.

In the first part of this piece, I showed that, on a world scale, the radical form of in-marriage represented by the union of parallel cousins is highly unusual. Parallel-cousin marriage is confined almost exclusively to the region once ruled by the original eighth-century Islamic empire, and this involuted form of marriage stands in sharp contrast to the relative value placed on out-marriage, inter-group alliance, and interchange favored by almost every other culture in the world.

Anthropologists once identified exogamy — the tendency to form alliances with strangers by “marrying out” — as a core component of human nature. Of course, every society identifies boundaries outside of which legitimate marriage cannot take place. Nonetheless, within those boundaries, most societies frown on close marriages within existing family lines, and this sets a nearly universal value on the practice of alliance and interchange between insiders and outsiders.

Yet the very strong form of endogamy uniquely practiced throughout much of the Muslim world shows that it is possible to construct a human society on the basis of another fundamental strategy. Instead of cultural communication, adaptive development, and mutual trust, this strategy stresses intense in-group solidarity and unbreakable cultural continuity. Understanding the distinctive kinship principles around which Muslims structure their social life may tell us a good deal about why we’re engaged in a war against terror — and what we must do over the long term to win it. In particular, we want to understand the “functional connection” between the marriage practices prevalent in the Muslim world and Islam itself. How do Muslim religion and social life fit together, and what is it about both that makes the Muslim adjustment to modernity so difficult?

Problem Solved
Recognizing the anomalous nature of parallel-cousin marriage on a worldwide scale, as well as its importance for Muslim society, students of Middle Eastern culture puzzled over the phenomenon for a century. By the mid-1970s, however, anthropologists had grown tired of Muslim parallel-cousin marriage. Some complained that the preoccupation with this single exotic practice was diverting attention from other important forms of marriage and kinship in the Middle East. And increasingly, scholars despaired of making sense of parallel-cousin marriage at all.

The most popular explanation of parallel-cousin marriage treated it as a way of keeping wealth within the family line. And while an economic motive is clearly in play in many cases of parallel-cousin marriage, there are plenty of other instances that have nothing to do with wealth. The economic circumstances of Middle Eastern societies differ widely, yet parallel-cousin marriage is practiced across the region. In some places, the poor prefer parallel-cousin marriage every bit as much as the rich. The more anthropologists learned about these exceptions, the more they were inclined to drop the issue of parallel-cousin marriage as a false or insoluble problem.

Then, in 1989, Czech anthropologist Ladislav Holy published Kinship, Honour, and Solidarity: Cousin Marriage in the Middle East. After a century of unresolved puzzlement, Holy offered an credible general explanation of the Muslim preference for parallel-cousin marriage. Holy showed how cousin marriage serves as a fail-safe protective device to secure collective family honor, and linked the honor-based function of cousin marriage to a broader appreciation of super-charged, in-group solidarity as a social strategy. No society can do without some form of in-group solidarity. But once you understand how Muslims construct society as a collection of counterbalanced, sometimes allied, sometimes feuding, closed-off, and self-sufficient family cells, the problem of Muslim cultural persistence begins to make sense. Holy also allows us to appreciate that the Muslim seclusion of women (another critical barrier to modernization and assimilation) is part and parcel of a larger complex of practices, at the center of which is parallel-cousin marriage. (Unfortunately, Holy’s book is difficult for non-specialists to follow, but see especially pp.110-123. See also a classic 1959 essay making some of these points by R. Murphy and L. Kasden, “The structure of parallel cousin marriage,” American Anthropologist 61:17-29.)

Holy argues that the high value placed on endogamy sharply sets Muslim society apart from the rest of the world. The loyalties of women who marry within their own family lines remain undivided. Negatively, therefore, parallel-cousin marriage sacrifices the “integrative” advantages of exogamy. Yet in a positive sense, parallel-cousin marriage serves as a powerful tool for preserving the internal solidarity and cultural continuity of the group. True, no real society is, or can be, entirely composed of sealed-off, perpetually in-marrying family lines. Many Muslims do “marry out,” and economic exchanges and strategically forged marriage alliances counter-balance the tendency of parallel-cousin marriage to divide Muslim society into a series of closed, self-sustaining family cells. Yet Muslim society’s leading theme is set and reinforced by the preference for parallel-cousin marriage — that theme being the creation of closed-off, secluded, and intensely loyal “solidarities,” and harsh dealing with any insider who would endanger or desert the charmed circle.

Parallel-cousin marriage is often practiced as a way of keeping wealth within a particular family line. Yet it isn’t wealth that turns Muslim families into the ultimate in sealed-off, self-perpetuating in-groups, Holy argues; it’s the other way around. The pre-existing value placed on in-group solidarity dictates that, when serious wealth is in play, it needs to be kept in the family line.

Rather than wealth, Holy argues, the real key to the puzzle of Muslim parallel-cousin marriage is family honor. With all the economic and social diversity in the Middle East, one factor remains constant. Wherever parallel-cousin marriage is practiced, the notion that the honor of the male family-line depends upon the sexual conduct of women is strong. For this reason, a woman’s father’s brother’s son (her parallel cousin) has the right-of-first-refusal in the matter of her marriage. To protect against the possibility of a woman’s shameful marriage (or other dangerous sexual conduct) damaging the honor of the men of her lineage, male relatives have the right to keep her safely within the family line by marrying her off to her parallel cousin.

As I’ll show in a follow-up piece, all of these kinship mechanisms are much at work in Europe today. Muslim immigrants in Europe use cousin marriage to keep wealth within already tight family lines, and to prevent girls from entering “shameful” marriages with cultural outsiders. All this serves to reinforce family “solidarity,” thereby blocking the assimilation of Muslim immigrants into society at large. We’ve all heard about full-body veiling, the seclusion of women, forced marriage, honor killing, and the like. Europe is struggling with the question of how to handle these practices. What we’ve missed up to now is the sense in which cousin marriage tends to organize and orchestrate all of these controversial practices, thereby serving as the lynch-pin of a broader pattern of resistance to assimilation and modernization. In effect, parallel-cousin marriage in Europe acts as a social “sealing mechanism” to block cultural interchange — just as, over a century ago, Sir Edward Tylor theorized it would.

No Escape
Let’s return to Dinesh D’Souza’s novel plan for winning the war on terror. D’Souza wants to isolate the secular Left at home, and Muslim radicals abroad, by forging an alliance between America’s Christian conservatives and cultural traditionalists (including peaceful Muslim traditionalists) across the globe. All the world’s traditional cultures, says D’Souza, while differing on details, share a belief in external moral standards — a belief that sharply contrasts with the expressive individualism and relativism of America’s secular Left. As I pointed out in “War of Cultures,” however, D’Souza’s focus on what the world’s traditionalists have in common glosses over immense differences between moral and social systems, thereby telling us little or nothing about why some traditionalists are attacking us, while others are not.

While it’s possible to lump the world’s “traditionalists” together by contrasting them all with the secular Left, there’s another and more productive way to cut the cake. Once your subject is the social meaning and function of kinship, the Muslim world stands in stark contrast to every other society in the world — traditional or modern. This contrast, I argue, has everything to do with why Muslim societies have difficulty accommodating modernity, why Muslim immigrants resist assimilation, and why some Muslims are attacking us.

The key “functional connection” between Middle Eastern marriage practices (which are not religiously dictated, although they are sometimes justified in religious terms) and Islam itself would appear to be the creation and reinforcement of a pervasive cultural tendency to form in-groups with tightly monitored boundaries. A male parallel cousin’s right-of-first-refusal in marriage serves to prevent a woman from threatening lineage honor and solidarity by entering into a low or dishonorable out-marriage. By the same token, as we saw in the case of Afghan convert to Christianity, Abdul Rahman, Islam itself functions as a kind of closed in-group on a grand scale, welcoming converts, yet punishing apostasy with death. Explaining this Muslim practice, D’Souza says that, “Apostasy in Islam is less a matter of ‘wrong beliefs’ or heresy and more a matter of treason, of betraying the Muslim community.” Precisely. Yet D’Souza fails to see that this is the heart of the problem. Instead of serving as a religious creed that individuals are free to accept or reject, Islam itself functions more like a gigantic in-marrying lineage, whose solidarity is threatened by any individual member’s dishonorable exit. This, in turn, puts us in mind of the case of Salman Rushdie.

However well-known the Rushdie affair may be, we have arguably missed its larger significance. As D’Souza notes, given that sharia law punishes apostasy with death, “Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was entirely in line with Islamic teaching, and even traditional Muslims could not disagree with the ayatollah’s verdict.” Westerners see the Rushdie case as an attack on free speech, and that it is. More deeply, however, the Rushdie affair was a triumph for the built-in enforcement mechanism that seals off Islam from adaptation to the modern world.

D’Souza gives the example of the Taliban’s notorious execution by stoning of two adulterers. Recently, notes D’Souza, Maulvi Qalamuddin, former head of the Taliban’s Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue, defended that stoning: “Just two people, that’s all, and we ended adultery in Kandahar.” By the same token, Ayatollah Khomeini might with justice have said of Salman Rushdie: “Just one writer, that’s all, and we killed off the possibility of a reformist Islam growing up in Europe.” Rushdie may not have been a religious reformer himself, yet the death sentence pronounced upon him sent out a powerful message to any European Muslim who might be planning to lead a movement for reform.

Compare the Rushdie affair to the development the Conservative and Reform movements within American Judaism, and the parallel rise of American Jewish intermarriage with non-Jews. Judaism, like Islam, was once less a religious creed than a tight community constituted by a set of laws and practices extending into areas well beyond matters of pure “belief.” Yet without the intense form of lineage endogamy favored by Muslim society, and in the absence of the in-group policing mechanisms found in Islam, Judaism adapted to modernity, and Jews assimilated into American life (arguably to a fault, since Jewish identity is now seriously threatened by intermarriage). To put it simply, early followers of Conservative and Reform Judaism didn’t have to worry about being executed for intermarriage or apostasy by angry Orthodox Jews.

So D’Souza’s notion of a grand coalition of the world’s religious traditionalists completely glosses over specific cultural characteristics that have blocked any reconciliation between Islam and modernity. D’Souza doesn’t directly endorse Islam’s harsh enforcement mechanisms. Instead he argues that the intolerant secularism of the cultural Left is forcing Muslims into an all-or-nothing choice between their harshest traditions, on the one hand, and total repudiation of Islam, on the other.

What D’Souza can’t see is that, far more than America’s secular Left, it is the distinctive nature of Islam itself, and of Middle Eastern social life generally, that forces this all-or-nothing choice. A non-creedal religion whose jurisdiction extends to vast areas of social life; a communal religious identity that punishes disloyalty with death; and a marriage system that generates (and harshly polices) a pervasive ethos of in-group solidarity: these are the real sources of the all-or-nothing choice between Muslim tradition and modernity. This is why the current alternatives in the Muslim world sometimes seem to be boiling down to an untenable choice between Iranian theocracy, on the one hand, and Turkish secularism, on the other.

If we want to change any of this, it will be impossible to restrict ourselves to the study of religious Islam. The “self-sealing” character of Islam is part and parcel of a broader and more deeply rooted social pattern. And parallel-cousin marriage is more than just an interesting but minor illustration of that broader theme. If there’s a “self-sealing” tendency in Muslim social life, cousin marriage is the velcro. In contemporary Europe, perhaps even more than in the Middle East, cousin marriage is at the core of a complex of factors blocking assimilation and driving the war on terror. So I shall take up the question of cousin marriage in Europe in the next in this series of essays.
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