Iqbal is a youth in his twenties from a small village in coastal Karnataka. He was reportedly assaulted for “being with a Hindu girl”. He is too scared to reveal more about his ordeal.
The incident happened around a week ago. Iqbal confirmed that it did occur, but refused say more. He is back home in Vittla, a village around 80 km from Mangalore.
There is however, an unauthenticated video circulating on a social messaging service showing a young man being asked to say “Om Namah Shivay”, “Jai Shri Ram” and praise and say derogatory things about other religions. In the background, there are two or three other male voices asking him to these things and also swearing at him. It would be inappropriate to reproduce some of the other things he is asked to say, and the comments passed by the other voices.
Sources confirmed that it is indeed Iqbal in the video. His ordeal, and his refusal talk about it, are far too common. His testimony will never appear anywhere, least of all in crime records because he is too scared to talk.
There have been innumerable cases in the past in the two culturally and geographically contiguous districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in coastal Karnataka. Men and women including sexual minorities have been assaulted for mingling with people belonging to other communities, or for allegedly illegally transporting cattle, or simply targeted for being born into one religion or another.
Self-proclaimed guardians have taken it upon themselves to “protect” the religion they belong to. And by extension, they govern the conduct of the people who are born into those religions, irrespective of whether they are believers or not. Such assaults may be carried out by organizations or even groups of local civilians who firmly believe that social relations between communities must not extend to romantic relationships. It occurs in both rural and urban areas.
Iqbal’s case is not an isolated one. In most cases, as any journalist who has covered crime in coastal Karnataka will tell you, vigilante groups accost young couples, assault the men and often molest the women, and then hand them over to the police.
Instead of registering a case of assault and molestation as the case may be, the police summon the parents of the man and woman and tell them, as they put it, “to talk some sense” into their sons and daughters. This sort of vigilantism of morality can take extreme forms – such as the pub attack case in 2008 and the home stay attack case in 2012.
Instances of vigilantism, communal violence and aggression take various forms in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts. These include assaulting someone simply because they belong to a particular religion, assaulting men and women who are socializing with people of different religions, discrimination on religious lines, allegations of religious conversions, clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups, hate speeches, assaults for supposed illegal transportation of cattle, and deliberate provocation by placing animal carcasses close to religious places.
Political observers trace the beginning of communal tensions in the region to the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. But such assaults occurred in an organized manner after 2000. Reports of such incidents began to appear in the news several years later.
One of the earliest cases to be reported was the Adi Udupi case in 2005. Around 40 people belonging to a right-wing group surrounded two cattle-traders Hajabba and his son Hasanabba. Father and son were stripped and assaulted. Their nude photographs were published on the front page of a Kannada daily the day after the incident. The accused were all acquitted several years later.
People’s Union for Civil Liberties and the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike (Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum) have been compiling news reports of communal discrimination and violence for the last few years.
Udupi and Dakshina Kannada reported 121 communal incidents in 2013. Nine were relating to allegations of religious conversion and eight incidents of cattle vigilantism. Around 45 of these incidents related to “moral policing”.
This year until June 12, a total of close to 80 incidents were reported. But although the incidents included the usual, there were at least three incidents which turned into riots, which required the police to use lathi-charge and even tear gas to disperse the mobs. Prohibitory orders were imposed in each case for around three days to ensure that the situation remained under control. One instance occurred in Ullal in Mangalore and the other two in Kalladka, a small town in Bantwal talk of Dakshina Kannada district.
According to Suresh Bhat Bakrabail of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, these incidents were likely to have had an impact on the elections, which were held in Karnataka on April 18. Such incidents tend to “polarise the vote”, Bhat says.
The Congress appears to be blissfully unaware of the simmering communal tension, which is spilling over to other parts in Karnataka. Despite the change of guard in Bangalore, the situation in the coastal districts remains unchanged. There is a need for strict action against the people who engage in violence of any kind, including communal. In the past, upright police officers have ensured that these goondas were reined in, even when the BJP was in power. Congress leaders were voted to power during the Assembly elections in 2013 in the region in expectation of a change, which has not been delivered. Who then, is answerable?
இஸ்லாத்தில் இருக்கும் அடிப்படைக் குறைபாடான குரானின் “காஃபிர்களைக் கொல்” என்னும் கட்டளையை நீக்காத வரை உலகில் அமைதி இருக்காது என்ற எனது கருத்து உண்மையாகிக் கொண்டு வருகிறது.
ஈராக்கிலும், சவுதி அரேபிய எல்லையிலும் ஐ.எஸ்.ஐ.எஸ் எனப்படும் இஸ்லாமியத் தீவிரவாத அமைப்பினர் குர்த் இனத்தினரையும் ஷியா முஸ்லிம்களையும் கொன்று குவித்து வருகின்றன. இந்த இனகளைச் சேர்ந்த பெண்களை வன்புணர்வு செய்து வருகின்றனர். அமைதி மார்க்கத்தின் கதி அந்தோ!
இந்த ஐ.எஸ்.ஐ.எஸ் இந்தியாவைக் கைப்பற்றுவோம், காலிஃபேட் அமைந்தது, என்றெல்லாம் பிரகடனமே செய்கின்றனர்.
ஆனால் இங்கே போலி மதச் சார்பின்மை வாதிகள் சிறுபான்மை உரிமைகள் என்ற பெயரில் வளர்ந்து வரும் தீவிரவாதத்தை ஆதரித்து பிரசாரம் செய்து வருகின்றனர். ஐ.எஸ்.ஐ.எஸ் என்ற அமைப்பு இருப்பதாகவே அறியாத மாதிரி மோடியைத் திட்டுவதிலும், ஆர்.எஸ்.எஸ். பி.ஜே.பியைத் திட்டுவதிலுமே தமது சமுதாயக் கடமை இருப்பதாக நினைக்கின்றனர்.
சங்கரன்கோவிலில் இந்து முன்னணி முன்னாள் நகரத் தலைவர் ஜீவா ( வயது 38) இன்று காலை மர்ம நபர்களால் வெட்டி கொலை செய்யப்பட்டார்.
வாழ்க சோஷலிசம்
வளர்க இஸ்லாமியத் தீவிரவாதம்
ஒழிக உலக அமைதி
Sudanese Christian woman, husband released from custody
A Sudanese Christian woman who had been sentenced to die for refusing to renounce her faith and her husband were released from custody late Thursday, the two told CNN.
Mariam Yehya Ibrahim and her husband, Daniel Wani, said that they were freed on bail but are prohibited from leaving the country.
The pair had been detained after they arrived at an airport in Khartoum with their children on Tuesday. She is accused of two criminal counts, traveling with falsified documents and giving false information, according to Ibrahim’s legal team.
Ibrahim was trying to leave the African country for the United States with her family, her legal team said Wednesday. Daniel Wani was being held as an accessory, the lawyers said.
The family was stopped at the airport after what Ibrahim’s lawyers described Tuesday as an alleged “irregularity with her documentation.”
The U.S. State Department said Tuesday that Ibrahim and her family had been “temporarily detained at the airport” for questioning over issues relating to their travel and documentation.
“She and her family are in a safe location, and the Government of Sudan has assured us of the family’s continued safety,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Thursday, confirming that Ibrahim had been released on bail.
Harf said that the U.S. Embassy “remains highly engaged” in the woman’s case, saying “we will provide more information as it becomes available consistent with privacy laws.”
Sudanese authorities said Ibrahim had been detained because of the documents she submitted.
Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services said that she had South Sudanese travel documents despite not being a citizen of South Sudan, and she was heading to the United States, which is not her native country.
“This was considered illegal by the Sudanese authorities, who have summoned both the U.S. and South Sudanese ambassadors,” the agency said in a message posted on its media Facebook page early Wednesday.
The airport detention came a day after Ibrahim’s legal team announced the 27-year-old woman had been released from prison after weeks of international controversy over her conviction on apostasy and adultery charges.
According to her lawyer, the case began when one of Ibrahim’s relatives, a Muslim, filed a criminal complaint saying her family was shocked to find out she had married Wani, a Christian, after she was missing for several years.
The Sudanese court considered Ibrahim a Muslim because her father was Muslim, but she said she was a Christian and never practiced Islam. She was charged with adultery, because a Muslim woman’s marriage to a Christian man is illegal in Sudan, and with apostasy, accused of illegally renouncing what was alleged to be her original faith.
Woman’s ‘brother’ says she should repent.
Man found in girl’s company, thrashed
A mob thrashed a man when he was with a girl from another community on Tuesday.
Thirteen men barged into the girl’s house in Banglegudde, Karkala, and assaulted Sudhir Rane, 29, of Bailoor who was with her. They assaulted Sudhir with lethal objects, injuring him on the face and hands. They humiliated him by trimming his hair, videographed their act, and shared the clip on Facebook and WhatsApp.
Six persons were on Wednesday arrested in connection with the assault. They have been identified as Asif, Makbul, Kishore, Altaf, Dawood and Ibrahim, all residents of Banglegudde. The other seven are absconding.
Police have charged the six arrested men under Sections 307 (attempt to murder) and 395 (dacoity) of the Indian Penal Code, and registered a case at the Karkala police station.
The girl has been charged under the same sections because police suspect her involvement in the incident. She is to get married in September this year. Sources say she knows Rane for some time.
The arrested were produced before a court on Wednesday evening, police said.
An injured Rane, who is unemployed, is undergoing treatment at the KMC Hospital, Manipal.
I’m not the least bit surprised that Savukku routinely misses stories where the religions are reversed. Dear Asha, what do you have to say about this? Secularism in action, perhaps?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Man-found-in-girls-company-thrashed/articleshow/36409688.cms
As to the blog owner, I have just one thing to say. This website became popular because you unmasked corrupt people without taking sides. Slowly but surely, you are morphing into yet another left-leaning, liberal, secular ‘intellectual’ whose moral compass is skewed. If this trend continues, you will lose many of your readers, including yours truly.
Shiite Violence Traps Baghdad’s Sunnis, Haunted by a Grim Past
The bodies arrive in twos and threes most every day in the Baghdad morgue now, a grim barometer of the city’s sectarian tensions. Most have gunshot wounds to the head, some have signs of torture, and most of them are Sunnis.
When families come looking for relatives, they are directed to a room with five 48-inch television monitors playing what could best be described as a slide show from hell — one bullet-riddled corpse after another. Those who came Wednesday morning left both disappointed and relieved, upset about not knowing their loved ones’ fate, but glad not to have confirmation; not here, at least.
For now, sectarian assassinations do not nearly approach the wholesale slaughter of the years 2005 to 2007, when as many as 100 bodies a day sometimes showed up at the morgue, some of them Shiites killed in suicide bombings but many Sunnis who had been executed by Shiite militias.
Still, the specter of that grim past preys on the thoughts of Baghdad’s Sunnis, who suddenly find themselves in a Shiite-dominated city threatened by extremist Sunnis, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and its allies, who want to kill all the Shiites.
“It is fair to say that nowadays there is only fear in us,” said Muthan al-Ani, a Sunni who sells household appliances and lives in the majority Sunni neighborhood of Ameriya in western Baghdad. “The only worry I have now is if they arrest me, what will my wife and child do without me? I know that even if they take me to prison, if they don’t kill me now, they will kill me later.”
In the recent abductions and killings, Baghdad’s Sunnis see sinister signs that the walls surrounding their neighborhoods, built by the Americans to protect them, could also entrap them, making them easy prey for the newly emboldened Shiite militias, some of them the same ones that executed Sunnis by the truckload in the bad years.
Some Sunnis no longer go to work for fear of checkpoints, where Shiite militiamen have joined the Iraqi Army and the police. Several said that carloads of armed militiamen now cruised their neighborhoods at night, shouting anti-Sunni insults; many are trying to leave Iraq.
Mr. Ani, 34, said that last week, for the first time, unmarked vehicles carrying men in military-style uniforms came in the middle of the night. They took away his next-door neighbor’s two sons.
When their mother asked a soldier at a nearby checkpoint what had happened to them, she said the soldier replied, “We do not know where they took them, and we could not ask because they are more powerful than us.’ ”
That language alone is enough to leave most Sunnis with a sense of foreboding and a memory of the days when militias were above the law.
A worrisomely growing number of these abducted men show up at the Baghdad morgue. In the third week of June, at least 21 unidentified bodies, most shot in the head, were found in Baghdad, a United Nations official said. Police officials found 23, said an Interior Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of policy. Others simply disappear, most likely into the overcrowded Iraqi prisons, but no one knows for sure.
“We certainly acknowledge there are unidentified bodies being found in Baghdad, and some evidence is emerging that people have been tortured,” said Jacqueline Badcock, the deputy representative of the secretary general for Humanitarian and Development Affairs for the United Nations office in Iraq.
“The numbers are relatively small, but they’re rising,” she said. “It’s alarming.”
Day in and day out, Baghdad’s Sunnis are closely watched in crowded neighborhoods. Suspicions that they are secretly siding with the Sunni insurgents only grow as the militants get ever closer to Baghdad, they say, and increase their fears of retaliation.
Baghdad Sunnis in six neighborhoods said in interviews that they had been treated more harshly since ISIS took over Mosul on June 10. While there have been abductions and killings of Sunnis for months, after Mosul they began to sense that they were being targeted because of their sect.
In Ghaziliya, a neighborhood with a major crossroad that divides the Shiites and the Sunnis, the difference between the two worlds is almost palpable.
On the Shiite side, distinguished by the black flags that hang from the street lamps, children play in the side streets, and at least a few women stand in the doorways. On the Sunni side, the streets are mostly empty, and the shops, although open, have few customers.
“We’ve been isolated here in this deliberate way,” said Mohammed Arkan, who runs a three-man mattress and pillow-stuffing factory on the Sunni side. Citing checkpoints that regulate the entrances and exits, he said, “They are doing it because something bad is going to happen.”
“Everyone feels frightened because of the Jaish al-Mahdi,” he said, referring to the armed wing of the movement led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who on Friday paraded in the tens of thousands, hoisting their weapons in a show of force. “They are back to fight, but we don’t know who they are planning to fight.”
As he was describing his anxieties, Mr. Arkan broke off: Three policemen had entered his tiny machine room to ask what a reporter was doing there. Clearly frightened, he ducked his head down and resolutely fed cotton into the clanking machine.
It is often like that now in Sunni areas. A reporter was not even allowed to enter Mr. Ani’s Ameriya neighborhood. And in the Hai Adil quarter, which is divided between Sunnis and Shiites, a military contingent rode in a Humvee just behind a reporter as she was doing interviews, all but guaranteeing that people would say no more than the barest of polite greetings.
On the walls of the mosques in Adamiya, an old Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad, just in the last week, death notices have begun to appear that say the person died at the hands of unknown gunmen. The notices, black or white cloth with the name painted on them and a prayer, are a traditional means of mourning here.
Mohaned Maki, 27, who lives in Adamiya, said two of his colleagues, both engineers, had disappeared last week from the neighborhood, and that his cousin had disappeared from the affluent Mansour area.
“If you come in the evenings, the militias are everywhere,” said Mr. Maki, who is himself an engineer who fled Falluja for Adamiya.
His missing colleagues may well have been among three engineers whose bodies were brought to the morgue on Sunday. They were snatched by men in uniforms with no insignia, according to a witness who lives in their neighborhood.
On Wednesday, it was a farmer from the outskirts of Baghdad whose body was among nine laid out on gurneys — four of them gunshot victims brought in that morning, according to morgue records, one of them brought in with no identity cards.
Outside, a dozen women in black mourning clothes wailed, beat their chests and, in some cases, fainted in the heat. “Those cowards killed him,” one woman screamed of the farmer.
Male relatives were calmer, but red-eyed. The victim, Thaha Ahmed Shabab, 62, from western Baghdad Province, just outside the city, was shot to death on the road in front of his home Tuesday night, just before dark, by unknown men passing by.
“Asaib al-Haq,” said his brother Yassin Ahmed Shabab, referring to the Shiite militia, a favorite of the prime minister whose members now often staff checkpoints at the gates of Sunni neighborhoods and generally have free rein wherever they go.
As Mr. Shabab’s family wept outside the morgue, a small crowd arrived, looking for four men who had disappeared, two of them brothers in a mixed Shiite-Sunni area. They were clamoring at the entrance of the archive hall to be allowed to look at photographs of the unknown dead.
இந்த தரித்திரியம் பிடித்த காபிர் நாட்டில் இனி வாழமுடியாது எனும் மனநிலைக்கு ஒவ்வொரு முஸ்லிமும் தள்ளப்பட வேண்டும்.
காபிர் நாட்டில் காபிராக வாழ் – இல்லாவிட்டால் குருட்டுக்கிழவியை உதைத்து அடுத்த பாக்கிஸ்தானை உருவாக்கு.
Sunni-Shiite violence soars in Pakistan
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (RNS) Qadeer Abbasi is recovering from a broken arm in his two-room shanty home not far from the capital, Islamabad.
On Nov. 15, Abbasi, 34, offered noontime Friday prayers at Madrassa Taleem ul Quran when the seminary was attacked by a procession of Shiite mourners. Besides the Sunni madrassa, the Shiites also struck 100 shops, four private banks and scores of cars.
In less than an hour, 12 people were killed and intense gunfire prevented humanitarian services from ferrying the injured to hospitals.
Reports suggest some of the Sunnis praying at the madrassa insulted the Shiites as they passed during the annual procession for Ashura. But Abassi said he heard nothing until gunfire rang out.
All of Islam’s sects revere Ashura, the day the Prophet Muhammad’s maternal grandson Hussein and his family were slaughtered and starved to death in Karbala (a city in today’s Iraq). But Shiites have traditionally staged elaborate rituals to mark what they deem the worst tragedy of Muslim history.
Each year during Ashura, which falls on the 10th of Muharram according to the Islamic calendar, people are killed in Pakistan. But tit-for-tat target killings between Sunnis and Shiites have escalated this past year, with Taliban forces repeatedly targeting Shiite processions and places of worship and Iran-backed Shiite groups retaliating.
Home to 188 million people, 95 percent of Pakistan’s population is Muslim and they are predominantly Sunni. Only 13 percent of its citizens are Shiite.
Abbasi, who sells popcorn on a pushcart, believes his life changed forever after the attack.
“I sleep in fear of being burnt alive as the image of carnage revisits me every night,” he said, speaking from his small home on the bank of a draining canal that crisscrosses this British-era garrison city.
Three months later, there are few efforts of reconciliation afoot in Rawalpindi.
“The religious leaders hold the key to peace here,” said Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, a popular politician who helped ease the tensions after the carnage. “They must come forward to root out sect-based hatred and violence.”
Over the past two decades, the Shiite minority has attained top positions in media, bureaucracy and politics.
“Whosoever reaches power corridors or top offices aims at self-preservation,” said Aoun Naqvi, a schoolteacher who practices Shiite Islam.
Pakistan inherited Sunni-Shiite animosity from India, which Muslims ruled from 712 to 1857. With the creation of Pakistan, Shiites from various cities in India migrated to Pakistan in large numbers and settled in cities such as Karachi, Hyderabad and Multan.
In modern-day Pakistan, Sunni-Shiite harmony was dealt a hard blow with the fall of the Shah of Iran. Not only did Pakistan lose its land route to Europe, but Tehran also became hostile to Islamabad for its pro-U.S. policies.
However, roots of recent sectarianism can be traced back to 1990, when a leading Sunni cleric Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi was assassinated by suspected Shiite militants.
Jhangvi was a fierce anti-Shiite campaigner. Following the 1979 Iranian revolution, Shiites mobilized their community through an outfit known as Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqh-e-Jafria (Movement for Imposition of Shiite jurisprudence) in Bhakkar.
The 1990s was an era of tit-for-tat Shiite and Sunni killings.
“With nuclear sanctions likely to be eased in Iran, and NATO forces withdrawing from Afghanistan, both Iran and Saudi Arabia will use their proxies to wrestle for influence over Pakistan,” said Habib Ahmad, who teaches economics in Multan. He was referring to the interim deal struck in November between Iran and six global powers, under which Tehran agreed to scale back uranium enrichment in return for sanctions relief.
Meanwhile, the violence continues. In mid-January, a Sunni leader was gunned down at his home in the Punjab province. The same day another Sunni cleric was injured in southern metropolis of Karachi.
Within the next 24 hours, two dozen people including women, children and security personnel were killed when a bomb blew up a bus of Shiite pilgrims returning from Iran, in the southwestern province of Balochistan.
In Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, Shiites refused to bury the blast victims until the killers are arrested and stern charges leveled.
Neither Shiite nor Sunni leaders speak candidly about the renewed spree of sectarian violence. Both offer the same explanation: “External forces are pitching Muslims against Muslims.”
Abbasi is not convinced. “Though Shiites wanted to kill me that Friday, I don’t identify myself as a Sunni,” he said. “I am only a Muslim who believes in peace and co-existence.”
(Naveed Ahmad is a freelance journalist based in Pakistan and Turkey. Follow him on Twitter @naveed360.)
No one asked you to live here in this holy hindu country. You can leave us at anytime. You select and go and settle down in any of your “istan” or satan, the so called islamic paradises. Now, your presence may be more needed in Iraq (an important islamic paradise) where sunny is killing shia and shia is killing sunni to maintain your islamic peace. Thankless muslims. Islam means Deception and Treachery
/// You can leave us at anytime ///
We can NOT simply leave you because Islam came to create Muslim nations by waging JIHAD on Kafir nations – Until Hindustan becomes Islamistan, we will wage NON STOP JIHAD on slumdog Bharat Mata – Allahu Akbar.
—-
தாருல் இஸ்லாம் உருவாகும் வரை காபிருக்கெதிராக இடைவிடாத ஜிஹாத் என்பதுதான் இஸ்லாத்தின் அடிப்படை – இஸ்லாமென்பது மதமல்ல. காபிர்களை முஸ்லிமாக்கி, அவர்களை வைத்து குருட்டுக்கிழவி மீது ஜிஹாத் செய்து பாக்கிஸ்தான் போன்ற இஸ்லாமிய தேசங்களை உருவாக்குவதுதான் இஸ்லாம் காட்டும் மார்க்கம் – புரிஞ்சா சரி.
Dear Muslim,
Don’t think we are idiots. We know your islam and its treachery better than you. We also know how to deal with you.
மத வாத நாடு ஆக பாகிஸ்தானை பிரித்து கொடுத்ததும் இன்னும் அது உருப்பட்ட பாடு இல்லை!
ஆப்கானிஸ்தான்,ஈராக்,என முஸ்லிம் நாடுகள் எல்லாம் எதற்காக தமக்குள் அடித்து சாகிறார்கள் என முஸ்லிம் சகோதரர்கள்தான் விளக்க இயலும்!
இந்துக்களும் , தம்முள் உள்ள தீண்டாமை, சாமியார்களும் , கோவில்களும் சொத்து சேர்ப்பது பற்றிய சமூக பொருளாதார பின்னடைவுகளை சரி செய்வதாக தெரியவில்லை!
கிருஸ்தவர்கள், மதம் பரப்புவதை , மதவாத காசு வியாபாரம் ஆக்கி விட்டார்கள்!
ஈயத்தை பார்த்து இளித்ததாம் பித்தளை என்பது போல, எந்த மதத்தை குறை சொல்ல?
கடவுள் என்பது ஒரு மறுக்க இயலாத நம்பிக்கை!அதை அன்பால் உணரலாம்!மத வெறியால் கேவலப்படுத்தலாம்!
படிக்காத 35 வருடம் முன்பு, சகிப்பு தன்மை இருந்தது!இப்போ?
நம்பிக்கை நாகராஜ்-துபாய்.
@Nambikai Nagaraj
The problem is with the religion. Islam only segregates people into we (muslims) and they (kafir).
Christians may be good or bad. But Jesus taught only to love everyone. He asked his followers to show the other cheek when beaten in one cheek. He never preached violence. Buddha is an embodiment of love. Aadhi Sankara taught the best virtues.
But the rasool in the quran through allah has commanded to kill the non-muslims (quran 9:5). This is the root cause of the violence in islamic countries. For sunni, the shiite is kafir and vice versa. Islam is against unity and humanity.
Whether a person is a Shia or a Sunni Muslim in Iraq can now be, quite literally, a matter of life and death
As the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has seized vast territories in western and northern Iraq, there have been frequent accounts of fighters’ capturing groups of people and releasing the Sunnis while the Shias are singled out for execution.
ISIS believes that the Shias are apostates and must die in order to forge a pure form of Islam. The two main branches of Islam diverge in their beliefs over who is the true inheritor of the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad. The Shias believe that Islam was transmitted through the household of the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis believe that it comes down through followers of the Prophet Muhammad who, they say, are his chosen people.
But how can ISIS tell whether a person is a Sunni or a Shia? From accounts of people who survived encounters with the militants, it seems they often ask a list of questions. Here are some of them:
What is your name?
A quick look at an Iraqi’s national identity card or passport can be a signal. Shias believe that the leadership of Islam was passed down through the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali and his sons Hussain (or Hussein), Hassan and Abbas, among others. While some Sunnis and members of other Islamic groups may also have those names, ISIS would most likely associate them with the Shias.
Where do you live?
In every city and province, even majority Sunni ones, there are enclaves that are known to be Shia. People who said they came from one of those neighborhoods would most likely be killed.
In a chilling video that appeared to have been made more than a year ago in the Anbar Province of Iraq, ISIS fighters stopped three truck drivers in the desert and asked them whether they were Sunnis or Shias. All three claimed to be Sunni. Then the questions got harder. They were asked how they performed each of the prayers: morning, midday and evening. The truck drivers disagreed on their methods, and all were shot.
What kind of music do you listen to?
Recordings of religious songs could also be a tipoff. Similarly, even the ringtone on a person’s telephone could be a clue because it might be from a Sunni or Shia religious song.
There are other clues, but none are completely reliable. For instance, a number of Shias wear large rings, often with semiprecious stones. But so do some Sunnis, and others.
Generally, Iraqi Shias and Sunnis are often indistinguishable in appearance. That is even more evident in many families and tribes in which there has been intermarriage for generations.
Given that the rigid views of ISIS are fairly well known, it is perhaps natural to wonder why hostages do not simply lie about their origins. It seems that many do, yet in very tense, perilous encounters, people can easily get tripped up. Sometimes another person in a group might inadvertently give someone away. Others refuse to lie about their faith.
Live and Let Live… The Rule of Law must be upheld… There are bound to be differences in A Large Nation like India… Please View: karunaignana.wordpress.com
I read through the petition of Karunaignana alias Karunairaj in the link furnished by him above. It shows that the Police violate not only law and constitution but also the personal rights of a citizen, when the citizen exposes the misdeeds of the Police. This Shylendrababu must be first surspended and arrested and prosecuted. Truth must prevail. It seems that even in this country barbaric governance like Saudi Arabia goes on.
Lets not look at it with a political tinge. This country belongs to Hindus the way Saudi or Indonesia belongs to Muslims. While others who have chosen to follow different faiths can continue to stay & live, they have to live with the knowledge of living in a country that belongs to a Hindu faith and refrain from propagating their faith. Just the way Indians live in Saudi. We are a democratic country no doubt and it means majority rules while others are tolerated subject to adherence of a code of conduct. India is a heritage country that is spoiled by invaders and rulers successively. Its high time its prestige as a country of ancient knowledge & wisdom are restored by its people.