Last week, a group of 500 Sikh truck drivers in Canada threatened to file a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission in an attempt to challenge a "hard hat" policy instituted by the Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) . The policy, as described in a company memo:

Please be advised that as per CPR's Safety Policy, all drivers required to enter CPR property as well as customer locations are required to wear a hard hat. There are no exceptions to this policy.

We understand that this might be a concern for some drivers who are required to wear turbans as part of their religious doctrine… There is zero tolerance at CPR with regards to this requirement.

In objecting to this policy, a large group of Sikhs noted that there had been no injuries justifying the hart hat rule and that Sikhs even served in the British Army with turbans.

A Canadian human rights commission found that a Sikh had been discriminated against in a similar situation, however the Supreme Court of Canada, in Bhinder v. Canadian National Railways, 1985 CarswellNat 144, 9 C.C.E.L. 135 (S.C.C.), overturned the decision, ruling that employers do not infringe upon human rights law when they ban Sikhs from wearing turbans on the job "for genuine business reasons." The court continued:

The hard hat rule did not lose its character as a bona fide occupational requirement solely because it had the effect of discriminating against (Bhinder) … once established as a bona fide occupational requirement for employees in (CN’s) coach yard, the hard hat rule was not a discriminatory practice within the meaning of the act, despite its affect on (Bhinder.)

Reports are now surfacing that CPR has "agreed to negotiate with the drivers over the wearing of turbans versus hard hats." Accordingly, the "Sikh truck drivers will not file a complaint." Hopefully an amicable settlement can be reached between the two sides.

On Saturday, we entered the streets of San Francisco. Our first interview of the day was SEAN FERNANDES (pictured). Sean, from Calcutta, India, was with his white Australian friend ROBIN CLARKE days after Sept. 11, 2001. After walking out of a bar, they were confronted by a group of men and women who started taunting Robin for being with an “Arab.” The confrontation escalated and Robin was stabbed with a screwdriver. “Why he had a screwdriver I have no idea,” Robin told me four years ago. He nearly died at the hospital, just for standing up for his brown-skinned friend.

Sean talked to us at the San Francisco intersection where it happened four years earlier. We learned how events became even more tragic. The man who was convicted killed his best friend, the man who started the fight, because he was afraid her would testify against him. Since then, Sean has decided to shift his life course and attend law school to advocate for civil rights.

After our interview, we decided to shoot b-roll, spending the day in the chilly streets of San Francisco, moving from one location to the next. Sharat, our director (pictured), continued to shoot with his 8mm camera, weaving yet another medium into our film.

We made our way to a hilltop in Marin County to film the Golden Gate Bridge. Here the crew looked especially stunning and wind-swept (Don Presley, our first camera, on the left, and our entire crew, Don, Matt, Sharat, and Tim, below):

We made our way to the intersection of Fourth and Market, where a stranger once asked whether I was Muslim and cursed me out while I was sitting in my car. As we were standing and filming at this very intersection, a woman walked up to us, and asked us what we were filming. We told her it was about hate crimes after 9/11. She responded into our microphone:

"Hate crimes? That's when you hurt someone for no reason. I can tell you about hate crimes. You know what I call a hate crime? A hate crime is when the police don't stop the shootings in black neighborhoods, because they've decided 'let them all kill each other.' You know what I call a hate crime? When politicians make promises to poor people and don't follow through. You know what else is a hate crime? When you are diagnosed with Hepititus C and need a kidney transplant, and Medicare puts you off just a month before, and you have a husband and two kids and... I don't know what I'm going to do. I need healthcare, and they're just going to let me die."

She began to cry, solid tears down her dark cheeks. And LATRICIA EVANS began to apologize for telling us about her life. I didn't know what to do. Except hug her. And tell her that we would post her story.

"God works in mysterious ways," Latricia said. "Maybe someone will help."

For the rest of the day, I thought about Latrcia's interpretation of the label "hate crime." We've debated the term on and on with police officers, legislators, and community members, trying to figure out what counts as a hate crime. But to this poor woman, 'hate crimes' are built into the very systems that exclude people from the resources that make a livable life-- resources that protect people from crime, deception, and denial of basic needs such as healthcare.

I tried to comprehend relations between different dimensions of violence. The stabbing of a brown man is different from the preventable death of a poor woman. But in both cases, when the faces of the persons affected appeared before me, I saw a common anguish. A common suffering. And a common cry- that it could be otherwise. We have the resources to build a society that does not attack minorities in times of war, that does not allow the poor to suffer. These stories make us ask: why not? what can we do in order to change this reality? what can we do right now?

I'm still discovering the answers in my own life path. But I have this faith that this film, however small, is part of the solution. Help us complete this film with your support.

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on August 13, 2005.]

The Washington Post posted an interesting article on how several Muslim girls in the Washington, DC, area are able to, on one hand, remain faithful to the Koran's mandate that followers of Islam wear modest clothing, and on the other still feel attractive and beautiful in modern, American society. The author of the article, Sandhya Somashekhar, follows a few girls as they pick clothes in a mall, discussing how they balance their religion with the contemporary demands of Western fashion.

Perhaps most intriguing is Somashekhar's interview with Rika Prodhan, a 22 year-old Muslim who decided, after considerable thought, to trade her "form-fitting outfits" and exposed "cascading hair " for a hijab, or head scarf. The decision resulted from Prodhan's intrepretive understanding of the Koran, which she felt was unambiguous in its guidance that "the body, including the hair, should be well covered."

In addition, Prodhan realized that her actions would change how the world viewed her: adopting a hijab was a "big step that she knew would forever change the way she was perceived in public."

"I tried to find every reason not to wear it," she said. "But I came to the conclusion it was like listening to your parents. We may not know the wisdom behind it now, but we'll realize it later."

Her parents, she said, actually were troubled by the decision, fearful that she was becoming "too Muslim" and isolating herself from mainstream society.

The implication is that the physical attire in itself may isolate a Muslim with a hijab (or by extension, a Sikh with a turban), regardless of the active participation of the Muslim in Western society. In other words, the question becomes whether a Muslim with a hijab or Sikh with a turban is per se isolated from mainstream society.

Columnist Jane Eisner responds to the following sentence, uttered on an American radio station: "It's so hot the Muslim men are taking the towels off their heads to wipe their faces!" Eisner notes:

The bigotry in that remark was matched by its ignorance. Not all Muslims are Arab, and not all Arabs wear the headdress known as the keffiyeh. And it's an entirely different faith, Sikhism, whose adherents wear turbans.

Such subtleties are too often lost on the average American, and despite all the fine words and noble intentions uttered since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the continued lack of knowledge about and respect for Islam and other religions is appalling.

Eisner goes on to argue that "[t]rue pluralism demands that we acknowledge our differences as well as celebrate what we have in common" (emphasis added). The distinction between tolerance (a passive acknowledgment of the existence of minority groups) and pluralism (the active engagement of minorities such that a climate of mutual respect may develop) has been made convincingly by my colleague, Valarie Kaur.

Eisner closes with the following thought:

We can respond to an ever-more diverse world by digging in and shutting out, or we can respond to it with the strength of character demanded of true pluralism.

Our choice.

When the FBI arrested two Pakistani-Americans as suspected terrorists in Lodi, CA this June, the small farming town became the center of national and international media attention. But news media has not shown the extent to which the FBI has followed, monitored, and intimidated the greater Muslim American community there, including families who have lived and farmed in Lodi for generations.

VEENA DUBAL, my classmate at Stanford, detailed the Lodi case in her article, The FBI Witch-Hunt in Lodi, California. Read her article for the entire story about misinformation, media hysteria, fear and the FBI.

We decided to travel to Sacramento Valley to find out more. We spent the afternoon hearing stories in the regional office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). We met DINA EL-NAKHAL (pictured above), communications director, who grew up in the area and went to UC Davis:

"Muslim Americans in Lodi feels terrorized. The FBI follows their children, questions them at night, and holds men for interrogations. I spoke at a "Know Your Rights" session for the community. Afterward, a woman came up to me, tears rolling down her cheek. With what little English she had, she said, 'I didn't know that the FBI interrogation was voluntary. If I had, I would have never told my son to go. He never came back that night. It's all my fault.'"

Dina herself became emotional. The fear experienced by this community comes to touch anyone who spends time with them. Including Executive Director of CAIR's Sacramento region, BASIM ELKARRA (pictured). In supporting the Lodi community, Basim himself has his own share of FBI stories.

These Lodi accounts came soon after our visit to Stanford University, where two Stanford professors shared with us reflections that cast light on these stories.

JAYASHRI SRIKANTIAH (pictured) is a professor and director of the Immigration Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School. I first met Jayashri when she was a legal director at ACLU in San Francisco, where we worked together briefly on a project to document stories of those deported after INS special registration.

In our conversation, Jayashri detailed the state policies and programs since 9/11 that have targeted non-citizens, from detentions and deportations to the PATRIOT ACT.

“The administration has said that this is not a war against Islam, but actions speak louder than words. Its actions have consistently targeted Muslims, Arabs, and non-citizens. A war on terror is a war on immigrants.”

In response to two New York legislators who supported a bill to mandate racial profiling in NY subways after the London bombings, Jayashri said:

“Racial profiling has never prevented a terrorist attack. What’s more, it gives the green light for prejudice among the public. Instead law enforcement should build relationships with these very communities in order to fight terrorism effectively.”

After Jayashri’s legal analsyis, we heard from social psychology in an interview with JOSEPH BROWN (pictured), now Dean of Student Affairs at Stanford University. Joseph advised me on my honors thesis about post-9/11 prejudice, together with Linda Hess, when I was a senior at Stanford. We had experimented together in applying social psychology theories to the prejudice that took place after 9/11.

Two years had passed since my thesis was given an award at graduation— this is the last time I saw my advisor. So as soon as I walked through the door, Joseph and I (pictured) chatted endlessly about all that had passed—from current events to my academic plans to his new position as dean. And then when our conversation turned to America’s present climate from a social psychological perspective, we simply moved to our spot before the camera and began rolling.

Joseph described how widespread fear and anxiety cause the public to permit state policies and actions (like the Lodi case) that would not have been tolerable before. Even if those actions are ineffective.

Fear is at the center of the social psychology of prejudice, both in the motives for prejudice and its long-term impact on targeted communities. For example, one concept to explain prejudice is terror management theory: when people feel threatened, they are more likely to discriminate against anyone who is not ‘seen’ as part of their ‘group.’ One can imagine that terror management happened on a national scale after 9/11. Not only were Sikh, Muslim, and Arab Americans already not ‘seen’ as full-fledged American citizens, media images confirmed their faces as those of the ‘enemy.’ This made it easy for people to target them based on how they looked.

What about the impact of prejudice? In the short term, targeted groups respond by withdrawing from public spaces, both physically and mentally. In the long term, people experience stereotype threat: Every time targeted Americans enter a public space, like airports, they are aware of the stereotypes against them, now embedded into American culture, and this increases their own anxiety. In many cases, people experience attributional ambiguity: when others treat them poorly, they are left guessing whether the motive was prejudice or not. In the end, entire communities of people feel marked in public spaces in mainstream America.

In the end, both Joseph and Jayashri offered frameworks for understanding the stories of prejudice and profiling in Lodi and across the country. This confirmed my faith that academia may provide both theoretical and practical responses to social injustices. (This is why I am still in school and will be for a long time, now at Harvard Divinity, next fall at Yale Law School).

As the crew packed after the interview, I walked through Stanford’s Main Quad (pictured) and remembered all the hours I spent walking these halls, researching and reflecting on the stories gathered on my journey across the country after 9/11. Now I am back, this time with a film crew. I would have never imagined that a student project could have grown into a feature-length independent film production.

To add to the nostalgia, my dear friend JESSICA JENKINS (pictured) showed up to meet us. We had been dorm-mates together since freshman year all through college, both studied International Relations, and wrote our honors theses side by side. (She wrote about women in El Salvador and Catholic liberation theology). Now Jess is working for a Catholic social justice lobbying group in DC, but we still collaborate together. She is working on this film as Director of Research, for example.

Jess and I walked together and visited my favorite men at Stanford: the Burghars of Calle (pictured). They were my companions in despair and struggle and strength when I was a student here. The crew filmed them alongside Memorial Church and the Main Quad, in order to capture Stanford as the starting point of the journey.

Stanford University was the first to give me a small grant to make the trip across the country. I only needed a few thousand dollars then to make the four-month trip, taping interviews on a video camera. Now four years later, in order to complete this feature-length movie and aim for theatrical release, we need $40,000. Help us make it happen.

A big thank you to our friends: Mohammad Abdul-Carim, Kulwindor Dol, Amit Garg, Chris Metinko, Sonya P, and Vijay Myneni and Jagu (who just got engaged!). They joined us for dinner after our long production day, and gave us food, drink, music, and even donations for the project. Too much.

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on August 12, 2005.]

An Arab-American man received a credit card offer addressed to "Palestinian Bomber." The unsolicited offer came from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the number two bank in the United States, and arrived at the mailbox of Sami Habbas, a 54-year-old Arab-American from Corona, California. "Palestinian Bomber" was used "in both the address field and salutation, as well as on the envelope."

To its credit, J.P. Morgan Chase apologized and blamed the gaffe "on a list it purchased from an unidentified vendor." Spokesman David Chamberlin conducted damage control:

Although no Chase employee was involved in creating this information, we are embarrassed by this incident and regret that our automatic screening procedures did not catch this erroneous information.

As a company that is fully dedicated to respecting our card members, prospective customers and employees, we offer our sincere apologies to anyone who might have been offended by this matter.

Habbas, who "has lived in the United States for 51 years and served in the U.S. Army," said of the incident:

this is indicative of the growing rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment in this country, where everyday peaceful and law-abiding citizens are being harassed based solely on their ethnicity or their religion.

On Saturday, C-SPAN aired a town hall meeting in which the media's treatment of Asian-Americans, particularly during times of war, was discussed. One of the panelists was Jaideep Singh [pictured], co-founder of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund. As part of his remarks, Singh identified several problems with the media's presentation of Sikhs and Sikh-Americans during the post-9/11 backlash. Singh noted, in part:

1. The mainstream media failed to present an honest picture of the backlash in the days immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In fact, the media presented opinions, most notably from then-New York major Rudy Guiliani, that the backlash was minimal and being held in check. In other words, the mainstream media offered the public material that differed from what was actually happening to Sikhs.
   
2. The mainstream media failed to explain to the public that 99.9% of turbaned individuals are Sikhs, not Muslims. The absence of explanatory information on Sikhs, which could help allay the ignorance fueling the backlash itself, is evidenced by fact that the words "Sikh" and "Sikh-American" remained missing from the headlines of news stories describing the backlash. In other words, the Sikh-American experience after 9/11 was marginalized to an article's fringe, even though they suffered the brunt of the post-9/11 backlash.
   
3. Ironically and unfortunately, Sikhs were being targeted because of their disctinctive appearance and dark skin, however in those articles that did discuss instances relating to Sikhs, the maintream media failed to include pictures of the Sikh victims. For example, those stories covering the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi on September 15, 2001, who was killed because of his long beard, turban, and dark skin, generally failed to include his picture.

A description of the town hall can be found here.

Video of the program can be viewed here.

We spent this afternoon with the AKHTER family, a Muslim American family in Gilroy, California, who I first visited in October 2001. I remember eight-year old SAMIR (pictured) the most:

"The kids call me bin Laden’s son, and all of their friends were putting their lunch pails on my face like this, and they called me bin Laden’s face. They smashed lunch pails on my face so that I couldn’t breathe. I said no, I’m not the bad guy, and I don’t want to be a bad guy. I want to be a good guy and I don’t want to go to jail. If I saw the bad guys, I would beat them up."

"How would you know the bad guys if you saw them on the street?"

"They would have turbans on their head."

At that moment, I realized the media's hold on the face of the enemy. I badly wished I could introduce Samir to Sikh children with turbans.

Samir was in third grade when we first talked with him. Now entering junior high school at eleven years old, Samir is taller than me. He opened the door for us and led us inside his new house. Very quiet and reflective, Samir soon opened up and told us about basketball camp and video games. I asked him to talk about school:

“After 9/11, the kids at school used to call me Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. They still call me that. They don't do it as much, because I'm bigger now.”

When we first interviewed Samir after 9/11, there was no mention of Saddam Hussein. But in the four years that have passed, the face of the villain has changed. The enemy bin Laden has been conflated into the enemy Saddam—even in the mind of a child targeted by schoolyard taunts.

“What do you want the kids at school to know?” I asked Samir.

“I want them to know I am just as different as they are. There are Hispanics and Irish and Italians. They don’t know that they we are all different.”

I saw a stroke of brilliance here. Most people wish to say that they are the same as everyone else. But Sameer turned this message on its head: everyone else is just as different as he is. We ought to respect each other for the one thing we hold in common: our difference as unique human beings.

After speaking with Samir, I talked with his father Sohail (pictured), who spoke eloquently about the need for education and understanding. He didn't want his children to grow up feeling marked by prejudice in this country.

We want to thank Sohail and his wife Nudrat, their children Samir, Zaki, and Maheen (pictured below between their parents) for opening their lives to us once again, and treating us with such kindness.

We also want to thank Jagi Auntie and the Goswamy family for donating their beautiful house (pictured below) for the stay of our film crew during our SF Bay Area production.

The donations of friends and family and good-hearted strangers keep us alive. We still have a long way to go and can use all the support we can get, in any form. Can you help us? Let us know!

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on August 11, 2005.]

After a week-long break in production, we hit the road again. We spent five days in Phoenix, Arizona, to revisit THE SODHI FAMILY (below) whose story set this film in motion nearly four years ago.

On September 15, 2001, BALBIR SINGH SODHI (pictured) was standing in front of his gas station, preparing to plant flowers. A man in a black truck pulled around the corner and shot him five times. Balbir, 52 years old, was the first person to be killed in a post-9/11 hate crime. When arrested, the man yelled, “I am a patriot. Arrest me and let those terrorists run wild.”

Over the last four years, I have visited the Sodhi family several times, talking with them and filming their stories. The brothers and their wives and the children are all very close, and I am always moved by their togetherness and their spirit.

After the death of Balbir Singh, their private mourning was made public, and the brothers found themselves in the spotlight. They chose to speak out against hate crimes, so that “no more innocent people would be killed.”

One year later, one of Balbir’s brothers, SUKHPAL SINGH SODHI (pictured) was shot and killed while driving his cab in San Francisco, just when plans for the Iraq war were emerging. Over the next months, his murder was followed by the shootings of three other turbaned Sikh cab drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. Although the police had no hard proof for the motives, the families and larger communities have felt the repercussions of hate crimes.

When I visited the Sodhi family after the second brother was killed, I spoke with DAMAN SODHI, their young nephew. When I asked him how he felt, he said that he didn’t cry as much when his second uncle was killed. “Crying is not going to do anything,” he said, “I already tried it. I guess I just cried enough.”

ON THURSDAY, when we visited their house, DAMAN (pictured) was the first one we interviewed. He was in fifth grade the first time we met, and now he’s starting high school. Always soulful, he shared memories of his uncle:

“He was killed because of the way he looked. It’s so stupid. They call that guy a criminal, but I call him a terrorist. Terrorists kill innocent Americans and that’s what he did… I used to call my uncle ‘fatty’ and chase him around the couch, laughing and stuff. For hours. We would just do that for hours…”

Daman began to cry. And I began to ache. How can I keep asking this family these difficult questions? How can I keep asking them to remember the darkest part of their lives and share it with me, over and over?

“I’m so sorry, Daman. I should just stop doing this.”

“No, I’m glad you ask me these questions,” he said. “Otherwise, how will anyone know what I’m feeling inside?”

I thought that on this visit, years after both murders, our interviews would show how things had improved in Phoenix. But when we talked with the brothers HARJIT and RANA SODHI (pictured), I realized that I was wrong.

“Just a week ago, after the London bombings, a man came to my gas station and yelled, ‘Go back to your country!’” said Rana (pictured). “I told him that I would call the police unless he left. This discrimination is still here.”

After the interview, the entire family gathered together for chai and biscuits in the living room—aunts and uncles and children spanning all ages, talking and joking and laughing. Then the WIDOW of Balbir Singh Sodhi, whom I call Auntie Ji out of respect, joined us. And she was wearing white, the color that widows wear. We embraced and sat together.

I didn’t want to interview her. Every interview about her husband had always brought tears, and so this time, we played with her grandchildren, who made her smile so much. It wasn't until we left that I realized it was August 4th, the 3-year annivesary of the murder of Sukhpal Sodhi.

ON FRIDAY, the next day, we visited the home of GARY GIETZ, President of the ARIZONA INTERFAITH MOVEMENT, an organization that has supported the Phoenix Sikh community through the epidemic of hate crimes. Only minutes into our conversation, it was clear that this man had felt and thought deeply about the exclusion and violence caused by fundamentalism and nationalism. He pursues interfaith work committed to the message of religious pluralism. In his genuine manner, Gary shared his memories of Sodhi’s murder:

“Right after September 11, I was invited to speak at the Sikh gurdwara that Sunday, because the CHILDREN were scared, and I was supposed to tell them that it was alright. But then Mr. Sodhi was killed. And my message came too late. It was not alright. So instead, my wife and I spent all day at the gurdwara to help get their story to the media. What I remember most was the fear in the eyes of the children, the real fear…”

Tears began to well up in his eyes, and we stopped for a moment.

I have come to believe that real sadness is buried deep inside many people. One would never see it in daily interactions, but it only takes someone, even a complete stranger, to ask the right question: who are you? Suddenly, one touches that sadness in peoples’ hearts, and the tears spill easily. I wonder how many people walk around protecting this part of themselves, afraid of the question, never asking others this question, or worse, never having been asked.

ON SATURDAY, we visited the gas station where Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed. As we approached, my body tightened. This place is like ground-zero to me. It is ground-zero for the epidemic of fear and hate against our communities. Inside the store, I look up to see a sign that has hung on the wall since the murder. It is the theme of our film

SUKHWINDER (GOLDY) SODHI now runs his father’s gas station. The first time we met was soon after his father's death. What I remember most was his sadness when he said to me, "My dad will never know his grandchildren." Goldy now has two young children, a girl and a boy (pictured).

Goldy walked me to the street and showed me the memorial they placed where his father fell. The plaque reads:

In memory of all the souls who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and all the backlash victims. “We don’t want any other innocent people hurt.” – The family of Balbir Singh Sodhi (1949-2001). On Saturday, September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, was shot here at this corner while planting flowers in front of this shop. In the tradition of the Sikh faith, he wore a turban and beard. He was killed simply because of the way he looked. Sikhs believe: In one God. That all religious paths lead to God. That all people are equal in the eyes of God. In peace, and love for humankind.

We stood gazing at his father’s memorial until I broke the silence.

"Life is good these days?” It had been two years since we last met.

Goldy shrugged and kept his eyes on the plaque. “It’s alright… It could be better,” His voice was quiet. “It would be better with him. I still miss him a lot.”

I did all I could to keep the tears from welling up again. No one can measure the loss of those we love. And when the motive is hate, and the murder is public, the grieving process itself becomes amplified. I put my hand on his arm.

In the evening, I brought flowers to the gas station to place at the memorial. This is one of the few times the director decided to put the camera on me, and at first, I felt a deep discomfort.

But then I made a resolution: This camera will not capture a manufactured moment. I must never become one of those reporters who laugh right before they deliver some grave news into the camera. I must never misuse the power of this camera.

And so for the first time, I ignored my crew completely. I walked to the memorial and placed the flowers before it. “Balbir Uncle, I am trying.” I said in my mind. “I am trying to do my part.”

TODAY IS SUNDAY. We spent the morning filming the beautiful service at the Guru Nanak Dwara Ashram (Sikh house of worship), where the Sodhi family worships. The sangat (community) embraced us. We filmed the service and then shared langar (the community meal) before we drove back to Los Angeles.

Our time in Phoenix was very heavy for me, perhaps the most difficult part of our journey. So I am especially thankful for our crew for their hard work in filming these difficult interviews so well.

Our director Sharat Raju, cinematographer Matt Blute, and first camera Don Presley (pictured above) were joined in Phoenix by our new excellent sound mixer TIM FORREST (pictured left). They have endured 12-hour production days in the heat with little or no pay, simply because they believe in the message of this film. I do not know how to thank them.

What's more, Dolly Brar, my favorite mother, came with us to manage production madness. Her care and laughter keep sustaining me. Here is a picture of what my mom calls The Dream Team at work.

The Dream Team stayed at the home of Jaskanwal (Sweety) Sachdev, my long-time friend and sister. She and her husband cared for us, while their five-year old son Hargun provided the best entertainment in town. We felt so much love from the Sachdev family, the Sodhi family, and the greater Phoenix community. I can’t wait for the day we return to Phoenix to show them the final film.

A big thank you to JESSICA JENKINS, our Director of Reserach based in Washington, DC (left), and TRACY WELLS, our Communications Director based in Cambridge, MA (bottom right) and their teams for researching and scheduling all our interviews this summer.

They make a superb group, and without them, the final journey of this production would not be possible. They could always use more devoted volunteers, so contact us if interested.

Support our film, Divided We Fall.

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on August 8, 2005.]

In response to arguments that American law enforcement should racially profile young Muslim men [see e.g., here and here], sociologist Andrew Beveridge explains that "even if the New York Police Department wanted to do so -- and it has said clearly that it doesn’t -- profiling young Muslim males is virtually impossible.... They are not racially or physically distinct."

Consider, for example, this chart showing the countries with the highest Muslim population. "China ranks ninth. Russia ranks 18th.... [S]ome Chinese New Yorkers may be Muslim, while some Indonesians may not be." Moreover, "There are 231,000 New Yorkers who claim heritage from these 25 countries.... Some are black, some are Asian; more than 50 percent are white."

Based on his presented evidence, which is shown more dramatically in the article itself, Beveridge concludes:

Profiling by origin is the sort of policy that seems appealing during periods of stress and hysteria, but in hindsight is almost always seen as a mistake – such as the internment of Japanese-American during World War II. In this case, however, it wouldn’t even be possible.

The DK Sankaran Committee, recently organized to provide relief to survivors of the 1984 pogroms of Sikhs, held its first meeting:

The issue of giving relief to the Sikhs, who left their homes in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh to go to Punjab, was raised by the representatives from Punjab who attended the first meeting of the committee chaired by Secretary in the Union Home Ministry D K Sankaran here on Friday...

The Punjab representatives told the committee that 28,000 to 30,000 Sikhs had migrated to the state after the violence and were now living in one-room LIG flats and they needed to be given relief to allow them to lead a better life, the sources said.

The Committee has two months to prepare its recommendations for submission to the central government. Again, the Committee discussed employment opportunities for survivors in Indian paramilitary organizations. Such paramilitary organizations, however, like the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), participated in human rights abuses in Punjab during the mid-1980s and 1990s.

Several reports have appeared supporting the claim that the Nanavati report failed to hold senior police officials accountable. ENSAAF's report Twenty Years of Impunity extensively discusses the role of police in instigating the violence and destroying evidence. In an article in the Indian Express, Manoj Mitta discusses how Justice Nanavati exonerated all of the police officers from the worst site of the carnage:

The largest Sikh massacre in a single locality in 1984 took place at Block Nos 32 and 36 of Trilokpuri in East Delhi, where, according to the Nanavati Commission, ‘‘almost all Sikh males of these two blocks were killed.’’ Out of the official death toll of 2,733 in the carnage, East Delhi alone accounted for 1,086 deaths.

And yet, what got lost in the debate over Jagdish Tytler’s resignation and the Prime Minister’s evocative speech in Parliament, was one startling fact: none of the police officials Nanavati indicted was from this area or from anywhere in East Delhi—or even from West Delhi, the two worst-affected police districts in that order...

Sewa Dass, who was then in charge of East Delhi, is now special commissioner, the number two in the Delhi Police. He is due to retire next month.

The Nanavati Commission did not recommend any action against him even after recording the allegation made by ‘‘many witnesses’’ that Sewa Dass and his subordinates in East Delhi ‘‘had even encouraged the mobs while they were attacking Sikhs.’’

The commission glossed over one sensational discovery that was made about the Trilokpuri massacre in the course of the inquiry. That Sewa Dass knew about the mass killings in Block Nos 32 and 36 long before The Indian Express reporters Rahul Bedi and Joseph Maliakan—Bedi has since left the newspaper—brought it to the notice of the police headquarters in the evening of November 2.

The former joint director of India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), NK Singh calls for further investigations by a task force, excluding Delhi policemen. He sites to the unanswered questions that remain about the role of senior government officials:

The role of two top functionaries of the Congress government in 1984, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Home Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, as also of top functionaries of the PMO, cannot be brushed aside. They may have been absolved of the blame of instigating the killings, but what about the failure to act for two days or to call in the army promptly and to ensure firm and effective action by them and the police? Both the Nanavati Commission and the Rangnath Mishra Commission have observed that there was delay in calling the army. And then, that infamous statement by the PM that the earth was “bound to shake”, when a big tree fell.

Former MPs, senior lawyers, retired generals and a former prime minister have deposed how evasively Narasimha Rao behaved when they met him and requested him to call in the army. Then Lt. Governor P.G. Gavai has openly come out against him. We have had many other accounts in the public discussion in the past few days as well, including, notably, by former DG Punjab Police Julio Rebeiro. In the light of these, how far was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh justified in stating in Rajya Sabha on August 11, that “the lie which has been used for 21 years to poison the Sikhs mind has been nailed” by the commission?

An article in Tehelka (subscription required) discusses in detail how senior officers who instigated and participated in the massacres were actually awarded with promotions.

[This entry is cross-posted on ENSAAF's blog]

This week, we take a break from production, but there is no rest for Sharat and me. We flew to Montana to fundraise for the film and spent the weekend in Livingston, MT, a small eclectic town at the mouth of Yellowstone Park. Our visit was organized by Penny Ronning, who hosted screenings of our work on Friday and Saturday nights at her art gallery, House of Fine Arts. We showed Sharat’s award-winning short film American Made and our film trailer for Divided We Fall, which was followed by an intimate conversation with our small audience.

As soon as the lights came up, the room was buzzing. People began to offer praise for “both the intention and execution” of American Made, and share excitement for the stories in our film. Soon people began to open up and share their own stories:

“My father was a guard at the camps where they interned Japanese Americans during World War II,” one woman said. “And he still expresses so much prejudice.”

“I’m Jewish and I have experienced this discrimination all my life,” another man said.

“So many groups in America have faced this kind of discrimination,” someone added. “Every person here descends from immigrants who had to face exclusion and hate at some point in this country. This story needs to be told, because it is so American.”

“My mother is glued to the television set,” another woman shared. “And she has so much hatred for Muslims and Arabs. It makes me crazy.”

“What do you think would change her?” I asked.

She thought for a moment and said, “This.” She pointed to the screen where we just showed our trailer. “Your stories. Your film.”

I later gave her a copy of the film trailer to show to her mother. “Maybe this will make her see that we are American too, we are people too, just like her.”

We were overwhelmed by the warmth and support of the people in this small town. Including one MARGOT KIDDER, the strong and beautiful woman who played Lois Lane in the original Superman movies. In the picture, Sharat and I stand next to Margot Kidder and John Ansotegui from the Montana Film Commission:

Margot now lives in Livingston, where she pours her energy into activism; her community loves her, and it’s easy to see why. After viewing our work, she took us under her wing and showed us Montana from the best possible view: inner-tubing down the cool waters of the Yellowstone River. Floating down the river, we could see everything: green fields sweeping up into dramatic rocky mountains and great billowing clouds erupting into endless blue skies (just like the picture below).

Margot is hysterically funny. She made us laugh very hard on that river – a much needed break after so many sleepless 12-hour production days. What’s more, she really believes in our film. She said that our message about fighting racism draws upon American history, speaks to the present situation, and will echo into the future.

We want to thank the Livingston community in Montana for supporting our film, and especially Penny Ronning whose friendship, mentorship, and vision made it all possible. Although the project has received donations in film and equipment from Panavision and Kodak, we still need $40,000 to finish production alone. We must rely on the support of grassroots communities like Livingston, which is why every single donation makes a real difference at this point.

[This entry is cross-posted at "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on July 25, 2005]

Rob Marris, Member of Parliament and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for UK Sikhs, argued why Sikhs should be protected after the terrorist attacks of 7/7:

I am very concerned that the Sikh community and other minority communities should not become the target for hate attacks following the dreadful bombings in London on the July 7.

The UK Sikh community have expressed their deep sadness and concerns along with others at the terrible atrocities perpetrated by the terrorists, both in London, New York and elsewhere in the world.

Since September 11, 2001 there have been several attacks suffered by the visible Sikh community including attacks on Sikh gurdwaras.

I roundly condemn such attacks, and attacks on other minority communities, and would ask the police to be vigilant and to treat any threats against minorities very
seriously.

A delegation of the Punjab State Human Rights Commission stated that 80% of the complaints received by the Commission concern police abuses:

Justice Anand [the Chairperson] said Punjab police personnel were the main violators of human rights in the state and should urgently amend themselves.

‘‘The regular occurrence of incident of custodial violence, rape and deaths, apart from illegal detaining and torture, is a black spot on the face of the police,’’ he said.

Human rights reports and reports by the U.S. Department of State corroborate the frequency of custodial torture. The 2004 State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices in India states:

The prevalence of torture by police in detention facilities throughout the country was reflected in the number of cases of deaths in police custody (see Section 1.a.). Police and jailers typically assaulted new prisoners for money and personal articles. In addition, police commonly tortured detainees during custodial interrogation. lthough police officers were subject to prosecution for such offenses under the Penal Code, the Government often failed to hold them accountable. According to AI [Amnesty International], torture usually took place during criminal investigations and following unlawful and arbitrary arrests.

We interviewed Nitasha Sawhney, a lawyer at Burke, Williams, and Sorenson, LLP in Los Angeles, who has focused her energy on civil rights cases on behalf of Sikh Americans since 9/11, including Swaran Bhullar. As a Sikh American lawyer and activist, she spoke with great passion about her community's experiences. She feared that many Sikhs have simply become accustomed the prejudice they face daily. And she hopes that with enough education and advocacy, people may begin to recognize one another as Americans:

"As long as there is a war on terror, there will be a war on immigrant communities. It’s going to take this country as a long time to remember that this country was built by immigrants. Every time we have a war, we look at who is going to be 'the Other', who is going to look like the Other-- the Japanese, the Sikhs, the Muslims. Sikhs are attacked because they are assumed to be Arab, but the deeper problem is that someone is always going to be attacked when we are at war. We need to change this. We need more legislation and education. We need the community to step out of its protective shell. And we need the government and media to change the climate of this country."

We want to thank Nitasha not only for sharing her experience and perspective, but also supporting our project in every way. Her friendship, and the generosity of people like her, has brought us this far.

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on July 19, 2005.]

"As politicians reach out to Muslim communities to secure their integration with rather than isolation from mainstream society, a growing number of businesses across Europe are doing the same," according to an article in the Financial Times. For example:

• Nokia "has introduced the Ilkon i800, a mobile phone that directs users toward Mecca and tells them when to pray."
• Heineken "has decided to roll out the nonalcoholic malt drink Fayrouz internationally."
• Lloyds TSB "is the latest bank to introduce Islamic banking services"
• GlaxoSmithKline "secured a statement from the country's Muslim Law Council that the company's Ribena and Lucozade soft drinks are halal"
• Sony "is supporting the British launch of PlayStation Portable with an exhibition of Arabic art this month.

In a related story, an IKEA branch is planning to design hijabs [pictured] for its Muslim employees.

The article notes that the "internationally-acclaimed company... was making [an] effort to accommodate Muslims in its workforce."

Today, we interviewed California Assemblymember Judy Chu, who has pioneered a number of hate crimes legislation to protect the rights of Sikh, Arab, and Muslim communities in California since September 11, 2001. She spoke with knowledge and eloquence about how lives have changed for many minorities who now fear discrimination in their own neighborhoods.

She remembers learning about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in college as a student of Asian American Studies. Her awareness of the power of fear and hysteria in times of war made her quick to respond to the hate crimes that swept the country after September 2001. We talked about the hate crimes bills she has passed, which expand the rights of hate victims and demands accurate reporting and tracking of hate crimes.

"When there is a war, there will be fear and hatred. As long as there is a war in Iraq, as long as there are incidents against Americans, then targeted groups have to be very careful. Sixty years ago, 120,000 Japanese Ameicans, US citizens by and large, were sent to concentration camps. No case of espionage was found. Yet nobody stood up for them. It is our policies that engender this haterd and violence. That’s why it’s the responsibility of government to be as proactive as possible and make sure that innocent people are not victimized."

She concluded, “Injustices happen when good people do nothing."

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally published on July 19, 2005]

85-year old Gurdev Singh has spent 12.5 years in jail in Punjab, India under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). TADA, enacted in May 1985, comprised part of the laws instituted during the police counter-insurgency campaign in Punjab. This act lapsed in 1995, but the Indian government continues to detain people under TADA, for offences allegedly committed prior to May 1995.

Human rights groups have chellenged this law for its draconian provisions. TADA establishes in camera courts and authorizes detention of persons in a “disturbed area” based on mere suspicion. Under Section 21 of TADA, detainees are presumed guilty until proven innocent; Section 20(8) prohibits the granting of bail even if the detainee has not been charged for ninety days. Furthermore, confessions extracted through torture are admissible in TADA courts, in direct violation of Article 15 of the UN Convention against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

According to the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, "Punjab registered 17,529 cases under the TADA since its promulgation in 1985 up to 31 July 1994." There were only a handful of convictions.

Gurdev Singh recently described his experiences at a press conference:

The Punjab police has already killed my two sons and I don't know why they are keeping me in jail even after completion of my life sentence. I don't know what danger they have from an 85 year old who is suffering from so many ailments and is hard of hearing.

My younger son who left military [after the Army's 1984 attack on Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple)] was killed in a fake encounter by Punjab Police on 17 December 1987. After that all hell was let loose on my family. My elder son was killed by Punjab Police Cats (Kalian Bilian) and his dead body was thrown in the village to terrorize people.

Gurdev Singh described how he and his younger brother Jora Singh, aged 70 years, have been tortured by the Punjab police. They are both serving TADA sentences. Further, seven years ago, the police disappeared his third son, Kinder Singh. According to Gurdev Singh, after this son's disappearance, his wife Surjit Kaur died of shock.

[This entry is cross-posted on ENSAAF's blog.]

Police in Columbia, Missouri are stating that an attack on a Middle Eastern man was not a hate crime due to "that the assailants were motivated because of race."

According to police reports, "Haitham Alramahi, 22, was walking home about 2 a.m. when he was struck by a car.... He was in the crosswalk, but the car did not stop at the stop sign. He said four or five men got out of the car."

“I thought they were going to help me,” said Alramahi in an interview. Instead, they shouted racial epithets at him, telling him to go back to Iraq, he said."

The police argued, "simply using racist language during an assault does not automatically mean the crime was originally perpetrated because of race."

The past few days, The Washington Post's op-ed section has admirably devoted considerable attention to racial profiling and the multiculturalism question in Britain. Today, for example, two of the four op-eds examine these subjects.

Columnist William Raspberry responds to those who argue in favor of racial profiling. He firsts sets forth what the proponents of racial profiling are saying:

After all, they argue, weren't the Sept. 11 terrorists all young Muslim men? Isn't it likely that the next terrorist attack will be carried out by young Muslim men? So why waste time screening white-haired grandmothers and blue-suited white guys? Much more efficient to tap the shoulder of any young man who looks Muslim -- a category that covers not just Arabs but also Asians, Africans and, increasingly, African Americans.

Raspberry counters that, practically speaking, developing a coherent profile is impossible, as "young Arab men are fungible." As a result, "since Americans look all sorts of ways, a more sensible way of deciding who gets extra attention is behavior." In conclusion, Raspberry quips:

[W]e do know what [the terrorists] look like. They look like the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, but they also look like Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid, John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla and -- don't forget -- Timothy McVeigh. Profile that.

Also in today's edition of the Post, Frances Stead Sellers addresses multiculturalism in Britain. She defines multiculturalism as "the... challenge of building community out of disparate populations with disparate traditions and disparate beliefs, all the while preserving and celebrating those disparities. "

Sellers argues that there is a fundamental difference between the United States and Britain, in that in America "every new immigrant can make America more American (as President Bush once argued), and where the founding philosophy and civic rituals were designed to create a citizenry out of the masses," whereas "European countries were established less deliberately -- largely on shared traditions, shared languages, shared histories and even shared genes." The result in Britain is a "deficit in civic ritual," which the British government has tried to correct in the past few years through, for example, the introduction of a national "Citizenship Day."

On Saturday, columnist Colbert I. King argues that the "massive failure of assimilation" that is seemingly "inconceivable in the United States" generally is occurring in American prisons: "the group within the African American Muslim community that is experiencing the most explosive growth is probably the least assimilated: black inmates." King contends that what has led to the many conversions to Islam is not "Americanization." As FBI director Robert S. Mueller III noted, the American prison system is "fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socioeconomic status and placement in the community upon their release." King effectively argues that this "concern is no longer theoretical."

Law professor David Harris argues that, "The impulse to use a profile targeting young Muslim men may seem obvious in light of the bombings in London and elsewhere, but using these kinds of demographic factors in law enforcement, except as a description of a known suspect, would be a first-order strategic mistake." In particular, Professor Harris reasons, in part:

When we make appearance - looking like a young Muslim or Arab or South Asian - one of the criteria we use to decide who is suspicious, we lose what must be a total focus on behavior. This makes law enforcement officers less accurate in finding what they are looking for, as several studies have shown.

Using a profile against young Arab and South Asian Muslims destroys our ability to make use of our most important weapon against terrorists: intelligence. Intelligence is key to finding these killers before they reach the subway station or airport concourse, and the best possible source for intelligence about these zealots is our very own Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities.

Today we sat with a group of Japanese Americans who shared their memories of the Internment during World War II. In their seventies and eighties, they exuded the warmth and wisdom of grandparents. All of them were born in the United States. The afternoon was organized by Janelle Saito, the mother my dear friend Brynn, at the United Japanese Christian Church in Clovis, California. We talked with this group for hours. At times, they drew haunting parallels to present-day America. Here are sketches of their stories:

AIKO AND TOM UYEOKA

Aiko Ueyoka sits beside her husband Tom. She is 85 years old. When the war broke, she lived in Sanger, a town in the California’s Central Valley, but when the orders for internment came, she was grouped with others in Clovis. In July 1942, she was sent to Camp #2 in Poston, Arizona, and she stayed in Barrick 22 in Block 222. "We were rounded up onto the trains like cattle." She remembers that all they served in the barracks was mutton soup and more mutton soup. It made many people sick. To this day, she cannot stand the taste of it. It was in the camp that she met her husband Tom.

Tom Uekoya had joined the United States army before the war, but after the bombings at Pearl Harbor, the army removed all weapons from the Japanese American soldiers. They sent him to Seattle and then inland to Colorado, where they were considered to be less dangerous. On his first furlough, he visited his uncle who was interned in Poston, Arizona. This is where he met Aiko. He wrote her letters after he returned to his base. On second furlough, he visited her again, and they were married on March 18, 1944.

Aiko was now able to leave the camp and move to Denver, Colorado, where Tom was training at Camp Haley. She stayed in Denver and took care of the child of a Jewish couple, who sympathized with what was happening to her family. Tom was the only Japanese American in an all-Caucasian battalion. He was trained in #442 field artillery.

One day, the colonel pulled him aside. “Our battalion has been called to fight in Japan,” the colonel confided in him. “Are you willing to go?” The man shook his head, and said, “Sir, my two brothers are in Japan. I don’t want to fight against them.” The colonel sympathized with him, and sent him to Europe. When the war ended in 1945, they moved to Fresno, where they live today. Aiko remembers the discrimination they faced after the war. She wanted to become a beautician, but the beauty parlor would not hire her.

MARION MASADA

Marion Masada, now 72 years old, lived in Salinas, California. She is wearing the number she was assigned when she was sent to the camps at nine years old. "I have never forgotten this number, " she said. Her family was forced through the Salinas Assembly Center and later to Camp #2 in Poston, Arizona. She remembers that summer as very hot. Marion confided that she was sexually abused in camp, and it took her many years to work through that trauma and regain her trust in people. After the war, her family returned to Salinas, where many soldiers had been killed in the war. But there was so much discrimination against Japanese Americans that they were not welcomed back. So her family moved to Watsonville, California. She stayed in a Buddhist temple for one month, then in a Presbyterian Church. Years later, she was married in that same church in 1955 to Reverend Saburo Masada, who then served there.

Marion brought many things to show us, including posters of the camps, a miniature of the barracks she stayed in, small crafts the Japanese American women made in camp, and photographs. One photograph shows Marion as a little girl: "I looked like an old lady!" she laughed. Another photograph shows the hateful anti-Japanese signs that were common at that time (in the picture).

REV. SABURO MASADA

Reverend Saburo Masada, now 75 years old, was taken to the Fresno Assembly Center for five months before his family was forced to Jerome, Arkansas. His father caught pneumonia from the poor conditions in the barracks and was the first to die in camp. He showed us a photograph of the family gathered at the funeral, still in the barracks. In order to make room for the German POWs, they were moved once more to Rohwer, Arkanasas for one year. He returned in April 1945 to Carathers, California. His family's farm had been watched by friends, people like my grandfather Kehar Singh who took the risk of caring for these families while they were away.

“Japanese Americans have been silent about their time in the concentration camps and have not told their grandchildren, because it was like incest. We were in love with our country and we respected authority, and suddenly our country abused us and treated us like enemies. We did not believe it for the longest time. When this happened to us, nobody was there to stand up for us. But our Sikh, Muslim, and Arab brothers and sisters are experiencing the same hate and fear, so we must speak out for them."

TOSHI SAKAI

Toshi Sakai, now 82 years old, lived in Gilroy, California. She was sent to the Salinas Assembly Center and then to Poston, Arizona. She was nineteen years old and the eldest of four sisters. Her most painful memory of the camps was remembering that her father was very sick. He was worried about how his family would survive without him, and he died in camp. Toshi had to take responsibility, since she was the eldest. After the war, Toshi met Bob Sakai in San Francisco and came to Fresno, California in 1952.

BOB SAKAI

Bob Sakai, now 83 years old, lived in Del Rey, California and was sent to Gila, Arizona from 1942-43. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, he remembers someone pounding on his door at night. They took his father and jailed him for days on grounds of alleged misconduct at his store. His father was returned weeks later when they were already in camp. "It was like that then, the authorities abused their power in order to arrest and detain us." Bob was twenty years old when a friend urged him to apply to college in order to get out out of the camps. He applied to Saint Paul University in Minnesota and was accepted. He later transferred to the University of Minnesota and finished at California State University, Fresno. He courted Toshi in San Francisco and they have since lived in Fresno.

Here our director Sharat Raju is speaking to the group. They are talking about how they had to 'prove' their patriotism when they were released from the camps. The stories we captured today will help us examine how and why minority groups are threatened and targeted as enemies during time of war.

[This entry is cross-posted on "Into the Whirlwind," and was originally posted on Sunday, July 17, 2005.]

Today, we drove to San Diego to meet Swaran Bhullar, the Sikh Punjabi woman who was stabbed in her car a few weeks after September 11, 2001. She had immigrated from Kenya in order to find peace and security. After her attack, she said that she had lost that security here in America.

On the way to see her, I read again my transcript of our first interview together in November 2001:

SWARAN: On September 30th, coming here [to my video store] from home, I was in the left lane and stopped my car at the light at Cabot Street. I saw two men on my left in a black motorbike. They opened my door. They said, “This is what you get for what you people have done to us, and I’m going to slash your throat.”

I knew to cover my throat, and I tucked myself down with my hands like this [to cover my head with my arms]. They gave me a few cuts on the head with a blade. There were three cuts here. A white car approached, and so they ran away. As soon as they’d gone, I decided to drive here [to my video store] instead of stopping to ask for help. At that moment, I didn’t trust anyone.

I was bleeding all over. They brought me down here, and took me to the hospital. The doctors called the police. They stapled my head with two or three staples, and the police asked me questions. They never found them.

I read this story outloud to my crew, and it gave me chills to hear it, even though I had written about it and analyzed it in my writings many times. Whenever I tell these stories to others, I am reminded again of their pain and gravity.

We arrived at Swaran's video store, Bombay Video, and she was the same as I had remembered her. Soft-spoken, yet sharp and quick with energy. I called her Aunti, out of respect. We talked for a long time and filmed a half an hour interview. I asked her about her memory of her attack:

SWARAN: Every day I think about it. Every time I approach Cabot Street, it’s like a tape recorder in my head, playing over and over again. It was only forty seconds of my life but I live it over again every day.

Four years have passed and yet the trauma runs deep in people who have survived such violence. And they must learn to pass through the trauma encoded in the body, just as she had to learn to pass through that intersection everyday.

Through the entire interview, Swaran talked about what happened to her without becoming emotional. There were tears only at the end, when she began thinking of her grandchildren who call her Nani, and how close she was to never knowing them. She is grateful for being alive:

SWARAN: What happened to me shouldn’t happen to anyone. My wish is for all people to live in peace.

Swaran Bhullar

Swaran Bhullar speaking with me in her store at the end of the interview.

Swaran hard at work in her video store, Bombay Video.

Swaran recommending that I take Veer Zhara and some Punjabi folk music home with me (which I did).

Thanks to Anup Sugunan (writer/director/actor) who joined us as our production assistant for the day, and also took these photographs.

[This entry is cross-posted on In the Whirlwind, Valarie Kaur's blog. The entry was originally posted on July 14, 2005]

The prosecution's behavior in a case against Sajjan Kumar, arising from the 1984 Sikh massacres, gives insight into what will happen in any future prosecutions initiated by the government in fulfillment of its recent promises regarding the Nanavati Report.

The Delhi High Court was forced to adjourn a hearing today because the prosecuting authority was not prepared to argue their appeal to a 2002 acquittal of Sajjan Kumar in a case arising from the 1984 Sikh massacres:

Do your home work and then come to the court," a Division Bench of Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Rekha Sharma told the CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] counsel.

The court's observation came after the counsel started arguments on 'leave to appeal' but ended up reading out the CBI petition (appeal).

CBI counsel R M Tiwari submitted that the trial court order would result in miscarriage of justice as evidence of several prosecution witnesses had not been appreciated properly.

However, when asked to specifically point out the shortcomings in the trial court order acquitting Sajjan Kumar and some other accused in the anti-Sikh riots case, he could not impress the court.

Earlier in April, the Court requested the CBI to file an explanation for why it had delayed filing its appeal. The CBI had allowed the 90-day appeal period to lapse.

The hearing was adjourned until October 4, at which point the Court will also consider petitions by 8 other survivors and the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC).

ENSAAF’s report Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India discusses how grave lapses in police investigations, delays in filing cases, the failure to identify and investigate prosecution witnesses, the deliberate misrecording of witness statements, and the failure to comply with legal procedures precluded effective prosecutions. It also specifically focuses on Sajjan Kumar's acquittal in this case:

On December 23, 2002, another major perpetrator, MP Sajjan Kumar, was acquitted in the last case remaining against him. This case illustrates the government delays and impact of police manipulation of evidence. The police had earlier closed all cases against Kumar, never filing a charge sheet. Only after the Poti-Rosha committee recommended the institution of a case against Kumar, based on the affidavit of Anwar Kaur regarding the murder of her husband, did the CBI register a case on September 7, 1989. In 1992, the CBI applied for prosecution sanction—required by the State for the arrest or prosecution of public servants—but received no response for two years from the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao (who was Home Minister in November 1984). After M.L. Khurana began to push for the grant of sanction, the CBI was finally able to file its charge sheet in court in December 1994 and record the statements of witnesses in 1999, 15 years after the massacre. Two witnesses testified to seeing Kumar addressing meetings on October 31, exhorting people to kill Sikhs. Anwar Kaur gave her testimony and stood by her statement for two days of cross-examination. On the third day, the reporter recorded a confusing statement where Anwar Kaur first vehemently stood by her testimony of the previous days, and then stated the contrary. Harvinder S. Phoolka, senior advocate representing the victims, attributed this to a recording error—the insertion of one negative word.

The next five witnesses called by the prosecution turned hostile. Kumar’s two witnesses, both police officers, had recorded the Sultanpuri omnibus FIR. The Sessions Judge Manju Goel acquitted Sajjan Kumar on the basis of the police officers’ testimony that none of the witnesses had mentioned Kumar in their FIRs or testimonies, failing to account for police manipulation of FIRs and testimonies…Thus, by tampering with and falsifying the FIRs, and failing to record the names of certain perpetrators, the police managed to preclude most of the prosecutions.

The U.S. Department of State issued this press release in which the results of a panel discussion on Muslim-American Women were discussed. According to the State Department, "contrary to popular media perceptions, Muslim women do not feel discriminated against or dispossessed within the traditions of their faith."

For example, a Muslim-American woman noted that her "distinctive attire" has not hurt her career despite the concerns of her family. "On the contrary, she says, people began to respect her for her individuality and firm rooting in her faith." (Indeed, Muslim-American women are never disrespected or discriminated against in the U.S.)

The press release is a good read for those interested in learning what the government, or at least the panel convened by it, believes with respect to the compatibility of Islam with American culture, gender equity in Islam, and religious discrimination in the United States.

In an ironic turn of events, a Sikh Prime Minister apologized to the Sikh community for the 1984 massacres of Sikhs. In his speech, however, he still maintained that the massacres were not organized by senior political and police officials, terming them "riots," impying violence on both sides. The Prime Minister alternatively referred to the massacres as a "human tragedy," "this whole mass tragedy," and "all those ghastly happenings." His speech anesthesized the stark reality of the violence and the subsequent 21 years of impunity: meetings organized by Congress Party officials the night of October 31 to distribute weapons and exhort attendees to kill Sikhs; distribution of voter lists identifying Sikh residences and businesses; use of rationed resources, such as kerosene, to kill; dissemination of false rumors of Sikh attacks on Hindus; organized transportation facilitating travel by death squads; systematic killings; attacks on Sikh gurdwaras and desecration of Sikh scriptures; participation and inaction by police; among other characteristics.

PM Singh warned against partisan politics, yet his speech represents a clever political move. He has apologized for the massacres, but not promised any concrete action beyond further inquiries and committees. To those who criticized the Nanavati report and the government's Action Taken Report, the Prime Minister raised the spectre of a return of "terrorism" in Punjab. Instead, PM Singh would do well to consider the state terrorism employed by Indian security forces during the counter-insurgency operations of the 1980s and 1990s.

Only by vindicating the victims' rights to knowledge, justice and reparation can the government put the bitterness behind, as the Prime Minister exhorts. As a BBC article warns, Sonia Gandhi apologized about the massacres over a decade ago, promising action, but nothing resulted from her speech:

For the angry and hurt Sikh community and the outraged media, it is a classic case of too little, too late.

They are not wrong.

[This entry is cross-posted on ENSAAF's blog.]

In Moral Indifference as the form of modern evil, Siddharth Varadarajan discusses the indifference of then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi towards the massacres, and how such indifference has led to an entrenched and institutionalized "riot system" that "any ruling party anywhere in the country can use [] with impunity." Varadarajan criticizes the Nanavati report for describing the effects of the organized violence, but failing to analyze the causes:

India is the only democracy in the world where politicians and policemen responsible for mass murder, from Delhi in 1984 to Gujarat in 2002, are allowed to thrive while their victims live lives of penury and despair. It's time we put a stop to this....

He [Nanavati] concludes that the violence was "organised" and involved "the backing and help of influential and resourceful persons" but then blithely states that there is "absolutely no evidence" to show high-ranking Congress leaders were involved....

At no time did either Rajiv Gandhi or any other senior Minister display the slightest interest in understanding how such a terrible crime could have been committed on their watch, in ordering an inquiry, in ensuring that forensic and other forms of evidence were collected in a timely fashion so that the guilt of the perpetrators could be established swiftly. This is the way a leadership that was genuinely unaware of what was going on would have acted after the event. Conversely, it is only a government that knew it had something dreadful to hide that could behave the way the Rajiv Gandhi Government did in the weeks, months, and even years following November 1984....

Modern states do not allow small men like Jagdish Tytler, Dharamdas Shastri and Sajjan Kumar to unleash — as part of some sort of private initiative — murder on a genocidal scale. Modern states do not allow their police system to fall apart, except by design. Modern states do not allow Army commanders to say they do not have enough troops to do the job at hand. Littered through Mr. Justice Nanavati's text are all the telltale dots of official guilt but these have been left unconnected, allowing the institutional rot to remain and infect our body politic again in the future. His philosophical approach — in which effects can exist without causes — does not augur well for the Gujarat violence inquiry report he will prepare next.

In See you at three thousand, Dilip D'Souza discusses India's failure in upholding the fundamental obligations of a state:

Think about it: is there anything more fundamental to the way a society lives, even perceives itself, than the need to punish those who tear at its fabric? Yet in the face of arguably the greatest such tear in our history -- a great gaping hole that 3,000 mangled bodies fell through -- we are at our most apathetic.

He challenges perceptions of India's rising status, focusing on its inability to provide justice or act against perpetrators of the massacres:

Because I hear this stuff about India on the move, and the international cachet of India escalating by the day, and American MBA students coming to Indian companies to intern, and waging war on terror, and how we deserve a seat on the Security Council (veto power included) -- and I think, how empty it all is. What a bunch of horse-pucky.

When we are a land -- let's be frank, why not? -- of no justice whatsoever, what pride can we take in those American interns? When we are complacent about that lack of justice, what image are we talking about? When we let the terrorists live untouched in our midst, even give them police protection, what war on terror are we fighting?

[Note: This entry is cross-posted at ENSAAF's blog.]

A PBS NewsHour feature story is on the efforts of the Muslim community in the United States to reach out to Muslim youth, in order to assuage "concerns about the vulnerability of American-born Muslim youth to recruitment by terrorist groups."

The Muslim community leaders interviewed understand there are "unique issues facing American-born Muslims struggling to balance the values of American society with the teachings of Islam." The question is squarely one of identity, one of being both sufficiently Muslim and American. Muslim activist Amin Al-Sarras admits that Muslim-American youth are "confused," but he goes on to argue that, at bottom, "There is no friction between American society and Islam."

The difficulty for these Muslim leaders is to strike this balance and to permit Muslim-American to feel as if they have an identity that isn't in conflict with Muslim principles but which satisfies the American mainstream.

Interestingly, Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, offers a thought as to how the next generation of Muslim-Americans can help the youth strike this balance: "We need Americans who were born here, who watched MTV and understand American culture to be Imams.... We need the authentic American Islamic voice. It's unique."

Since the revelation that the 7/7 bombers were "homegrown" terrorists, commentators have been debating whether or not America may be vulnerable to such attacks by American-Muslims.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, adds to the discussion by addressing the conditions that explain why homegrown terrorism is more likely in Europe, and the factors that, if left unattended, may exacerbate the possibility that Muslims in the United States will carry out a terrorist plot in their own backyard.

Al-Marayati explains that Muslims in Europe are more isolated, "partly because of the socioeconomic status of Muslim communities throughout Europe and partly because of self-imposed isolation," whereas American Muslims "are typically far more interested in integrating into mainstream society."

The author points out, however, that "many [American Muslims] live in a psychological ghetto caused by the lack of acceptance they feel from their neighbors and colleagues, especially in the post-Sept. 11 era." It may very well be true that this "psychological ghetto may prove the largest challenge in the war on terrorism."

To prevent American Muslims from becoming isolated, alientated, and vulnerable to radical clerics, Al-Marayati argues that the Muslim community must no longer be stigmatized and that the cooperative relationships between Muslims and the American government, particularly law enforcement, needs to be publicized.

Today, August 15, 2005, marks the 58th anniversary of India's independence from Britain. This is not an auspicious time for many in India, particularly Sikhs, who are still grieving over the Nanavati report, which named several government officials as being "very probably" involved in the massacre of over 4,000 innocent Sikhs in 1984.


Lost son : A Sikh father of men who were killed in the 1984 riots, cries during a demonstration near parliament in New Delhi as Sikhs protest against the findings of the Nanavati Commission. (AFP/Raveendran)
















A Sikh woman wipes her tear during a demonstration against Congress Party leaders implicated in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, in New Delhi, India, Friday, Aug. 12, 2005. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday apologized for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and stated that his government was committed to further probe into charges against all those implicated by the Nanavati report. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Henry Weinstein of the Los Angeles Times argues convincingly that U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts' "biggest impact on the high court could come in cases on wartime executive authority -- not a right to abortion." Even though "[t]here is no more important issue on the court's docket over the next few years than this one," it "has received little attention so far in the debate over Roberts' nomination."

The article points to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in which Roberts joined, holding that, in the words of Weinstein, 1) the administration may "use military tribunals to try those labeled 'enemy combatants' at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," and 2) "those combatants had no right in U.S. courts to enforce provisions of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war."

Respected Georgetown Law Professor Neal K. Katyal, an attorney for Osama bin Laden's alleged bodyguard and driver, notes "No decision, by any court in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has gone this far" in respect of governmental authority in times of war.

Given the importance of the constitutional question and the consequences that a Supreme Court case may have on the war on terror and the rights of individuals, some have argued that senators should ask Judge Roberts about the issue. For example, a group of over 100 law professors and other legal scholars signed a letter urging senators to ask Judge Roberts ten questions, one of which is:

In Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of evacuating Japanese-American citizens on the West Coast from their homes during World War II. What lessons do you believe the Court should draw from Korematsu and the World War II experience?

Law professor Eric Muller, however, thinks that asking Judge Roberts about Korematsu would be a waste of time because the decision is almost universally recognized as one of the worst in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, professor Muller suggests that senators should ask the following question:

When the United States was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy in 1942, the Army imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew along the West Coast for U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, but no curfew anywhere in the United States for U.S. citizens of German or Italian ancestry. In Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), a unanimous Supreme Court held that the curfew did not violate the due process rights of the affected Americans.

Was Hirabayashi correctly decided?

The Associated Press offers this interesting article on the difficulties that the British government and police are having in balancing national security and civil liberties. The article artfully addresses the parallels between the British struggle with this balance and the American experiences fighting terrorism and protecting individual rights after 9/11.

In the same way that police and other authorities were granted more expansive powers after 9/11 to fight terrorism, certain proposals in Britain are calling into question whether individual rights are being sacrificed in the name of fighting potentail suicide bombers. These proposed British initiatives include:

Britain's police argue that authorities should be allowed to hold suspects without charge for as long as three months — rather than the two weeks now allowed under terrorism laws — because the global phenomenon requires time and expertise to combat.

Police also want a new law making it a crime to withhold information on computer encryption and the right to suppress what was described as inappropriate Internet usage.

Knight Ridder columnist Gaiutra Bahadur addresses "why experts say second-generation Muslims here are unlikely recruits for terrorist organizations."

Bahadur writes while observing a summer camp for mainly Muslim and Arab children. He argues that such camps are "part of a multicultural mechanism that allows Muslims here to strike a compromise between two worlds, even in the midst of a post-Sept. 11 backlash that has made that compromise harder." According to Bahadur, the camp attendees "mirror the Muslim population in the United States: They come from middle-class, suburban families who do not live sealed off in ethnic enclaves."

This setting is different from that facing Muslims in Europe. Bahadur notes, "The descendants of Muslim immigrants in Europe... continue to live in ghettos isolated by poverty, language, religion or national origin. " However, "American Muslims are better educated and wealthier than Americans as a whole."

Bahadur continues:

It's also much easier for residents of an enclave to feel they or their communities don't have a stake--or have been denied a stake--in their adopted country. That kind of alienation exists to a lesser degree among second-generation Muslims in the United States....

Finally, Bahadur states that pluralism is a cherished social value in the Unites States, whereas, for example, in France "Muslim girls can't wear a traditional head scarf at public schools. In the Netherlands, Moroccans are barred from nightclubs."

I am pleased to welcome into the fold three new contributors to the DNSI Blog.

First, we will be cross-blogging with ENSAAF, an organization whose mission is to "fight[] impunity for human rights violations committed in India. " ENSAAF is an authority on the human rights abuses carried out during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India. As DNSI is interested in international and historical contexts in which minority communities are subjected to mistreatment during national crises, DNSI will benefit greatly from ENSAAF's knowledge of the 1984 pograms.

We will cross-post entries by ENSAAF's bloggers, Jaskaran Kaur and Vanessa Pon. According to ENSAAF, Jaskaran:

has authored several seminal reports on human rights abuses in India, including Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India, and, as a contributing author, Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, analyzing over 600 cases of extrajudicial execution and disappearance by Punjab's security forces. From 2003 to 2005, Kaur was the recipient of the Irving R. Kaufman Fellowship from Harvard Law School. In 2001, she went to Punjab on a Harvard Human Rights Summer Fellowship to study the role of the judiciary in handling habeas corpus petitions filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court by families of the disappeared; her study was published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Kaur graduated with distinction from Yale College in 2000 and Harvard Law School in 2003.

And Vanessa is a:

student at UC Berkeley. Her majors are Economics and Political Economy of Industrial Societies. She is currently interning for ENSAAF and works on ENSAAF’s blog and newsletter.

Please also welcome Tracy Wells, a research associate at Harvard's Pluralism Project. Tracy has already been an invaluable resource to the blog. We look forward to her commentary. According to the Pluralism Project:

Tracy works with our Religious Diversity News, searching for articles to include and entering the international articles into the databse. She is also continuing research on interfaith organizations, which began in her first year at the project (2003) with a survey of interfaith groups in Boston, available in the online version of World Religions in Boston. Originally from Lexington, South Carolina, she earned a B.A. in English and religion from Furman University and conducted student affiliate research mapping religious diversity in South Carolina in the summer of 2003. She is currently a third year M.T.S. student at Harvard Divinity School, where she is a participant in the Program in Religion and Secondary Education.

In addition to posts from Jaskaran, Vanessa, and Tracy, the DNSI blog will feature entries from Valarie Kaur, and myself, Dave Sidhu. Valarie's entries will be cross-posts from her journal, "Into the Whirlwind."

The full text of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech to the upper house of parliament regarding the Nanavati Commission's findings on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots can be found here. Selected excerpts are reprinted below:

Mr. Chairman, sir, I must confess to you, at the very outset, that speaking on this occasion has meant a great emotional strain for me." [The death of Indira Gandhi was tragic.] What happened subsequently was equally shameful.

I have no hesitation in apologising not only to the Sikh community but the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood and what enshrined in our constitution. So, I am not standing on any false prestige. On behalf of our Government, on behalf of the entire people of this country, I bow my head in shame that such thing took place.

During the British times, it was the brave Sikh community, which developed the canal colonies of the erstwhile united Punjab which made Punjab the granary of India. With Partition the Sikhs suffered the grievous loss. Our community was divided into two parts. All of them were forced to migrate to this part of the Punjab; and I know hundreds of cases where people came to India with their clothes.... they converted that adversity into an opportunity to reconstruct, to rebuild their lives and rebuilt the life of our nation. And, we all know how a very deficit, poor, east Punjab state, once again emerged on the screen of India as a number one state in terms of per-capita income, as the state known for the start of the green revolution in our country.

I have interacted with hundreds and hundreds of Sikh young men who doubted, at that time, whether they had a place in building a prosperous united Indian nation. I went abroad and several young Sikh people -- students and teachers -- used to come to me with the same questions.

The Sikh community has regained its self-confidence.... Let us help the Sikh community to get out of that trauma of 1984.

The report is before us, and one thing it conclusively states is that there is no evidence, whatsoever, against the top leadership of the Congress party. That lie, which has over the last 21 years been used to poison the minds of the Sikh youth, stands nailed conclusively. There are, of course, individuals mentioned. The commission has not come forward with conclusive conclusions. These are in the realm of probabilities. [W]hosoever figures in the Nanavati Report -- and the commission has in its wisdom found it necessary to draw an adverse inference about their conduct or behaviour -- we will reopen those cases.

So, that commitment I have given..... within the ambit of law, whatever action we can take, we will reopen those cases also if the law of the land permits that.

[W]e are dealing with the past, the present and the future of a very brave community which has bold traditions, which has been a part of our national mainstream, which has contributed far above its proportionate share in our population, in the national freedom struggle, which has contributed, admirably, to the processes of social and economic development in our country, which have, as a result, made Punjab one of the most prosperous States of our country.

One of the most interesting topics of discussion following the terrorist bombings in London is whether multiculturalism poses a threat to British security, given the argument that the homegrown terrorism witnessed on 7/7 was a product of Muslim kids who were not sufficiently integrated into British society and were thus vulnerable to the preachings of Islamic radicals [see, previous posts here, here, and here].

For example, some contend that "multiculturalism is no longer the way forward and we must pursue integration in the UK."), while others counter that there was "no contradiction" between having a multicultural society and achieving integration.

The results of a new poll, conducted for the BBC, indicate that

• 62 percent of the general public and 87 percent of British Muslims surveyed had favorable views of multiculturalism
• one-third of the general public felt multiculturalism to be a threat
• 54 percent agreed that "parts of the country don't feel like Britain any more because of immigration

The Boston Globe contains this excellent article on the backlash after the London bombings. The article begins by discussing the experiences of Muslim community activist Muhammad Abul Kalam, who posted fliers with his number across London a day after the bombings, warning Muslims of an impending backlash. In return for his kindness, he received this text message:

'Muslim bastard... get out of the UK you Islamic parasite. You devil worshipers are killing people all over the world. Islam is pure evil!

Kalam says that the moderate Muslims in Britain "are being held collectively responsible for the murderous extremism of a few." The article continues with other examples of how the world has changed for some in Britain:

• Women have told of bus drivers refusing to let them on board unless they remove their hijabs, or head scarves
  
• Nearly every young Muslim has a story of dirty looks or words being thrown their way on buses and trains, of being stopped and searched, just because of the way they look, a practice which police have unabashedly explained is targeting people who fit the profile of attackers or those who might help them.
  
• Outside a mosque in Balham, South London, an old man sheepishly admitted that he had shaved his white beard and that he no longer wears a cap, thinking it will steer racists clear of him.
  
• Some young Sikh men, whose appearance leads some to mistake them for Muslims, have taken to wearing T-shirts that say, ''Don't Freak, I'm a Sikh."
  

Kalam contends that the Muslim community "isolated ourselves. My generation is changing that.... We are British, but we are also Muslim."

The Financial Times is reporting that "The first detailed study into hate crime against ethnic minorities was launched yesterday amid rising tensions caused by the London bomb attacks."

The research will be conducted by Victim Support, an organization that describes itself as an "independent charity which helps people cope with the effects of crime" and that "also works to promote and advance the rights of victims and witnesses." Peter Dunn, of Victim Support, said:

Hate crime has a destructive effect not just on victims but on whole communities. The government and the statutory services have begun to recognise it as a phenomenon but little is known about how individual victims are affected.

Part of DNSI's mandate is to study historical and international contexts that implicate the tension between equality and national order. With this in mind, we're commenting on the release of the Nanavati Commission report, which discusses the government's involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. (The riots took place after two Sikhs assassinated then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, on October 31, 1984, in retaliation for the military invasion of the Sikh's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple.) Over 4,000 Sikhs died in the riots. Not one killer has been prosecuted.

The report indicted several prominent leaders, including Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, yet exonerated then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Specifically, the report noted that there was "credible evidence" Tytler, a minister, was "very probably" involved in the incitement of the riots.

The government of India indicated that it was not in a position to prosecute anyone based on mere probabilities. However, Tytler resigned, as has Kumar. Tytler maintains his innocence, explaining that his resignation was tendered to save the party from further embarassment, not as a sign of moral culpability. Tytler also argues that he is a victim of a political conspiracy, rather than a legitimate player in the heinous killings of innocent Sikhs.

There appears to be direct evidence, though, of Tytler's material involvement in the riots:

Jasbir, who is in hiding, told Newsline he was willing to repeat that he saw Tytler goading a mob to go for the kill even if it costs him his life. His 2000 affidavit helped provide the panel “credible evidence” against the leader.

“I can die but will always say this. For 18 of my family died and Tytler’s hands are coloured in their blood...” said Jasbir who had shaved off his hair to escape detection.

Recalling the events of November 3, 1984, he said: “I was standing outside the Rajan Babu TB hospital in Kingsway Camp when I noticed Tytler come out of his car and chide a small group of people. He was provoking them to go and kill more people rather than putting them to shame,” Jasbir said.

How a high-ranking government official, in a democracy, can engage in this intentional incitement of violence against a religious minority group is appalling. Worse is his insistence still that he is the victim. His resignation should have been offered in shame, not, it appears, in defiance of the truth.

As for the victims themselves -- those killed, those close to those murdered, and to some extent the Sikh community in general -- it appears that justice has, again, eluded them. To his credit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, has assured the people and the parliament that "wherever the Commission has named any specific individuals as needing further examination or specific cases needing re-opening and re-examination, the Government will take all possible steps to do so within the ambit of law."

Dr Singh, who undoubtedly is in a difficult position being both a Sikh and a Congress party Prime Minister, will hopefully see that his "solemn promise" is kept, that those responsible will be prosecuted even if they occupy or occupied positions in the government or the party in particular. An editorial in an Indian newspaper noted:

"[Justice] cannot be tossed aside, as some apologists have suggested, by the passage of time. Getting away with murder... undermines the quality of our democracy. That is why this chance of a second shot at justice in the 1984 carnage should be seized with both hands. As a nation, we cannot afford to go wrong on it again."

In the meantime, it appears as if the emotional Sikh protesters who understandably desire -- and deserve -- more immediate justice are themselves being subject to cruel treatment reminscent of the days of the 1950's and 1960's civil rights movement in the United States, in which African-American protesers were hosed down with powerful gusts of water and beaten with riot sticks:
































For some, the absence of justice is painful enough:

















For more information on the riots and the Nanavati report, visit ENSAAF's web site and blog.

Edward Epstein of the San Francisco Chronicle offers this excellent overview of various argumetns for and against racial profiling after 9/11. Epstein's discussion covers theories that aren't normally mentioned in most press accounts regarding racial profling. Because of the novelty of these arguments, we include some of them here:

Law Professor John Banzhaf compares racial profiling to race-conscious admissions: "A very compelling argument can be made that the government's interest in protecting the lives, safety and health of thousands of its citizens from another major terrorist attack similar to those carried out in New York, London and other cities ... is at least as 'compelling' as a racially diverse student body."

Law Professor John Yoo contends that "racial profiling would be advisable under specific circumstances, such as when police have a description of a suspected suicide bomber's race or ethnicity. 'But without that, I'm not sure it makes sense,' said Yoo.

Instead of race, Yoo says "a better profile for suspected terrorists might be of young men in general, pointing to the Sept. 11 and London bombers and terrorists of other races like Reid and McVeigh."

The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff would dismiss both arguments, so it seems: "I think we want to focus on behavior. It's behavior which is the best test of someone's intentions. ... We want to focus on behavior and not prejudice."

With the knowledge that the 7/7 bombers were "homegrown" terrorists, the ability of the Muslim community to successfully become part of mainstream British/Western society is being questioned, while on the other hand the need for Muslims in Britain and elsewhere to abandon their cultural ties, religious traditions, and other customs is also being challenged. In other words, the questions has become whether integration to a particular point is now required for social safety and whether multiculturalism is a liability -- not an asset -- to open democracies [see previous post].

Indeed, Trevor Phillips of the Commission for Racial Equality was reported as saying that "multiculturalism is no longer the way forward and we must pursue integration in the UK." Echoing these sentiments, Tory leader David Davis reportedly argued that "multiculturalism allowed people of different religions and cultures to live together without expecting them to integrate – which was wrong." Davis additionally stated that that multiculturalism was "outdated."

The integration vs. multiculturalism question is most difficult for British Muslims themselves, who are now suffering from an identity crisis - e.g., are they sufficiently British given the extra scrutiny they will endure after 7/7, to what extent can they be Muslim without generating this heightened attention, and what allegiance does a British Muslim have to other Muslims who have resorted to, or are interested in using, terrorism as a means of addressing some grievance?
Maruf Khwaja, for example, writes that the issue has been framed as to "whether religious or national identity should take precedence in the Muslim’s acute sense of awareness." Complicating matters, according to Khwaja, is that "Islam is not an easy faith to practice.... It is also a very 'public' or demonstrative religion, and both its divisions and contradictions are in the open." In addition, Muslims in Western society are already"faced with the challenge of preserving some sort of identity against the combined impact of powerful inherited cultures and a hedonism-driven media."

To Khwaja, this self-examination is easier in the West because it "can only be undertaken in places where rational debate is protected from death threats." For this particular author, the West provides an environment in which the individual Muslim mind, especially one of a Muslim youth, can establish a fine balance between adhering to the faith and being "secular." Khwaja himself notes that, after going to America, "I rearranged my mental universe, abandoned all the schools I was born into and indoctrinated with, and went all by myself happy and free into the land of the infidel."

This individual story suggests that integration and multiculturalism aren't inconsistent concepts. This thought was repeated by the The Muslim Council of Britain, which argued that there was "no contradiction" between having a multicultural society and achieving integration.

The debate surrounding identity in the context of the integration vs. multiculturalism has now turned to a question of labeling, specifically whether hyphenated titles such as Indian-American or Italian-American should be used in Britain. Joseph Harker, a columnist for the Guardian (UK), thinks such titles are a negative thing: "Across the Atlantic, the double identities of the various minorities are a measure of their exclusion from society, not of their integration into it." Harker also argues that it is inconsistent for Muslims and Asians in Britain to want hyphenated names (and thus to be identified differently), but for these same people to complain when they are treated differently (i.e., during the 7/7 backlash). Apparently, however, some Muslims are criticizing the idea as well: Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum said, “What is being proposed is divisive … it would create a lower strata of British."

There has been extensive coverage of the backlash following the bombings in London, and of the reaction from the government and members of the Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and Asian communities in Britain and elsewhere. Unfortunately, we have been unable to post or comment on all of the articles that we came across on this subject. However, these articles deserve to be distributed and talked about. In an effort to render our coverage of the 7/7 backlash and resulting debate more thorough, we are posting articles we previously overlooked.

We'd like to draw particular attention to the articles on the racial attack on 7/7 victim's family (who is Muslim).

Incidents

• Bombing Victim's Family Targeted in Race Hate Crime: The family of one of the London bombing dead has become the latest victim of the racial abuse backlash against muslims which is sweeping the country.
• Muslim abuse victim's anger at backlash: [same family as above]
• 7/7 'revenge' attack on disabled Asian: Backlash against the July 7 bombings here is taking on racial dimensions with a disabled Hindu man attacked and called Al Qaeda, an Asian human rights campaigner has said.
• Attack on Hindu Temple Blamed on Bombings Backlash: Vandals and fly-tippers have driven worshippers out of a Hindu temple in Edmonton.... Hindu priest Bandit Krishnatreya, 79, fears they are the victims of a backlash against minorities in the wake of the terror attacks on London.
• Asian Mother and Daughters Attacked in Essex: the 30-year-old was and her children were kicked, spat at and taunted about the terrorist attacks in London.

Profiling and Other Security Measures

• Profiling Debate Heats Up in London: "I don't want people to stare at me any more," he said of his change of habit, adding that he had no particular religious affiliations."
• Transit Attacks Revive Targeted Profiling Debate: In a country that has proclaimed from its inception that all men are created equal, many Americans find the notion of targeted racial profiling disturbing. In most cases, it's also illegal.
• Faith Groups Oppose Plans for Government ID Cards in the UK: Mounting concerns over the government's plans to introduce compulsory ID cards were given fresh impetus yesterday after it emerged that Britain's major religions oppose the scheme.
• Head of Australian Muslim Organization Wants Required Registration for Clerics: THE head of Australia's peak Islamic body wants Muslim clerics to undergo a registration process similar to marriage celebrants

Condemnation & Outreach

• U.S. Muslims Reach Out to Youth, Educate Against Terror: Alarmed by the London subway bombings, US Muslim activists have produced a pamphlet on how to spot "susceptible youth" and are taking steps to prevent young people in the US from embracing extremist views.
• Australian PM Hosts Anti-Terrorism Summit with Muslims: Prime Minister John Howard is to host an anti-terrorism summit with Muslim leaders to find ways to confront religious figures and others who preach fear and violence.
• Backlash Fear Helpline Set Up at Scotland Yard: A 24-hour advice line to help minority groups who fear a backlash after the London bomb attacks has been set up at Scotland Yard.
• CAIR-SC Condemns London Bombings: As a Muslim, I am outraged as well as sad to see those committing this heinous crime in the name of Islam. They not only are destroying innocent lives, but also are betraying the values of the faith they claim to represent.
• Muslim leaders call bombers `criminals': Prompted by the terrorist bombings in London that killed dozens last month, a group of Bay Area Muslim leaders Tuesday read aloud a fatwa, or religious ruling, at a San Jose mosque calling the attackers ``criminals'' who violate the letter and spirit of Islam.

[Thanks to Tracy Wells of the Pluralism Project for bringing these materials to our attention]

WTOP NEWS is reporting that "A Muslim woman who is eight and a half months pregnant was allegedly harassed Tuesday morning," in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. Specifically, according to a local police officer, "the 23-year-old woman told officers she was walking... when three white men in a pickup truck drove by shouting anti-Muslim epithets at her." The woman was wearing a head-scarf. "The truck reportedly circled back around and one of the men got out and shouted at her while grasping her shoulders."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants the FBI and local police to treat this as a hate crime.

According to CAIR, "the men shouted, 'You terrorist b- tch, go back to your country...You n-gger b-tch... We're going to kick your a-s. . . you're nothing.'"

Columnist Vanessa Gezari writes of her recent experiences in London, generally observing that "Last month's terrorist attacks have left the British wondering about their routines and beliefs, and what the future holds for their country."

Gezari speaks of her friend "Anjali, who is 31 and half Indian." According to Gezari, Anjali "told her mother that if she saw a South Asian man with a backpack on the bus, she would sit next to him in a personal rebellion against the divisive effects of the bombings."

Gezari also provides us with insight into how the lives of South Asian men have changed after 7/7:

A man recently told a TV reporter that he had bought a bicycle, not so much because he feared an attack, but because he didn't like eyeing his fellow passengers with suspicion....

On the subway these days, Ats and other South Asian men play a silent game. "We look and just sort of smile, like, "You're wearing a backpack, are you a bomber? No, I'm not,' " Ats says.

"We're seen by everyone as potential threats, and we see each other as potential threats as well.... It was the worst nightmare come true that those guys were British-born," he says. "We wanted them to be foreigners."

Recently, we introduced you to "Into the Whirlwind," the blog of DNSI co-director Valarie Kaur. As previously noted, Valarie spent four months after 9/11 interviewing victims of hate crimes and discrimination from around the nation. This summer, Valarie is retracing her steps, interviewing these same and other victims.

Valarie's latest post recounts her meeting with Balbir Singh Sodhi's family. As Valarie painfully reminds us:

On September 15, 2001, BALBIR SINGH SODHI [pictured]was standing in front of his gas station, preparing to plant flowers. A man in a black truck pulled around the corner and shot him five times. Balbir, 52 years old, was the first person to be killed in a post-9/11 hate crime. When arrested, the man yelled, “I am a patriot. Arrest me and let those terrorists run wild.”

Valarie met with several of Mr. Sodhi's family members, including his widow. This post is a must-read for anyone interested in the backlash after 9/11.

Donald Hubin, a professor at Ohio State University, offers this response to the argument that it makes more sense to profile a Muslim or Arab man rather than subject an old white woman to heightened security measures. For example, Rich Lowry, argued that "a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach should [not] receive the same level of scrutiny as a Muslim from Jersey City." Similarly, Ian Johnston, chief constable of the British Transport Police said his force "should not waste time searching old white ladies."

Professor Hubin counters:

It's hard to argue with the logic that we're more threatened by a young Arab man than a 67-year-old grandmother. [However,] The average young Arab is not going to do us harm. Once they know you're giving white-haired grannies a pass, hey'll find and recruit grannies.

The Washington Post's Colbert I. King offers another convincing critique of conservative commentators who argue that racial profiling should be used as an anti-terror security mechanism in light of the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks.

King argues principally that it is hypocritical for conservatives to support racial profiling when they are generally opposed to racial preferences. For example, conservatives are against race-conscious admissions programs.

In the course of his discussion, King also points out that even if conservatives were consistent in their approach to racial classifications, developing a coherent and reliable profile would be extremely difficult:

Under racial profiling, as they would have it practiced in subways, airports, train stations, etc., individual differences among North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian young men would be ignored. These people would be labeled and profiled as possible terrorists and be reduced to an amalgamated stew closely watched by the state....

Who among us, for example, can distinguish a Muslim man from a non-Muslim man? A Saudi from a Salvadoran? A dark-brown-skinned Jamaican from a dark-brown-skinned Washingtonian? A heavy coat-wearing, backpack-toting, suicide bomber, quietly reciting religious verse, from the over-cloaked, muttering, bag-laden homeless man who takes off running at the sight of a cop?

King concludes by hypothesizing why conservatives can rally in support of racial profiling despite their views on the race in society and the clear mandates of the Constitution:

How can they, of all people, argue that the government, in the name of fighting terrorism, should judge individuals differently on account of their national origin, ethnicity, religion or race? Is it because they know it won't be their ox that gets gored?

The shooting death of a Brazilian man who was thought to be of "South Asian origin" should itself indicate that profiling may have very dangerous and unfortunate consequences. In addition, Britain's Daily Mirror is reporting on the minority communities subjected to hate crimes: "Suresh Grover, of The Monitoring Group which studies race attacks, said: 'We have had calls from South Americans, Eastern Europeans, Hindus and Sikhs'" -- clearly not just Muslims, Arabs, or South Asians.

In a press release, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced that the Department of Justice, FBI and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department all contributed to the arrest of Max L. Oakley, who "allegedly sent e-mailed threats claiming that he would bomb CAIR's Washington, D.C., office and American mosques unless the civil rights and advocacy group made a public announcement that it was ceasing operations."

A CAIR spokesman noted, "This arrest will send a clear message to Islamophobic bigots that intimidation of American Muslims and threats against their institutions will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted vigorously."

About 150 Muslim-Americans gathered at the Connecticut state capitol on Friday to voice their objections to terrorism and particularly to Muslim extemists. In what is becoming a more familiar sight after the 7/7 attacks, Muslims themselves are speaking out against terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism:

Saud Anwar, president of the Connecticut chapter of the Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee, said "Today we all come together to make a statement.... Terrorists are our enemies as much as they are anyone else's."

On NPR: "Following the recent London transit bombings, commentator Siddhartha Mitter notes that some targets of the harshest anti-Muslim attacks have no connection to Islam. Mitter is a Boston-based independent writer on politics and culture."

To listen to the audio segment, please click here.

[Thanks to Amardeep Singh]

"Professor Zaki Badawi, head of the Muslim College in London and chairman of the Council of Mosques and Imams, wrote:

In the present tense situation, with the rise of attacks on Muslims, we advise Muslim women who fear being attacked physically or verbally to remove their hijab so as not to be identified by those who are hostile to Muslims.

This suggestion serves as further evidence that the cost of maintaining a more identifiable religious identity is greater and greater.

The rise in hate crimes in England after the 7/7 bombings and the failed 7/21 attacks is known and documented. The Associated Press has provided an example of the increased tension and intolerance in London by running a story on Ahmed Ali, a Somali-born Muslim who "moved to Britain nearly 13 years ago, found work as a London bus driver and became a British citizen."

Prior to 7/7, Ali "says he never suffered abuse because of his ethnic background or religion." All that has changed.

According to Ali, after the media reported that "an East African man [was] suspected of trying to blow up a London subway train," a co-worker told Ali: "Mr. Ali, he's your brother, he just looks like you. You are coming into this country, blowing yourselves up and killing people"

The article also recounted other examples and provided troubling statistics on the rise of hate-related incidents:

• In northern England's West Yorkshire region, which has a large minority of Muslims of mostly South Asian origin, police said reports of racially motivated incidents nearly doubled.
  
• There were 366 such incidents between June 30 and July 21 [in this region], compared with 195 over a similar period last year.
• Police in Edinburgh, Scotland, said a gang of 10 men attacked two South Asians on Friday, shouting racial taunts about the London bombings and throwing a hammer through their car window.

The Sikh Coalition, via SikhSangat.com, is reporting that a Sikh woman was fired from her job with a National Wholesale Liquidators store in New York, and was also told by her supervisor that she should take off her turban and that Sikhs are “thieves and nasty.”

The Coalition filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Abhi, at Sepia Mutiny, linked to this DNSI post regarding the creation of a "Beurger King Muslim" (BKM) fast food restaurant in France, and has thoughtfully advanced the following question: to what extent does BKM demonstrate the isolation of Muslim communities in the West, given that their ability to integrate into Western societies is already being challenged? Indeed, the alleged failure of Muslims to sufficiently assimilate (and thus be a member of the "mainstream") is being considered part of the reason why homegrown terrorist activity was realized in London, and why the United States is, as of yet, free from this particular brand of violence. (Of course, Timothy McVeigh and others are homegrown terrorists, but that fact has escaped the attention of many, and homegrown terrorism seemingly is defined with reference only to second-generation immigrants with particular national origins.)

Leaving aside terrorism for a brief moment, this issue is important in respect of individual identity. A difficult problem for many, if not all, second-generation youth is how to balance the cultural upbringing and traditions of the motherland (e.g., India) with the values and lifestyle of the adopted homeland (e.g., the United States). A failure to integrate may lead to isolation in American schools, the workplace, and in everyday life, whereas abandoning or ignoring the ways of immigrant parents results in a Western identity that may be without meaningful understanding of the motherland's language, traditions, etc.

One may argue that one's identity is ultimately a personal choice; that no single point on the cultural identity spectrum should or must be selected. However, in the present climate, and to return the discussion to terrorism, it now appears as if one extreme has been rendered inappropriate for Western society - a failure to integrate is not only troublesome for the individual (e.g., being the subject of social ridicule, being unfamiliar with pop culture and other Western references), but also, according to some, for the safety and welfare of that individual's country. That is, a school of thought seems to hold that a person who does not integrate is perhaps more likely to be seduced by radical thought and is less attached to the community they are about to violate, and is thus more likely to be a terrorist.

In this sense, one may wonder whether the current post-7/7 environment is, to some extent, starting to force individuals to integrate more fully and to adopt an identity that bears greater resemblence to those who have been in that home country for generations and generations. The effect on the immigrant community, then, is a greater cost for being reliable members of an ethnic minority group, by holding on to foreign customs, languages, or traditions. This is true not only in terms of continuing to observe certain traditions (e.g., keeping unshorn hair and a turban), but also associating with other members of the same minority group (e.g., in 'Little Pakistans'). A Sikh man with a turban and a group of men of "South Asian origin" may be viewed with greater suspicion than a Sikh with his hair cut and a single Indian-American man walking down Main Street, USA. (Would Americans on a plane rather sit next to a man with a turban or a clean-shaven man, or be on a plane with a single Pakistanior four of them?)

In other words, "multi-culturalism," (which implies at a minimum that a person identifies with and embraces at least parts of two cultures, and which does not demand that one part dominate the other), is being redefined by some in the world of terrorist aggression: some are insisting that the culture of the adopted home nation mute the emotive ties that one may have to one's homeland, ties that may be abused into sympathy for the identifiable (and therefore marginalized?) minority community.

In a larger context, one may additionally ponder whether this form of coercion, where there is an expectation that one assimilate to a certain degree or at least want to avoid additional suspicion, is consistent with American liberal traditions. The nation was founded by immigrants and is the melting pot of the world. The appreciation for diversity of people is generally well-recognized in American society, for example with respect to race-conscious admissions and the concept of factions articulated by James Madison. However, one amorphous group within the American mosaic (i.e., the brown) is being thought of as "safe" only because it has commingled with larger American society to some satisfactory degree - conversely, perhaps the more identifiable it is with respect to foreign customs (e.g., all Muslim women wearing burkas), the more uncomfortable some would be with their existence in America.

This leads to another related concern, which is what it truly means to be a "moderate." Some have said, convincingly, that moderate Muslims must take on a greater role in preventing radical Islamic fundamentalists from claiming religious legitimacy for their terrorist actions, from effectively recruiting young Muslims, and from ultimately carrying out terrorist acts against innocent civilians. A moderate is perhaps generally thought of as someone who believes in the faith but whose beliefs do not compel hatred against non-members of that faith and who do not use the faith as a justification for acts of hatred. However, what if a moderate is being redefined as well, to mean not just someone who believes but does not hate, but who is assimiliated, integrated, or multicultural in their identity? That is, the moderates in the United States are more likely to be Westernized, and thus they are the safe sect of the Muslim community who is now assuming a greater role in the war against radical Muslims. The universe of radicals is going overlap to a large extent with the universe of those who have sincerely held beliefs at the exclusion, to a large extent, of the adopted land's popular culture.

In short, who is "safe" is more likely to be more like "us" whereas those resistant to a more Western identity will be looked on with greater suspicion and urged to change their ways or else face the consequences. This returns us to BKM, which to some is an unwise venture because it is an indication that Muslims are taking a step back in terms of integrating and are drawing a thicker line between their culture and dietary needs and those of the general French population; indeed, the BKM business has the word "Muslim" in it! Perhaps worse than this is the compulsion, the urging by some Western political leaders that Muslims integrate to some satisfactory degree. Ideally, one should practice their faith as they see fit so long as one does not harm others. But, the cost of holding on to one's Eastern faith and customs is unfortunately greater. As a result, perhaps there is a positive aspect to BKM - it is a sign of defiance in the face of governmental expectations.

UPDATE: In today's Washington Post, Salmun Rushdie offers the following, related thoughts:

In Leeds, from which several of the London bombers came, many traditional Muslims lead inward-turned lives of near-segregation from the wider population. From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal rucksacks.

The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a move beyond tradition -- nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.

France has a new fast-food restaurant: Beurger King Muslim (BKM). The restaurant is styled after American fast-food chains (hmm, wonder which one??) and aims to attract France's young generation of Muslims:

The name is a play on both the huge American chain as well as the French slang word "beur", which means second generation North Africans living in France.

There is only one BKM currently open, however the hope is that other BKM's will pop-up across the country. The menu, expectedly, features burgers with halal meat. A "technical counselor" named Hakim explains:

We buy meat from a local supplier and it's prepared according to halal rites. And we verify the origin and content of all foods to make sure there is no alcohol or animal fat mixed in with the sauces or other ingredients.

One can only appreciate the ingenuity of the BKM concept, however one must also worry that in addition to facing the ban on conspicuous articles of faith in public schools, the Muslim proprietors who created this restaurant may also have to concern themselves with a trademark suit by, of course, Burger King.

UPDATE: Abhi, at Sepia Mutiny, linked to this post, and has thoughtfully advanced the following question: to what extent does BKM demonstrate the isolation of Muslim communities in the West.... [read more]

SECOND UPDATE: The story regarding the opening of BKM is gaining considerable steam, as, for example, The Washington Post, on Friday, August 5, 2005, picked up this Associated Press write-up.

According to Newsday (NY), the federal authorities have been targeting the 'Little Pakistan' section of Brooklyn in an attempt to round up suspicious individuals and those violating immigration laws. The article notes that as a result of this unwanted attention, many Pakistanis who did not get picked up by authorities have left the area - to other areas of the U.S., to Canada, and even back to the homeland.

As a result, 'Little Pakistan' has been functionally gutted. Grocery store owner Pervaiz Saleem says, "it's dead here.... My customers, so many of them did get interrogated, were deported or just fled. People disappeared."

Another man noted, "Women and girls in particular, given their mode of dress -- their head scarves, for example -- tell me that they feel they would be the first to be singled out for a hate crime or a deportation-type arrest. Some are actually afraid to go outside right now."

As an indication of how little things have changed since 9/11, a man admits to showing large American flags on the Fourth of July: "If we have to prove our patriotism, so be it -- we will."

The editors of the Los Angeles Times discussed the fatwa issued by "U.S. and Canadian Muslim scholars and religious leaders " in which they declared that "All acts of terrorism are haram, forbidden by Islam. It is haram, forbidden, to cooperate or associate with … any act of terrorism or violence."

According to these editors, these Muslim leaders should be praised for their efforts and that the existence of this fatwa demonstrates the fact that Muslims are more integrated in American society, which is different from the condition of Muslims in Europe, where they are more "ghettoized."

The editors suggested that the government should be more appreciative of this fatwa: "The U.S. is safer for their efforts, but the government has been curiously reticent to acknowledge and praise the anti-terror cooperation of Muslim organizations. The latest fatwa offers a new opportunity. It would be encouraging for these Muslims to hear publicly from President Bush or at least Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff on that point."

Law professor David A. Harris argues in the Washington Post:

Using race or ethnicity this way will not make us safer; it will make us less safe.

In a war against terrorism, we must train our law enforcement personnel to watch for the things that terrorists do, no matter what they may look like. The Israeli aviation security system has made this a guiding principle. Our certainty about what our enemies "look like" distracts our security forces from what's important: terrorist behavior. The result is less accuracy.

In addition, the inclusion of people who "look like" our enemies results in a huge number of false positives upon which we spend our precious time and resources.

Perhaps most important, when we focus on Muslims from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, our ability to receive intelligence from these groups will be corroded because these people will begin to fear law enforcement. And fear will cut off communication and our best source of human intelligence on potential sleeper cells in the United States.

[P]rofiling will not leave our murderous enemies with the single alternative of "recruiting elderly Norwegian women." Al Qaeda has shown itself to be smart, adaptable and cunning; it will simply use people who do not play into our stereotypes. The appearances of people from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia vary enough that these killers won't be held up for a minute.

Avoiding racial or ethnic profiling is not a matter of "assuaging the feelings of minorities" or of political correctness. It is about avoiding a tactic that would be profoundly against our own interests.

Figures from Scotland Yard indicate that:

• "Crimes motivated by religious hatred have rocketed by nearly 600% in London since the July 7 bombings
• "[T]here were 269 such incidents reported since the suicide bombings compared to only 40 in the same three-and-a-half week period last year."

Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said that "[m]ost of the incidents were low-level abuse or minor assaults but they had a great 'emotional impact' on communities...."

Reader Jaskaran Kaur, co-founder and executive director of ENSAAF, a nonprofit organization fighting impunity in India, sent us this eye-opening and thought-provoking op-ed, which she authored and which was published in the Boston Globe:

WHEN INDIAN Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets with President Bush in Washington this week on his first official visit, and the first of an Indian head of state since 9/11, he will be reaffirming a strategic partnership. Prime Minister Singh will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, and terrorism is high on the agenda. An item not likely on the agenda is India's systematic abuse of human rights in the name of counter-terrorism. Despite receiving praise as the world's largest democracy, India's human rights record falls dismally behind countries that have only recently shed their legacy of dictatorships.

From 1984-95, Indian security forces tortured, ''disappeared," killed, and illegally cremated more than 10,000 Punjabi Sikhs in counter-insurgency operations. Many perpetrators of these abuses are now championed as counter-terrorism experts. Most prominent among them is former Punjab director general of police and campaign architect K.P.S. Gill, whose policies, according to Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, ''appeared to justify any and all means, including torture and murder." Hailed as a super cop, Gill now heads an Indian counter-terrorism institute.

Four years ago, I criss-crossed Punjab and documented the impact of impunity for abuses committed by security forces. I sat on jute cots in poor farming houses talking with survivors struggling to rebuild their lives and sipped tea in the guarded mansions of judges. A senior high court judge, who addressed me as a naïve daughter, pointedly told me that fundamental rights did not exist during an insurgency.

One afternoon, I spoke with Jaswinder Singh. He was in his 20s. In 1992, Punjab police officers repeatedly subjected Jaswinder to electric shocks, stretched his legs apart at the waist until his thigh muscles ruptured, and suspended him upside down from the ceiling, while beating him with rods. Subsequently, the police ''disappeared" his brother, father, and grandfather. Jaswinder unsuccessfully pursued his family's disappearance to the Supreme Court. But he had no time for grief; the loss of his family's breadwinners meant he had to support the survivors, despite continued police harassment.

A flickering hope of justice remains for survivors of the counter-insurgency abuses. Since December 1996, the Committee for Information and Initiative in Punjab has struggled before the Indian National Human Rights Commission in a landmark lawsuit addressing police abductions that led to mass cremations, including those of Jaswinder's family. The commission, acting as a body of the Indian Supreme Court, has the authority to remedy violations of fundamental rights in this historic case of mass crimes. Its decisions will serve as precedent for victims of state-sponsored abuses throughout India. The commission has received over 3,500 claims from Amritsar alone, one of 17 districts in Punjab.

During the past eight years, however, the commission has not heard testimony from a single survivor. Guatemala's Historical Clarification Commission registered 42,275 victims in 18 months. El Salvador's Commission on the Truth collected information on 22,000 victims in eight months. The Indian Commission, however, has kept survivors running in circles, limiting its inquiry to one of 17 districts in Punjab.

A few weeks ago, the commission drastically narrowed its mandate, stating its plan to resolve the case by determining only whether police had properly cremated victims -- not whether the police had wrongfully killed them in the first place. With this move, the commission rejected the victims' right to life and endorsed the Indian government's position that life is expendable during times of insurgency.

India's counter-terrorism practices have left a legacy of broken families, rampant police abuse, and a judicial system unwilling to enforce fundamental rights. As India ignores its past, it continues to employ the same Draconian measures in places such as Kashmir. While Prime Minister Singh extols India as a leading democracy, the international community must weigh the devastation and insecurity wrought by a national security policy based on systematic human rights abuses and impunity.

In 1997, Ajaib Singh committed suicide after the Punjab police tortured and disappeared his son and justice failed him. His suicide note read: ''Self-annihilation is the only way out of a tyranny that leaves no chance for justice." If India fails to address its own mass atrocities, this should raise serious questions about its role as a partner in the ''war on terror."

Sikh barrister Navtej Ahluwalia offers this account of a recent encounter with British police:

On Wednesday of last week I had to get a 7.25am train to Nottingham for a court case. I ran for the train, but was stopped at the barrier and told that I wasn’t able to board without a ticket.

I protested, saying that every time I’d taken that train I’d bought a ticket on the train.

They told me it wasn’t possible and gave me a blank look. So I ran downstairs, bought a ticket and ran back on to the train again. Once I’d sat down, two station managers came up to me and said they wanted me to get off the train.

They alleged I’d pushed a member of staff at the ticket barrier. This was untrue, so at first I refused their request. They replied that they were not going to let me travel.

I got off the train. Then the police came up to me and said they required me to submit to a search under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

I told them this was ridiculous, that I was a barrister travelling to Nottingham for a court case. They replied that in the “current climate” they regarded my behaviour as suspicious.

I asked them what their basis was for saying that, given that my behaviour wasn’t anything other than that of a person getting on a train. They replied that they remained of the view that my actions were suspicious.

Eventually I told them that I didn’t accept they had grounds to search me under the Terrorism Act, but I wouldn’t stop them looking in my bags. All this was happening on the platform and everyone around me was looking.

Of course, they found nothing.

I felt humiliated. I wear a turban and I’m quite evidently a Sikh. I told them my name and the officers went away to check who I was on the radio. I eventually got to court late and the case had to be put back.

On the way back to London I just didn’t want to get on the train at all. I’ve noticed there’s an open hostility among members of the public at the moment, that they’re watching me carefully.

It’s very unpleasant. I’m driving everywhere I go now.

The New York Times offers this interesting analysis of the backpack, which the author describes as an 'accessory to murder' and an invitation to extra scrutiny.

The article asks perhaps the more poignant question, what is the real catalyst for the scrutiny - the backpack itself or the color of the wearer's skin? An "olive-skinned" man wonders, "I don't know if it's the size of the pack, or the color of my skin, but I do notice, when the SWAT teams are out, they're looking at me."

As if the subject of Islam in Britain wasn't already a hot topic, The Washington Times has picked up a story regarding the right of a Muslim girl to wear religious attire in school. A British appellate court ruled that the girl should be allowed to wear the jilbab, but the "British government will support an appeal of a ruling that a high school's ban on certain Muslim attire violates human rights."

In fact, "Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said is was unfair to force schools to become human rights experts." Isn't that something - the schools should teach human rights to students, but not practice basic religious tolerance. Who knew one had to be an expert in human decency in order to allow a girl to wear religious clothing.

The shoot-to-kill policy has been the subject of considerable discussion after the killing of a man of "South Asian origin" who fled from British police and was later found to be an innocent Brazillian electrician.

The pro-policy arguments include the claims that, practically speaking, a suicide bomber cannot be "disabled and prevented from triggering the device, other than by shots to the head," and that such drastic measures are, in any case, justified because of the unusual times in which the British find themselves - in a state of war. As a British politician stated, "The new terrorist threat requires new responses."

With respect to the first justification, some may contend that the more humane use of the taser should be used in most circumstances so as to avoid the unnecessary killing of innocent people - the danger of over-inclusive police measures (profiling?) is minimized. On the other hand, respected police commissioner Sir Ian Blair stated that "a Taser could actually set off a [suicide] device."

While dealing with suicide bombers is not something Americans, or more correctly American authorities, have had to deal with, Americans are familiar with the second justification, both in terms of the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act and the suspension of the writ of habeas (see, All the Laws but One : Civil Liberties in Wartime), for example. At least one American publication has weighed in on the particular subject of the shoot-to-kill policy, which Americans may unfortunately have to grapple with: the editors of the Daily Reporter-Herald (Colorado) argue, "a civilized society cannot assume a foreign-looking man in a bulky coat is a terrorist and shoot first and ask questions later."

Anni Shamim has written this very insightful op-ed that appears in the New York Daily News. She argues, in part, "Let's take it to where all Muslims condemn violence all the time, without the "yes-but" syndrome that seems to have so many of us by the throat. Yes, killing is bad, we've elevated ourselves to say, but we do it because ... Let's have none of that."

On July 15, Republican congressman Tom Tancredo was asked on a radio show how the United States might respond to a nuclear strike by Islamic terrorists. His reply was, "You could take out their holy sites." The host sought clarification, "You're talking about bombing Mecca?" Rep. Tancredo answered, "Yeah."

Rep. Tancredo has since apologized, but some are demanding that the congressman leave office.

"U.K. Home Office Minister Hazel Blears is to meet Muslims leaders across the U.K. to discuss how to tackle religious extremism and terrorism, in the wake of bomb attacks on London that killed at least 52 people.

``Muslim leaders recognize that it isn't enough just to condemn the bombings but that they must also act with us to tackle extremism,'' Blears said.

The question for some is if Muslims have sufficiently condemned the attacks, let alone taken affirmative steps to work with the British police and others to stop Muslim extremism from spreading.