Al Mayadeen – August 21, 2024
Resistance's 'painful' response delayed for planning: Sayyed al-Houthi
The leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement confirms ongoing support for the Gaza Strip as the Israeli war of genocide continues, vowing that the Axis' response is inevitable and will be painful.
The Israeli occupation has been carrying out the crime of the century against the people of the Gaza Strip for 321 days now, confirmed the leader of the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, stressing that this Israeli crime is being committed in partnership with the United States and with Western support.
In his speech today, Thursday, regarding the developments of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and regional developments, Sayyed al-Houthi said that [shouldering] responsibility and [upholding the] religious and moral duty incumbent on all Muslims, in a way that lives up to the utmost injustice the Palestinian people are subjected to, coupled with failure to take action, “is a serious matter."
He stressed that religious scholars and enlightened people are the ones mostly responsible for opening the eyes of the nation and raising its awareness regarding the dangers of failing to support the Palestinian people.
Defending Gaza and the al-Aqsa Mosque is a sacred duty incumbent on all Muslims, according to Sayyed al-Houthi, who affirmed that some are slackening in this respect while others are being complicit.
Sayyed Al-Houthi further stressed that "failure to support the Palestinian people is a danger to the Arab and Islamic peoples and an opportunity for the enemies," hailing the decision of the Colombian President to ban the export of coal to the occupation entity in support of Gaza, while "we see Arab regimes pursuing exports to the enemy."
He added, in the context of the stances of Arab regimes from the aggression on Gaza, that some of them have gone as far as punishing with imprisonment, fines, torture, and sometimes exile whosoever sympathizes with the Palestinian people and their freedom fighters.
Sayyed al-Houthi stressed that "it is inappropriate for the Islamic and Arab arena to be devoid of popular solidarity with the Palestinian people, while interaction continues in non-Islamic countries."
Support fronts for Gaza
Regarding the developments in occupied Palestine, Sayyed Al-Houthi touched on the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the US Congress last month, noting that it was not about him receiving a warm welcome and standing ovations for his crimes but rather about him returning with more military and political support to take his crimes to the next level.
The leader of the Ansar Allah movement described the martyrdom operation in Tel Aviv and reintroducing such operations as a successful step “that holds utmost importance."
On the support fronts for Gaza, Sayyed al-Houthi stressed that they are "ongoing" and "effective", especially the southern Lebanese front, where the Israelis are awaiting Hezbollah's inevitable response to the assassination of Commander Sayyed Fouad Shokor.
Expanding on the Lebanese front, the Yemeni Resistance leader called Hezbollah’s operations ongoing and “flaming”, which is evident in the great human losses and impact on the Israeli occupation.
On Iran, Sayyed al-Houthi recalled how the Israeli occupation is anticipating the Iranian response to the assassination of the great Islamic leader, the martyred Resistance fighter Ismail Haniyeh, which he said “will be painful and of huge impact," affirming that "planning for such a response is one of the reasons for the delay."
Manifest honorable Yemeni stance
The leader of the Ansar Allah movement announced that Yemen’s front in support of Gaza and its Resistance carried out several operations during the past week using 21 ballistic missiles and USVs, adding that the number of ships targeted whether for their connection to the occupation or for violating the embargo decision reached 182 since the Yemeni operations were launched.
Sayyed al-Houthi stressed that this week's operations came despite the fact that the American-British aggression launched 5 raids on the Hodeidah Governorate.
He added that the number of mobilization and training recruits exceeded 432 thousand, hoping "that there will be a higher turnout."
The number of military parades, military marches, and maneuvers amounted to 2292, the Yemeni Resistance leader highlighted.
Sayyed al-Houthi affirmed that the weekly marches and rallies held in support of Gaza will continue in the capital Sanaa, as well as in different Yemeni governorates and countrysides, regardless of the circumstances and weather conditions.
In this context, he called on the Yemeni people to hold million-man marches tomorrow, Friday, across Yemen.
Sayyed al-Houthi concluded his speech by saying, "The stance of our beloved people is one of honor and valor, and it will be remembered by the coming generations as such; never stained with the shame of failure, as is the case with many peoples and regimes."
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/resistance-s--painful--response-delayed-for-planning--sayyed
Ukraine war cements decline of the West
Conflicted Western leaders have encouraged and armed Ukraine to fight a war it has no chance of winning
By Jan Ksrikke
“All that remains of the West is the ever more artificial, even insane attempt to arrest the wheel of history… In this senile Europe, the nations, states, and ruling classes… keep their faith in empty formulae of freedom and progress.” Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
In June of this year, the German daily Handelsblatt revealed that German leader Olaf Scholtz, while serving as finance minister in 2020, tried to make a secret deal with the Trump administration to avoid US sanctions on the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline.
Two years later, in early February 2022, a few weeks before the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Scholtz, as German Chancellor, visited the White House for talks with US President Joe Biden on the growing crisis.
During a live press conference following their talks, Biden was asked about his view of Nord Stream, the pipeline system that delivers Russian gas to Europe. The US president responded by saying, “If Russia invades Ukraine, there will be no longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Scholtz, standing next to the US president, was asked for a response. The German leader affirmed that the US and Germany were on the same page regarding Ukraine. Without mentioning Nord Stream, he implicitly endorsed its destruction.
But as he spoke, the German chancellor seemed uncomfortable. Did he consider how history would judge him for effectively greenlighting the extrajudicial destruction of a crucial part of Germany’s civilian infrastructure? And how it would set a new precedent for international norms of behavior?
Encircling Russia
On the face of it, the West seems to have a schizophrenic view of Russia. Following the collapse of the USSR, Europe and Russia developed growing economic ties that culminated in the first Nord Stream agreement between then-German chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2005.
The US government opposed Nord Stream, ostensibly because it would make Germany too dependent on Russian energy. Merkel obviously did not share America’s concerns.
US president Donald Trump nonetheless imposed sanctions against companies involved with Nord Stream. For unclear reasons, Nord Stream had become a part of Trump’s “Make America Great” agenda.
The then-president signed a very deep-state piece of legislation, known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which enabled the US to sanction any company that was working with German and Russian companies on Nord Stream to “protect the energy security of US allies.”
With friends like this, who needs enemies or, as Henry Kissinger reportedly said in a rare moment of candor: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
The Ukraine war resulted from the Western failure to remold Russia in its own neoliberal image. After the collapse of the USSR, the US had an ally in Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev’s successor.
Yeltsin took the advice of American economists to turn Russia cold turkey into a neoliberal economy. Only shock therapy could get Russia on track to become a democratic market economy, they advised.
The subsequent “market reforms” resulted in the plundering of Russian resources by well-connected entrepreneurs who formed a class of oligarchs that made billions.
They immediately moved their wealth abroad and bought soccer clubs in England and trophy real estate on the French Riviera while Russian pensioners were sitting in the streets of Moscow selling their medicine to buy food.
When the nationalist Putin replaced the globalist Yeltsin, the West doubled down on NATO expansion.
Failed strategic bet
Whether under Gorbachev, Yeltsin or Putin, the US never stopped its Cold War policy of undermining Russia. President Jimmy Carter provided support to the Afghan Mujahedeen, the precursor to the Taliban, and every successive US president, Democrat and Republican, continued covert and overt interference in countries on Russia’s southern border.
The ideological architect of the strategy to contain Russia was Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to Carter. Ukraine plays a pivotal role in the so-called Brzezinski Doctrine, which identifies it as the key to preventing Russian-European economic integration. Still today, the US foreign establishment is rife with Brzezinski proteges.
With Ukraine, the West made a major strategic bet that failed. The crippling sanctions against Russia should have cratered the Russian economy, resulting in a popular uprising and leading to the replacement of Putin with a pro-Western leader. It should have been the mother of all regime changes.
Another globalist in the Kremlin would have been a boon for Wall Street as Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of natural wealth. With the growing importance of natural resources, Russia represents a rich investment opportunity for the next 100 years.
End game
After the espionage attack on Nord Stream in 2022, Western governments floated various “leads” for identifying the perpetrators. They offered no proof, but the tips helped to muddy the waters and provided an alternative narrative to Biden’s bold statement on Nord Stream.
Germany, Denmark and Sweden conducted pseudo-investigations into the Nord Stream sabotage and refused to share their findings while the West vetoed a Russian request for an independent UN investigation.
In early August, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on new Nord Stream leads, suggesting that Ukrainian operatives executed the attack with the knowledge of Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky,
An optimistic reading of the WSJ narrative is that the West is preparing public opinion for throwing Zelensky under the bus, opening the way for his replacement to negotiate peace with Russia. Zelensky has admitted that earlier Minsk negotiations with Russia were meant to buy time to build up Ukraine’s army, disqualifying himself as a good-faith negotiating partner.
Apart from Ukraine itself, the West is the war’s big loser. Ruled by a generation of neoliberals and Atlanticists for whom ideology trumps economic, military and historical common sense, they have encouraged and facilitated Ukraine to fight a war against a nuclear and industrial-military superpower it had no chance of defeating.
For Atlanticists, ideology even trumps ethics and morality.
Countercurrent – August 21, 2024
Between Secularism and Stigma: The Islamophobic Politics on Social Media
by Syed Wajahat Ali
Introduction
The emergence of social media platforms has brought about a significant transformation in the political discourse, opening up new channels for the dissemination of ideas and the establishment of virtual communities. One of the more alarming developments in this digital realm is the increase in Islamophobic speech and advocacy. This paper looks at the relationship between Islamophobia, stigma, and secularism on social media platforms and how these ideas interact to influence political debate online and have practical effects on Muslim communities.
Secularism and its discontent
Many contemporary democracies have been built on secularism, which is often understood to mean the separation of church and state. However, there are significant differences in how it Is applied and interpreted in various political and cultural contexts (Modood, 2019). Secularism has been increasingly framed in recent years, especially in Western countries, as a cultural virtue that opposes perceived Islamic influence rather than merely as a political philosophy. On social media, this framing of secularism frequently takes the form of stigmatizing Muslim communities. Invoking secular values as a justification for discriminatory attitudes or policies can lead some users to portray Islam as fundamentally incompatible with contemporary, secular countries (Evolvi, 2018). The varied ways Muslims handle their faith in secular environments and the variety of ways they understand Islam are often overlooked by this rhetoric.
How Online Stigma Works?
Narratives that pilloried Islam and Muslims can proliferate thanks to social media platforms. These platforms’ anonymity, quick information flow, and echo chamber effects have the potential to exacerbate anti-Islamic sentiment (Awan, 2016). In order to simplify convoluted subjects into crude, frequently disparaging depictions of Muslims and Islamic customs, memes, hashtags, and viral videos are frequently used. Evolvi’s (2018) research highlights the proliferation of Islamophobic rhetoric on Twitter in particular. The character limit on the platform promotes concise statements, while the retweet feature facilitates the quick dissemination of anything that is deemed controversial. Due to the frequent exposure of users to derogatory and disparage depictions of Muslims, this atmosphere has the potential to normalize Islamophobic beliefs.
Islamophobia and Political Opportunism
The ability of social media to disseminate anti-Islamic sentiments has not been overlooked by political players. Right-wing populist movements have successfully used social media platforms to spread anti-Muslim agendas and incite fears of Islamic domination in several Western nations (Ekman, 2015). The Islamophobic language of these selective amnesia movements is frequently presented as defending women’s rights, secular ideals, or national security. Campaigns on social media have the force to affect public opinion, influence policy discussions, and even conflagarated hate crimes against Muslims in the real world (Awan & Zempi, 2016).
Combating Islamophobia on the Internet
Social media platforms offer chances for resistance and education, notwithstanding the major obstacles faced by online Islamophobia. According to Vis et al. (2020), Muslim activists and allies have utilized these same venues to dispel myths, spread uplifting stories, and foster interfaith understanding. Important refutations of stigmatizing narratives have included hashtag campaigns, instructional materials, and online groups devoted to overcoming Islamophobia. Furthermore, social media firms are beginning to realize how important it is to confront Islamophobia on their networks. Though the success of these efforts is still up for discussion, many have put policies in place to try and stop hate speech and extremist content (Alkiviadou, 2019).
Conclusion
For modern communities, the confluence of Islamophobia, stigma, and secularism on social media poses a difficult dilemma. Social media platforms offer chances for resistance and education, but they have also opened up new channels for the propagation of politics hostile to Islam. It is imperative that more complex conceptions of secularism be developed in the future that do not rely on stigmatizing religious populations. To further create more inclusive digital and real-world contexts, additional research into the dynamics of online Islamophobia and the creation of practical remedies are imperative.
References
Alkiviadou, N. (2019). Hate speech on social media networks: towards a regulatory framework? Information & Communications Technology Law, 28(1), 19-35.
Awan, I. (2016). Islamophobia on Social Media: A Qualitative Analysis of the Facebook’s Walls of Hate. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 10(1), 1-20.
Awan, I., & Zempi, I. (2016). The affinity between online and offline anti-Muslim hate crime: Dynamics and impacts. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 27, 1-8.
Ekman, M. (2015). Online Islamophobia and the politics of fear: manufacturing the green scare. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(11), 1986-2002.
Evolvi, G. (2018). Hate in a Tweet: Exploring Internet-Based Islamophobic Discourses. Religions, 9(10), 307.
Modood, T. (2019). Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism. ECPR Press.
Vis, F., van Zoonen, L., & Mihelj, S. (2020). Women’s responses to the ‘Instagram hijab’: A visual analysis of digital resistances. International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism, 3(1), 56-76.
Syed Wajahat Ali is an independent researcher and social activist with a focus on gender, religion, social media, and intersectionality. With experience as a field investigator at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, they bring a critical perspective to his work. My M.A. dissertation, titled “Cyber Violence against Muslim Women in India: An Intersectionality Approach,” reflects his commitment to exploring complex social issues through an academic lens. Ali’s writings contribute to ongoing discussions on social justice and equity.
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Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
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