MSN - March 8, 2024
Delhi: Police Officer Kicks, Punches Muslim Offering Friday prayers
A shocking and shameful incident has come to the fore from New Delhi, where a police officer was seen kicking and hitting Muslim men offering Friday prayers on the side of the road. Videos of the assault have been circulated on social media on Friday, with many condemning the police officer.
The incident reportedly happened in the capital's Inderlok area. The police officer, who has not been identified yet, can be seen kicking Muslim men, who were in 'sajda' (state of prostration), when offering namaz as the azaan (call of prayer) continued in the background. The men were forced to get up mid-prayers.
Soon, men gathered and confronted the police officer for his act. An argument between him and the others broke out.
As the video went viral on social media, the Delhi Police said it launched an inquiry into the matter. The incident, however, divided the social media users, with people calling out the police officer for his actions and others questioning the reasoning behind offering prayers on the road.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/delhi-police-officer-kicks-punches-men-offering-namaz-on-road-video-goes-viral/ar-BB1jxPJc
Trump’s return would be better for the world – Orban
Donald Trump will be able to stop the conflict between Russia and Ukraine if he wins the election in November and returns to the White House, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Orban, who has a good long-standing relationship with Trump, made the comment in a video message on his Facebook page on Saturday dedicated to his meeting with the 45th US president at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida the previous day.
While he was in office between 2017 and 2021, Trump was “the president of peace, he enjoyed respect all over the world and thus created the conditions for peace,” the Hungarian leader said, stressing that there was no conflict in Ukraine or the Middle East at that time. “Today, there would’ve been no war if he was the US president,” the PM insisted.
According to Orban, Trump and him agreed that “there will be peace if there will be world leaders who want peace.” The Hungarian PM added that he was “proud” that his country was one of those that are striving for peace.
Since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, Hungary has been consistently calling for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Unlike its EU neighbors, Budapest has refused to provide weapons to Kiev, maintained economic ties with Moscow and criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Russia as “counterproductive.”
Russia has repeatedly said that it is ready for dialogue, but stressed that it hasn’t been getting any reasonable proposals that would account for the actual situation on the ground from Kiev or its backers in the US and the EU. According to Moscow, in such conditions it has no other choice but to keep pursuing its goals in Ukraine via military means.
Orban explained that the aim of his visit to Florida was “to say frankly” that Trump’s second presidency “will be better for the whole world,” not just for ties between Budapest and Washington. The Hungarian PM added that it would, of course, be up to the American people to decide who will be their next head of state.
Earlier this week, Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in the election as his last renaming rival, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign after losing primaries in 14 out of 15 states.
US President Joe Biden lashed out at both Trump and Orban during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Friday. “You know who he [Trump] is meeting with today down in Mar-a-Lago? Orban of Hungary, who’s stated flatly that he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship.” Biden claimed that he himself was looking for a future “where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
During his campaign, Trump has repeatedly vowed to settle the Ukraine conflict “within 24 hours” if he returns to the Oval Office, claiming he would sit down with both Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
In the fall of 2022, Zelensky signed a decree banning Kiev from negotiating with Putin.
Pakistan’s Generals Fail to Fix the Election
BY IAN BREMMERMARCH
Pakistan’s worst-kept secret is that its military dominates its government. Whether to safeguard the nation against chaos or to protect their own privileged access to power and wealth, its generals have manipulated the country’s politics for decades. Pakistan’s voters, like voters elsewhere, want change. February’s ugly election fiasco shows that it’s only getting harder for the army to prevent political disrupters from upending their plans but, unfortunately for Pakistan’s future, they have yet again managed to override public demand for a new direction.
A brief recap: The generals and popular leader Imran Khan decided some time ago they could no longer trust one another. The army then removed Khan from his post as Prime Minister and put him in jail, as it has done to many past Prime Ministers who refused to respect their dominance. He now faces more than 150 criminal charges, all of which he denies.
When the brass refused to let him contest February’s national elections, even from prison, aides in Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party created AI-generated Khan speeches that were then broadcast around Pakistan. In a nation where 40% of voters are illiterate, army-dominated courts ruled that ballots could not include the symbol of Khan’s party, a cricket bat to reference Khan’s professional sporting prowess, but the party vowed to press ahead. When the generals refused to allow PTI members to appear on ballots, many ran as independents.
Both the army and a former Prime Minister, the exiled-then-rehabilitated Nawaz Sharif, were confident that destroying Khan’s candidacy would assure a victory for Sharif. It did not. Even after manipulating courts and the media, stuffing ballot boxes, and turning off mobile phone service and social media in areas where Khan voters were setting their get-out-the-vote plans, the nation’s self-appointed overlords could not stop voters from shocking Pakistan and the world by handing victory to the independents who stood for Imran Khan’s PTI. They didn’t win a majority, but they did win more seats than any single party.
It took the army and its political subordinates three weeks to untangle this mess and find a way to keep Khan’s party out of power. On March 4, Pakistan’s newly formed Parliament announced that Shehbaz Sharif—Nawaz’s brother and the interim Prime Minister since the army grabbed power again last August—will again lead a coalition government. All in the name of “stability.”
It’s reasonable to wonder why Sharif, or anyone else, would want the job. Pakistan ranks 161st out of 191 countries in the U.N.’s Human Development Index. Its economic prospects remain poor. About 40% of Pakistan’s people live in poverty, and inflation stands at about 30%. Power outages are a fact of daily life. To pay its foreign debt to avoid default, Pakistan’s government must come up with more than $20 billion. Its current reserves have dwindled to less than $10 billion.
The country is increasingly isolated. China and Saudi Arabia, traditional investors in Pakistan, increasingly see the country as a bad commercial bet. Traditional security partners in the U.S. are less interested, particularly since the U.S. withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan. And though Khan has vowed that PTI lawmakers will sit in opposition, the party’s followers have already demonstrated an ability and willingness to generate major trouble in the streets of Pakistan’s largest cities.
Worse still, the army establishment has shown Pakistan’s voters that their country’s democracy cannot create the change they need. That bodes ill for the nation and all who would lead it, whether they’re elected or not.
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
