By Tariq Shah

Mar/Apr 25

The U.S. government’s response to the 9/11 attacks, while driven by national security concerns, helped cement a damaging stereotype of Muslims and Arabs as anti-American. This portrayal, amplified by mainstream media, fueled Islamophobia, hate crimes, and social exclusion. Hollywood, as noted in Jack G. Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs, played a central role in vilifying Muslims.

Post-9/11, policies like the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) and the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) disproportionately targeted Muslim and Arab communities, reinforcing the idea of Muslims as security threats. Meanwhile, the threat posed by domestic groups, such as violent white nationalist militias, was largely ignored, highlighting the need for a more balanced approach to domestic security.

Law professor Caroline Corbin from the University of Miami School of Law identifies two false narratives: “All terrorists are Muslim,” and “White people are never terrorists.” These misconceptions distort reality, as they often morph into the damaging belief that “all Muslims are terrorists.”

The media’s focus on individual Muslims’ actions, painting entire communities or even Islam as responsible, perpetuates this harmful stereotype. The negative coverage of Muslims has a far greater impact on American social consciousness than any positive portrayals. It reinforces the false connection between Muslims and terrorism.

The media’s tendency to link Muslims and terrorism plays on the availability heuristic: vivid, negative portrayals overshadow facts, leading to skewed judgments and fostering hostility toward Muslim Americans. To counter this, we must adopt an evidence-based approach that acknowledges the diversity of Muslim experiences, challenges stereotypes, and promotes nuanced dialogue.

Global Rise in Islamophobia

Islamophobia is a global issue. In Europe, mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, and individuals face rising violence, vandalism, and harassment. In India, the spread of Hindutva, an ideology of anti-Muslim hate, has sparked violent attacks on Muslims, deepening fears in a community already marginalized by racial hatred.

In 2017, a far-right gunman attacked a mosque in Quebec City, killing six. The community responded with vigils and calls for unity. In 2019, a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, prompting stricter gun laws and the launch of the “Christchurch Call” to combat online extremism.

Media Representation and Responsibility

The internet and social media have become major platforms for scapegoating Islam. Partisan outlets create echo chambers that reinforce harmful narratives, like the idea that Islam is inherently violent. Media outlets often perpetuate a double standard, emphasizing the religion of Muslim perpetrators while downplaying the affiliations of non-Muslim offenders. This selective coverage perpetuates Islamophobia.

To counter these stereotypes, we must promote media literacy, fact-checking, diverse sources, and inclusive representation. A 2017 GAO report found that since 9/11, far-right extremists have committed 73% of deadly extremist incidents in the U.S., compared to 27% by radical Muslim extremists. 

Yet, the media continues to focus on Muslim and black perpetrators, reinforcing racial and religious stereotypes. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated the propagation of negative stereotypes and Islamophobic tropes by self-proclaimed and media-appointed “experts”.

When individuals are “othered,” they are unfairly blamed for the actions of a few. For example, stereotypes that link Mexicans to crime or Chinese people to the spread of COVID-19 ignore the diversity within these groups. Similarly, when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu framed military actions in Gaza as a “divine mission,” the role of Judaism in these actions was questioned, yet the religion itself wasn’t blamed for war crimes.

White shooters, on the other hand, are often labeled as “lone wolves,” and their race, religion, or ideology is rarely emphasized.

Joseph Czuba’s 2023 murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy was framed as a hate crime, but his religion wasn’t mentioned in news reports. The same is true for recent gunmen who targeted President Trump, where their race, religion, and political affiliations were largely omitted. 

In July and October 2024, two Caucasian gunmen shot at President Trump over political disagreement. The media and police barely mentioned their religion, ethnicity, or political affiliations, only stating these were “unknown.” The New Year’s Eve rampage by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran struggling with PTSD, economic and personal issues, and isolation, was wrongly linked to his religion by the media. Why the double standard in how Muslim and non-Muslim perpetrators are framed?

Selective demonization of Islam, especially when the perpetrator is Muslim, must end. Stereotyping Islam reinforces misconceptions, prejudice, and violence. It is crucial to recognize that crimes are committed by individuals, not entire communities, or religions.

Muslims Shouldn’t Have to Defend Their Faith

In the aftermath of violent events, Muslims often feel pressured to defend their faith. This is a form of prejudice, not complicity. In Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism, Prof. Todd Green argues that focusing on evidence, rather than assumptions, reveals that no inherent link exists between Islam and terrorism.

Global Initiatives and Collective Action

Combating Islamophobia requires amplifying diverse Muslim voices, consulting experts, and avoiding tokenization. Instead of retreating, we must engage proactively with media platforms to foster accurate, inclusive representation and inclusive storytelling. Muslim youth, supported by imams and community leaders, can drive positive change, and help promote systemic anti-Muslim biases over sensationalism.

The Christchurch Call is an example of collective action against violent extremism online, promoting accountability through shared vision and multi-stakeholder collaboration. This framework offers a model for combating hate in the digital age.

Countering Islamophobia, and hatred of any religion, is a moral, ethical, and civilizational imperative. It is essential for building a just, peaceful society rooted in equality, justice, and mutual respect.

Tariq Shah is a citizen writer and a Michigan resident.

The post Countering Islamophobia is a Civilizational Imperative appeared first on Islamic Horizons.

By Luke Peterson

Mar/Apr 25

Though the well-established institutional and intellectual bias shown by Western media and the United States government toward Israel has been entrenched in this country’s psychology for three-quarters of a century, a new facet in the American insistence on the Israeli narrative has recently emerged. This new element legislates that the U.S. government and its myriad of entities and affiliates refuse to accept or endorse demographic statistics produced by the Palestinian government. 

Specifically, according to a brief provision buried within the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized a colossal new $895 billion spending package for the U.S. military, the U.S. will not accept casualty figures from the Gaza Health Ministry as it endeavors to keep up with the nearly interminable list of dead, injured, or missing Gazans since the most recent Israeli assault on that population began in October of 2023. 

Ostensibly, this line-item proviso was attached to the NDAA to maintain intellectual balance in U.S. government recordkeeping on Israel and Palestine. Congress’ stance over Gaza works according to Israeli propaganda requirements that, despite the prolific destruction wrought upon that territory by the Israeli military over the course of the last 15 months, is still largely under the official sway of the Hamas government, a political organization founded in the ideology of resistance to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Rejecting the Gaza Health Ministry’s statistics is therefore a hedging of bets by the U.S. government. They will not trust Gazan health statistics because Gaza is governed by Hamas, and the U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist entity and is therefore not to be trusted. Lawmakers on both sides of the barely visible political aisle when it comes to this topic agreed on this point all while Israeli statistics are naturally not burdened by the stain of partiality for some reason that has never been explained by the federal government. 

This trend mandating that officials reject statistical information coming from the Gaza Ministry of Health is a new phenomenon. In fact, aspersions cast upon official figures provided by the Gaza Health Ministry began only after the widely lauded humanitarian agency Amnesty International (AI) confirmed for the world what Palestinians already knew: Israel’s indiscriminate assault on Gaza beginning in October of 2023 constitutes genocide. 

AI’s established record as an international watchdog has made it into a standard-bearer of fact in reporting on crises and conflicts all over the world. Today, it is a much relied-upon agency informing state governments as well as political coalitions like the European Union, and it has declared statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry to be factual and reliable. Nevertheless, the official U.S. position is to ignore AI’s finding on the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. As it has done for the past 75 years of this occupation, the U.S. government simply looks away when truly neutral agencies like AI clamor for a ceasefire to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.

AI is not alone in trusting the Gaza Health Ministry to report on intentional Israeli efforts to exterminate the Palestinians. Statistics coming out of the government in Gaza are also trusted by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Further, the World Health Organization and Human Rights Watch cite Gaza Ministry of Health figures in their reporting on the destruction of the Palestinian society by the Israeli occupiers. 

Where Israeli crimes are concerned, however, it seems AI’s word confirming the Gaza Health Ministry’s assessment of the carnage done to their own people by the Israeli onslaught is not sufficient for the U.S. government or media establishment. So, continuously in the throes of the ongoing American love affair with Israel, while at the same time rejecting international confirmation of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the American news establishment deliberately leaves consumers in the dark regarding Israeli brutality in the Gaza Strip. 

As such, the extent of the Israeli destruction of Gaza since October of 2023 is largely unknown to Americans. A key component within that body of ignorance is a profound lack of knowledge about the number of Palestinian dead in Gaza (at least 45,541 including 17,492 children with an additional 11,160 missing) and the percentage of those casualties that were civilian non-combatants (no less than 70% according to Gaza Ministry of Health statistics and verified by additional, international observers). And there is simply no way to account for the thousands of Palestinians who now lie buried under the rubble, a number which may well escalate the number of casualties in Gaza to between 64,000 and 186,000 dead.

Such deliberate obfuscation of the numbers of dead and missing in Gaza by the U.S. news media is perhaps only the most blatant example of that institution carrying water for the state of Israel since 1948, and especially since October of 2023. In addition to these omissions, analysis of the news covering the genocide in Gaza during this period has demonstrated utterly biased coverage in favor of the Israeli narrative across news media outlets in the U.S. In reputable publications from The New York Times to The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times, coverage of the war on Gaza has enacted hyperbolic language to describe Israeli deaths while downplaying or omitting the killing of Palestinians, a massacre of citizenry more than 40 times larger than the deaths of Israelis that occurred on October 7. 

In a detailed analysis of more than 1,000 news articles from those sources mentioned above, the independent outlet The Intercept uncovered a glaring bias in the U.S. media’s approach to the ongoing destruction of Gaza. “Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’, and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,” the report read. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.” 

Further, shockingly few stories emanating from these standard bearers of U.S. news ever mentioned the staggering number of Palestinian children and journalists that have been killed by Israel. “Only two headlines out of over 1,100 news articles in the study mention the word ‘children’ related to Gazan children,” the Intercept report stated. “The word ‘journalists’ and its iterations such as ‘reporters’ and ‘photojournalists’ only appears in nine headlines out of over 1,100 articles studied.” 

Much more concern was shown by U.S. news media over child killings and the targeting of journalists in Ukraine during this period of time versus the much more numerous casualties of this type inflicted by Israel in Gaza. In the light of this analysis and others of its kind, it is reasonable to conclude that U.S. news media simply does not want its readership to know about the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinians either in its gory detail or even by description in broad strokes. 

So, we are left with an unclear picture of the damage done by Israel in Gaza, and if we continue to put our faith in the authoritative U.S. news media, we will remain ignorant of the horrific crimes committed by America’s closest ally in the Middle East. 

Worse than the promotion of ignorance about this genocide, though, is the the fact that the U.S. is materially abetting Israel’s actions. With only a few weeks left of his bitterly disappointing presidency, Joe Biden authorized an additional $8 billion in weaponry to Israel. Little wonder, then, that American newsmakers want media consumers to look the other way when it comes to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza. What might an accurately informed citizenry do about a government that actively participates in genocide? 

Luke Peterson, Ph.D., The University of Cambridge–King’s College, is a professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies based in Pittsburgh. He is also the author of The U.S. Military in the Print News Media: Service and Sacrifice in Contemporary Discourse (2024).

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By Abu Ali Bafaquih 

Mar/Apr 25

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton (R) has introduced a Senate bill mirroring the HR 7552 House bill introduced last February by New York Republicans Reps. Claudia Tenney and Anthony D’Esposito, alongside Randy Weber (R. Tex.).

The bill mandates that all official U.S. federal government documents refer to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” the terminology which they claim aligns with Israel’s historical and biblical claims to the territory. 

In doing so, Cotton has regurgitated what several Congress members on both sides of the aisle have previously stated, “The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria go back thousands of years. The U.S. should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel.” 

The name West Bank is a translation of the Arabic term ad-Duffah al-Gharbiyyah, given to the territory west of the Jordan River. Gaza and the West Bank are two Palestinian territories that were a small part of Mandate Palestine and were part of the swatch of territory captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. On the ground, however, Israel has rendered a two-state solution including the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel impossible with the establishment of more than 300 settlements with a population of approximately 700,00 on occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.  

Effectively, this the U.S. congressional move aims to erase Palestinian identity, and cements U.S. complicity in Israeli expansionism. It also gives the blatant greenlight for further, illegal settlement expansion.

Cotton’s interest, however, is most interesting. According to the Jewish Virtual Library published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, his state’s Jewish population was 4,000 in 1899 rising to 5,090 in 2024, just 0.17% of his state’s overall population. However, his deep interest in Israeli policies should be seen through the lens of his receipts from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): Code Pink says that he has received $237,077 from AIPAC. The New York Times announced that the amount of this financial assistance was around $2 million. This is while some informed sources in the US say the AIPAC lobby has spent $4.5 million for Tom Cotton to insure his winning against “Mark Pryor” in the 2014 Senate elections.

Israel is headed by a fragile ultra right-wing coalition that holds 64 seats out of a 120-seat Knesset. The ruling western-armed Israeli junta has, since Oct. 7, 2023, and as always since the British planted this colony in 1948, striven to eliminate all non-Jews, because they claim they have a “birthright” in the territory.

On July 24, 2024, the head of this ethnocracy, Benjamin Netanyahu visited the U.S. Congress where had pledged in a scathing and combative speech to achieve “total victory” against Hamas while denouncing American opponents of the war in Gaza as “idiots”.

Speaking for nearly an hour in which, he was applauded 79 times, 58 of which were standing ovations from sycophantic members of Congress, Netanyahu said, “America and Israel must stand together. When we stand together something really simple happens: We win, they lose.” 

In essence, Netanyahu was verifying that his colonial occupation of Palestine is American made. 

To this end, it serves Netanyahu that those of us watching the release of the Israeli hostages notice the extensive damage all over Gaza, but not the Palestinian jubilation over the release of their hostages, or the surviving strength of Hamas.  

It was ordained that Hamas demonstrate clear control of these scenes while transferring previously held Israelis to the ICRC without any indication that the occupation had caved in.

Netanyahu is banking on a Palestinian revolt against Hamas so that the U.S. and Israel can install a more pliant regime, like the ineffectual Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank.

The Anadolu Agency’s Abdelraouf Arnaout, citing Israeli analyst Avi Issacharoff, wrote in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Jan. 20, 2025, “Even after 15 months of war, Hamas remains in place… Although the government of Benjamin Netanyahu said it will eradicate Hamas, the group not only survived militarily but also retained its rule intact.” 

True to their bias, Reuters reported, “But, in the days since the ceasefire took effect, Gaza’s Hamas-run administration has moved quickly to reimpose security, to curb looting, and to start restoring basic services to parts of the enclave, swathes of which have been reduced to wasteland by the Israeli offensive.”

The much-heralded ceasefire between Israel and Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement – an Arabic acronym Romanized from Arabic: Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah), loudly and falsely claimed by the American president as his own achievement, is merely a 42-day arrangement.

Still, Netanyahu continues his war in Gaza by refusing Israeli withdrawal from the denuded enclave. His coalition partner, Bezalel Smotrich, vows to bolt the coalition if stage two of the ceasefire is agreed upon. Consequently, Netanyahu will likely conduct a provocation, either in Gaza, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem, that could be interpreted as Hamas breaching the ceasefire thereby creating an excuse where Trump would re-assent to Israel’s renewal of the slaughter of innocent Palestinians.  

The Israelis and the American right-wing consider the question of who rules Gaza as the key to ending the war which would lead to the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. If Hamas remains in control of the Gaza Strip, there will likely be no reconstruction permitted. As it is, both the state of Israel and their U.S. backers have maintained a purely colonial mindset which may well lead to further ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The Trump Administration is very vocally pursuing Egypt, Jordan, and even Indonesia and Albania are being pressed to take in the intended to displace Palestinians from Gaza.  

Foreign ministers of five Arab countries, the PA, and the Arab League (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar) have issued a joint statement rejecting the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land “under any excuse.”

The statement, released on Feb. 1, 2025, presented a unified stance against Trump’s call for Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza.

However, Trump reiterated his illegal position on Jan. 30, 2025, saying, “We do a lot for them, and they are going to do it.” This is in apparent reference to the abundant U.S. aid, including military assistance, to Egypt and Jordan, two countries who, along with Israel, have been exempted from the American aid cutoff initiated by the autocratic Trump.

Israel and its western partners envision the Palestinian Authority taking over control of the Rafah crossing, and eventually Gaza. But will Hamas, which survives despite all the propaganda and bombs, agree to the PA taking over a major thoroughfare in their territory?

Gershon Baskin Ph.D., an Israeli blogger and self-styled negotiator, says that the Israelis are banking on creating the facade of a new temporary government in Gaza by some pliable figures such as Dr. Nasser Alkidwa, the former PLO ambassador to the UN and former PA minister of foreign affairs (he also happens to be Yasser Arafat’s nephew). 

For their parts, regional Arab governments have been compliant since the British installed them to replace the Ottoman rule after World War I. To his credit, Trump, who visited the region in October 2018, correctly stated to cheers at a rally in Mississippi on October 2, “We protect Saudi Arabia — would you say they’re rich? And I love the king, King Salman, but I said, ‘King we’re protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military, you have to pay. . .”

According to opinion polls published by Gallup in 2009, the presence of the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia was strongly objected to by most of the world’s Muslim population.

This is the reality of the present-day Muslim majority countries, organized under the obviously dormant Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Given their compromised position owing to the billions flowing in their direction from the United States, their immoral silence over the Gaza Genocide is understandable.

When will Arkansas, or any constituency of American voters, ask that their politicians focus on the U.S. like they do Israel? In the absence of that call, a joint U.S.-Zionist owned Gaza is far more sacrosanct than any human life, let alone the collection of 7 million Palestinians living on the land between the River and the Sea.

Abu Ali Bafaquih is a freelance writer.

The post Forced Ethnic Erasure appeared first on Islamic Horizons.

By Tariq Ahmed

Mar/Apr 25

Kashmir continues to bleed and determine South Asia’s power relations due to its framing as a national security issue. Surrounded by multiple nation-states, the former princely state has long been and continues to be adversely affected by its location. 

Its strategic significance can be traced back to the 19th-century Anglo-Russian conflict, when Central and South Asia were frontlines of the Great Game. British India and Russian-controlled Central Asia surrounded Kashmir. Russian influence made the British anxious, whereas the Russians saw Kashmir as a conduit between Central Asia and India. 

Kashmir’s transition from Afghan rule to the Sikh empire (1820-46) was a turning point. Kashmiri Muslims passed through miserable conditions under the reprehensible Sikh rule: Adhan was banned, the obligatory five daily prayers were prohibited, mosques were sealed, cow slaughter was banned, and heavy taxes were imposed.

The Sikh dynasty fell into disarray, after Ranjit Singh death in 1839. Meanwhile, British-Sikh tensions escalated due to their mutual distrust as regards territorial matters. Two successive wars erupted and ended only when the Sikhs were subjugated under the Treaty of Lahore (March 9, 1846) and required to pay an indemnity. Failing this, the Sikh Empire was forced to cede territory and its rights and interests. Resultantly, Punjab and Kashmir under direct British colonial rule. 

Selling Kashmir for Money and Merchandise

Britain, impatient to offload Kashmir due to its financial difficulties, sold the princely state to Gulab Singh, a Hindu ruler of the nearby province of Jammu, through the infamous Treaty of Amritsar on March 25, 1846. This was only days after signing the Lahore Treaty, relieving the British of all their direct control responsibilities. Besides the paltry sum of £750,000 (today about $31,040,131), the sale included people, land, crops, mountains, and rivers. In exchange for security guarantee, the British royalty required annual gifts of a few fabled Kashmiri shawls and cashmere goats.

The treaty formalized Gulab Singh’s loyalty to the British East India Company during the 1845-46 Anglo-Sikh war, and his relative munificence paid him dividends: He was installed as the Maharaja of the Jammu and Kashmir region, although neither he nor the British had any moral, political, cultural, or legal claims to Kashmir. This bizarre transaction was met with outrage and disbelief by the local population, whose homeland had been arbitrarily exchanged without their consent. This sense of injustice fueled unrest and resistance throughout Kashmir. The cries of Moha’id-e-Amritsar na- Manzour! (The Treaty of Amritsar is unacceptable!) reverberated throughout the skies. 

This manipulative and exploitative treaty ushered in a century of ruthless Hindu rule. In Jammu, Gulab Singh was notorious for brutalizing Muslims. For geostrategic, political, economic, and military reasons, the British needed him and so simply ignored his brutality. Sounds familiar, right? This treaty also enabled the British Empire to indirectly incorporate this region. Gulab Singh’s authority as a colonial agent was limited, and British agents closely monitored and influenced his administration. 

Scholars have wondered how two parties could sign a “sale deed” without any legal right to do so. The legal ownership of property – let alone a territory– is a prerequisite for selling, bartering, or forming territorial alliances. Whose land were they trading? Did they consult the real owners, the Kashmiris? Moreover, the Indian Independence Act of 1947 dissolved all agreements, arrangements, and treaties, including the Treaty of Amritsar, thereby invalidating any legitimacy derived from it.

Creating a buffer zone between the British and Russian empires minimized military risks and costs for the financially struggling East India Company. As both Russia and the Company secured their interests, Kashmiris’ daily lives changed dramatically. Gulab Singh levied heavy taxes, and inhuman forced labor caused economic and mental hardship, and Hindu culture was imposed upon the Muslims. While guarding an unwanted and unscrupulous ruler, the British ignored the Kashmiris’ suffering.

Partition

Hari Singh, a descendant of Gulab Singh, took over the government (r.1926-47) and plunged Kashmir even further into the darkness of repression. Forced labor, prisons, torture, land confiscations, taxation, and police violence against protesters amplified.

During Partition in 1947 – a time of horrendous communal hostilities and the call for a separate nation (Pakistan) – reached a crescendo. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs of both genders and all ages were killed in one of modern history’s most traumatic events. Characterized by violence and displacement, families were torn apart, causing irreparable economic and social damage. Thousands of Muslims were massacred in the Jammu Massacre of Oct.-Nov. 1947 (Khalid Bashir, “Kashmir: A Walk-through History,” 2018).

Under the Indian Independence Act 1947, all princely states were given the option of joining either India or Pakistan; Gulab Singh refused to join either. As a result, Kashmir remained an independent territory for a few months. Due to the Partition plan, Muslim-dominated parts became Pakistan, which led to Pakistan’s rightful interest in Kashmir.

To aid Kashmir’s oppressed Muslims, armed militias from northwest Pakistan entered the princely state. According to this Partition logic, Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan, as the state has a close to 77% Muslim majority (British Census of India of 1941, The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of [British] India). In response, Hari Singh requested military assistance from the Indian government, then under Governor-General Lord Mountbatten.

As Jammu and Kashmir was an independent kingdom, Mountbatten refused to intervene. Taking advantage of the situation, India coerced the maharaja to sign the “Instrument of Accession.” Mountbatten inserted a referendum clause, to which Indian leaders agreed, that any accession must be ratified by the Kashmiris. The original document, which India claims is untraceable, has been questioned for its legal or moral validity, whereabouts, and originality. 

Alastair Lamb has convincingly demonstrated in his “Birth of a Tragedy: Kashmir 1947” (Roxford Books, 1960) that India sent its troops to Kashmir before the alleged document was signed. They also co-opted and later installed Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (d.1982), a popular local leader, as prime minister to manufacture the people’s consent. Soon, his insistence on a referendum led to his dismissal on the flimsy excuse of losing his cabinet’s confidence and the equally false charge of the Kashmir Conspiracy Case (Aug. 8, 1953). He spent the next 22 years in prison.

India and Pakistan fought their first war in January 1948. At India’s request, the UN intervened, and a ceasefire was called. But all subsequent Indian governments have demonstrated their inflexibility by not holding a referendum despite UNSCR 47’s (1948) calling for one. India fears that a truly democratic free and impartial plebiscite will favor Pakistan; although by definition self-determination implies all possible options including independence. 

The UN failures in Kashmir are akin to those in Palestine. It emphasizes human rights and international law, while the international community – often perfunctorily – advocates dialogue and diplomacy. As in the Great Game, geopolitical considerations and trade interests complicate decisive action.

The Securitization of Kashmir

This conflict has resulted in a dangerous deadlock. Pakistan perceives any compromise as a threat to its identity and water security, whereas India sees any concession as a threat to its national security. In this battle of two nationalisms, Kashmiris are exposed to human rights violations, economic hardships, psychological trauma, and attempts at identity erasure. Indian-occupied Kashmir is now facing the juggernaut of settler colonialism. 

This deadlocked conflict continues to have a widespread impact throughout South Asia, particularly in Kashmir, in terms of thousands of deaths, socioeconomic disruptions, limited and manipulated political representation, threats to cultural heritage, and strained sociopolitical relations. 

Political territorial conflicts don’t just disappear, as we have seen in the Middle East and Ukraine. They endure. Unresolved conflicts cause prolonged suffering and instability and often lead to radicalization and violence. The international community’s benign neglect or Prime Minister Modi’s facile muscular nationalism is no substitute for an equitable and peaceful dispute resolution. 

All that Kashmiris would like to see is an end to this zero-sum game. A civilized and just solution would be to determine what the people of Kashmir desire. 

This self-determination is long overdue for us! 

Tariq Ahmed is a freelance writer.

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