Muslims Demand Representation:
Today, according to Himalayan Times, Muslims in Nepal staged a protest, bringing traffic to a standstill for an hour. Members of the umbrella group Nepal Muslim Ettehad Organisation were behind the protests. The demonstrators sat in the road at Ratha Park today, protesting that they wanted to be proportionally represented in parliament. Ratna Park in Kathmandu is where the Jama Masjid mosque is situated. This is one of the four "traditional" mosques in the country.
Taj Mohammad Miya, joint coordinator of the Nepal Muslim Ettehad Organisation, said: "The interim constitution should show respect for the sacrifice we made during the Jana Andolan II. As the statute makes no mention of the sacrifice we made during the movement, how can we say the interim statute is inclusive?"
The Jana Andolan (People's Movement) II was the gathering of protests against the autocratic monarchy in Nepal in which King Gyanendra had decided that he was better able to contain Maoist insurgents than the civil politicians. He had appointed himself head of a personally-selected government in February 2005. Most of the members of the parliament Gyanendra had deposed fled to India. There they plotted to restore democracy.
The Jana Andolan II movement was formed, and in early 2006 it had caused enough demonstrations to force the monarch to back down and accept a democratically elected government. The group was named after the original Jana Andolan movement of 1990, which had first removed the "absolute" aspects of Nepal's monarchy and also the policy of "Hindu nationalism" espoused by the monarchy. Jana Andolan I began the process of instituting a constitutional monarchy, and abolished the "panchayat" system of justice, where village elders set up councils to judge people by their own values, rather than a set code of law.
Nepal has been in a state of chaos politically since Gyanendra's nephew slaughtered almost the entire royal family while allegedly high on drugs in June 2001. A Maoist insurgency, funded by China, which seeks to establish its influence and to make Nepal a "buffer state" between Tibet and India, has been ongoing since before Jana Andolan 1.
How the Muslims suffered in Jana Andolan II is not clear. But as we have not dealt with Nepal's Muslims here, it is worth examining what has been happening.
Muslims now comprise 8% of Nepal's total population of 27,000,000 according to one source. Traditionally, the Muslims of Nepal have been well-assimilated with the Hindu and Buddhist (about 10% of the total) population. This is quite a large increase on the 4% of the population recorded in the 2001 census. The Muslims speak Urdu, the "official" language of Pakistan.
This number has risen as a result of the Kashmir crisis, where for the last 16 years Muslims have been fleeing into Nepal. One source claims that the indigenous Muslims of Nepal are mainly unskilled laborers of subsistence farmers, leading to their lack of representation in the political process. "Even in the faith that they profess, their knowledge of Islamic principles and culture is very meager, and they do need guidance and direction in this respect. Many of them are Muslims in name only, but hardly know anything else about Islam", the report states.
However, with the rise of Muslims from Kashmir, there has been a politicization of Nepal's Muslims, and groups such as Al-Haramain (listed by the US as a terrorist entity) has been funding the construction of mosques and madrassas in Nepal. Saudi Arabia and Egypt also offer scholarships to their countries where the Muslims come directly into contact with political and "international" Islam.
Islam first arrived in Nepal in the 12th century. Muhammad Nassir Al-Abboudy of the Saudi Muslim World League has said that Nepalese Muslims are incapable of overcoming their socio-political and economic "backwardness". This reasoning was used to justify "dawah" or missionary work in Nepal.
In 2004, the Nepalese authorities began to regulate the Saudi-funded madrassas. Because of the Kashmiri issue with India, there has been Pakistani funding of madrassas. One Pakistani funder is Pantech, which is a front group for ISI, Pakistan's intelligence and security agency.
500,000 Nepalese work abroad, with an estimated 350,000 working in the Middle East. About 17,000 Nepalese were working in Iraq in 2004. On August 19 of that year, 12 Nepalese workers and two French workers were separately kidnapped in Iraq.
The two French workers were eventually released, and it was later claimed that their government had paid a secret ransom. The Nepalese were not so lucky. A week after their kidnapping, one Nepalese was decapitated, and 11 were shot. On Tuesday, August 31 2004, an Islamist website showed video footage of the beheaded man having his head sawn off and then held up as a bloody trophy.
The results in Nepal proved catastrophic for the Muslim population. For the first time in its modern history, there was inter-religious violence in Nepal, and the victims were the Muslims. The Jama Masjid was attacked, and two hundred copies of the Koran were taken and burned. Offices of Pakistan International Airlines and Emirates Air were attacked, as well as private residences and media outlets. On September 1, two people were killed. One of these died as a mob tried to storm the Egyptian Embassy.
Sayed Mohammed Habibulah, a Muslim in charge of Tribhuvan University's political science faculty said: "Muslims and non-Muslims have been living side by side for the past 1,000 years and there has never been any communal violence. This anti-Muslim wave will be short-lived. Muslims in Nepal are peace-loving people and loyal to the state."
Muslims took part in the Jana Andolan II protests, in which many civilians were attacked by forces loyal to King Gyanandra, but it is not clear that the 2006 protests saw the Muslim community specifically targeted. Jana Andolan II was successful in that it placed 90,000 troops under parliamentary control, rather than in the hands of the autocrat Gyanendra. For the first time in its history, Nepal was declared a secular country, rather than a Hindu Kingdom.
It is hard to say what significance today's protest really has. Is it a sign of genuine grievance or is it a sign of political manipulation carried out by imported Muslims and their ideas? Time will tell.
January 5, 2007
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003531.html
