Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

Mankind is being Traumatized for its Hopes for Peace and Sustainable Future

The trajectory of peace and war between Russia, Ukraine and the West unfolds the pursuit of unbridled ambitions and insane geopolitics at the height of cheap military triumphs and fame. The egoistic class of leaders operating global institutions claim “success” by rape of earth, destruction of human habitats and bellicose chauvinism without any accountability.  The unending war fast became an economic warfare – accelerated weapons sales to warring parties and money making. The Transcend Media Service – Norway (8/21/23), reports that the “top 5 US weapon contractors made US$196B in 2022.” The inept leaders lack humanitarian consciousness of peace and conflict management and are well paid and well fed to have distorted the criterion of basic human values, morality if any, and standards of being honest. They solely rely on making bogus statements of peace and conflict management for public consumption. It is evidence of tragic abnormality and much evil and less goodness in the 21^st century global affairs – amassed collection of unthinkable junk history.  If the leaders were honest, they should have faced the current challenges. If President Putin and President Erdogan (Turkey) could meet in Sochi to discuss the grain deal and prospects for peacemaking, surely, if the US and NATO and the EU wanted conflict resolution and peace could open a dialogue with Russia and China.

The on-going war in Ukraine and its wide range of global ripple effects – from the supply of gas, oil, grain deals, collaborative ventures in peaceful dialogue and the lingering suspicion of the threat of tactical nuclear weapons – all echo degradation of human values and soul, exhibit intellectual failure, universal chaos and socioeconomic miseries of innumerable multitude. Time and history are not going to wait for the few insane outrages, phony statements on human deaths and destruction unless we take this challenge in its time and opportunity to make things happen  for change and for the best of all mankind.

We, should not wait for the end game to watch global leadership failure but being the People of Reason call for the formulation of a global forum of peace and unity and to plan for peace and conflict resolution between Ukraine and Russia and elsewhere in the world.

Imperatives of Meeting of Minds:  Conflicts, the Earth and Human Consciousness

A rational conflict analysis and search for peace involves listening and learning to divergent viewpoints and finding a common place of reasoning without agreeing or disagreeing to halt the warfare. This shows effective communication and enlightened leadership traits.  Modern technologically advanced wars kill people; destroy the Earth and its systematic working, human habitats and its ripple impacts entrap the future generations in psychological and intellectual captivity and dehumanization. Strangely enough, none of the Western leaders – be it the US, NATO or the EU had fostered a vision for a dialogue with Russia and China or to forge understanding for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Could we the human kind count the blessings of God to maintain life for millions and billions of years on this planet?  All things exist in a mathematical order, whether we recognize it or deny it. So strange, we know all about other material things and scientific – technological developments but we are ignorant and arrogant to learn about our own origin and existence on a living planet. Are we the human being intelligent enough to know about our own existence and Purpose of Life?  How could we imagine peace and harmony among ourselves when we bomb and destroy each others with weapons of destruction as if we were not the human kind but some kind of animals without any sense of rational thinking? The Earth is a living entity and is meant for us – the human beings. The Divine warning (Chapter 7: 56: The Qur’an), is self-explanatory:

Do no mischief on the Earth after it hath been set in order, but call on God with fear and longing in hearts                 For the Mercy of God is always near to those who do good.  

In all ages, people and nations claiming to be most powerful and transgressors manipulating the Earth and humanity were destroyed by the Laws of God – natural causes. Have you not walked on the earth to learn how most powerful nations of the past were destroyed by the Will of God – asks the Divine Revelations? We, the People live in a splendid Universe in which planet Earth floats ordained by the commands of God. We are moral being unlike animals that possess the eyes, ear and other senses but cannot draw logical conclusion from their senses. There is a moral sense of spirituality and humanity to co-exist in harmony with the rest of all creations on this Earth. This TRUST is explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an, Chapter 33: 72:  “We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth; And the mountains but they refused; To undertake it, being afraid thereof: But man undertook it; He was indeed unjust and foolish.”    

Have you ever thought how the day-night alternates systematically to serve the mankind?

“Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of Night and Day – There are indeed Signs for men of understanding.” (3: 190). Do you know who else other than God determined the Earth spinning of 1670 km per hour? Who else than God ordained it to orbit the sun at 107,000 km per hour?  And who else than God made it to spin at 28,437 km per hour at the equator? (https://www.newscientist.com/question/fastearthspin/#ixzz7C8p37S9X). Be aware that earth average distance to the Sun is about 93 million miles (105 million km); the distance of Moon from Earth is currently 384,821 km equivalent to 0.002572 Astronomical Units and if the distance between the Earth-Sun and the Earth-moon were ever to change, there will be no sign of life, human civilizations or habitats left on Earth. You as human being as One Humanity has one origin –  why can’t we co-exist in peace and harmony?

It is God Who has created you from dust; Then from a sperm-drop,

Then from a leech-like clot; Then He does get you out (into the light)

As a child: then lets you (grow and) reach your age of full strength; then lets you become old,

Though of you there are, some who die before;

And lets you reach a Term appointed; in order that ye

May learn wisdom.       (Chapter 40: 67: The Qur’an)

Are the Global Leaders Ignorant of People’s Aspirations for Peace?

If the Russian, American, Ukrainian and NATO’s leaders are honest, proactive and accountable to the global community, they would urgently need new creative strategic thinking to cope with multiple layers of political conflicts and humanitarian crises and to find peaceful and workable solutions away from the entrenched political box of the few global warmongers. Recently, this author proposed a strategic framework of dialogue for peace to global leaders to resolve the conflict :

The challenging truth arising from the emerging conflicts and leadership failure calls for rejection of the violent assumptions of militarization and egoistic triumphs by acts of genocidal plans. We, the People of global humanity ask the conscientious leaders to listen to the voices of reason for an immediate ceasefire between Russia-Ukraine and stop the acceleration of military confrontations on all fronts. Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian critical thinker and a housewife spells out a prevalent scenario: (“Always Opposing Past Wars But Never The Present One.” Information Clearing House: 8/30/23): One day it will be permissible to say in mainstream circles that it was wrong for the US empire to deliberately provoke the war in Ukraine and keep it going as long as possible to bleed Russia, but it’s taboo to say that now, because the empire hasn’t yet accomplished all its goals in Ukraine.

Despite the sketchy illusions of freedom, democracy, human rights, liberty and justice, we are encroached, stuffed and at terrible risk of annihilation more by error of judgment than planned scheme of things by Man against Man. Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

“War provides an outlet for every evil element in man’s nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in position of power the vulgar and base.”  (C.E.M Joad. Guide to Modern Wickedness, 1936)

The Leaders Who could not Lead to Political Change and Peace

The Arabian landscape portrays continuous wars, insurgency against authoritarianism, insecurity and lack of moral and intellectual leadership to political change for the good of people. For more than a decade, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Afghanistan have not emerged stable entities after the conflicts.  This week, the Laws of Nature signaled the staunch reminders to all mankind via flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and raging wildfires across the globe. Would any serious thinkers take notice of these natural acts for change, reformation and security? Please view:  “Global Peace and Security:  World Leaders Betray the Canons of Truth, Wisdom and Humanity”, “Peace and War The Russia-Ukraine Conflict Urgently Needs a Dialogue for Peace”, Uncommon Thought Journal: 8/26/2023, and “Arab Triangle: How the prosperity bubble destroyed the Arab Moral and Intellectual culture” Uncommon Thought Journal: 6/12/2013.

Militarization of the Arabian Peninsula appears high on the agenda items for policies and  practices. The European and American policy makers view the oil exporting Arab leaders as “camel jockeys”  and draw hollow laughters.  According to John  Perkins (Confession of an Economic Hitman, 2006), Arab States are like ‘cows to be milked as long as necessary.’ Most of the Arab leadership families are the former colonial agents hired by the British, French and US Empires to control and manage the oil export business. They pay to the Masters for protection of their palaces, but not of the people. Even a common person cannot think outside the capsule of secret police apparatus.

There are no objective moral, spiritual and intellectual values in the imperial philosophy of global economic development except power and wisdom are immeasurably separated by the gulf of greed, militarization and hegemonic control over the oil-rich Arab Middle East. The puppet rulers and the imperial Masters demonstrate sadistic policy behaviors  and cruelty to safeguarding their vested interests and strategic priorities for hegemonic economic development across the Arab world.

Evil is deprivation of good. The coming of Islam glorified the Arab moral and intellectual cultures from an age of ignorance to an age of human development, change, progress and  to the peak of Golden Age of scientific and human progress lasting 800 years in

Al-Andulcia- Spain. Marai Rosa Menocal (A Golden Reign of Tolerance: The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2003), highlighted the contributions of Islamic civilization in Spain. The Islamic civilization identified the Arabs as “Ummah of Khair – people of goodness and peace.”  The message of Qur’an is clear:  “We have revealed for you (O men!)  a book in which  is a message for you: Will ye not then understand?” (21: 10). And it warns: “Then the Apostle will say: O My Lord! My people took this Qur’an for just foolish nonsense.”(25:30), “Does Man not see; It is God Who created him from sperm. Yet Behold! he (stands forth) as an open Adversary.” (36:77). Today, the Arab world exemplifies a decadent moral and intellectual landscape. What a moral and intellectual human tragedy for those knowledgeable people, who defied the logic of truth. The oil exporting superficial prosperity betrayed the heritage of Arab nations and changed them to be interdependent and subservient to the West as puppets and stooges living to compete in erecting high-rise buildings and palaces without any purpose, importing luxury cars, organizing  and enjoying football matches and striving for exclusive consumerism and nothing else. They lost sense of humanity,  and consequential futuristic calamities and accountability to God.

The Arab Spring (2011), raised hopes for systematic rethinking and socioeconomic and political change but the authoritarian Arab leaders crushed the spirit of people’s movement for political change. Islam professed a movement for human development and change but the neocolonial opted for a short lived economic prosperity. The Arab people have become victims of their own rulers and their complacency to remain in power, fair or foul. 

After the 9/11 tragedies, the US led bogus “War on Terrorism”, and its War-Industrial  Complex fetched the Arab rulers with a sense of insecurity for their survival.  John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman, 2006), outlines how the economic and industrial development scenarios were linked to a ‘Saudi Arabian money laundering affairs’ to modernize the Kingdom by an unusual coercive and secretive agreement worked out by Henry Kissinger. Under the conspicuous scheme of things:

“Saudi Arabia would use its petrodollars to purchase US Government securities; in turn the interest earned by these securities would be spent by the US Department of the Treasury in ways that enabled Saudi Arabia to emerge from a medieval society into a modern, industrialized world….Our own US Department of the Treasury would hire us at Saudi expense to build infrastructure projects and even entire cities throughout the Arabian Peninsula.” Perkins adds that “Washington used its advantage to impose one other critical condition…. and I sometime find it difficult to understand how Saudi Arabia could have accepted this condition.”

John Perkins views the grand scheme of Arab economic development as a blueprint for the US ambitions of empire building across the globe: “ it was part of a sinister system aimed not at outfoxing an unsuspecting customer, but rather at promoting the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known…….most puzzling was that final entry under the list of my clients: US Treasury Department, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Arab world lives under the Western Imperialism and War Racketeering

“War is a racket Then and Now” (Free Thought Manifesto: 05/29/2011) describes Mark Sheffield. Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler (WAR IS A RACKET) of the US marines served 33 years but “had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until [he] retired to civil life did [he] fully realize it.” The wars sustained capitalist governance and made millionaires into billionaires. “WAR is a racket.  It always has been.  It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.  It is the only one international in scope.  It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”  Butler asks many rational questions: “How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?  How many of them dug a trench?  How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout?  How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?  How many of them parried the bayonet thrust of an enemy?  How many of them were wounded and killed in battle?”

War is a crime in civilization context. What is the cure to raging indifference and cruelty to the interests of the whole of the mankind?The 21^st century new-age complex political, economic, social and strategic challenges and the encompassing opportunities warrant new thinking, new leaders and new visions for change, conflict management and participatory peaceful future-making. The Divine knowledge offers logical substance of reality to be reckoned with:

Verily in the creation of the Heavens and of the Earth and in the succession of the night and of the day, are signs for men of understanding;                                                                                                                                             Who standing and sitting and reclining, bear God in mind and reflect on the creation of the Heavens and of Erath and say: Oh, our Lord- Thou has not created this in vain.  (3: 190: The Qur’an).

The imperial networks export militarization and wars to destabilize the Arab Middle East. The Arab world has one focal issue – Palestine and the Two States solution.  The contemporary Arab world has no honest leaders to protect the Masjid Al-Aqsa and its sanctity from Israeli’s Ultra Nationalist provocations and to reason with Palestine and Israel and what future options could be imagined for peace and security: Please see by this author: “Al-Aqsa Mosque Waiting for the Arab Leaders.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57491.htm 

Wars, deaths and destruction are at the top notch agenda items in relations between the West and the Arab world.  Was the discovery of “oil” was a conspiracy (“Fitna”) to forfeit the Arab culture and Islamic civilization? The on-going bloodbaths across the streets of Yemen, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere provide a staunch reminder of something terribly wrong with human thinking and military actions. How do such crimes portray the nature of Arab societies in which bloodbaths are taking place under the aegis of economic development and militarization? Do the paranoid Arab authoritarian rulers envisage an advanced culture of “modernity?” The whole of the Arab world is a quagmire of conflicts, sectarian warfare and foreign interventions. Wars kill people, destroy the planet and those who posses power show no wisdom to dream of triumph and glory over human mind and soul. The on-going war between Russia , Ukraine and NATO,  and the war-torn Middle East overshadowing the common citizens of the world feeling incapacitated and dehumanized to share a terrible sense of helplessness and wonder how to save the humanity from the scourge of imperial led war racketeering and the consequences of man’s intransigence, triviality and viciousness against his own existence and future on Earth.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019.

Prison.

It’s just a word. But when you are using it to describe your own possible future, it leaves the lips with a heaviness and a bitter taste, like bile.

Until a few years ago, ending up in an Indian prison because of my work or things I said seemed as unimaginable as my death — a grim but distant prospect. When I met with fellow journalists, we discussed stories we were working on or the latest political gossip.

But today the possibility of arrest and prosecution on fantastical charges lurks deep in my heart and in those of many Indian journalists, historians, writers, academics, intellectuals and others who openly criticize Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. Now when we meet, we talk about lawyers, potential charges and sentences, legal funds and making sure that our personal and financial affairs are in order.

Since Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, the Hindu nationalist mob has targeted one supposed enemy after another — Muslims, students, activists, opposition politicians, lower-caste Dalits, gay men and lesbians — tearing our incredibly diverse country apart in a myopic attempt to remake it into a bastion of Hindu supremacy.

Another line was crossed two weeks ago when the government announced charges against the writer Arundhati Roy. Ms. Roy, whose works include the novel “The God of Small Things” and the essay collection “My Seditious Heart,” is one of the greatest writers of our time. She has been a voice for truth, tolerance and sanity in India for decades. Her books and essays record the utter apathy of the post-independence ruling class as India descended into the chaos of Mr. Modi’s right-wing politics. Jailing Ms. Roy would be not unlike America imprisoning a writer of the moral stature of Toni Morrison or James Baldwin.

The charges against her represent a pivotal moment for India; If Ms. Roy is incarcerated, she will become the country’s highest-profile prisoner of conscience.

She would join a growing body of writers, activists and intellectuals.

Shortly after Ms. Roy was charged, 12 leading international human rights groups issued a joint statement accusing Indian authorities of abusing a counterterrorism law, financial regulations and other laws to “silence journalists, human rights defenders, activists and critics of the government.”

This has been going on for years. According to the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, in the five years before Mr. Modi took power, the central government filed just 69 cases under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, an overly broad state security law that allows detention for extended periods without due process. Under Mr. Modi, the number of cases filed has jumped to 288 as of September 2022.

The charges against Ms. Roy are typically absurd. She is accused of provocative speech and promoting enmity between different groups merely for comments made in 2010 that questioned the Indian government’s claims to the disputed, restive region of Kashmir. But the real reason she is being targeted now — 13 years later — is surely her courageous criticism of the intolerance and violence unleashed under Mr. Modi. People like her are among India’s greatest assets because they stand for truth and decency, but they are being cast as enemies of the state. India is devouring its best and brightest.

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Interesting articles on how major Jewish donors are pressuring universities for pro-Israeli bent. (f.sheikh)

Some alumni want the president to resign. They are angry about a Palestinian conference and Penn’s response to the Hamas attacks — as well as D.E.I. and transgender rights.

In the two days after Hamas killed hundreds of men, women and children in a surprise attack on Israel, the University of Pennsylvania had not reached out to its students or alumni with an official statement.

But it did post a message on Instagram, honoring Native and Indigenous people and “their culture, history, and importance as members of the Penn community.”

That post set off one of the university’s largest donors, Marc Rowan, the chief of the private equity giant Apollo Global Management.

“So this weekend, while 1,200 Israelis were being butchered and murdered and raped, we tweeted as a university about Indigenous Peoples’ Day” he said in a CNBC interview.

Mr. Rowan, who with his wife gave at least $50 million to Penn, had been angry for a while.

Back in September, he and other alumni, including the philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, had pleaded with the university’s president, Liz Magill, to cancel or strongly condemn a Palestinian literary conference. Citing free speech, she declined, while acknowledging that some of the speakers had a history of remarks considered to be antisemitic.

“As a university,” she wrote in a statement, “we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission.”

To Mr. Rowan and others, the administration had lost it moral compass and overlooked the concerns of the university’s Jewish community. He called for donors to cut their gifts to $1 as an unmistakable symbolic protest — and demanded the resignation of Ms. Magill and Scott L. Bok, the chairman of the board of trustees.

“There has been a gathering storm around these issues,” Mr. Rowan said on CNBC. “You know, microaggressions are condemned with extreme moral outrage, and yet violence, particularly violence against Jews — antisemitism — seems to have found a place of tolerance on the campus, protected by free speech.”

Since then, some of Penn’s most influential alumni and benefactors — including Mr. Lauder, the former Utah governor Jon Huntsman and the “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf — have joined Mr. Rowan in pulling funding.

Even before the conference, though, tensions had been simmering at Penn over what some donors viewed as the university’s leftward shift, including a transgender athlete on the women’s swim team and the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs by the dean of the business school. They were also concerned about the declining number of Jewish students.

A couple of donors, it turned out, had cut off contributions well before the conference.

“The conservatives have this intersecting set of issues and among them, pro-Israel stuff is one of them,” said Robert Vitalis, a Penn professor who formerly ran the university’s Middle East Center and supported the Palestinian writers. “The conference became a vehicle.”

It is not unusual for donors, unhappy with student activism, to pull back giving. A host of universities have struggled to bridge political and cultural divides among donors, faculty and students. At the University of Texas at Austin, alumni threatened to cut funds over efforts to eliminate the university’s fight song, and at the University of Denver, a plan to give an award to President George W. Bush drew donor ire.

But donors rarely try to topple the leadership so publicly. For many watching this battle, the campaign to wrest control over the university’s direction — its policies, principles and vision for the future — was unsettling.

The donor outcry dismayed pro-Palestinian alumni, who in an Oct. 18 open letter criticized the Penn administration, as well as influential donors, for overlooking the treatment of Palestinians in the ensuing violence.

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