Monthly Archives: February 2017

The curious cases of MQM in London

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-The curious cases of MQM in London

Aftab Siddiqui

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This is probably the most appropriate description of how 2016 ended for Altaf Hussain and the MQM. It brought greatest relief as the investigation in the money laundering case was stopped in the UK. On the other hand, his infamous speech in August literally sounded the death knell for the MQM as we know it. With this background what can the Interior Ministry of Pakistan do now to overcome the shortcomings of the past years and help bring successful prosecution in the UK against the MQM and its dear supreme leader in 2017?
The fact of the matter is that the reasons which led to the decision to eventually drop the money laundering case largely reside in Pakistan. It has been observed that the main defendants submitted large numbers of documents including but not limited to private undertakings from individuals from Pakistan stating that they gave money to the MQM and Altaf Hussain. Personal undertakings in the form of affidavits made in Pakistan were given by people connected to the MQM, industrialists and businessmen based in Karachi. These undertakings provided the cover for the amount of cash recovered from various properties connected to the MQM in London.
The veracity of these undertakings was never questioned. No efforts of note were made to find out who gave these undertakings, were they given under duress or voluntarily, and what were the sources of income of the signatories of these undertakings. This lack of interest by Pakistani authorities is alarming as all of this evidence originated from Pakistan. None of the many agencies under the command of the interior minister were able to provide high quality evidence to Scotland Yard to raise sufficient doubt in their minds on the overall genuineness of these undertakings. As a result, they were received as part of acceptable evidence by the UK investigators.
However, most recently, the money laundering case has taken a new turn. The UK authorities are confronted with multiple claimants and hence are not able to close the inquiry due to this dispute. If the Interior Ministry has the will to act, they have an opportunity now. They should intervene, submit new evidence based on professional investigations of all the personal undertakings and the circumstances in which they were made and collected in Pakistan. This evidence, alongside other proof, should then be submitted to Scotland Yard so it can initiate further investigations which could lead to successful prosecution in the money laundering case.
The Interior Ministry has two more opportunities to redeem its reputation. The first is the Charity Commission UK’s inquiry into the transfer of approximately £180,000 from MQM Pakistan to the ‘Society for Unwell and Needy’ UK (SUN Charity). The violation in this instance has been committed by MQM in Pakistan. Over the years they never disclosed this huge amount remitted abroad in their annual accounts submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). On the other hand, SUN charity has always declared these as funds received from MQM Pakistan. The breach of electoral laws in this case has been committed by a registered political party in Pakistan. The leading UK newspaper ‘The Daily Sun’ published a story on SUN Charity and the MQM connection in its edition of March 21, 2016.
However, despite this story being widely cited in the UK and Pakistani media, no representations from the interior ministry or the ECP has been made to the Charity Commission, UK or to the media group to obtain the background information.
Authorities in Pakistan it seems have not conducted any legal action about these falsified annual accounts, how this huge amount was collected and eventually transferred to the UK by MQM Pakistan. And now MQM Pakistan on the surface appears to have parted ways with Altaf Hussain. They should demand their money back immediately. They can use this money to provide some relief to the poor people of Karachi rather than spending this amount in the Somerset area of the UK. If this amount is not returned to them on demand they can institute legal action in the UK to get the amount back. This is the least Farooq Sattar and party can do to show that they have changed their ways and the welfare of poor Karachites is now their top priority.
The other important case is the incitement to violence arising from the infamous speech of Altaf Hussain delivered from London on August 22, 2016. An inquiry is being conducted by the Counter Terrorism Command, UK. This is one other opportunity for the leadership of the interior ministry to prove that they are neither complicit nor incompetent in relation to the lack of success achieved by them in these cases. As reputable investigators, they now have to provide irrefutable evidence in the shape of unedited audio, video, photos, statement of victims and witnesses, the murdered person’s medical reports, circumstantial evidence and the confessional statements of individuals involved. All this evidence should unambiguously connect persons resorting to violence and murder directly to the content of the speech.
One aspect which cannot be ignored is that Altaf Hussain has engaged the world’s leading law firm to defend him in the money laundering case. It will be an important game-changing step for the interior ministry if they also engage a reputable law firm in the UK to assist them. This law firm should be tasked to review evidence collected by the Pakistani agencies. Such a firm should help the Pakistani authorities improve the standard of evidence collected to the extent that they fully meet the highest standards of proof required by the Crown Prosecution Service and British courts. The law firm should liaise at every step of the way with UK investigators. They should submit evidence officially to them on behalf of the Pakistani authorities. This critical measure would eliminate benefit of doubt as an excuse to dismiss these cases by the UK investigators. It will also greatly reduce the influence that the anti-Pakistan lobby can exert on these cases.
Needless to say, it is a legal and moral responsibility of the interior ministry to provide some closure to the family of Arif (son of Abdul Saeed), a Karachi’ite who was only 42 years old when attacked and murdered after the speech. The ministry is duty bound to act professionally and deliver evidence which make the cases prosecutable in the UK justice system. This will ensure that common citizens, the media personnel and media houses attacked as a result of Altaf Hussain’s incitement to violence get the justice they fairly deserve.
The announcement by the MQM London group to hold a public rally in Karachi has sent the local police and the rangers into overdrive. This culminated in the arrest of many ordinary workers. Similar efforts over the years by the LEAs to arrest workers have not yielded positive results for the city. It has in been of great help for Altaf Hussain and other MQM leaders. They play it as a victimization card and use it to support their separatist agenda among their followers. The interior ministry needs to change their strategy now by stopping giving ammunition to their anti-Pakistan agenda. Ordinary political workers should not be persecuted in any way and form. The ministry should focus on pursuing the successful prosecution of the leaders who plan and promote anarchy and have plundered the wealth of Karachi.
Tailpiece: The Dr Imran Farooq murder case is being investigated in the UK. An FIR has also been registered in Pakistan. It’s a unique situation that inquiries in two different jurisdictions have been registered for the same crime. At present there seems to be minimal possibility of a successful prosecution in the UK in this case.

The writer is founder of the online Facebook forum “Dialogue of the Civilisations” and is an independent senior analyst for South Asia and is based in London. He tweets @siddiquiaftab

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10 CONTEMPORARY NOVELS BY AND ABOUT MUSLIMS YOU SHOULD READ

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OR HOW TO COMBAT XENOPHOBIA FROM HOME

November 17, 2016  By Emily Temple

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Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account

This novel, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is the fictional memoir of Estebanico, a Moroccan slave of conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez, who emerges as one of the few survivors after his crew lands on the Florida coast in 1527. History is written by the victors, this novel reminds us, but only certain victors—here, Lalami fights erasure, providing an alternative narrative of the exploration of the New World.

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G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

In this delightful, techno-fantastical novel, Alif is a hacker in an unnamed country in the Middle East, fighting authoritarian government censorship and trying to get the girl. Then, enter the jinn. Also worth mentioning: G. Willow Wilson is also the writer behind the new Ms. Marvel comic, which stars 16-year-old Pakistani-American shapeshifter Kamala Khan, the first Muslim character to headline a Marvel comic book.

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Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

For a certain bookish type, this novel is some serious wish fulfillment—after all, its narrator, Aaliya, is a somewhat misanthropic old woman who does nothing but read books all day and never goes out. But most important and impressive here is the skill with which Alameddine has created a full, seductive, and—I can’t resist—actually completely necessary mind for us to delve into, live with, and explore.

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Saladin Ahmed, Throne of the Crescent Moon

Ahmed’s epic swords & sorcery fantasy novel which follows a ghul hunter and his apprentice on a quest to save their city, was a finalist for pretty much every fantasy prize, but won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. In an interview with Alyssa Rosenberg, Ahmed referred to it as a “sadly radical gesture,” explaining that just as feminism is “the radical notion that women are people, a lot of my work is about the fact that Muslims and Arabs and people who look Arabic are heroes.”

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Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead

The first novel in Khan’s crime series follows Rachel Getty and her partner Esa Khattak, detectives with Toronto’s Community Policing Section, which deals with “minority-sensitive cases.” A death that first seems to be an accident soon seems to be connected to the Srebrenica Massacre, complicating the relationship of the detectives—particularly the Muslim Khattak—to the case.

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Ali Eteraz, Native Believer

Ali Eteraz is a pen name that means “Noble Protest.” In his darkly funny debut novel, the protest may not be entirely noble, but it is essential—the story follows M., a Philadelphia man who is Muslim by birth but not by belief. When he gets fired for owning a copy of the Quran, his life spirals out of control as he tries to find some semblance of a place in the world.

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Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

This lyrical novel moves back and forth between two stories: one set in a contemporary Scotland deeply suspicious of Muslims, where Natasha, a half-Russian, half-Sudanese professor studying Imam ­Shamil finds out that her favorite student is descended from the 19th-century Muslim warrior (and has a very important heirloom)—and the other telling the story of Imam Shamil himself.

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Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

This bestselling novel takes the form of a long monologue, as Changez, a young Pakistani man, tells his story to an American in a cafe. Since Changez had been living, by some standards at least, the American Dream before 9/11, his reaction to the disaster is strange: “I stared as one—and then the other—of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.” But this reaction confuses him, and soon everything begins to change.

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Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim

In this novel, the sequel to The Golden Age, a sister and brother clash in postwar Bangladesh. Maya, a doctor, remains a revolutionary, while Sohail, once her idol, has become a conservative religious leader. “The book is sort of asking the reader to challenge that notion of what is a good Muslim,” Anam told NPR. “Is it the practicing Muslim? Is it his sister, who’s very progressive and areligious?”

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Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Exploding mangoes are the least of it. Hanif’s satirical debut takes on the suspicious death (plane crash) of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, former president of Pakistan, inventing a number of increasingly goofy assassination plots and possibilities. Intelligence agents, military aircraft, political alliances, and slapstick jokes make for a kind magical, mango-ish Catch-22.Emily Temple

Emily Temple

Emily Temple is an associate editor at LitHub.

http://lithub.com/10-contemporary-novels-by-and-about-muslims-you-should-read/
posted by f.sheikh

Advanced technology, that made America and West prosperous, will it be responsible for its undoing and reversing immigration pattern? Brief Thought By F. Sheikh

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“ the looming technology tsunami that will hit the U.S. job market over the next five to 15 years and likely destroy tens of millions of jobs due to automation by artificial intelligence, 3-D manufacturing, advanced robotics and driverless vehicles — among other emerging technologies. The best research to date indicates that47 percent of all U.S. jobs are likely to be replaced by technology over the next 10 to 15 years, more than 80 million in all, according to the Bank of England. Jobs at risk include a diverse range of service and professional positions. Retail and fast-food jobs will be almost entirely automated. Manual laborers and construction workers will be replaced by robots; long-haul truck drivers by self-driving trucks; accountants, clerks, paralegals, telemarketers and customer-service reps by artificial intelligence; and security guards by robots and drones. Even professionals in the fields of accounting, law, finance, consulting, journalism and medicine are at risk of losing their jobs to smart machines” Writes economist and business professor in one of his columns in WP.

The well-paying job situation is already so dire that the public is willing to elect demagogues who are selling them nothing more than a snake oil. Despite all the threats, bullying, and shouting insults at Mexico and China, the effect of policies on well-paying jobs will be marginal. Just focusing on job loss to developing countries and tearing up global agreements will not do it.  

If current job loss is creating such a chaos and havoc, it is going to get worse, and imagine what it will be like in next few years. It is a critical time to come up with a plan and policies that will seriously address the jobs loss in the new automated age.. To make matters worse, we are electing leaders at this crucial juncture, who seriously lack the foresight and wisdom to address this core problem. We are already way behind the curve, and we have not even started seriously addressing the core issue of loss of jobs due to advanced technology, especially automation. It has already created a significant portion of population, which is permanently either unemployed or underemployed. Rather than focusing on the underlying causes, we are scapegoating immigrants and greedy corporations as well as wall street is happy to finance this diversion.   

In this coming fully automated age, the underdeveloped countries may fare better, as their labor may still be cheaper than installation of expensive automated machinery especially in service industry. They will still be manufacturing cheap products that West and its increasingly poor population will need to survive. It may impact immigration patterns also, decreasing immigration to West and increasing reverse immigration to the underdeveloped countries.  

F. Sheikh

 

” 20 USA Tech Giants With Immigrant Roots” By David Ryan Polgar

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44% of Silicon Valley startups feature an immigrant founder and 51% of tech unicorns (valuation over a billion dollars) include an immigrant founder. The United States is a country where the founder of its financial system, Alexander Hamilton, was born out of wedlock on the island of Nevis. The late Steve Jobs, who put a giant dent in the universe with his visionary leadership, had a Syrian biological father.

American ingenuity is often foreign-born.

The engine of Silicon Valley is fueled by an international labor force that has come into focus during the current tumultuous political climate. The tech industry has long put a premium on talent and a de-emphasis towards one’s country of origin. It remains to be seen how the heated rhetoric will impact the industry’s ability to be a giant magnet for top-tier global talent. To understand the potential future for the tech industry, it is helpful to look at the current makeup of talent.

Here are 20 tech influencers that are either immigrated to the US or a first-generation American.

1. Elon Musk (Tesla | SpaceX, founder): Born in South Africa

2. Steve Chen (YouTube, Co-Founder): Born in Taiwan.

3. Pierre Omidyar (eBway, Founder): Born in France from Iranian parents.

4. Michelle Zatlyn (CloudFlare, Founder): Born in Canada.

5. Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, Co-founder): Mother was an undocumented immigrant from Armenia.

 

My father’s family were refugees & my mom was an undocumented immigrant. Without them, there’s no me & no @Reddit.https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/5r43td/an_open_letter_to_the_reddit_community/?depth=1 …

10:05 PM – 30 Jan 2017

6. Sundar Pichai (Google, CEO): Born in India

7. Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox, Co-founder): Parents emigrated from Iran

8. Garrett Camp (Uber, Co-founder): Born in Canada

9. Bozoma Saint John (Apple Music, marketing exec): Born in Ghana

10. Satya Nadella (Microsoft, CEO): Born in India

11. Shantanu Narayen (Adobe, CEO): Born in India

12. Jess Lee (Sequoia Capital): Born in Canada, grew up in Hong Kong

13. Omid Kordestani (Twitter, Executive Chairman): Born in Iran

14. Jerry Yang (Yahoo, Co-founder): Born in Taiwan

15. Sergey Brin (Alphabet, Co-founder): Born in Russia

16. Bastian Lehmann (Postmates, Co-founder & CEO): British citizen

17. Sean Rad (Tinder, Co-founder): Parents emigrated from Iran

18. Gary Vaynerchuk (VaynerMedia & Investor): Born in Belarus. Immigrated to the US as part of an exchange program with Soviet Jews for American wheat.

19. John & Patrick Collison (Stripe, Co-founders): Irish entrepreneurs

20. Safra Catz (Oracle, Co-CEO): Born in Israel

http://bigthink.com/david-ryan-polgar/20-tech-influencers-with-immigrant-stories?utm_source=Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d8488c8538-DailyNewsletter_020517&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_625217e121-d8488c8538-41548293

posted by f.sheikh