#islamic invaders

[h0bg0blin-meat]

Idk who needs to hear this but removing Mughal history from history textbooks completely to the point that the future generations wouldn't even KNOW who the Mughals were, is not the way to go.

You can't just distort history and remove a chunk of it. That's a very biased way of viewing something that actually happened not even 500 years ago. History is not fiction. You can't remove the existence of real people.

When you remove Mughal history, you also remove the good and bad they did. You remove the reason behind the beautiful blend of Indo-Islamic architecture, culture and art we see today, few of the things that have implied towards a sense of harmony amidst the religious chaos that reeked back in the day. But with that, you ALSO remove the massive destruction and looting of thousands of temples, the inhumane measures, laws and punishments they put up against non-Muslims, the struggles and sacrifices of the Hindus and other oppressed groups who protested against these atrocities oh-so-courageously. You remove their cries, their brave stories. You remove the valiant fights Shivaji, Maharana Pratap and their likes put up against these people. You remove the martyrs of the several genocides these guys (especially Babur) caused. You remove them all, because once there's no Mughals, who did these brave souls fight against?

Also why only Mughals? What about the Khaljis, Mamluks, Tughlaqs, Ghaznis and others? They committed way worse atrocities than the Mughals did tbh. So with that logic all of their histories should be wiped out? But that's almost like a 700-800-year-history-wipeout we're talking about (the dates might not be accurate). And that's not how it works.

Here's a better idea. Just... show their good and their bad, and just don't glorify them and their tyranny. We keep the struggles and the sour lives the suppressed groups lived under the rule of these dynasties, and maybe glorify the brave souls who fought selflessly against them. We show how they plundered any place of worship that wasn't a mosque (or Islamic in general), and treated the idols of these religions post-destruction. We can also include the non-Islamic kingdoms and kingdoms that stood still and strong despite the invasions, like the many Hindu kingdoms in the south, then the Ahom dynasty and a few other small kingdoms in the northeast, etc. We can bring lesser-known and highly underrated non-Islamic kingdoms into light too in this process, and how they dealt with these invaders. (Half of these points are already depicted in the existing textbooks, or... atleast the textbooks *I* studied back in school, but I think they get kinda overshadowed by the subtle glorification of these invaders)

These are the solutions I'd provide. If anyone has anything to add, please do, or if yall have better solutions, pls lmk. But removing a huge chunk of history just out of pure hate and revenge like this is NOT the way to go about in the field of history LMFAO. It's the same as how that one biased historian recently claimed that no Hindu temples were destroyed by the Islamic invaders.

#keep the conversation civil btw cuz i dont wanna fight with anyone #mughal empire #ncert #cbse #cbseboard #hindublr #mughal invasion #mughal dynasty #desiblr #desiposting #desi tumblr #desi tag #islamic invaders #islamic invasion

[secular-jew]

Brief but fairly accurate. In the 7th century, the Muslims were the invaders and occupiers of the Israelites and Judeans who had lived there for 2000 years prior to the invention of the cult currently known as Islam.

#secular-jew #israel #jewish #judaism #israeli #jerusalem #diaspora #secular jew #secularjew #islam #invaders #occupiers #Islamic invasion #Islamic occupation

[stellarshift]

""desiblr"" is disgusting

#'when the mosque was finally demolished in 1992' yes go on say more...... #'no walk in the park' yeah it just involved killing thousands in communal violence. no biggie though #dont even get me started on the 'islamic invader' bs like. LMAO #cool parallels between hindutva and zionist weirdos btw. #justifying incredible violence with baseless claims of historicity.... some vague idea of 'returning home' fuelled by religious sentiments #😐😐😐😐 #gross #india #my post

[rayatii]

Full offense but I think governments with a constitution that revolves around the people being of one faith only should not be allowed to exist.

#this is especially egregious to me as someone who grew up in a country with 18 legally recognized religious groups #(well. various different branches of christianity and islam but still) #and it is legally required to have at least one member of each sect in the government #even so i think this system suck and that state and religion should be entirely separate #raya reflects #raya talks politics #btw did you know that this system was mainly established by invaders? #i'm really not surprised about that honestly #it was initially conceived during ottoman occupation and the system that's currently in use was established by the french

[afooldyedinfolly]

Feeling bad about me being Jewish being hidden from me out of fear almost my entire life again

#becoming #what growing up as a jew in iraq/iran even as a nonpracticing one who practices islam will do to a parent #all I had were the horror stories. i never got the community or the joy or the arguments or the teachings #all i ever had were the horror stories #which is what goyim have anyways. the only difference is that it was my family dying in these stories #and I feel like an invader in jewish spaces bc I have no intentions on a convert #i have no desire to become religious #i just want to reconnect to a culter and community that should have been my birthright #i want to hold what was hidden from me due to years of fear and shame #*'''''''becoming''''''''' a convert. Tumblr mobile hates quotation marks i forgot

[agp]

stephen harper is like bender in that episode where hes made of wood

#cool arm movements bro are you autistic or what #are you scared of islam and terrorism or what? #chretien harper trudeau seriously how much did we waste in money blood and time invading afghanistan???

[friendly-dad7]

Vodka is literally the fountain of youth

#thank fuck for that boyar or tsar or whatever the fuck for rejecting islam because it wouldnt let him drink #i will high five him in hell #russians are so cool when they arent invading other countries

[timetravellingkitty]

everyday i see clueless westerners (especially white people) peddle thinly veiled hindutva propaganda which they wouldn't know cause they know absolutely nothing about what goes on in india. so here are some signs that that the person you're talking to is a hindu nationalist:

they either do not acknowledge casteism or claim that caste is a western construct. my personal favourite however is dismissing anyone bringing up caste discrimination by saying that the indian constitution outlaws untouchability. they may also bring up the fact that the prime minister belongs to an other backwards class (obc) so clearly india has moved on from caste and hindutva isn't only for the upper castes. they possess a shallow understanding of caste

harping on about "islamic colonisation" : no, the mughals did not colonise india. when you point this out, they will immediately assume that you think muslim invaders were innocent beings who did nothing wrong, which is very much not what anyone is claiming here

while we're on the topic of "islamic colonisation" they will also refer to the demolishing of muslim sites of heritage and worship and then building hindu temples over them as "decolonisation" (cough cough ram mandir) the hindu right also goes around pretending that they're indigenous to india. this is false

along a similar vein, they will dismiss islamophobia by bringing up instances of hindu oppression in countries like pakistan and bangladesh. it is true that hindus are persecuted in these two countries, however they are used to fuel their oppression complex, that their upper caste hindu self is under attack in india of all places (think a white christian in the united states). you should be in solidarity with minorities everywhere. it is neither transactional or conditional (note: they will never bring up sri lanka. persecution of hindus exists only when the oppressors are muslim)

claiming that hindu nationalism and hindutva are not the same because hindutva means "hindu-ness". that is only the literal translation of the term. like it or not, they're the same thing

they support the indian military occupation of kashmir. they will call it an integral part of kashmir, one reason which will be "hinduism is indigenous to kashmir." they will also bring up the last maharaja of kashmir signing the instrument of accession as further proof, as if the consent of the people was taken

they're zionists. do i even need to explain this. hindutva is just zionism for hindus

they refer to buddhism and jainism (sikhism too sometimes) as branches of hinduism rather than separate, distinct religions

they condemn any resistance to the indian govt as a burden or terrorism) (like calling the farmers who are currently protesting a hindrance or terrorists. funny how sikhs are the same as hindus when they support hindu causes but terrorists when they resist oppression...)

they call you a pseudo liberal or a fake leftist. i'm telling you, they don't know jackshit. they can't even tell the difference between a liberal and a leftist and call US unread lmao. bonus points if they call you a liberandu or a sickular 💀

they call india "bharat" when they talk in english. there are in fact multiple indian languages that call india bharat or bharatam, but if they say bharat while talking in english, that is absolutely a hindu nationalist no questions asked

please do your due diligence. read up on hindutva. hindu nationalists have already started making gains in the united states, thanks to rich upper caste nris. do not fall for propaganda

#hindutva #india

[autismserenity]

Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels.  Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

#free palestine #free gaza from hamas #free everyone from hamas it's awful #we want to live movement #free gazans group #center the people directly affected #Ironically it's almost exclusively zionists who know about and support the actual activists in Palestine #because Zionism is a real Jewish term for self-determination not something you can redefine to demonize us #and the pro-hamas movement is inherently both antisemitic and anti-Palestinian #wall of words #jumblr #jewish history #palestinian history

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

Old Enough to Remember 9/11 Part II:

I definitely did not have “TikTok stans Osama Bin Laden” on my bingo card, but here we are.

I was in leftist circles during 9/11 too, and there are quite a few key differences between the leftist stance then, vs the leftist stance now. I’m sure more extremist views existed, but they weren’t mainstream enough to be common talking points.

Reading comprehension check: I’m talking about the positions of ANTI-WAR LEFTISTS. NOT the right, the government, or the US establishment.

What I heard: “Al Qaeda is an extremist terrorist group that does not represent Islam or the Muslim people.”

What I didn’t hear: “Al Qaeda are the good guys. They’re freedom fighters.”

What I heard: “people like Bin Laden are products of western imperialism.”

What I didn’t hear: “Bin Laden was right.”

What I heard: “of course 9/11 was a tragedy, but the innocent people in the Middle East and the global south who get killed as a result of US imperialism are no less important, and they deserve just as much attention.”

What I didn’t hear: “the people in the twin towers deserved to die because they’re all complicit in US imperialism by virtue of living here.”

What I heard: “Muslims are not responsible for Al Qaeda and they shouldn’t be subject to Islamophobia.”

What I didn’t hear: “being anti-terror isn’t Islamophobia! I get to decide what Islamophobia is, no matter what actual Muslim people say.”

What I heard: “we shouldn’t invade Iraq because it has nothing to do with 9/11.”

What I didn’t hear: “we should let Al Qaeda carry out as many 9/11 as they want until the US is abolished, because that’s the only thing that will liberate the Middle East. American civilian death is a necessary cost to achieve this goal, and besides, they’re all guilty by association anyway.”

What I heard: “it’s actually all Israel’s fault.”

Ok, that part hasn’t changed.

#antisemitism #jumblr #israel #9/11 #leftist antisemitism

[hindulivesmatter]

Why Gandhi is a piece of shit and you should hate him.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been established in our history as a "Mahatma" which means "great soul"

This man is anything but that.

He is EVERYWHERE. He's on our currency, he's revered as a hero who saved India, and we have a mandatory holiday on October 2nd in honor of him.

If you didn't know, now you're going to get to know why he was a horrible human being. Let's begin.

This man managed to fool people Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (among many others) into thinking he was a good person.

Here is some of the shit he's done:

In 1903, when Gandhi was in South Africa, he wrote that white people there should be "the predominating race." He also said black people "are troublesome, very dirty, and live like animals."

 Refused to have sex with his wife for the last 38 years of their marriage. He felt that in order to test his commitment to celibacy, he would have beautiful young women (including his own great niece) lie next to him naked through the night. His wife, whom he described as looking like a "meek cow" was no longer desirable enough to be a solid test.

Believed that Indian women who were raped lost their value as a human.

During Gandhi's time as a dissident in South Africa, he discovered a male youth had been harassing two of his female followers. Gandhi responded by personally cutting the girls' hair off, to ensure the "sinner's eye" was "sterilised". Gandhi boasted of the incident in his writings, pushing the message to all Indians that women should carry responsibility for sexual attacks upon them.

He argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour. 

Gandhi also waged a war against contraceptives, labelling Indian women who used them as whores.

He believed menstruation was a "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality".

On 6th April 1947, he gave a speech where he said, “ If the Muslims are out there slicing through Hindu masses to wipe out the Hindu race, the Hindus should say nothing and peacefully accept death”.

He hated the great Hindu rulers, especially Shivaji Maharaj. To please the Muslims, he banned the book named ShivBhaavani which correctly depicted Islam’s intolerance and fierce fundamentalism spread by it.

Refused his wife life-saving medication (for religious reasons), but those religious reasons all of a sudden no longer applied to him when he was in a similar position.

Started a fast unto death when Ambedkar asked for separate electorates for Dalits.

Gandhi left his ailing father on his deathbed, to sleep with his wife. The child born out of this copulation died in infancy. According to Gandhi, the death of this infant was the result of this evil karma.

Gandhi, even when he claimed to be the angel of non-violence, made no efforts to prevent the British from deploying Indian troops at various locations during World War II.

Kashmir was invaded by Pakistan in 1947, the brutal Pakistani army committed heinous crimes against Kashmiri Pandits including mass rape and mass killings consequently many Pandits were forced to flee to Delhi and other places. In one incident Pandits took refuge in an abandoned mosque in Delhi. Infuriated, Gandhi threatened to fast to death if the Pandits didn't leave. The Pandits were slaughtered in a communal riot as soon as they abandoned the mosques.

Criticized the Jews for defending themselves against the Holocaust because he insisted that they should have committed public mass suicide in order to "shame" the Germans instead of fighting back. His exact words were, "But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from the cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions."

And this is all from a simple Internet search compiled here. I wonder what else is hiding if I do a deep dive.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#hinduphobia #hindublr #desiblr #antisemitism #history #india #gandhi #can you guys tell i hate him #indian history #british empire #tw rape #tw assault

[zvaigzdelasas]

[BBC is UK State Media]

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has funded politically-motivated assassinations in Yemen, a BBC investigation has found, exacerbating a conflict involving the Yemeni government and warring factions which has recently returned to the international spotlight following attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Counter-terrorism training provided by American mercenaries to Emirati officers in Yemen has been used to train locals who can work under a lower profile - sparking a major uptick in political assassinations, a whistleblower told BBC Arabic Investigations.

The BBC has also found that despite the American mercenaries' stated aim to eliminate the jihadist groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) in southern Yemen, in fact the UAE has gone on to recruit former al-Qaeda members for a security force it has created on the ground in Yemen to fight the Houthi rebel movement and other armed factions.

The UAE government has denied the allegations in our investigation - that it had assassinated those without links to terrorism - saying they were "false and without merit".

These are largely between the two parts of the "real" "legitimate" "internationally recognized" coalition govt of Yemen you've been scolded so much about over the last month btw [22 Jan 24]

Continued after the cut

The killing spree in Yemen - more than 100 assassinations in a three-year period - is just one element of an ongoing bitter internecine conflict pitting several international powers against each other in the Middle East's poorest country.[...]

In 2015, the US and the UK supported a coalition of mostly Arab states led by Saudi Arabia - with the UAE as a key partner - to fight back. The coalition invaded Yemen with the aim of reinstating the exiled Yemeni government and fighting terrorism. The UAE was given charge of security in the south, and became the US's key ally on counter-terrorism in the region - al-Qaeda had long been a presence in the south and was now gaining territory.[...]

Under international law, any killing of civilians without due process would be counted as extra-judicial.

The majority of those assassinated were members of Islah - the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It [...] has never been classified by the US as a terror organisation, but is banned in several Arab countries - including the UAE where its political activism and support for elections is seen by the country's royal family as a threat to their rule.

Leaked drone footage of the first assassination mission gave me a starting point from which to investigate these mysterious killings. It was dated December 2015 and was traced to members of a private US security company called Spear Operations Group.[...]

Isaac Gilmore, a former US Navy Seal who later became chief operating officer of Spear, was one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.

He refused to talk about anyone who was on the "kill list" provided to Spear by the UAE - other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden, the government's temporary capital since 2015.[...]

Mr Gilmore, and another Spear employee in Yemen at the time - Dale Comstock - told me that the mission they conducted ended in 2016. But the assassinations in southern Yemen continued. In fact they became more frequent, according to investigators from the human rights group Reprieve.

They investigated 160 killings carried out in Yemen between 2015 and 2018. They said the majority happened from 2016 and only 23 of the 160 people killed had links to terrorism. All the killings had been carried out using the same tactics that Spear had employed - the detonation of an improvised explosive device (IED) as a distraction, followed by a targeted shooting. The most recent political assassination in Yemen, according to Yemeni human rights lawyer Huda al-Sarari, happened just last month - of an imam killed in Lahj by the same method.[...]

Mr Gilmore, Mr Comstock, and two other mercenaries from Spear who asked not to be named, said that Spear had been involved in training Emirati officers in the UAE military base in Aden. A journalist who asked to remain anonymous also told us he had seen footage of such training.

As the mercenaries' profile had made them conspicuous in Aden and vulnerable to exposure, their brief had been changed to training Emirati officers, "who in turn trained local Yemenis to do the targeting", the Yemeni military officer told me.

Through the course of the investigation, we also spoke to more than a dozen other Yemeni sources who said this had been the case. They included two men who said they had carried out assassinations which were not terror-related, after being trained to do so by Emirati soldiers - and one man who said he had been offered release from a UAE prison in exchange for the assassination of a senior Yemeni political figure, a mission he did not accept.

Getting Yemenis to conduct the assassinations meant it was harder for the killings to be traced back to the UAE.

By 2017, the UAE had helped build a paramilitary force, part of the Emirati-funded Southern Transitional Council (STC), a security organisation that runs a network of armed groups across southern Yemen.

The force operated in southern Yemen independently of the Yemeni government, and would only take orders from the UAE. The fighters were not just trained to fight on active front lines. One particular unit, the elite Counter Terrorism Unit, was trained to conduct assassinations, our whistleblower told us.

The whistleblower sent a document with 11 names of former al-Qaeda members now working in the STC, some of whose identities we were able to verify ourselves.

During our investigation we also came across the name Nasser al-Shiba. Once a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative, he was jailed for terrorism but later released. A Yemeni government minister we spoke to told us al-Shiba was a known suspect in the attack on the US warship USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in October 2000. Multiple sources told us that he is now the commander of one of the STC military units. Lawyer Huda al-Sarari has been investigating human rights abuses committed by these UAE-backed forces on the ground. As a result of her work, she would frequently receive death threats. But it was her 18-year-old son Mohsen who paid the ultimate price.

He was shot in the chest in March 2019 while on a trip to a local petrol station, and died a month later.[...]

A subsequent investigation by Aden's public prosecutor found that Mohsen was killed by a member of the UAE-backed Counter Terrorism Unit, but the authorities have never pursued a prosecution.

Members of the prosecutor's office - who we cannot name for safety reasons - told us that the widespread assassinations have created a climate of fear that means even they are too afraid to pursue justice in cases involving forces backed by the UAE.

Reprieve has received a leaked UAE document that shows Spear was still being paid in 2020, though it is not clear in what capacity.

#quite a piece

[janaknandini-singh999]

Now that Ram Mandir has been opened can I honestly share what I feel? No, I'm not on the side of the extremist Hinduism nor am I on the leftists I just want to take a neutral stand here.

To everyone saying it's just a political agenda and Modi is using Ram mandir to appease the Hindu vote bank. Yes, and? I think we all (even the Hindus) know what game he's playing here. My house was conflicted yesterday. My mother and nani (grandma) were sobbing on finally getting Ram lalla's darshan yesterday on TV, my nanu (grandpa) wasn't supporting any of it. And I was torn. Torn between celebrating a historic moment and rationalizing whether it even deserved to be celebrated. His return deserved to be celebrated yes but the extreme Hindus who shower flowers with one hand and with the other hand throw stones on innocent Muslims of today who never took away our beloved Ram ji away in the first place. Would Ram ji have wanted this? He would've wanted us to celebrate yes but not at the cost of harming others. I condemn the acts of discrimination against the minor sects of society, everyone who's got to suffer because of this. In Mahabharata too, the minority (Pandavas) had to go through hell but they emerged victorious in the end coz they were right. However, I'd also like to state that it's not that simple here. People calling out Islamophobia, I'm with you. People calling out Hinduphobia, I'm ALSO with you. All lives matter no matter if they are Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Palestinian. "Hinduphobia doesn't exist" It does. Ofc not at the scale of the terrifying Islamophobia in India but it does. In other Islamic etc countries, it does. Just like how Islamophobia exists in countries where Islam folk are in minority. But does that give Hindus a license to endorse and impose themselves any more than the colonizers and invaders did? No.

You can't blame innocent Muslims for what Mughal invaders did centuries ago any more than you can blame Vibhishan for what his own brother Raavan did. But whoever is on the side of wrongdoing no matter their caste, creed or religion is just as much of a criminal like Karna was with Duryodhana even though he was a Pandava by birth.

Yk I've grown up in my remote, countryside hometown where they play azaan in mosques every day morning and evening and kid me since then became so used to it that it would feel like something is missing if I'd not hear it in the background somewhere while swinging around near the trees or while just walking on the terrace and watching the distant sunset. I'm a Hindu but well, that's just personal nostalgia.

Not all muslims are terrorists. Not all Hindus are fascists. But for those who are, I'd let Karma take care of you all.

I stand with humanity.

Jai Shri Ram 🙏

Allahu Akbar 🙏

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[jethroq]

there’s an interesting phenomenon, where the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, in online discourse, is only ever talked about as an anti-Semitic theory, completely bypassing the people who are the immediate subject. Yes, undoubtedly it has lead to anti-Semitic attacks, and for many proponents of the theory they do blame the jews, but in the very immediate they are blaming black and brown people for existing. Yes, there was a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, but there was also the Christchurch Mosque shooting, and it’s the latter that the far right celebrates far more widely, and has become the template for later attacks.

there are pro-zionist versions of the theory, ones that frame Israel as the bulwark against the barbarian hordes. the UK Tory party uses the spectre of islamic anti-Semitism as a reason to over-police Muslims. there are right wing jews who believe Muslims are invading Europe and America. Europeans are racist against black people very easily without blaming it on jews. if you can’t oppose those things without justifying it to yourself with ”actually they’re secretly being anti-Semitic about it” you don’t actually care about the people who concretely suffer.