Recently in Nepal Category

Everywhere in the world it is the same: demands for "rights," leading to an increasingly separate cultural and political identity, demands for accommodation of Sharia, and inevitably, increasing conflict.

"Muslims demand separate identity in new constitution," from the Himalayan News Service, April 16 (thanks to Twostellas):

NEPALGUNJ: Muslim priests today announced protest programmes demanding constitutional identity and ensuring their rights in the new statute.

In a press meet, Maulan Jabbar Manjari, central vice chairman, Nepal Itihad Sangh and Muslim Priests, said that people of Muslim community from all the political parties have agreed to detach the Muslim community from the Madhesi list.

The Muslim community have demanded not to incorporate them in Madhesi community under any condition.

Similarly, the national chairman of Nepal Madrassa Council, Maulan Mansur Arafi demanded the Muslim community should be enlisted in a separate list in the new constitution, adding, “We should have separate constitutional identity and all Muslim organisations are united in their demand.”

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Federation of Madrassa Islamic Mutafi Liyakat Ali Khan warned that their protest would continue until the CA ensured the constitutional identity to the Muslim community.

Former central member of Federation of Nepalese Journalists, Mohammad Harun Maulan said that all Muslims will take part in the protest programme, adding, “Our protest will end only after achieving our goals.”

Maulan Kalim, chairman, Madarasha Islamiya Association, Banke, opined that it is worthless to talk about other things until their identity is ensured in the new constitution.

Bajruduja Khan, district secretary, Madheshi Janadhikar Forum, opined that there should be representation of the Muslim people on the basis of the population as the population of Muslim people is high in Madhes region.

The Muslim community has announced various protest programmes starting from April 20 to April 26 across the nation. They have also warned of intensifying their protest if their demands were not addressed at the earliest.

Might this have to do with the belief that Muhammad legitimized sex slavery for infidel women?

'Nepali women victims of prostitution and slavery in Arab countries," by Kalpit Parajuli for AsiaNews, June 9 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Kathmandu (AsiaNews) - Hundreds of Nepalese women who emigrate to Arab countries in search of better jobs and wages, are unaccounted for. According to husbands and relatives they become victims of prostitution and slavery. The migrants who manage to return, show signs of physical exhaustion, injuries, psychological damage and are often infected with AIDS. To resolve this tragic situation, the Government of Nepal wants to block migration to Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan where most cases are registered. In 2010, 242 women emigrated for work and were never heard of again....

According to Maiti Nepal, an association against the trafficking of women, alleged disappearance are still rising. In eight years we have gone from three cases in 2002 to 242 in 2010. The growth is mainly due to increased migration to the Arab countries that attract women aged 25 to 35 years with jobs as nurses, domestic helpers and caregivers. However, many of them are sold as prostitutes in brothels or are employed in private homes as domestic servants-slaves and subjected to constant abuse by employers.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Nepal is currently Hindu 80.6%, Buddhist 10.7%, Muslim 4.2%, Kirant 3.6%, other 0.9%. That's from the 2001 census. And so the U.S. Government under the rule of Barack Obama is reaching out to...the Muslims.

"DeLisi in mosque," from The Himalayan Times, June 25 (thanks to herr Oyal):

KATHMANDU: US Ambassador to Nepal Scott H DeLisi said his country was committed to further engagement with the Muslim community in Nepal for cementing mutual relations and interests.

Addressing a special event organised by Madrasa Islamiya School in Ghantaghar today, DeLisi said, "I am delighted that we have begun to build this relationship and I look forward to expanding our outreach programme in the months and years ahead."

Earlier, the US Embassy had organised the outreach programme for the country's Muslim community in December 2009, reaching more than 3,000 individuals in 19 areas. Stating that such contact between Nepali and US communities was a must to better know each other, DeLisi said he had served in Pakistan with a predominantly Muslim population.

"I have seen the strengths and challenges of Muslim communities first hand. Through our outreach, I hope to learn more and expand mutual understanding and partnership with the Muslim community in Nepal," he mentioned.

The outreach campaign was organised in collaboration with the Teacher Educators' Society, Nepal (TESON) to support dialogue with local Muslim communities, with whom the US Embassy historically had limited contact....

Resistance vs. appeasement, from Daniel Pipes at FrontPage:

In the Nepalese case, a group of cooks, janitors, laundry attendants, and other laborers had just crossed the border from Jordan into Iraq when it was kidnapped by Ansar al-Sunna, a violent Islamist group. On Aug. 31, an Islamist website showed a four-minute video of their executions.

Nepalese responded to this atrocity by venting their anger by assaulting the Muslim minority in Nepal. Hundreds of infuriated young men surrounded Katmandu's one mosque on Aug. 31 and heaved rocks at it. Violence escalated the next day, with five thousand demonstrators taking to the street, yelling slogans like "We want revenge," "Punish the Muslims," and "Down with Islam." Some attacked the mosque, broke into it, ransacked it, and set fire to it. Hundreds of Korans were thrown onto the street, and some were burned....

Thus did a frustrated, enraged, and powerless people overwhelm their authorities and target close-by innocents.

The French response could not have been more different. Threats to murder the two reporters met with a massive governmental effort to save their lives, not by targeting French Muslims but by cultivating them. Paris strenuously pushed local Islamists to condemn the kidnappings, hoping that their voice would convince the terrorists to release the two men.

In the process, Islamic organizations effectively took charge of the country's foreign policy, issuing statements and acting as though they represented the national population. Bertrand Badie of l'Institut d'études politiques in Paris complains that French Muslims became "a sort of substitute for the French foreign ministry."

Likewise on the international level, Paris called in chits for having stood with the Arabs against Israel and with Saddam Hussein against the U.S.-led coalition. French diplomats openly sought the support of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

These efforts culminated thirty years of French appeasement and, in the scathing analysis of Norbert Lipszyc, "constituted a major victory for Islamists and terrorists." Lipszyc sees France acting like a dhimmi (a Christian or Jew who accepts Muslim sovereignty and in return is tolerated and protected). "France has publicly confirmed that its dhimmi status, its readiness to submit to Islamist overlords. In return, these have declared that France, dhimmi that it is, deserves protection from terrorist acts."

If the hostages are released, the policy of appeasement at home and abroad will seemingly have been vindicated. But at what a price! As Tony Parkinson writes in Melbourne's Age newspaper, "No democracy should have to jump through these hoops to keep innocent people alive." And jumping those hoops has deep implications.

The historian Bat Ye'or, the first person to comprehend the gradual process of Europe accepting the dhimmi status, observes that this fundamental shift began with the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when the continent began moving "into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity."

Bat Ye'or points to Euro-Arab collaboration now being near-ubiquitous; it is "political, economic, religious and in the transfer of technologies, education, universities, radio, television, press, publishers, and writers unions." She envisions this shift ending in "Eurabia," or Europe under the thumb of Arabia.

Returning to recent events: the abhorrent Nepalese violence reflected an instinct for self-preservation - hit me and I will hit you back. In contrast, the sophisticated French reaction was supine - hit me and I will beg you to stop. If history is a guide, the Nepalese thereby made a repetition of atrocities against themselves less likely. And the French made such a repetition more likely.

It's notable that, despite hysterical and inflated assertions to the contrary, there was never any kind of reaction like this to 9/11 in the United States. From Reuters, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepali authorities clamped an indefinite curfew in Kathmandu on Wednesday and warned violators would be shot after furious mobs attacked a mosque and went on the rampage to protest against the killing of 12 Nepalis in Iraq.

Protesters stormed inside the city's main mosque and lit a fire, but were driven out by police. Others burst into the offices of Saudi Arabian Airlines and Qatar Airways, smashing windows and taking papers and furniture into the street to burn.

Earlier, police had lobbed teargas shells at about 3,000 demonstrators burning tyres at a main intersection 200 metres from the Jame Masjid mosque in the heart of the city.