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Historically, Western governments prefer liberal values and principles in their foreign relations only when they enjoy a competitive advantage. When the governments experience crises and find themselves in a disadvantaged position, hatred, alienization and otherization increases. This has been the case recently with the Western world knee-deep in political, social and economic crises.

As a result, they hold others responsible and accountable for the problems they face, just like when they blamed Jews in the first half of the 20th century. If they do not face a real threat, Western governments will construct one or at least the illusion of one.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism, the Western perspective of Islam has increasingly become negative. There are many reasons for vilifying Islam and Muslims over the past several decades. In this text, I will mention some of these factors.

First, the West needs a political enemy to survive. For decades, dominant Western countries fought fascism, with the main representative being Germany's Adolf Hitler, during the first half of the 20th century and communism, mainly represented by the Soviet Union, during the second half of the 20th century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West replaced the "red menace" communism with the green menace, Islam.

Even though Muslims do not constitute a real political or military threat to the world, i.e. the West, Western countries continue to politicize Islam and Muslims as their main opponent. In the past, they considered fascism or communism a threat to their way of life; nowadays, they claim the same thing for Islam.

Second, using an anti-Islam and Islamic terrorism jargon is one of the easiest ways to assert dominance over governments in the Muslim world. The West does not prefer independent governments to manage the Muslim world. Colonial powers want to maintain their direct and indirect control over these countries.

France, in particular, has been exploiting the resources of African Muslim countries such as Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad, Gambia and Mauritania. For instance, today France and some other Western countries prefer putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who is determined to preserve French interests, to rule Libya.

Third, the cost of using anti-Islam rhetoric is quite low. Western countries could not and cannot otherize other countries like India or China. The interdependence of the West and China or Russia is stronger than that between the West and Muslim countries, making the cost for Western global powers' rifts with Beijing and Moscow quite high.

Therefore, the otherization of Islam is more practical. It is easier to mobilize the world behind Islamophobia, since China, Russia and especially India, which host Muslim minorities and control historically Muslim-majority territories, have a traditional enmity against Muslim countries.

On the other hand, controlling the Muslim world will determine the global rivalry between the West and others. Whoever controls the Muslim-dominated regions such as the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia will gain the advantage and become superior.

Fourth, the governments in the Muslim world have strong political discourse and a wide reach. With devoted followers all over the world, Islam is a global phenomenon and has the potential to unite influential countries across the globe. Muslims constitute the second-largest religious group, and Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world. Therefore, Western countries feel threatened by Islam and Muslims. It has become the second-largest faith in many European countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands.

Today the number of Muslims living in the European countries exceeds 20 million, and their presence in the West grows every year in the continent's streets. Muslims have begun to shore up different sectors of European societies. Likewise, the refugee wave continues from the Muslim world, heading toward Western Europe. That is, the number of Muslims living there will only increase.

Last but not least, Western governments, most of which have no respect for religions, do not respect sacred figures, including Jesus, who plays a central role in Christianity. Many Western media platforms have no redline in terms of respecting religions and faiths; therefore, they draw cartoons even insulting Jesus. If this is the case, we cannot expect someone who does not respect their own sacred personalities to respect the sacred personalities of other people.

By targeting Prophet Muhammad, they contribute to the radicalization of some Muslim groups who are ready to react to these insulting moves in the West. The more governments pursue anti-Islamic policies, the more it contributes to the polarization; and the more polarization, the more social and political tension will rise in Western countries. Islam and Muslims are not outsiders in Europe and the West; they are a part of it.

Since otherization and alienation of Islam and Muslims will sooner or later lead to the destabilization of Western societies and states, the current anti-Islamic policies will be counterproductive. That is, Islamophobic policies are a lose-lose strategy; Western politicians such as French President Emmanuel Macron may save the day but not the future of the West.

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Why has the West turned against Islam? | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Despite the pandemic, the PCF began this weekend to get down to its next congress. By statute, it was already to be held in 2021 and the global and national situation, in many historical respects, the makes it all the more essential , emphasizes Christian Picquet. Responsible for the movement of ideas pole, he was in charge of presenting, during the national training council, this Saturday, the Four major themes of debate proposed on the agenda of the future meeting.

On the menu of this 39th congress of the PCF, must therefore figure, among the substantive issues, The crisis of civilization on an international scale totally revealed by the Covid-19 epidemic. This one Is articulated with a crisis of capitalist globalization generating political and ideological chaos, in which Communism is more than ever a horizon of the future, details Christian Picquet. Analysis of The tangle in France of health, economic, social and political crises, to which no progressive response is neither up to nor credible, will also be at the heart of the discussions at the congress, which should equally focus on An innovative project for France opposed the PCF .

Just like the roadmap to build a Stronger and more established Communist Party, the question of the presidential and legislative elections will be another major axis. A subject that had created lively debates during the previous meeting in 2018, until the non-renewal of the outgoing management. Our party must decide how it translates what was the mandate of the previous congress. Namely a communist candidacy for the presidential election and to bring an offer of comprehensive and in-depth reconstruction of the left , sums up Christian Picquet, for whom the question remains opened and must involve as many Communists as possible. Which is not without its difficulties. On the one hand, confinement makes the normal functioning of a party very complicated and therefore a fortiori the preparation of a congress, on the other the upheaval of the electoral calendar (the regional and departmental scheduled for March could be postponed to June, or even beyond Editors note) disrupts the agenda we had planned with a final meeting in June , explains the member of the national executive committee. In these circumstances, the training directorate opened a consultation with its federations on the method to be adopted. One of the assumptions on the table would be to Decoupling the decisions on the presidential and legislative elections from the holding of the congress. A decision must be made at an upcoming national council on December 12.

Until then, a platform must be set up to welcome the first contributions from members. And it is also for the Communists to remain turned to action. Health crisis, attacks More than ever, there is a need for a horizon of hope, a project to break with the great capitalist disorder. This is where a party like ours, carrying the perspective of communism, has an irreplaceable role to play at this time , thus argued, Saturday, the national secretary of the PCF, Fabien Roussel. Lashing out a Very liberal confinement, An unbearable guilt of our fellow citizens and Decisions taken by a very isolated executive, the deputy from the North notably called for Limit work to essential economic and cultural activities, at Implement job security and training and the mobilization so that it is no longer Spared the responsibility of capital and current leaders in this crisis.

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Left. The PCF launches the work of its congress - Pledge Times

Forty-eight metres in height, the project depicts the 1980 Gdask Shipyard strike, a keynote moment that was sparked by the dismissal of crane operator Anna Walentynowicz. Murall

The first in a series of nine murals illustrating Polands road to freedom has debuted in Pozna, and in the process become the citys tallest outdoor artwork and possibly the countrys.

Forty-eight metres in height, the project depicts the 1980 Gdask Shipyard strike, a keynote moment that was sparked by the dismissal of crane operator Anna Walentynowicz. Ultimately, the protest scored an early triumph against the Communist system and led to the creation of the Solidarity movement.

Taking nearly two weeks to paint, and executed by a team of eleven artists, the size of the first mural is such that it is visible from neighbouring areas.Murall

Located in the Wichrowe Wzgrze housing estate in Poznas Winogrady district, it will eventually be joined by eight other works depicting a range of people, events and circumstances associated with the countrys battle against Communism.

Among these will be an XL mural depicting a typical shop queue showing the privations of the era, one paying tribute to those that died during the 1981 pacification of Katowices Wujek Coal Mine and another dedicated to the 1989 Autumn of Nations that resulted in the disintegration of the Iron Curtain.

The mural will be joined by eight other works depicting people, events and circumstances associated with the countrys battle against Communism.Murall

Designed by the Murall studio, and commissioned by the Wielkopolska branch of Solidarity, it is hoped that the outdoor gallery will become not just a tourist attraction but also a calling card for the area.

These murals arent just a treat for tourists, said Jarosaw Lange, the head of Solidarity in Wielkopolska, but also a good example to other cities of the good things that can be achieved based on contact with local residents, regardless of their political views.

Among the other murals will be an XL work depicting a typical shop queue showing the privations of the era.Murall

Taking nearly two weeks to paint, and executed by a team of eleven artists, the size of the first mural is such that it is visible from neighbouring areas such as Zawady, Centrum and even Rataje beyond.

With the murals set to occupy the facades of two distinct clusters of buildings, the decision was taken to segregate them according to different time spans.

The outdoor gallery is located in the Wichrowe Wzgrze housing estate in Poznas Winogrady district.Murall

The apartment blocks stand in two groups so we divided the project into two periods, says Dominik Dziedzin of Murall. The first one will feature murals focused on moments leading up to the creation of Solidarity while the other will show images relating to events right up until the free elections.

The murals have been designed by the Murall studio, and were commissioned by the Wielkopolska branch of Solidarity.Murall

Of the other moments in time that will be presented shall be the 1989 Round Table talks and the introduction of Marial Law. However, plans for a mural depicting Lech Wasa appear to have been shelved after the idea was hesitantly met by a minority of locals. Instead, an alternative is now being sought.

The next murals will take longer to realize possibly even two years due to ongoing work to safely reinsulate the other apartments.Murall

Specifically designed so as to be consistent with the elevation of the tower blocks and to naturally slot into the surrounding landscape, the next murals will take longer to realize possibly even two years due to ongoing work to safely reinsulate the other apartments. Thereafter, its hoped that the project will finally be completed.

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Off the wall: new mega mural celebrates Poland's road to freedom - The First News

BRUSSELS Polands right-wing government has delayed implementation of a court ruling that would impose a near-total ban on abortions after two weeks of the largest protests the country has experienced since the 1989 collapse of communism.

The country already had one of Europes most restrictive abortion laws before its Constitutional Tribunal ruled on Oct. 22 that terminating pregnancies for fetal abnormalities one of three justifications for legal abortions and virtually the only type performed in the country violated the Constitution.

On Tuesday, the government indefinitely delayed the publication of the courts ruling, which prevents it from going into legal force, in an apparent response to the protests. For the change to take effect under ordinary procedures, the government would have had to publish the ruling in a government journal by Nov. 2.

The government could still publish the decision at any time, as it has done with other controversial rulings, even though legal experts say that would violate the Constitution.

A discussion is ongoing, said Michal Dworczyk, the head of the prime ministers office. In this situation, which is difficult and causes a lot of emotions, it is good to give ourselves a bit of time for dialogue and for working out a new position.

Ewa Letowska, a law professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a former judge at the Constitutional Tribunal, the countrys highest court, said the governments delay was illegal.

The publication of the tribunals rulings is mandatory, she said. Although there were objections to the ruling, some of them legitimate, delaying the publication is unconstitutional.

Before the Constitutional Tribunals decision, Poland allowed terminations of pregnancies in three instances: in cases of fetal abnormalities, a threat to a womans health, and incest or rape.

In practice, most legal abortions 1,074 of 1,100 performed in the country last year resulted from fetal abnormalities. Yet those abortions represent only a small fraction of those obtained by Polish women, who seek terminations abroad or undergo risky illegal procedures.

The courts Oct. 22 ruling ignited a furor on the streets of Poland. Ignoring Covid-19 restrictions amid skyrocketing new coronavirus cases, hundreds of thousands turned out, holding banners that read I wish I could abort my government and This is war.

The demonstrations across the predominantly Roman Catholic country also reflected a broader anger at the governing party over the erosion of democracy and other grievances, including its handling of the pandemic.

Critics accuse the government of circumventing Parliament to introduce the effective ban on abortion. They say the tribunal is under the thumb of the governing party, which appointed 14 out of 15 of its judges.

The government, led by the Law and Justice party, has also been accused by experts and the European Union of taking control of the judiciary. The courts president, Julia Przylebska, is a long-term friend of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the partys chairman and Polands most important politician.

Some protesters disrupted church services and confronted priests, challenging the Catholic Church, which holds a special place in Polands society after supporting the struggle against communism. The church is a close ally of the governing party.

Last week Mr. Kaczynski called on his conservative supporters to defend Poland, defend patriotism and defend Polish churches, remarks that could be construed as encouraging them to clash with protesters.

This is the only way we can win this war, he said.

Although the demonstrations have been largely peaceful, far-right activists, mainly young men dressed in black and armed with pepper spray and flares, occasionally confronted protesters violently.

In response to the social unrest, President Andrzej Duda submitted a proposal of changes to Parliament that would slightly ease the restrictions that the court supported by allowing the abortion of fetuses with lethal abnormalities. It would still ban abortions in case of other conditions such as Down syndrome.

There is very little institutional support in Poland for families with disabled children, leaving parents to fend for themselves once the child is born.

With polls showing drops in support both for the governing party and Mr. Duda since the protests began, a session of Parliament that was supposed to consider the presidents proposal on Wednesday has been postponed to mid-November. A lawmaker from the governing party said the session had been postponed because of the pandemic.

Barbara Nowacka, an opposition lawmaker, said the government had postponed the parliament session in the face of the public outcry.

They got scared by the protests, she wrote on Twitter.

Analysts say the presidents proposal has slim chances of getting sufficient backing from lawmakers, since it does not satisfy the demands of either side of the debate.

Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.

Link:
Poland Delays a Near-Total Ban on Abortion - The New York Times

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To break this deadlock of eternal present of capitalism, new imagination is imperative. Old school communism will not return. The ongoing pandemic has again exposed the crisis, failure and inhumanly cruel face of neoliberal capitalism. Once again it has become clear that this sadistic system is neither ready nor willing to protect the most vulnerable section of the population, writes Raihan Rahman

WHEN Mikhail Gorbachev handed over the nuclear launch codes to Boris Yeltsin and the Soviet flag was lowered for the very last time, history witnessed the dousing of a beacon of dream and optimism that was kindled on 07 November 1917. For decades, it was the October Revolution to which the wretched of the earth looked up for inspiration to dream of a future free from all exploitations and make a utopia of liberation, emancipation and mass-actualisation.

Of course, the Soviet Union and other communist regimes had their own flaws and faults and turned out to be the very monsters they wanted to obliterate (although many of my leftist friends decide to label this allegation as mere western propaganda). The communist bloc could not escape the collapse but as long as they existed, people could still think of an alternative to the oppressing reality of capitalism.

However, since the 90s, as the Soviet Union fell, the emancipatory dream of mass people began to get archived while capitalism has succeeded to establish itself as the only functioning system and has posited neoliberalism as the ubiquitous ideology of this unipolar world. The result is that now we live in a cerebral void where we can no longer envisage an alternative that could resist capitalism and its neoliberal phase.

American theorist and critic Fredrick Jameson once wrote that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. Though sounds like a quip, the inherent irony hints at the depth into which the ideological penetration of capitalism has reached and how it conditions our very thinking pattern and the limit of our imagination.

The most possible apocalypse one can imagine today is the ecological one since the furor of the cold-war era nuclear catastrophe is somewhat died out nowadays. Many post-apocalyptic sci-fi Hollywood films have done a great job in presenting convincing and engrossing visuals of ecological dystopias but hardly any visual is found that envisions an alternative to the very system that could one day lead to such catastrophes.

At the beginning of this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a surge of hope seemed to overwhelm the people on the left. They thought that the virus that did not distinguish between the rich and the poor would inevitably make capitalism suffer, could even make it a relic of history.

Slavoj iek too, the celebrity leftist intellectual recognised the signs of a resurrection of communism, though not the old-school one. He anticipated that this pandemic would exacerbate the dominant modes of politics of todays world incompetent western barbarism and efficient eastern totalitarianism and a highly reformed communism would spring from that ruin, redressing the mistakes of the past.

iek argued that a new normal will evolve where the existing market mechanisms will be transformed and a new kind of government and global organisation will come forth who will control and regulate the economy to replace capitalism.

Even though the conclusive optimism may sound a little bit naive, the premonition that the existing system may take a dystopian turn is not ill-founded. All the signs are scattered all around. A new array of crises will continue to hit capitalism and the periodic ones will keep on resurfacing. But the modern states will stick to bailing out the wealthy class with stimulating packages while the rest will suffer a sharp decline in living standards.

While there is no shortage of optimism on the left, a clear outline of any movement or charged activism to overthrow capitalism is blatantly absent. At the same time, whatever crisis befalls on capitalism or no matter how miserable human lives turn out to be, are people from the working class to the middle class, the 99 per cent who are suffering the most because of capitalism, thinking of any alternative? Are they dreaming of any emancipatory utopia? Or have they already surrendered taking this system for granted as a permanent settlement?

The commonsensical answers to these questions are known to all.

With this inability of thinking any alternative, this helpless surrender is deeply connected to how capitalism within its ideological domain conditions our perception of history and temporality. Fredric Jameson identifies two definitive traits of this attempt of controlling the perception of history and temporality.

The first, capitalism wants to hide its past by erasing all signs of its violence and bloody past. The second, very cleverly it wants to maintain an idea of an eternal present.

In this construction of temporality, there is no space for the future. Jameson terms this stalemate as the eternal virginity of the capitalist present. The motive behind the construction of this historicality and temporality is singular to resist the possibility of any alternative thinking in the public imagination. People can imagine an apocalyptic future but cannot think of any potential change of capitalism and its associated production processes and market logic. As if this system is destined to continue as long as time exists forever and after.

Capitalism is quite successful in this strategy, particularly its neoliberal phase. While maintaining the structural inequality and exploitation, neoliberalism is passing quite an unimpeded and almost resistance-free journey. Moreover, it has succeeded in masking its monstrous face from the public eyes. It shrewdly obscures capitalisms essential reality.

Neoliberal ideology has established itself as the social commonsense and collective wisdom which are being assimilated and reproduced in everyday life. Competition has become the representing trait of human relations and citizens have turned out as mere consumers. The senseless pursuit of money and the monetisation of every personal and social relation has been normalised in the society.

However, this neoliberal logic is not being consciously perceived in the public imagination, not being captured patently. Its anonymous ubiquity and pervasive penetration in every sphere of life have made it hard to recognise it as an ideology. Keeping itself in shadowy anonymity, it has planted the belief there is no alternative deep inside peoples mind. Columnist George Monbiot rightly says, Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of power.

But what is the way out? The assault of neoliberalism remains strong and unanswerable in the absence of any dynamic left opposition. Besides it is not enough to oppose a system, a coherent and viable alternative must be devised and proposed which will gain public support and bring people together.

To break this deadlock of eternal present of capitalism, new imagination is imperative. Old school communism will not return. That communism is now synonymous with authoritarianism and the accusation is not unfair. The iron fist ruling of the iron curtain countries has made people skeptical about it. The return of that kind of communism would be staged as a farce just as Marx joked about the repetition of history.

French philosopher Alain Badiou calls for new fiction, a fresh imagination. Recently demised anarchist author and activist David Graeber used to emphasise new imagination for a radically emancipatory world. Badiou thinks that the greatest crisis of todays world is that there is no great fiction supporting a great belief.

The ongoing pandemic has again exposed the crisis, failure and inhumanly cruel face of neoliberal capitalism. Once again it has become clear that this sadistic system is neither ready nor willing to protect the most vulnerable section of the population. Rather the fact that they are vulnerable itself is the structural consequence of this system.

The system that creates and maintains structural inequality and unequal power relations is never a successful system, let alone an ideal one. Thats why an alternative must be imagined. The 99 per cent must break the existing temporality of the eternal present and think of a possible future where neoliberal capitalism will truly become a historical relic.

Raihan Rahman is a young writer and critic.

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Is there really no alternative? - newagebd.net