We don't hit even animals the way they beat up my father: Alwar victim's son

“I am lucky to be alive. We somehow managed to escape because didn't seem to have noticed us. Otherwise who knows I too would have been dead like Pehlu Khan. How can someone beat another human being so badly that he dies and that too for cows that have been purchased legally for running dairies,” said Yunus.

“Have you seen how they have beaten these young boys? Their families couldn't even recognise them when they came home for Pehlu's funeral. Is this what your religion teaches? I am grateful that I am back with my family and cannot even imagine what Pehlu's family must be going through. Is a cow worth all this? Now I am afraid that I would never buy a cow,” he says as he tries to control the tears welling up in his eyes.

Yunus is yet to recover from the incident that occurred on Saturday wherein a group of Gau Rakhshaks attacked two vehicles and mercilessly assaulted the occupants alleging that they were illegally transporting cows. When the occupants provided them with the legal documents, they tore them up and started to beat them with sticks. All five men lost consciousness until the police came to their rescue. Three days later 55-year-old Pehlu succumbed to his injuries becoming yet another victim of cow vigilante groups that are thriving under the patronage of Hindutva outfits.

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4 Guided Steps in the Quran for Self Transformation - Nouman Ali Khan

Violent misogyny is a common trait among extremists

The man who attacked Westminster shared a hatred for women with other mass murderers

We may never know what went through the mind of the perpetrator of last week’s attack in Westminster, London. That’s the opinion of the police who have been investigating why Khalid Masood, born Adrian Elms, drove a car into dozens of pedestrians, stormed into the Parliament and stabbed a policeman, leaving four people dead and at least 50 injured.

I am struck by one thing we do know about him: a history of perpetrating domestic violence against his wives and partners.

In the record of notorious attackers, he shares this feature with his heinous peers. Because if there is one thing that has become clear in their histories, it is that violence against women is an embedded feature of their lives long before they set out on their inglorious ends.

A relative of one of Masood’s former wives said that he was "very violent towards her, controlling in every aspect of her life – what she wore, where she went, everything".

Last year, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel killed more than 80 people when he drove a lorry into a crowd in Nice, France. He had a history of domestic violence.

The former wife of Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in a Florida nightclub, last June reported that "he would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished".

Before anyone cries that this is about Muslims or Islamist ideologies, let’s be clear: this misogynistic world view cuts across all religions, backgrounds and classes. Whatever the background of such men, domestic violence abuse is a clear factor in their histories. In some cases, the atrocities they perpetrate are even announced as revenge on feminists.

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Muslim Teen Hebh Jamal's Activism Rarely Sleeps

Hebh’s parents are naturalized U.S. citizens who emigrated from Jordan to Canada and then to the United States. Hebh was born in Canada but moved to the Bronx before she turned one. She’s reluctant to answer questions about her family. “They’re not involved in activism,” she says. “I had to be politicized from a very young age. When Bin Laden was assassinated, teachers were asking me, ‘What do you think about that?’ And because I’m Palestinian, they were asking me, ‘What do you think about the war in Gaza?’" During the Gaza War, which ran from 2008 to 2009, Hebh was just nine years old.

Islamophobia is woven into the fabric of her everyday life. She lists the precautions she takes on the subway against an Islamophobic attack as frankly as if she were describing how to cross the street. Don’t stand too close to the platform in case someone pushes you onto the track. Make sure your feet are planted firmly on the ground. If you’re carrying a large bag, make a point of opening it so the people around you don’t get suspicious. “It’s internalized and normalized in me,” she says.

With her expanded focus after Trump's election, Hebh and other activists planned the Foley Square protest entirely via social media and phone calls. Seeing it gain momentum on Facebook, “I reached out and said, ‘Let me do the permits for you,’” Hebh says. A totally self-taught protest planner, she also helped organize the list of speakers and the sound system.

The student walkout originated from a conversation at Beacon High School.

“I made a Facebook page, I invited everyone I know, and I got the permits again,” she says. The walkout’s focus was broad. “It was about Black Lives Matter; it was about the Dakota Access Pipeline; it was about the Muslim ban; it was about refugees. It was about a lot of things that came together well.”

Next, she cofounded the student coalition United Students of NYC to help young activists coordinate. “We didn’t just come to a protest to yell our lungs out; we came because we want to be a part of the story,” Hebh says.

New York City public advocate Letitia James spoke at the student walkout Hebh organized. “I love the energy of young people,” she said. “Hebh’s representative of a wider group of young people who are energized and angered by the state of our nation, and who want to be part of the resistance.”

“Each and every day I try to motivate young people to get involved with politics, whether that’s to run for office or to get involved at a local level,” James adds. She recommends that aspiring activists look into their local community boards, school boards, precinct councils, or block associations. “You can contact your local officials or Congress members. And you can get online — there are conversations going on on Facebook, on Snapchat. We’re all interconnected now — there’s no excuse not to get involved. This, too, is your country,” she says. “If you believe in freedom, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in the freedom of the press, if you believe that all immigrants are welcome here, you should get involved.”

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The terrifying rise of nationalist villains in India

Since he assumed national office, Modi has traded open incitement against Muslims for a posture of strategic ambiguity, communicating with his Hindu followers through pregnant silences. When BJP's Hindu "cow vigilantes" (Hindus regard cows as sacred) hauled out an aged Muslim man from bed and bludgeoned him to death for allegedly eating beef, it took Modi several days to issue a lame condemnation (Yogi Adityanath, on the other hand, vociferously defended the killing and even recommended that the dead man's family be prosecuted for possessing the meat). Modi has done nothing to squelch BJP's baseless claims that Muslim men are using "love jihad" to spread their faith by deliberately seducing Hindu girls. Nor has he done a thing about his party's efforts to browbeat Muslims and Christians into converting to Hinduism in large mass public ceremonies. He did, however, declare Christmas "good governance day" when government employees would be required to work while leaving all official Hindu holidays unmolested.

In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, Modi ran a two-pronged campaign in recent state elections, emphasizing his message of economic prosperity for all before mixed audiences while whipping up Hindu grievances before Hindu crowds. For example, he accused the deposed ruling party of buying Muslim votes by giving free handouts to Muslims but nothing to Hindus. So diabolically effective was Modi's message that the BJP won 325 out of 405 seats in the state legislature simply by unifying the Hindu vote, till now deeply divided along caste lines.

Still, the hope was that after his resounding victory, Modi would start pulling back from his divisive rhetoric. But Yogi Adityanath's appointment suggests that the mask is finally coming off, and Modi is preparing to launch a much more aggressive phase of Hindu nationalism.

Adityanath, who commands a huge Hindu following in his state, has pledged not only to build a temple where the razed mosque stood but also place statues of Hindu gods in every Muslim mosque. But that's not even the worst part. He makes no bones about his ethnic cleansing agenda and speaks openly about the need to reduce Uttar Pradesh's 40 million-strong Muslim population — about 20 percent of the total — by at least half. Nor is he shy about how he plans to accomplish this. He reminds Hindus of their duty to "take out 100 Muslim girls for every Hindu girl they take out" and kill "100 Muslims for every Hindu they kill," and taunts those who have moral qualms as "eunuchs." Such incitement, which is by no means his worst, has landed the yogi, who obscenely ran on a law-and-order agenda, in jail a few times.

Trump's calls for a Muslim ban and "extreme vetting" have emboldened men like Adityanath, who has repeatedly recommended similar steps in India — except that he doesn't have in mind wimpy measures like creating a Muslim registry or barring Muslims from only a few countries. Indeed, within a week of assuming office, he had already embarked on a campaign of anti-Muslim harassment, shutting down and burning "illegal" slaughterhouses, and throwing 650,000 predominantly Muslim men out of work.

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8 LEVELS OF PERSONALITY - WHICH ARE YOU? - NOUMAN ALI KHAN - INSPIRATION

9 important questions we want to ask Pakistanis who hate women's rights movements

It’s no secret that a lot of people in Pakistan don’t support women’s rights movements. There are lots of people out there, men and women, who for some reason believe feminism and the desire to uplift women is evil, wrong or just plain unnecessary.

As social media becomes our dominant mode of communication, these people often take to the web to express their views. Recently one such person aired their views on a web platform. He posed a list of questions to desi feminists.

Well, we have some of our own – questions that we’re longing to ask everyone who has an issue with uplifting the status of women in Pakistan.

1) Do you really understand the movement you hate so much?

There appears to be confusion about what feminism means — and doesn't.

Simply put, feminism is the belief that women shouldn’t be discriminated against on the basis of their gender.

Maybe you believe the struggle to make this a reality involves depriving men of their rights. Well, actually, the opposite is true. Feminism is good for everyone. A society that upholds gender equality doesn’t just offer up benefits to women, it helps men too.

How, you ask? Well, feminism helps men by releasing men from strict gender roles that proclaim men can’t cry, can’t be artists, can’t be chefs, can’t be stay-at-home fathers, can’t do anything remotely ‘feminine.’

In our ever more costly global economy, a society that upholds gender equality will allow women to enter the workforce in larger numbers, adding to a household's income and easing financial pressure. In a just and equal society fathers won’t have to worry about their daughters being molested on the street. Friends won't have to guard doors for their female friends when they use public bathrooms, protecting them from assault. And deserving women will climb the corporate ladder just the same as men, and all genders will benefit from the expertise and experiences of the other.

2) What makes you think women already have the rights they're fighting for?

A lot of people who oppose women's rights movement believe women have 'enough' rights.

To these people who assume that women in Pakistan fully enjoy such basic rights as the right to study and the right to work, well, you need to wake up to the simple fact that having certain rights on paper doesn't translate to enjoying those rights in real life.

Here are two examples: first, the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey states that the literacy rate for males in 2015 was 70 per cent and 49 per cent for females, a gap of 21 per cent. Second, at a mere 22 per cent in 2015, Pakistan has the lowest female labour force participation rate in South Asia.

Pakistan was ranked the second last country in the Global Gender Gap Index for the second year in a row in 2016. And these are just statistics - the anecdotal evidence that women, especially women from impoverished backgrounds, single women, divorced women and women from minority groups are treated as second-class citizens in Pakistan is staggering.

With this evidence, how anyone can suggest that women already have the rights they are demanding for is beyond comprehension.

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The Empire Files: Inside the Hotbeds of Israeli Settler Terror

Extreme sides of both are bad. Moderation is the key.

An Unorthodox Gift to Notre Dame from Muslim Philanthropists

“We came as immigrants, and this country has given us so much,” Mrs. Ansari said in an interview ahead of the announcement. “We want to give something back to America, but also to humanity. We want to promote the idea of equality.”

On Friday, the Ansaris announced a $15 million gift to the University of Notre Dame, one of the top Catholic universities, to create the Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement With Religion. The institute will aim to deepen knowledge of religion and look to explain how the traditions and practice of various religions influence world events.

“Whenever you get a gift of this size, it’s tremendous, but particularly to have this named for the Ansari family, who is Muslim, is tremendously meaningful to us,” said the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, in an interview. “We believe religion is very important in our world. It can have a negative impact, but it should be possible to study the ways religion can be a force for human development and peace.”

Father Jenkins said the institute would look at religion not through a sociological or political lens, but through one focused on the religions themselves.

While the couple and the university said the gift, which was 18 months in the making, was not conceived as a way to make a political statement, all parties acknowledged that it came at a politically charged time, given the debate over Muslim immigration in America and Europe.

“In the last couple of years, the majority of problems have been created by the misunderstandings among the religions,” said Mr. Ansari, an oncologist and hematologist. “Is this the right time for the announcement? Yes, because there is so much going on.”

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