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By Ranjan Solomon

When Prof. James Small stated that Europe never built a civilization, he was not indulging in exaggeration. He was dismantling a carefully constructed historical illusion – one that presents Europe as the natural source of human progress and the rest of the world as late, grateful recipients. That illusion collapses the moment history is allowed to speak honestly. Small argues that Empire Is Not Civilisation. War cultures are not true civilisations. Conquest, extraction, and domination — hallmarks of Europe’s imperial past — are death projects, not human ones. When a system is built on supremacy, equality becomes its greatest threat.
Parity exposes the myth of superiority — and that is what terrifies supremacists.

Civilization did not begin in Europe. Long before Europe emerged from scattered tribes and feudal loyalties, ancient civilizations had already laid the foundations of organized human life. Along the Nile, the civilization of Kemet – misnamed “Ancient Egypt”- developed mathematics, geometry, astronomy, medicine, engineering, moral philosophy, and monumental architecture more than three thousand years before Europe’s rise. The pyramids were not acts of primitive labour; they were products of advanced knowledge systems that Europe would only encounter much later.

The statement “Europe did not build civilization” is a core tenet of critical, post-colonial, and revisionist history that seeks to dismantle Eurocentrism. It argues that modern civilization is a global, cumulative achievement, not a singular product of European genius. If one were to conduct a breakdown of the historical, cultural, and political arguments supporting this perspective, the following dimensions would be what we arrive at within the scope of understanding inherited parts of Civilization. Several crucial affirmations follow:

Inherited Parts of Civilization*

The “Cradle” Was Not European: The earliest civilizations – Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China—arose in North Africa and Asia between 4000 and 3000 BC. These cultures developed writing, metallurgy, urban planning, and organized religion long before advanced complex societies formed in Europe.

Middle Eastern Roots: Western civilization traces its roots to the Middle East, not Greece. The foundations of urban life, scientific inquiry, astronomy, engineering, and the “religions of the book” originated in Sumeria and Egypt.

Borrowed Greco-Roman Foundation: Greek and Roman civilizations, the supposed, “cradle of Europe,” were heavily influenced by, and borrowed from, the older civilizations of Egypt and the Levant.

Borrowed Much of It

· The Islamic Golden Age Transmission: During the European “Dark Ages” (roughly 5th–10th century AD), knowledge was preserved and expanded in the Islamic world, Persia, and China.

· Scientific and Mathematical Contributions: Essential technologies and knowledge—including the compass, gunpowder, paper, the decimal system, and advanced medicine—were brought from China and the Islamic world to Europe.

· Translation and Anonymization: In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arabic texts were translated into Latin in Toledo. Often, the original Muslim and Persian authors (like Avicenna/Ibn Sina) were anonymized or misrepresented in later European tradition, casting them merely as “transmitters” rather than innovators.

Dominated Others and Erased Origins

· “Civilizing Mission” as Justification: During the 19th-century “New Imperialism,” European powers justified their global dominance by framing it as a “civilizing mission” to bring progress to “savage” peoples.

· Cultural Erasure: European colonization often aimed to eradicate indigenous languages, religions, and knowledge systems, replacing them with European models.

· Rewriting History: Eurocentric narratives, such as the “Ancient Greece to Dark Ages to Renaissance” model, often ignore or downplay the contributions of non-European cultures, presenting Western culture as the pinnacle of human development.

· Cartographic Distortion: Traditional maps (like the Mercator projection) visually distort the world to make Europe and North America appear much larger and more central than they actually are.

Civilization Belongs to Humanity, Not Empire

· Decolonizing Knowledge: Modern scholarship increasingly recognizes that global progress is a collaborative, cross-cultural process.

· Post-Colonial Perspective: Acknowledging this perspective is not a rejection of European achievements, but a call to restore historical truth—recognizing that the “modern world” was built through global interactions, including, but not limited to, European imperialism.

In essence, this viewpoint emphasizes that civilization was built by humanity over thousands of years, with many cultures contributing before, during, and after Europe’s rise to power.

In Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians created writing, legal codes, irrigation systems, and city-states. The Code of Hammurabi articulated principles of justice when Europe had none. In the Indus Valley – Harappa and Mohenjo-daro—urban planning, sanitation, standardized measurement, and trade networks flourished around 2600 BCE. These cities had drainage systems that European capitals would lack for millennia.

China developed one of the world’s longest continuous civilizations. It gave humanity paper, printing, the compass, gunpowder, silk production, advanced metallurgy, agricultural innovation, state bureaucracy, and ethical philosophy rooted in Confucianism and Daoism. India produced profound philosophical traditions, advanced mathematics including zero and the decimal system, astronomy, medical science through Ayurveda, and universities such as Takshashila and Nalanda when Europe was still intellectually dormant.

In Africa beyond Kemet, Nubia, Axum, Mali, Songhai, and Great Zimbabwe built trading empires, centres of learning, architecture, and governance. Timbuktu housed universities and libraries when Europe’s literacy was confined to monasteries. In the Americas, the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations developed astronomy, mathematics, agricultural science, architecture, and governance independent of European influence. The Maya charted celestial movements with extraordinary precision; the Inca engineered roads, terraces, and water systems across the Andes.

At the time these civilizations were thriving, Europe was peripheral to human advancement. Its later intellectual awakening did not occur in isolation. Greece, often declared the cradle of Western civilization, openly borrowed from Egypt and Phoenicia. Greek thinkers studied African knowledge systems, absorbed them, and rearticulated them. Rome followed Greece, mastering administration and conquest, not original civilizational thought. Roman science, philosophy, medicine, and religion were largely inherited.

After Rome’s collapse, Europe entered centuries of stagnation. Meanwhile, Islamic civilization preserved and expanded global knowledge. From Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and Cordoba came algebra, optics, chemistry, medicine, cartography, hospitals, universities, and scientific method. Europe’s Renaissance was not a spontaneous rebirth; it was the return of knowledge Europe had previously lost, transmitted through Arab and Muslim scholars.

Europe’s later dominance was not the result of civilizational superiority but of militarized expansion, colonization, and extraction. Wealth accumulated through the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the systematic plunder of Asia and Africa. Entire civilizations were dismantled, their histories erased, their achievements rebranded as “Western.”

Colonialism did not civilize; it de-civilized. It destroyed local economies, languages, governance systems, and educational traditions. India’s impoverishment, Africa’s fragmentation, and the Americas’ devastation were not signs of native failure but of European violence.

Even today, modern life rests on ancient, non-European foundations. Mathematics uses Indian numerals transmitted through Arab scholars. Medicine draws from African, Indian, and Chinese knowledge. Agriculture depends on crops domesticated outside Europe. Navigation, engineering, and philosophy all trace their roots beyond the European continent.

What Prof. James Small confronts is not Europe’s participation in civilization, but Europe’s false claim to authorship. Civilization is not white, Western, or European. It is human—built over thousands of years by African, Asian, Indigenous, and Middle Eastern peoples long before Europe claimed the title.

Europe did not build civilization. It inherited parts of it, borrowed much of it, dominated others, and erased origins to justify power. To acknowledge this is not to reject Europe, but to restore truth—and to remind the world that civilization belongs to humanity, not to empire.

*The section on “Inherited parts of civilization” are based on a google search

Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local/national justice.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Hiren Gohain

Frequent shocks from Donald Trump’s apparently wild and wayward decisions, contrary to all received wisdom and established practices of international relations, seem to have so benumbed observers and policy experts that they have been reduced to declaring Trump a mad maniac with whom no reasoning is possible. But after observing his acts and opinions, one may argue that, to borrow from Shakespeare, “there is a method in his madness.”

After all, 45 p.c. of American voters have voted him to power, and there are people in the establishment, in the administration, and in politics who are happy to serve under him.

Consider the recent deal (Trump’s favourite word) thrust down India’s throat with the threat of bringing to a grinding halt a big chunk of Indian small and medium manufacturing industries. India evidently buckled under the pressure. It was forced to concede that it would buy £500 billion of American goods. Now that specifically included agricultural goods, which would certainly hit our farmers hard. But obviously, that does not cover the entire amount.

Now, American manufactures constitute a small part of its exports. Back in the fifties and sixties of the last century, booming American plants were producing half the exports of the whole world. Now that has been reduced, inasmuch as services make up one-third of all exports and solid goods have registered a decline. It is China today that is playing the same role as American industries did in those days.

But America still has an advantage in the latest high-tech products like AI and robotics. Its biggest producers, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others, are Trump’s closest advisers. But they still have a narrow market, which receives protection from the economic sovereignty of once colonised countries. Since they played a big part in seeing him through a fraught election, he is obliged to treat their demands on a priority basis. And so he has done. Doubtless, a considerable part of the deal with India would be composed of such ‘knowledge-based’ industrial products.

That explains the extraordinary publicity given to the recently concluded GLOBAL AI SUMMIT, and the gloating hype about India being the ‘Vishwa…’

However, given the logic of imperialism, it is unlikely that the fillip to production and productivity given by AI will result in a fall in prices of goods in general demand. The hefty royalty, as well as other possible costs like initial installation fees, will most probably be passed on to the final consumer, raising prices further. The monopoly ownership by big business and government will also probably lead to attenuation of customer as well as civic rights. This development, unfortunately but predictably, increases imperialist influence on the economy and politics of our country.

The speed and alacrity with which such an event was organised within days of the signing of the Indo-US trade deal arouse some suspicion that the Modi government was hustled into holding it. Whether Trump’s repeatedly muttered threat that he could destroy Modi’s career at any time he chooses is true is quite another story.

I can’t make out what Youth Congress demonstrators were shouting about, but everyone, up to learned courts, is saying it is a disgrace to the country. But all this noise covers up the real and mortal shame during the event: the showcasing of a second-rate Chinese toy, a robotic dog, as a specimen of India’s prowess in AI and robotics. I am sure any IIT could have put up a much better show if it had been given sufficient notice. But there was little time. Everything was to be done to meet Modi’s impetuous demand. Trump’s style leaves no time for such considerations, as if there is no other option.

The logic behind Trump’s ‘go-it-alone’ policy is revealed in the choice of his contemplated objectives. He wants, for his new capitalist cronies, monopoly control over sources of rare earths, manufacturers of semiconductors, and the most common fuel driving modern industries—oil. Plus a prostrate market in the targeted country. As a consequence of such aims and methods, he is driven to back an aggressive Israel, which is expected to keep the oil routes open and browbeat countries that might revolt against American dominance in the Middle East. The current threat of all-out war against Iran is again in defence of Israel and of American stakes in Iranian oil. The aborted but once dangerously close seizure of Greenland also proceeded from the same logic.

These are immediate tactical issues, but the long-term strategy has roots in the familiar ground of imperialism. However, abandoning the orderly ‘rule-based’ system of yesteryears, Trump has revived the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ of an even earlier colonial era. Buoyed by the knowledge that it has the world’s largest and most advanced weaponry, and an army kept in readiness to spring into action at a moment’s notice, America under Trump tends to think like the mafia dons of thrillers and films: “I am going to make an offer they cannot refuse!”

The big idea, the contribution of Trumpism, is to hog the lion’s share of imperialist loot under the banner of international trade by systematic use of threat and force. (Cont.)

Trump, like many of his countrymen, is harking back to the good old fifties of the last century as typical of American ‘greatness’. At that time, GDP of the United States was growing at the rate of 3–7%. In the next decade, despite recessions, the ratio of investment to GDP was 24%. Today, it is between 15% and 16%. That includes both national and American imperialist capital’s share.

Since profit is the crux of investment decisions, American imperialist capital might invest more on foreign soil than at home, and moreover plough back the profit abroad too. Besides, sharing the imperialist ‘super-profits’ with labour also made for a substantial rise in wages in those days. But since then, there has been a striking decline in real wages. While productivity has increased by 74.4%, wages have risen by only 9.2%. The grim stagnation in workers’ wages may be gauged from the fact that while back in 1960 those in the highest salaried group used to receive, on average, a pay packet 24 times that of the average worker, by 2025 the difference has risen to as much as 262 times. (All figures culled from the internet.)

The situation has imposed on the government the release of funds for massive social security measures, reminding us of the GOI’s scrambling to hand over large amounts of cash under various schemes with fancy names to workers. But such measures, designed to blunt or lull popular fury, are hotly denounced by pro-capitalist right-wing journalists and think tanks as freebies and unearned income. They demand a ‘level playing field’ between ‘privileged’ workers and hard-working businessmen. (Cont.)

As long as the capitalist class is absorbed in activity to capture the national market and consolidate its power over the state apparatus to ensure policies in its favour, its commitment to nationalism is total. But when competition becomes intense and lowers the rate of profit, it starts thinking beyond national borders and exporting capital to maintain and raise profit margins. Correspondingly, its volume increases and the rate of exploitation on foreign soil also rises to deadly levels. This trend is accompanied by the transformation of nationalism into envenomed chauvinism and racism in support of imperialist capital, partly offsetting lukewarm investment at home and stagnation in productivity.

By the time we reach the stage of a neo-liberal economy, with transnational corporations and the increasing role of phantom financial production and profit, the urge to promote the growth of the national economy and raise productivity at home slackens. Profits are redirected to other regions rather than home as investments. Hence, in terms of national income and gain, the data appear rather listless and discouraging.

In the nineteen fifties, the USA actually accounted for 40% of the volume and value of world trade. By the nineteen eighties, it had slid down to a little above 24%, and by 2024 it had come down further to a little over 15%. China has overtaken it as the largest exporter of manufactured goods. It still remains the biggest importer of goods from other countries, and the volume of such imports amounted to a massive figure, £4.11 trillion in 2024. But the catch is that this has also been accompanied by serious trade deficits, which by 2024 had grown to £911 billion.

Partly, the deficit seems to be caused by tax-free imports like minerals and oil from African countries, which perhaps stem less from benevolence than from making such raw materials cheaper for American industry.

The huge trade gap, as well as state expenditure on social welfare programmes, have resulted in steadily rising national debt. At present, the ratio of national debt to the country’s GDP is 120%.

These figures have fuelled mounting anxieties about an epochal decline of the American economy and stagnation in the condition of the so-called middle class—actually its working class. 40% of American households today are in a debt trap they are unlikely to overcome.

Trump’s reading of the situation echoes these popular anxieties, and he is taking peremptory steps to reduce government expenditure by blunt and shocking refusal to honour long-term commitments and traditional responsibilities of the state. He is arbitrarily annulling many earlier obligations to other states, insisting on brand new ‘deals’. And if other states resist, he confronts them with punitive measures or plain military threats.

All conventional, time-honoured policy frameworks and customary strategies, which have done duty so far in order to avoid raw conflict, have been contemptuously junked. It is indeed as if the new American doctrine is the familiar law of the jungle: “might is right.”

Thanks to its superiority in arms, other countries are loath to offend it, but also wary of the one-sided ‘deals’, even when sweetened by fulsome praise of the victim.

No doubt, this approach—unless undone by some yet unforeseen development—is leading to extraordinary volatility in the world situation and the defeat of all calculation and prediction in world affairs. An expected crisis of capital, but exacerbated by the personal interventions of a dangerously unpredictable leader of a ‘great’ power.

Hiren Gohain is a political commentator

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nick Turse

Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pulled over several cars in Eagle County, Colorado. They took the people away in handcuffs, according to a witness, and left the cars idling at the side of the road. When family members of the disappeared immigrants arrived, there was no sign of their loved ones. What they found instead were customized ace of spades playing cards that read “ICE Denver Field Office.”

When I saw an image of that card, the memories came flooding back. I’d seen something similar many years before. Sitting in the U.S. National Archives building — Archives II — in College Park, Maryland, sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I’d spent parts of several afternoons watching film footage shot by — and of — U.S. troops in Vietnam back in the 1960s. One of those silent military home movies always stuck with me.

That short film opened with a Vietnamese woman clutching a child next to a group of 10 or 15 other children huddled together. They all look wary. Worried. Scared. The camera lingered on a young girl, perhaps five years old, clutching a baby. If that girl survived, she would be around 64 years old today.

After several shots of those children, the source of their fear was revealed. The film cut to a group of foreign young men — heavily armed U.S. soldiers. They were tanned and gaunt, smoking and talking, standing over the corpses of some young Vietnamese men or boys. We see the dead bodies at a distance, again. Lying together and yet eerily alone. Next, the film cuts to a collection of weapons — perhaps a cache found in or near the Vietnamese village where all of this occurred — that resembled old junk more than lethal armaments. The film kept cutting between short scenes of American troops and Vietnamese bodies until it happened.

I’ve never forgotten the scene that followed because I was initially shocked that it had been immortalized on film. I was also surprised that the film had never been destroyed. But then I remembered how ubiquitous such activity was at the time. How soldiers bragged about it. How it was covered — positively — in the U.S. press. How it even showed up in the Congressional Record, not as an outrage deserving of investigation but essentially as a thank you to a manufacturer of playing cards.

In the next scene, we see a soldier pull an ace of spades from what looks like a big stack of such cards. He’s nonchalant. He’s clearly not worried about an officer seeing what he’s doing. He obviously knows he’s being filmed. He reaches down and, as another soldier presses his boot into the chest of that corpse to hold it steady, he tries to insert the card into the mouth of one of the dead Vietnamese. It’s apparently not so easy. It takes a bit of doing, but it proves possible. The next scene shows an ace of spades sticking out of the dead boy’s mouth. The camera lingers. It’s oddly and sickeningly cinematic. The following scene shows another Vietnamese, his face blackened. There’s a battered ace of spades jammed in his mouth, too.

“Impeding” ICE

Such “death cards” — generally either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for a kill — were ubiquitous among U.S. troops in Vietnam in those years. Some soldiers, like those in that unit of the 25th Infantry Division operating in Quang Ngai Province in 1967, used a regular ace of spades of the type you’d find in a standard deck of cards. But Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade, for instance, left their victims with a customized ace of spades sporting the unit’s nickname “Gunfighters,” a skull-and-crossbones, and the phrase “dealers of death.” Helicopter pilots, like Captain Lynn Carlson, occasionally dropped similar specially made calling cards from their gunships. One side of Carlson’s card read: “Congratulations. You have been killed through courtesy of the 361st. Yours truly, Pink Panther 20.” The other side proclaimed, “The Lord giveth and the 20mm [cannon] taketh away. Killing is our business and business is good.”

The cards found last month in Eagle County harken back to that brutal heritage. They were the same general size and shape as those shoved into the mouths of dead Vietnamese: black and white 4×6-inch cards with an “A” over a spade in their top left and bottom right corners. A larger ornate black-and-white spade dominates the center of the card. Above it is the phrase “ICE Denver Field Office.” Below it, you find the address and phone number of the ICE detention facility in nearby Aurora, Colorado.

The 10 people taken away by ICE in Eagle County are now reportedly being held in that very same Aurora Detention Facility.

In a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Democrats in Colorado’s Congressional delegation called out ICE’s use of the ace of spades. The card, they wrote, “has long been known as the ‘death card’ and has been used by white supremacist groups to inspire fear and threaten physical violence. It is unacceptable and dangerous for federal law enforcement to use this symbol to intimidate Latino communities.” They continued: “This behavior undermines public trust in law enforcement, raises serious civil rights concerns, and falls far short of the professional standards expected of federal agents.”

ICE’s Denver field office offered a boilerplate response to TomDispatch when questioned about the use of the cards. “ICE is investigating this situation but unequivocally condemns this type of action and/or officer conduct,” a spokesperson wrote in an email, adding, “Once notified, ICE supervisors acted swiftly to address the issue.” The spokesperson said that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which deals with employee misconduct, will conduct a “thorough investigation,” but the Colorado lawmakers asked for more. Those lawmakers called for an independent investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

“As the son of immigrants and the father of two young children, I am horrified by the abuses being committed by the Trump administration — from the streets of Minneapolis to right here in Eagle County,” said Democratic Representative Joe Neguse, a member of the delegation that wrote the letter. “These outrageous, aggressive intimidation tactics,” he added, “are meant to stoke fear among our neighbors, and it is immoral and wrong. This administration must be held accountable, and we cannot allow this to continue unchecked.”

ICE Denver has a much different opinion. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, ICE is held to the highest professional standard,” the spokesperson there told TomDispatch. “America can be proud of the professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out.”

Americans think otherwise. A clear majority of voters — 63% — disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job after more than a year of immigration crackdowns across the United States, according to a January poll by the New York Times and Siena University. Sixty-one percent of voters said that ICE had “gone too far,” including nearly one in five Republicans. The poll was conducted after Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and legal observer, was gunned down in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

Federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people since September, according to data compiled by The Trace, killing at least five, including Good and Alex Pretti, a Minnesota resident who was gunned down by Border Patrol agents last month. Before their killings, Good and Pretti had been observing the activities of agents. Federal officers frequently confront and threaten those observing, following, and filming them for “impeding” their efforts. In numerous prior instances, they had unholstered or pointed weapons at people who filmed or followed them.

A recent report by the Cato Institute notes that it is “crucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in ‘impeding.’” It goes on to note that DHS “has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them.” In the wake of Good’s death, to take one example, the Justice Department opened an investigation of Good’s widow for allegedly “interfering” with an ICE operation — apparently for filming the shooting.

A Death Card Moment

Killing, wounding, threatening, or investigating observers are just some of the many abuses and violent tactics of immigration officers in the era of Donald Trump. Others include brutally beating detainees, employing banned chokeholds, or spraying chemical irritants on protesters. They also have carried out arbitrary and unlawful arrests and detentions, fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades into crowds, and shattered the windows of vehicles.

Colorado specifically has seen numerous abuses by immigration agents in addition to the use of those death cards. ICE officers in Colorado continue to arrest people because of the color of their skin and in violation of a federal judge’s order, according to a complaint filed earlier this month by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and two Denver law firms. In November, U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson found that ICE was routinely conducting illegal arrests in the state.

“Just in Colorado, we’ve seen ICE agents pepper-spray protestors in the face. We’ve seen ICE drag elderly women on the ground,” said Judith Marquez, a volunteer for the Colorado Rapid Response Network and a campaign manager for the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition. “We don’t want to wait for another Renee Nicole Good to be murdered.”

Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas, the immigrant rights group that took possession of those death cards in Colorado, fears that ICE might be using such cards as an intimidation tactic elsewhere, too, but that information about such acts remains unreported because those affected are unlikely to trust local law enforcement officers, elected officials, or even mainstream human-rights groups.

In the wake of the killings of Good and Pretti, the Trump administration quickly branded those observing ICE as domestic terrorists, and federal authorities insisted that Minnesota had “no jurisdiction” to investigate those killings, while blocking the access of state investigators to evidence at the crime scene.

As U.S. District Judge Alex Tostrud wrote in an 18-page decision: “Federal agents collected evidence from the scene… They won’t share it with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension [BCA]… After BCA agents arrived, federal agents blocked them from accessing the scene.” Earlier this month, Tostrud, an appointee of President Donald Trump no less, lifted the emergency order he had issued the day of Pretti’s shooting that required federal investigators to preserve evidence gathered at the scene of that fatal shooting.

In the absence of independent oversight of the crime scenes, TomDispatch asked DHS if the federal agents who gunned down Good and Pretti had left death cards at the scene of those killings.

The Department never responded.

For more than two decades, America’s forever wars have been coming home in large and small ways. But in 2026, death cards made famous in a war that ended more than 50 years ago — a war that America’s president dodged via a draft deferment for seemingly spurious bone spurs — have made a reappearance. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a war of extreme brutality rooted in racism would have resonance with ICE any more than that those macabre calling cards are on brand for a self-proclaimed peacemaker president who has made war on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, as well as on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. While he might not have actually dealt those cards in Colorado, it’s hard not to see them as Donald Trump’s death cards.

Nick Turse is a senior reporter at The Intercept and a fellow at the Type Media Center.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

We know you are a world superpower. We request you to understand your responsibilities and move the world beyond wars.

I hope this letter finds you well, by which I mean alive, awake, and not currently declaring another war before breakfast. I also hope it finds you seated comfortably, because history suggests that whenever you stand up suddenly, something international tends to happen, mostly not good for the planet and its people.

Donald, I write to you not as an enemy, nor as a supporter, not as a war expert, nor as a person deserving or begging for a Nobel Prize for peace, but as a concerned bystander, someone watching a man juggle chainsaws while explaining that gravity is a hoax.

You see, the world has noticed a pattern. Whenever things get complicated, you simplify them. Sometimes too much. For example, diplomacy is complex, so you replace it with volume. International law is tedious, so you substitute instinct. Nuance is exhausting, so you tweet.

And yet, Donald, I admire your confidence. Truly. It takes remarkable self-belief to assume that centuries of history, geography, culture, and human suffering can all be fixed with one decisive strike, preferably before lunch.

Take Iran an example. A civilization older than most buildings in Washington. A country with layers upon layers of memory, pride, grievance, and resilience. And the solution being considered is well a “very strong message.”

Donald, I once sent a very strong message to my neighbour by slamming my door. He responded by slamming his. We both are now at war. Our cats are casualties. This is how things escalate.

You may believe that striking leaders brings peace. History believes otherwise. Recent examples are Iraq and Libya. History is annoying like that. It keeps interrupting great ideas with inconvenient outcomes. Further, Iran is neither Iraq of 2004 nor Libya of 2011. Please revisit your plans for greater good of this planet.

Also, about regime change, Donald, you should know this, regimes do not fall because outsiders ask them politely, threaten loudly, or bomb selectively. They fall when their own soldiers stop listening. Iran’s soldiers are not doing that. In fact, they seem to be listening very carefully. This is not encouraging for your plans.

It is like, you want to knock down a door by slamming it, remember you will hurt your foot, as the doors hinges are strong and won’t bend by your slamming, the Iran’s defense forces are its hinges.

I worry that you may be confusing noise with control. Loudness does not equal dominance. Fireworks are loud too. They are also brief and followed by smoke, confusion, and people asking, “Was that really necessary?”. Your advisers say a strike would be “limited.” History laughs whenever humans say the word “limited.” Wars begin limited the way snacks begin limited. No one plans to eat the whole packet. It just happens.

Donald, you are standing near a room full of gasoline, holding a matchstick explaining that you only want a little light. This is not reassurance. This is a physics problem.

I know you believe strength means never backing down. But sometimes strength is sitting down. Or staying quiet. Or reading a map. Or realizing that winning an argument is different from surviving the consequences. Fall of Iran will have ripple effect across globe including Kashmir. We are afraid people of the world may collapse and that is not good.

The world does not need another demonstration of power. It needs a demonstration of restraint. Or at least a pause long enough for everyone to put down the missiles and pick up a cup of water. Please remember, empires don’t collapse because they hesitate. They collapse because they rush.

Yours sincerely,

A concerned citizen of planet earth who wishes it to remain habitable

Dr. Ashraf Zainabi is a teacher and researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora J&K

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chuck Idelson

President Donald Trump’s expansion of the blockade is the latest chapter in an aggression waged by 12 successive US presidents. It’s time to close the book.

In the shadow of President Donald Trump’s military assault on Venezuela and threats to Iran, an escalation of the longest war in US history, the 65-year war on Cuba, is being waged while Congress is virtually silent.

This is the latest chapter in an aggression waged by 12 successive US presidents, with an all too brief break when President Barack Obama initiated diplomatic steps toward normalcy in his last year in office. It has included a failed invasion by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, multiple covert assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro, and secret chemical and biological attacks on Cuban agriculture and livestock to sabotage Cuba’s food self-sufficiency.

The US launched the war to overturn a socialist Cuban revolution that kicked out longtime dictator Fulgencio Batista who allowed US mobsters and corporations to dominate the island. US corporate interests owned “90% of Cuba’s mines, 80% of public utilities, 50% of railways, 40% of sugar production, 25% of bank deposits,” posted journalist Afshin Rattansi.

Most grievously, Kennedy in 1962 introduced an economic blockade of Cuba, in violation of international law, in retaliation for his Bay of Pigs humiliation. The rogue nation globally is not Cuba, it is the US. The United Nations has voted repeatedly, 33 years in a row, demanding an end to the embargo, most recently last October by a 165-7 vote. Only five right-wing allies joined the US—Argentina, Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, and Paraguay, plus Ukraine, dependent on the US for defensive arms against Russia.

In January, shortly after invading Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and seize Venezuela’s rich oil resources, Trump issued a sweeping expansion of the blockade. It was enforced with Naval ships that impounded one oil tanker while Trump imposed tariffs and other threats on nations that offer to provide aid to Cuba. The war on Cuba has long been sustained, primarily for political purposes by both major parties to appease and win the votes of Cuban emigres. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family left Cuba decades ago, has long been desperate to impose regime change on the island. He was the principal proponent of both the invasion of Venezuela, which he viewed as step one to end economic support for Cuba, and the follow-up quarantine.

Trump’s harsh blockade has already produced catastrophic suffering. It is not just crippling the economy, Cuba’s Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda told the Associated Press, but threatens “basic human safety.” The New York Times reports frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas, and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps.

But the devastation to public health and Cuba’s crown jewel healthcare system forms the most calamitous consequences. Israeli researcher and activist Shaiel Ben-Ephraim cites “rising mortality rate among the elderly and those with chronic illnesses who cannot access life-support or specialized care” and a surge in diseases such as dengue fever and Orupuche virus, “which have become increasingly fatal due to the shortage of basic medicines and rehydration fluids.”

“Public health data shows a spike in infant mortality, rising from 7.1 per 1,000 live births in 2024 to an estimated 14 per 1,000 in late 2025/early 2026,” Ben-Ephraim added on Twitter. “Over 32,000 pregnant women are currently classified as ‘at high risk’ due to the lack of fuel for obstetric monitoring and emergency medical transport.”

Portal warned that 5 million people in Cuba living with chronic illnesses will face disruption of medications or treatments, including 16,000 cancer patients requiring radiotherapy and another 12,400 undergoing chemotherapies. “Cardiovascular care, orthopedics, oncology, and treatment for critically ill patients who require electrical backup are among the most impacted areas. Kidney disease treatments and emergency ambulance services have also been added to the list of impacted services,” he reported.

It is an undeclared war, illegal under international law, without approval from Congress. Yet only a small handful of lawmakers are expressing opposition. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern introduced H.R. 7521 in early February with just 18 co-sponsors to date. It calls for an end to the embargo paralleling similar legislation last year by Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “It’s time to throw away the old, obsolete, failed policies of the past and try something different. Let’s focus on the people of Cuba—and let’s treat them like human beings who want to live their lives in dignity and freedom. The Cuban people—not politicians in Washington—ought to decide their own leaders and their own future,” McGovern says.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) compared the Cuban crisis to that of Gaza, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota called for the “cruel” and “despotic” blockade to be lifted, and Rep. Chuy García of Illinois said the blockade is “deliberately starving civilians” in Cuba. “The US is creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Trump’s & Rubio’s blockade is punishing the Cuban people, not the regime. We must learn from 6 decades of failed Cuba-policy & reverse course,” tweeted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

Ironically, the only setback for Trump’s attack on Cuba has come from the Supreme Court. Its February 20 decision striking down his use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) for tariffs appears to also invalidate his tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba. Hopefully it’s “a measure of relief. The siege must be broken,” Michael Galant, a member of Progressive International’s secretariat, told Julia Conley in Common Dreams. “The siege must be broken.”

In 2018, National Nurses United Board members saw first-hand the accomplishments of the Cuban medical system in a professional “people to people” research visit. Seventy percent of care is delivered in localized polyclinics and family clinics. The polyclinics are the centerpiece providing integrated, comprehensive services, including 24-hour urgent care, prenatal, maternity, pediatric, dental, vision, hearing, vaccinations, counseling, physical therapy, x-ray, and more, serving about 30,000 area residents. The family clinics are neighborhood based, providing home visits, and serving schools and workplaces that refer people to the nearby polyclinics for more specialized care. Together, both staffed with doctors and nurses, they reduce the need and pressure for hospitalization, with less waiting time for specialists. There is universal access to care with nearly all services free, including for most medications. Cuba’s patient outcomes often exceed the US from infant and maternal mortality to life expectancy despite reduced access to some medical equipment and other restrictions due to the blockade.

Cuba even developed its own medical biotech research and development programs including a vaccine for lung cancer treatment that extends life that is unavailable for US residents due to the sanctions. Cuba also trained medical professionals from throughout the world, especially the Global South, and sent doctors and nurses to multiple countries in need, a program the US has also tried to destroy. Cuba’s healthcare model is widely regarded around the world, and yet is now in grave danger due to the draconian Trump-Rubio assault.

Sadly, the Trump administration’s disdain for the lives it destroys in Cuba shows little difference from its lack of compassion with how it treats US residents, including immigrants or citizens, whether by terrorizing communities or slashing social programs. All the more reason for all of us to continue to challenge the lawlessness at home and abroad.

“This is what we’ve seen with Gaza—a new era of depravity,” says Ocasio-Cortez. “There used to be stated protections for innocent civilians, and now it’s almost acceptable for the Western world to look the other way as people are starved or deprived—simply because political actors or regimes in that country are found objectionable. What we’re seeing is the possible precipice of hospitals running out of fuel. Innocent children and women could be put in harm’s way. It’s incumbent upon all of us to defend human rights no matter where.”

Chuck Idelson, retired, is the former Communications Senior Strategist for National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses with 225,00 members.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ellen Isaacs

As Trump convenes his “Board of Peace” to consolidate Israeli and US exploitation of Gaza, death and suffering continue to stalk the population. A recently published study by the Lancet medical journal estimates that, as of January, 2025, the violent deaths of Gazans had been understated by about 35% over the official toll, now over 72,000. An estimated 16,000 had died of non-violent causes, although the proportion of non-combat related deaths has likely sharply increased recently. Overall, the victims of violent death are 56% women, children and the elderly.1 Since the so-called ceasefire, over 600 have been killed, Israel has occupied 53% of the territory, relief supplies remain severely restricted, the sewage system is completely destroyed, the health system further devastated, and almost no one has been allowed egress for life-saving medical treatment. The longstanding Israeli dream of ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians is continuing apace in Gaza, as it also accelerates in the West Bank (see https://multiracialunity.org/2023/12/07/ethnic-cleansing-was-always-the-zionist-plan/).

Meanwhile Trump envisions a luxurious territory under his control, not only as a beachfront resort, but as an anchor of US control of the fossil fuel resources in and around Gaza, indeed in the entire Middle East. The Board of Peace invitation to over 50 countries, does not even mention Gaza per se, but purports to be an engine for solving widespread international conflicts. It is an effort to rework the NATO/US domination of the world after World War II into a new structure of US domination, this time with non-European autocratic nations as allies. Trump has promised $10 billion in US funds for the project and is requiring each board member to come up with $1 billion within three years.

Among the 26 countries that have so far accepted Board of Peace membership are Argentina, El Salvador, Hungary, Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt Indonesia, and Israel. Although EU countries have declined to join, Russia, China and India are still considering it.2 The Executive Board consists of Chairman Trump (for life), as well as Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Mark Rubio, Tony Blair, the President of the World Bank and the Chairman of Apollo International. No Palestinians are included, of course, except a technical board seat for the collaborationist Palestinian Authority that administers the West Bank. Security is proposed to be enforced by 20,000 international soldiers, headquartered at a huge new 350 acre military base constructed on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza. So far, Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania and Israel have promised troops. Palestinian gangs that have opposed Hamas and been armed by Israel since the start of the genocide, who are also thought to have seized much of what relief has entered Gaza, will be empowered as part of a 12,000 man police force.3,4

For those in Gaza, the plan offers no hope of resuming a stable life – no goal of their wellbeing or say in their future. Although many, if not most, Gazans do not support Hamas, many are firmly nationalist and do not wish to leave. Hamas, although greatly weakened, is refusing to surrender its remaining weapons, which may well give Israel its excuse to resume active warfare.

As anti-capitalist organizers, we recognize that the weakness of the anti-imperialist movement of Palestinians – as in all national liberation movements – from the time of the Ottoman Empire to British colonialism to U.S. sponsored Zionism, has been the lack of a class-conscious resistance. Although there was communist led binational struggle from the 1920-30s in Palestine, this movement also devolved along nationalist lines. Palestinian nationalism has meant loyalty to the Palestinian ruling class, a small elite, that has exploited Palestinian workers in its own interests or in collusion with successive colonial and imperial masters (see https://multiracialunity.org/2024/07/13/no-war-but-class-war-class-capitalism-and-multiethnic-unity-in-israel-and-palestine/#more-5375, and https://multiracialunity.org/2018/05/21/one-state-in-palestine-israel-cannot-bring-equality-if-it-is-a-capitalist-state/#more-1099). Palestinian workers have no hope of achieving a society in their interests unless they become part of an international workers’ movement, be they Arab or Jew or from all nations of the world.

As declining US capitalists become more desperate and competition with China accelerates, all workers of the world face the risk of devastating war and deprivation. The determination of the US to control the resources and trade routes of the Middle East is reflected not just in this latest strategy to uplift Israel and empower itself more directly in Gaza, but in the threat to attack Iran. If either of these battles is lost, then China and its allies will have a huge leg up in the struggle to dominate this vital part of the world, and the decline of the US as a world power will be greatly accelerated. This understanding leads us to see that it is not just Trump that is the problem, although his tactics may be haywire. No, we must build an international communist movement that focuses on the overthrow capitalism and imperialism no matter what individuals are in power. Only then can the workers of both colonized and imperialist nations build a world that prioritizes their interests.

Ellen Isaacs is a retired physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

The Israeli army has adopted a new pattern of violations in southern Syria. It has sprayed chemical herbicides over agricultural and grazing lands along the border. Local monitors say the move forms part of a broader security policy. That policy aims to reshape the buffer zone and impose new facts on the ground by expanding control near the separation line.

This escalation comes alongside ongoing Israeli military violations in southwestern Syria. These include ground incursions, the establishment of checkpoints, shelling, home raids, and the abduction of civilians.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/2026037445511533006]

First Spraying Assaults in Quneitra Countryside

According to monitoring by the Syrian center “Sijil,” the first spraying attack took place on January 25, 2026. Israeli aircraft targeted the villages of Kudna, Al-Asbah, and Al-Asha in the southern countryside of Quneitra. Planes flew for nearly four consecutive hours. They dispersed a substance whose nature remained unknown at the time.

Two days later, on January 27, aircraft moved to the village of Sayda al-Hanout. They targeted Al-Razaniyah farm west of the town. On January 30, assaults expanded further north. Aircraft sprayed areas around Jbatha al-Khashab, Ofaniya, Al-Hurriya, and Al-Hamidiyah, in addition to Adnaniyah, Ruwayhinah, and the town of Bir Ajam in central Quneitra countryside.

The spraying stretched along more than 65 kilometers of the disengagement line.

Catastrophic Results

Within one week, vast green areas dried out. In southern Quneitra alone, grazing lands covering around 3,500 dunams suffered damage. Among them were 1,500 dunams of forest land where Israeli forces had cut trees earlier in 2025. About 450 dunams of winter crops, including wheat, barley, and beans, were also hit. Nearly 50 dunams of olive trees sustained damage as well. These figures come from the Quneitra Agriculture Directorate in statements to Sijil.

Hundreds of farmers and shepherds felt the impact immediately. Residents in this region rely heavily on agriculture and livestock as their main source of income. Even khubeiza, a wild mallow plant that families traditionally eat during winter, dried and turned yellow after exposure to the sprayed substance. Families lost a seasonal food source they depend on every year.

Khaled Shams al-Rahil, one of the affected farmers, told Sijil that grazing lands vanished entirely. Shepherds now rely on expensive fodder. Some may sell part of their herds to feed the rest. He said his son was grazing sheep during the spraying. The boy suffered severe eye redness for hours. The next day, the sheep appeared exhausted and refused to graze.

At Al-Razaniyah farm, farmer Fadi al-Mughtari reported that several sheep died three days after the spraying. He said Israeli aircraft sprayed lands along the entire border strip, including grazing fields, winter crops, and olive groves. He described this season as a total loss after a previous year of drought.

Syrian Ministry: Samples Not Toxic, But Damage Clear

The director of agriculture in Quneitra said a technical team began collecting water, soil, and plant samples the day after the first spraying. The team coordinated with scientific bodies and urged residents to avoid affected areas until lab results became available.

On February 11, the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture issued a statement through its media department. It said acute toxicity tests found no toxic substances in the samples. Water samples did not show harmful organic materials based on the methods used. However, qualitative analysis detected traces of broadleaf and narrowleaf herbicides in some plant samples.

The ministry stressed that it will continue monitoring water, soil, and crops. It pledged cooperation with scientific institutions and promised to keep citizens informed.

Despite the statement, the Agriculture Directorate clarified to Sijil that the materials had a clear and significant impact on vegetation and crops. Fields and grazing lands deteriorated quickly, even if tests did not classify the substance as acutely toxic. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor also said the chemical composition of the sprayed material in Quneitra remains unknown.

Similar Attacks on Lebanon

Similar assaults were documented along the Lebanese border during the same period. The The Guardian reported that Israeli aircraft sprayed herbicides over wide agricultural areas in southern Lebanon. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described the operations as an environmental and health crime and a violation of sovereignty.

Lebanese laboratory tests later identified the substance as glyphosate. Authorities announced the findings in early February 2026. Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that the World Health Organization has classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” A joint statement by Lebanon’s agriculture and environment ministries said concentrations exceeded normal levels by 20 to 30 times. Officials warned of soil infertility, ecological imbalance, threats to food security, and damage to farmers’ livelihoods.

So far, no official statement confirms that the substance used in Syria matches the glyphosate found in Lebanon.

Gaza Precedent: A Long-Running Policy

What happened in Quneitra reflects a longer pattern. Israel has sprayed herbicides along the Gaza border since late 2014. Investigations by Forensic Architecture documented the first aerial spraying between October 11 and 13, 2014. Gaza farmers reported crop damage from unknown chemicals that later turned out to be herbicides.

At the time, the Israeli Ministry of Defense acknowledged using a mixture of three herbicides: glyphosate, Oxygal, and Diurex. Reports show that spraying became a recurring practice, usually twice a year in December, January, and April. According to documentation by the Euro-Med Monitor in 2020, chemicals drifted hundreds of meters into Gaza farmland.

Israeli authorities admitted carrying out at least 30 aerial spraying operations along the Gaza border between November 2014 and December 2018. These operations destroyed thousands of dunams of agricultural land. Additional rounds in December 2018 and January and April 2020 caused further losses.

War Crime or Ecocide?

The repeated use of chemical spraying in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza raises serious legal concerns. International humanitarian law prohibits the extensive destruction of civilian property without imperative military necessity. It also bans methods of warfare that deprive civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including farmland and water sources.

In a report published on February 4, 2026, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor argued that such practices could amount to war crimes. The United Nations has also expressed concern over these reports.

In Lebanon, official and independent human rights bodies, including the National Human Rights Commission, described the large-scale spraying of glyphosate as a grave violation of international humanitarian law. Some statements said the practice could rise to the level of ecocide.

In Gaza, organizations such as Adalah and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights documented aerial spraying along the fence. They argued that Israel uses herbicides to enforce a buffer zone at the expense of farmers’ livelihoods. Academic studies have examined the environmental and legal implications of such policies.

The spraying in Quneitra does not stand alone. Since Israeli incursions into the Syrian buffer zone, forces have bulldozed land, cut trees, restricted farmers’ access, and opened fire on shepherds. Reports also document abductions and the confiscation of livestock.

Together, these measures weaken agriculture and livestock activity near the border. They reduce the human and economic presence in the area. Over time, they risk creating a semi-empty belt that aligns with Israeli expansion goals.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ram Puniyani

Tipu Sultan has been in the news quite often, particularly in Karnataka, more so during state-sponsored celebrations of his birth anniversary. The BJP regularly creates obstacles to these celebrations, and a ruckus is usually the result. This time, he is in the news from Malegaon in Maharashtra. The newly elected Deputy Mayor of Malegaon, Shan-e-Hind Nihal Ahmad, had put up a portrait of Tipu Sultan in her office. Shiv Sainiks noticed this and got it removed through the intervention of the authorities. Some protests were also held.

Following this, the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee President, Harshvardhan Sapkal, opposed the removal of the portrait, stating that Tipu Sultan’s contributions to Mysore are equivalent to those of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Maharashtra. This statement was opposed by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who said that comparing Tipu to Shivaji Maharaj is an insult to the latter. Subsequently, a Congress office was stoned by BJP workers, and nearly seven people were injured in the mayhem.

The BJP’s objection to Sapkal’s statement is based on the claim that Tipu was a mass murderer of Hindus and that he attempted to convert them to Islam. Many such allegations have been made against Tipu by Hindu nationalists, portraying him as anti-Hindu and a cruel ruler. This is far from the truth. Many of these myths are part of a communal narrative, accentuated by British accounts that were particularly hostile to Tipu because he was one of the few rulers who actively resisted colonial expansion. Tipu had urged the Nizam and the Peshwas to oppose the armies of the East India Company, foreseeing the dangers of British entrenchment in India.

His administration was inclusive, with many high-ranking Hindu officials. Purnaiah served as Mir Miran (head of a department) and played a crucial role in governance. Krishna Rao was his treasurer, Shamaiya Iyengar held a senior ministerial position, and Narsimha Iyengar served in the postal department. Tipu Sultan also provided grants to the Sringeri Shankaracharya, including funds for rebuilding the temple and reinstalling the goddess Sharada. He granted land and endowments to various temples, and during his reign, the ten-day Dussehra celebrations were an integral part of Mysore’s social life.

In 1791, Maratha forces led by Raghunath Rao Patwardhan attacked and plundered the Sringeri Sharada Peetham, forcing the Shankaracharya to flee. Upon learning of this, Tipu Sultan expressed deep anguish and declared that those responsible would be punished. He promptly sent funds, gifts, and letters to restore the temple and reconsecrate the idol. This episode occurred during the Third Anglo-Mysore War, when Maratha forces caused extensive destruction, including looting property and harming people. Tipu, who maintained respectful correspondence with the Sringeri Jagadguru, ordered his administration to assist in restoration efforts. Evidence of this survives in Kannada letters preserved in the monastery’s records, where he also requested prayers for his kingdom’s prosperity.

Tipu was a staunch opponent of British rule. There are also accusations that he persecuted certain Hindu and Christian communities. However, historians argue that such actions were political rather than religious. Historian Kate Brittlebank notes that “this was not a religious policy but one of chastisement.” The communities targeted were seen as disloyal to the state. These actions were not limited to Hindus; Tipu also acted against some Muslim groups, such as the Mahdavis, who were aligned with the British and served in the East India Company’s forces. Historian Susan Bayly similarly argues that his actions against certain groups outside Mysore must be understood in a political context, especially given his close relations with diverse communities within his kingdom.

Sarfaraz Shaikh, in his book Sultan-e-Khudad, reproduces the “Manifesto of Tipu Sultan,” in which he declares that he would not discriminate on religious grounds and would defend his empire until his last breath. Tipu also showed keen interest in rocket technology, a contribution noted appreciatively in A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s Wings of Fire.

It is noteworthy that the RSS itself, in its children’s series on Indian history, published a book on Tipu in the 1970s. BJP leader B.S. Yediyurappa even donned Tipu’s headgear while campaigning in the 2010 Karnataka elections. Former President Ram Nath Kovind, who has an RSS background, praised Tipu on Tipu Jayanti in 2017, calling him a hero who died fighting the British and a pioneer in the use of Mysore rockets. Tipu’s image also appears in the original handwritten copy of the Indian Constitution (Part XVI, page 144), alongside Rani Lakshmibai, as one of the figures who resisted British rule.

Due to his policies, Tipu was popular among the people of Mysore. Folk songs in villages continue to praise him. It is in this context that renowned playwright Girish Karnad remarked that had Tipu been a Hindu, he would have enjoyed a status similar to that of Shivaji Maharaj in Maharashtra. This is very close to what Sapkal stated—nothing more.

The controversy over the removal of Tipu’s portrait from the Deputy Mayor’s office is yet another instance of communal forces exploiting divisive politics. Kings should not be judged by their religion alone; rather, their policies toward people of different faiths and their commitment to public welfare should be the primary criteria. By this measure, Tipu stands tall as a ruler of considerable religious tolerance. The half-baked propaganda of communal forces seeks only to divide communities.

One of the most significant tributes to Tipu came from Subhas Chandra Bose, who adopted Tipu’s “springing tiger” as the insignia of the Azad Hind Fauj. Tipu’s greatest contribution was forewarning Indian rulers about the growing threat of the East India Company. He fought bravely against the British and laid down his life in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War. Those who seek to demonise him today belong to an ideological stream that did little to resist British rule.

Dr Ram Puniyani was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India.

19 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By V.A. Mohamad Ashrof

This paper advances the argument that the core ethical commitments of liberal political philosophy — universal human dignity, freedom of conscience, democratic governance, equitable distribution of resources, and the protection of pluralism — are not historical coincidences of Western modernity. They are encoded within the structural and semantic architecture of the three great Abrahamic revelations: The Hebrew Bible (Torah and Tanakh), the Christian New Testament, and the Quran. Through a methodology integrating linguistic exegesis, thematic coherence, and cross-scriptural resonance, this paper demonstrates a profound correspondence between the Abrahamic tradition as a whole and the humane principles of liberal governance. Conversely, the neoliberal ideology — with its doctrines of market supremacy, deregulation, commodification of the human person, and the concentration of wealth — is shown to violate the foundational principles shared across all three traditions: Tzedek (justice) in the Hebrew scriptures, Agape (love) and the preferential option for the poor in the Christian Gospels, and Mizan (balance), Adl (justice), and Karama (inherent dignity) in the Quran. The Abrahamic scriptures are revealed not as texts co-opted by any political fashion, but as timeless liberatory charters whose ethical mathematics precede and transcend the debates of modernity.

The Hermeneutical Horizon

Hermeneutics is the art of reading a text across time. The classical traditions of Jewish midrash, Christian exegesis, and Islamic tafsir have always understood that the living Word speaks to every generation in the language of its most pressing concerns. In the twenty-first century, humanity is divided not primarily by theology but by ideology: the struggle between systems that honour the human being as an end in themselves, and those that reduce the human being to an instrument of economic production.

The thesis of this monograph is precise: the foundational values of liberalism — liberty, dignity, equality, social welfare, and rational pluralism — are structurally confirmed within the texts of all three Abrahamic traditions. Neoliberalism, by contrast, operationalizes values that all three traditions explicitly condemn: the worship of accumulation (Matthew 6:24; Quran 102:1), the extraction of wealth through usury (Exodus 22:25; Luke 6:34-35; Quran 2:275), the concentration of resources among elites (Isaiah 5:8; Luke 1:51-53; Quran 59:7), and the subordination of justice to market outcomes (Amos 5:11-12; James 5:1-6; Quran 4:135).

The methodology employed here is threefold. First, semantic hermeneutics: close reading of the original languages — Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic — in their lexical and contextual fullness. Second, thematic hermeneutics: tracing the coherence of principles across all three canonical bodies. Third, typological hermeneutics: examining the patterns of correspondence between the traditions as a convergent theological witness to the same moral universe.

The Ontological Foundation — Dignity Against Market Utility

Every ideological system rests upon an implicit anthropology — a theory of what a human being fundamentally is. Neoliberalism’s foundational anthropology is that of Homo economicus: a self-interested rational actor whose value is determined by market productivity and the accumulation of capital. Under this model, a person who cannot participate in market exchange possesses diminished social value.

The Hebrew tradition offers a categorically different anthropology. The opening chapter of the Torah establishes what becomes the bedrock of all Abrahamic ethics:

“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

The Hebrew phrase Tzelem Elohim — the image of God — is an ontological endowment that precedes any social contract, any economic contribution, or any religious affiliation. It is bestowed upon all human beings without qualification: male and female, rich and poor, native and foreigner. The Mishnah, the foundational rabbinic text, draws the democratic implication with precision: ‘Therefore every person is obligated to say, the world was created for my sake’ (Sanhedrin 4:5), for since all humanity descends from a single ancestor, no person can claim superior lineage. The divine image is a universal franchise, not a market premium.

The Hebrew prophetic tradition translated this anthropology directly into economic critique. Isaiah, writing in the eighth century BCE, issued one of the most withering condemnations of wealth concentration in religious literature:

“Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.” (Isaiah 5:8)

The prophet’s indictment anticipates the logic of capitalist land enclosure by nearly three millennia. The accumulation of land at the expense of community — what economists now call ‘asset stripping’ — is not merely a policy failure but a theological transgression against the covenant community.

Christianity intensifies the Hebrew anthropological foundation through the doctrine of the Incarnation. If God chose to enter human history as a poor craftsman from a peripheral province — ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son?’ (Matthew 13:55) — then the dignity of the marginalised becomes not merely a social concern but a theological imperative. The Gospel of Matthew makes this absolute:

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)

When we see the divine in the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:35-36), it slams the door on any economic system that creates and perpetuates these conditions. It’s like, neoliberalism is straight-up going against the sacred by gutting welfare states, creating precarious lives, and blaming people for being poor. That’s not just wrong, that’s anti-gospel.

The Quran consummates the Abrahamic anthropological tradition with the concept of Karama — inherent, inviolable dignity granted by divine decree, independently of economic utility or social status:

“And We have certainly honoured the Children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with definite preference.” (Quran 17:70)

The verb Karramna derives from the root K-R-M, signifying an act of ennobling that is unconditional and primordial. The object — Bani Adam, the Children of Adam — is the entire human species without qualification. Paired with the doctrine of Khilafa (Vicegerency), announced in Quran 2:30, this dignity is not passive but active: the human being is constituted as a trustee (Khalifah) of the created order, not as a ‘human resource’ or a production input. To reduce the person to an economic variable is, in the Quranic framework, a form of Shirk — the association of an idol (the Market) with attributes belonging exclusively to the divine.

Liberty as a Divine Mandate — Conscience, Reason, and Non-Compulsion

Liberalism’s most fundamental commitment is to the freedom of the individual conscience — the right to think, believe, and dissent without coercion. Long before the Enlightenment theorised this principle, the Abrahamic prophetic tradition lived it. The Hebrew prophets — Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah — were structurally defined by their willingness to speak truth against temporal power. Amos condemned the judicial corruption of Israelite elites with language that retains its force across three thousand years:

“You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine.” (Amos 5:11)

This prophetic tradition is the original ‘speaking truth to power’ — a demand that political and economic life remain accountable to a moral standard that no sovereign can override. It is precisely the tradition that neoliberalism’s technocratic governance structures seek to silence: by relocating economic decision-making to central banks, the IMF, and corporate boardrooms that are insulated from the prophetic demands of democratic accountability.

Jesus of Nazareth stands explicitly within this prophetic tradition. His inaugural address in the synagogue at Nazareth, drawn from Isaiah 61, constitutes a comprehensive programme of liberatory politics:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19)

The reference to ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ is a direct invocation of the Jubilee — the Hebrew institution mandating the periodic cancellation of debts and the return of land to its ancestral holders (Leviticus 25). This is not metaphorical liberation: it is an economic programme. Debt cancellation, the primary meaning of the Jubilee, is precisely what neoliberal financialization has systematically made impermissible through the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and IMF.

The Quran’s contribution to the theology of liberty is its constitutional affirmation of non-compulsion in the domain of conscience:

“There is no compulsion in religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong.” (Quran 2:256)

The phrase La Ikraha fi al-Din does not merely permit tolerance; it constitutively defines the nature of faith itself. If belief must be free to be genuine, then any political system that coerces fundamental human expressions — including the freedom to organize labor, to access information, or to imagine economic alternatives — violates the ontological structure of truth. The liberal ‘harm principle’ articulated by John Stuart Mill is the secular expression of the same logic. The Quran further radicalises this: ‘And say, the truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills — let him believe; and whoever wills — let him disbelieve’ (18:29). This is the theological demolition of what critics of neoliberalism call the TINA doctrine — ‘There Is No Alternative.’ Where neoliberalism presents the market as a natural law impervious to democratic revision, the Quran insists that no truth is valid that does not pass through the gateway of free human choice.

The Quranic mandate of reason (‘Aql) reinforces this. The verb ‘aqala and its derivatives appear 49 times (7 × 7) in the Quranic text — a frequency suggesting that reason belongs not to any civilisation’s tradition but to the architecture of the universe itself. The rhetorical question of Quran 39:9, ‘Are those who know equal to those who do not know?’ constitutes a Quranic meritocracy of the intellect, not of capital. Neoliberalism’s commodification of education into a debt-driven credentialing system and its subordination of scientific research to commercial patent interests violate this mandate of knowledge as a universal human right (Haqq).

Democratic Governance and the Accountability of Power

The Hebrew political tradition is remarkable for its structural suspicion of concentrated power. The very institution of Israelite monarchy is introduced in the Hebrew Bible not as a divine gift but as a concession to human weakness, accompanied by an explicit prophetic warning about the abuses kings will perpetrate:

“This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots… He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.” (1 Samuel 8:11, 14)

The prophet Samuel’s warning reads as a precise inventory of what we would now call ‘regulatory capture’ — the use of state power to extract wealth for the benefit of the powerful at the expense of the many. The Hebrew tradition never fully legitimated unconditional royal authority. The covenant between God and the people (Exodus 19-24) preceded and constrained the monarchy: kings were bound by Torah, and prophets retained the authority to hold them accountable. This is the structural forerunner of the liberal rule of law.

The political theology of the New Testament is shaped by the tension between the Roman imperial order and the alternative community — the ekklesia — that Jesus’s followers were constructing. Paul’s letter to the Romans counsels respect for governing authorities (Romans 13:1-7), but the Revelation to John identifies Rome as the Great Whore ‘drunk with the blood of the saints’ (Revelation 17:6), whose fall is celebrated as liberation. The authentic Christian political tradition is not one of uncritical deference to state power but of prophetic witness against it.

The Letter of James, perhaps the most politically radical text in the New Testament canon, speaks with a directness that matches Amos:

“Now listen, your rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes… The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.” (James 5:1-4)

James calls out ‘wages withheld’, and honestly, it’s like he’s talking about today’s ‘wage theft’ and ‘labour precarity’ Neoliberal policies are all about squeezing workers dry through deregulation, crushing unions, and gigging people out. The Bible’s verdict? This ain’t just a policy mistake, it’s a MASSIVE moral fail.

The Quran’s political contribution is the principle of Shura — consultation — which it presents not as a procedural regulation but as a defining characteristic of the righteous community:

“…whose affair is [determined by] consultation (Shura) among themselves.” (Quran 42:38)

Critically, this verse places democratic deliberation alongside prayer and generosity as constitutive of faithful life. Democratic participation is not an imported foreign value; it is a Quranic obligation. This is reinforced by the command to the Prophet himself: ‘And consult them in the matter’ (3:159). If the individual with direct prophetic authority is commanded to govern consultatively, then any claim to governance without consultation — whether by autocrat or unelected technocrat — is theologically impermissible.

Neoliberalism’s transfer of effective economic governance from elected legislatures to central banks, the IMF, and corporate boards represents precisely this form of un-consulted authority. The market becomes the Pharaoh: it dictates austerity conditions to elected governments, and populations are presented with structural adjustment as though it were a law of nature rather than a political choice. Against this, the Shura principle insists that the Amanah (trust) of governance cannot be delegated to unaccountable institutional powers.

The anti-tyranny mandate is further specified in Quran 4:135: ‘O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for God, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives’ — and reinforced in 5:8: ‘Be just; that is nearer to righteousness.’ Justice is not an optional addendum to faith; it is a manifestation of Tawhid (Divine Unity) in the social sphere. A financialized system that writes laws favouring corporations over citizens, and allows ‘too big to fail’ institutions to bypass legal accountability, constitutes a fracture in this principle of divine unity itself.

The Moral Economy — Redistribution, Usury, and the Welfare Mandate

No aspect of the Abrahamic traditions is more systematically at odds with neoliberal economics than their treatment of wealth distribution. The Hebrew Bible’s most comprehensive economic institution is the Jubilee, prescribed in Leviticus 25: every fifty years, debts are to be cancelled, slaves freed, and alienated land returned to ancestral families. This is not a primitive ritual survival but a sophisticated structural mechanism for preventing the permanent entrenchment of economic inequality.

The underlying theology is explicit: ‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers’ (Leviticus 25:23). The foundational principle is that ultimate ownership belongs to the divine, not to private actors. Humans hold wealth in trust, and that trust imposes obligations of redistribution. The Deuteronomic code amplifies this with what may be the most extraordinary prohibition in ancient economic law:

“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be open-handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11)

The text does not say ‘there will always be poor people, therefore poverty is natural and acceptable.’ It says the permanence of poverty is the very reason for the permanent obligation to address it. This is structurally the opposite of neoliberal trickle-down theory, which holds that the enrichment of elites will eventually eliminate poverty without redistributive intervention.

The prohibition on usury in the Hebrew scriptures is equally categorical. Exodus 22:25 forbids charging interest to the poor: ‘If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest.’ Ezekiel lists the charging of interest alongside violence and idolatry as evidence of wickedness (Ezekiel 18:13). Nehemiah’s economic reforms include the cancellation of interest-bearing debts (Nehemiah 5:1-13) as a condition of community restoration.

The Christian tradition, particularly in its Latin American liberation theology expression, distils the Gospels’ economic message into the ‘preferential option for the poor’ — the principle that the moral quality of a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members. This is not sentiment but exegesis. Mary’s Magnificat, among the earliest Christian hymns, frames the Incarnation itself in redistributive terms:

“He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:52-53)

The Sermon on the Mount pronounces blessing upon the poor (Luke 6:20) and woe upon the rich (Luke 6:24). The parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31) presents the accumulation of wealth while ignoring the suffering of the poor as a condition that results in the ultimate inversion of status — the rich man tormented Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. The parable does not blame the rich man for violence or fraud; it condemns him for indifference. In the Christian moral framework, the mere passivity of allowing systemic poverty to persist while possessing the means to address it is itself culpable.

The economic vision of the earliest Christian community, described in Acts 2:44-45, is explicitly redistributive: ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.’ This is not a blueprint for compulsory collectivism, but it is an unambiguous demonstration that the early Christians understood the Gospel as requiring a transformation of economic relations, not merely of private piety.

Zakat, Anti-Concentration, and the War on Riba

The Quran’s economic theology is its most institutionally developed dimension. The anti-concentration principle is stated with remarkable directness:

“…so that wealth will not be a perpetual distribution (Dawla) among the rich from among you.” (Quran 59:7)

Dawla in classical Arabic is like a vicious cycle – wealth circulating among the same elite crew. But the Quran says break it! It’s not about policy tweaks, it’s about smashing the system where capital begets more capital for the few, while the many struggle. Today’s economists call it ‘wealth concentration’ and ‘rentier capitalism’ – the Quran calls it out.

Zakat — mandatory redistribution — is a Rukn, a foundational pillar of the faith. The Quran specifies its recipients in 9:60 as eight categories including the poor, the indebted, and the traveller. The poor person’s claim on the surplus wealth of the community is described as a Haqq al-Ma’lum — a ‘known right’ (70:24-25) — of the same legal standing as the right to receive a debt repayment. This is the theological basis for the liberal welfare state: social provision is not charity but justice, not a gift from the wealthy but an obligation they discharge.

The prohibition of Riba (interest-based finance) is the Quran’s most sustained economic argument, addressed with language of exceptional severity:

“God has permitted trade and has forbidden interest (Riba)… And if you do not [desist], then be informed of a war from God and His Messenger.” (Quran 2:275, 2:279)

The hermeneutical significance of the war-declaration is that Riba is treated not as a personal vice but as a systemic social evil equivalent to an act of aggression against the community. Contemporary neoliberal financialization has produced sovereign debt crises that force governments to cut education, healthcare, and welfare to service interest obligations to international creditors. Nations of the Global South have been locked into precisely the debt-peonage the Quran identifies as warfare — structural adjustment programmes that mandate austerity for populations while ensuring returns to bond-holders. The Quranic prohibition of Riba is not medieval fiscal conservatism; it is a structural critique of extractive finance that anticipates the pathologies of twenty-first century neoliberalism with startling precision.

The psychological critique of accumulation is completed in the verse: ‘Competition in worldly increase diverts you until you visit the graveyards’ (102:1-2). GDP growth metrics, stock market indices, and net worth rankings are the modern form of the ‘competition in increase’ the Quran identifies as a diversion from the fundamental purposes of human life. The verse does not condemn production or commerce but the psychological orientation that makes accumulation an end in itself — the condition that roots social injustice.

Pluralism, Coexistence, and the Common Humanity

Liberalism’s commitment to pluralism — the coexistence of multiple worldviews within a shared social framework — finds perhaps its deepest roots in the Hebrew concept of the Ger (resident alien or stranger). The Torah commands hospitality and justice toward the stranger with a frequency unparalleled in ancient legal codes: ‘Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt’ (Exodus 22:21). The memory of oppression becomes the foundation of solidarity. Leviticus 19:34 extends this to full legal equality: ‘The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.’

This is the theological genealogy of what we now call universal human rights — the extension of legal protections to all persons regardless of origin, status, or identity. Neoliberal globalisation’s simultaneous opening of borders to capital flows while closing them to the movement of labour, and its demonisation of refugees and economic migrants, violates this foundational Abrahamic principle of hospitality to the stranger.

The Christian Gospels are, among other things, a systematic disruption of ethnic and religious exclusivism. The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) makes a despised ethnic outsider the exemplar of neighbourly love, while the respectable religious insiders — the priest and the Levite — fail the test. The encounter with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42), the healing of the Centurion’s servant (Matthew 8:5-13), and the vision of Peter in Acts 10 — ‘I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him’ (Acts 10:34-35) — all consistently expand the circle of moral regard beyond ethnic and religious boundaries.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians offers the most celebrated expression of this inclusive anthropology: ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). This is not the abolition of difference but the abolition of difference as the basis for hierarchy and exclusion — precisely the principle that liberal pluralism seeks to institutionalise in law.

The Quran’s contribution to a theology of pluralism is its remarkable declaration that diversity is not a problem to be resolved but a divine intentionality to be honoured:

“And if your Lord had willed, He would have made mankind one community; but they will not cease to differ.” (Quran 11:118)

If the omnipotent Creator chose not to make humanity uniform, then any human project enforcing uniformity — whether through religious compulsion or through the neoliberal homogenisation of global culture into a single consumer identity — acts against explicit divine design. The positive purpose of diversity is then stated in perhaps the most beautifully concise formula in any scripture:

“O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another (Lita’arafu). Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous.” (Quran 49:13)

The word Lita’arafu — the stated purpose of human diversity — means not merely encounter but deep mutual recognition: to come to know the Other in their fullness. The sole criterion of honour is moral quality (taqwa), not ethnicity, wealth, or social origin. Neoliberal globalisation performs a false pluralism: it celebrates ‘diversity’ in advertising while pursuing the systematic replacement of local cultures, languages, and traditions with standardised, profit-driven products. This is what the Quran calls Fasad fi al-Ard — corruption in the land (2:205) — the destruction of the cultural ecology.

The Quran also mandates, in perhaps its most ‘liberal-secular’ verse, the protection of all houses of religious worship: ‘Were it not that God checks the people, some by means of others, there would have been demolished monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of God is much mentioned’ (22:40). The enumeration of all religious institutions — including those of non-Muslims — as deserving divine protection constitutes the theological basis for a neutral secular state that protects all religious communities equally.

Environmental Stewardship — The Mizan Against Extractivism

The opening chapters of Genesis have sometimes been misread as a divine license for environmental exploitation. The command to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ (Genesis 1:28) has been invoked to justify extractive industry. But the fuller Hebrew theological tradition offers a very different picture. The human role is designated in Genesis 2:15 as one of Abad ve’Shomar — ‘to work and to keep/guard’ the garden. The Hebrew Shomar carries the sense of watchful protective care. Humanity is not the owner of creation but its steward and guardian.

The Hebrew legal tradition embeds this ecology of stewardship in economic law. The land must observe a Sabbath rest every seventh year (Leviticus 25:4) — a requirement that functions as a form of environmental regulation, allowing soil to recover. Deuteronomy 20:19-20 even extends protections to trees in wartime: ‘Do not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them, because you can eat their fruit… Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?’ This rhetorical question is one of the earliest arguments for the intrinsic value of the natural world, independent of human utility.

The Christian tradition has been complicated in its relationship to environmental ethics, but its deepest resources point clearly toward stewardship. Paul’s letter to the Romans describes creation as sharing in the consequences of human failure: ‘The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed… the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time’ (Romans 8:19, 22). Creation is a moral patient, not merely a resource bank.

The Franciscan tradition, which has experienced a significant contemporary revival through Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), represents the most developed Christian theology of ecological care. Drawing on the vision of Francis of Assisi — who addressed the sun, moon, wind, and water as brothers and sisters — it argues that the same social justice logic that demands care for the poor demands care for the Earth, since the poor are disproportionately the victims of environmental destruction. Laudato Si’ explicitly names neoliberal economics as a driver of ecological collapse, arguing that the logic of ‘maximum gain with minimal investment in the shortest period of time’ is fundamentally incompatible with a theology of creation.

The Quran presents the cosmos as a system of calibrated, fragile equilibria:

“And the heaven He raised and imposed the balance (Mizan). That you do not transgress within the balance. And establish weight in justice and do not make the balance deficient.” (Quran 55:7-9)

The Mizan is not merely a metaphor for justice; it is a physical description of ecological reality. The nitrogen cycle, carbon balance, oceanic chemistry, and biodiversity are the Mizan of the created order. To ‘make deficient the balance’ — to transgress the ecological equilibria that sustain life — is a transgression equivalent in gravity to social injustice. Neoliberal deregulation, which removes environmental constraints from industrial production in the name of market freedom, constitutes precisely this transgression.

The Quran contains what may be the most accurate pre-modern description of anthropogenic environmental collapse:

“Corruption (Fasad) has appeared throughout the land and sea by reason of what the hands of people have earned, so He may let them taste part of the consequence of what they have done that perhaps they will return to righteousness.” (Quran 30:41)

The verse maps precisely onto the contemporary climate crisis: ecological breakdown (Fasad) appearing in land and sea as a direct consequence of human economic activity. The Quranic Khalifah doctrine — human beings as stewards of the created order rather than its absolute owners — provides the theological foundation for liberal environmentalism and climate justice. The steward who destroys the trust is not exercising freedom but betraying it. Neoliberal extractivism, which treats the environment as a free externality to be exploited for private gain, is the theological inversion of the stewardship mandate: despoilment of the Amanah.

Toward an Abrahamic Liberal Synthesis

This paper has traced, across three Abrahamic canonical bodies, a convergent moral architecture that is deeply consonant with the foundational commitments of liberal political philosophy and profoundly at odds with the neoliberal economic ideology. The convergence is not coincidental. All three traditions share a common theological grammar: the unconditional dignity of the human person, the accountability of power to a transcendent moral standard, the obligation of the community to care for its most vulnerable members, the freedom of conscience as a prerequisite for authentic moral life, and the stewardship of the created order as a trust, not a possession.

The Hebrew tradition contributes to the structural institutions: The Jubilee debt cancellation, the Sabbatical year, the laws protecting the stranger, and the prophetic tradition of holding power accountable. The Christian tradition contributes the radicalization of these institutions into universal human solidarity: the identification of the divine with the poor, the dismantling of every hierarchy of worth, and the vision of a community where the logic of gift replaces the logic of exchange. The Islamic tradition contributes the systematic elaboration of these principles into a comprehensive social theology: Karama as the ontological foundation of human rights, Shura as the constitutional principle of democratic governance, Zakat as the institutional architecture of the welfare state, and the prohibition of Riba as the structural critique of extractive finance.

Neoliberalism, assessed against this convergent Abrahamic framework, emerges as a sophisticated form of what classical Islamic scholarship calls Jahiliyyah — an age of ignorance in which idols are worshipped in place of the divine. The neoliberal idol is the self-regulating Market: presented as omniscient, self-correcting, and the final arbiter of human value. Against the Abrahamic affirmation that creation is a trust held in stewardship before the divine, neoliberalism implicitly declares this dominion to belong to Capital.

This is not a metaphorical critique. Neoliberalism’s elevation of market outcomes above democratic deliberation, its subordination of ecological health to shareholder value, its treatment of human labour as a disposable input, and its systematic dismantling of the social solidarity that all three Abrahamic traditions mandate as a pillar of a just society — all of these constitute, in the convergent Abrahamic hermeneutical framework, the worship of an idol in the political-economic domain. The Market is invested with the attributes of divinity — sovereignty, omniscience, ultimate arbiter of worth — that belong, in all three traditions, to the Creator alone.

The prophets of Israel called it Baal worship — the subordination of human welfare to the demands of economic gods. The Gospels named it Mammon — the service of wealth as an absolute master. ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money’ (Matthew 6:24). The Quran named it Takathur — the competitive accumulation that distracts humanity from its highest purposes until death renders the vanity of the whole project apparent (Q.102:1-2).

The Six Pillars of Abrahamic Liberal Political Theology

The monograph has established six pillars of an Abrahamic Liberal political theology, to each of which all three traditions contribute their witness:

First, the Primacy of Human Dignity: every political and economic policy must be evaluated against its impact on the intrinsic, non-negotiable dignity of the human person — Tzelem Elohim (Genesis 1:27), the imago Dei of the Incarnate Christ (Matthew 25:40), and Karama (Quran 17:70). No market outcome justifies the erosion of this dignity.

Second, the Sovereignty of Conscience: the freedom of belief and moral reasoning established in the prophetic tradition (Amos 5:14), in the Pauline theology of conscience (Romans 14:5), and in the Quranic La Ikraha (2:256) is not a liberal concession to modernity but a theological prerequisite for authentic moral agency. Political and economic systems that coerce belief, manufacture ignorance, or foreclose the imagination of alternatives violate the divine architecture of truth.

Third, the Democratic Imperative: from the covenant accountability of the Hebrew monarchy (1 Samuel 8) through the conciliar governance of the early church (Acts 15) to the Shura principle of the Quran (42:38), participatory governance is a religious obligation. The transfer of economic sovereignty to unelected institutions violates the Amanah of the people.

Fourth, the Social Floor as Divine Right: The Jubilee institutions of Leviticus 25, the redistribution mandate of Acts 2:44-45, the Zakat system of Quran 9:60, and the Haqq al-Ma’lum of Quran 70:24-25 establish access to food, water, education, and healthcare not as policy preferences but as legally cognizable rights of every human being. The withholding of wages denounced by James 5:4 and the anti-concentration mandate of Quran 59:7 together constitute a comprehensive Abrahamic economics of redistribution.

Fifth, the Anti-Extractive Covenant: the prohibition of usury in Exodus 22:25, Deuteronomy 23:19-20, Ezekiel 18:13, Luke 6:34-35, and Quran 2:275-279, combined with the Jubilee debt-cancellation and the Quranic war-declaration against Riba, establish that debt-based extraction and the hoarding of wealth are not merely unjust but are, in all three traditions, acts of violence against the covenant community.

Sixth, Ecological Stewardship as Sacred Trust: The Hebrew Abad ve’Shomar (Genesis 2:15), the Pauline theology of creation’s groaning (Romans 8:22), and the Quranic Mizan (55:7-9) together establish that the protection of the ecological order is a condition of human trusteeship. Environmental destruction is a betrayal of the Amanah — the trust deposited by the Creator in the human steward.

The Quran’s repeated address to humanity — ‘O Mankind’ (Ya Ayyuhan-Nas) — echoes the Torah’s repeated invocation of the covenant community (Am Yisrael) and the Gospels’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God to ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’ (Revelation 7:9). All three traditions speak not to a particular civilisation, sect, or ideological bloc, but to the enduring human being — the dignified, free, consultative, and stewardly creature called to justice, to care for the Other, and to the responsible inheritance of the created world.

To return to the Abrahamic scriptures on these questions is not to retreat from modernity but to discover that the path forward — toward a just, free, and sustainable human civilisation — was mapped long before the Enlightenment, in texts that address not the West, not the East, not the medieval, not the modern, but the universal human person: honoured by creation (Genesis 1:27), beloved by the Incarnate Word (John 3:16), and appointed steward of the earth (Quran 2:30). The liberal values of dignity, freedom, accountability, and solidarity are not Western inventions. They are the Fitra — the natural disposition of the human being as created and honoured by the divine — inscribed with equal force across the three great rivers of Abrahamic revelation.

“O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul…” (Quran 4:1)

“…that you may know one another.” (Quran 49:13)

“Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39)

“…so wealth does not circulate only among the rich.” (Quran 59:7)

V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism. With a deep commitment to advancing Quranic hermeneutics that prioritize human well-being, peace, and progress, his work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence.

19 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ranjan Solomon

Imran Khan’s political career—particularly his tenure as Prime Minister of Pakistan (2018–2022), along with his subsequent ouster and imprisonment—has been marked by intense polarization. The political establishment appears unwilling to acknowledge the deep trust and support he continues to command among the masses. Such unconditional public backing remains elusive for the generals and the ruling elite.

Khan campaigned for the prime ministership on a strong anti-corruption platform, positioning himself as an outsider challenging an entrenched and corrupt political class. His supporters have consistently viewed him as a rare and honest leader.

For the establishment, producing credible evidence of corruption against Khan has proved akin to finding a needle in a haystack—and that needle remains elusive. If he were even remotely as corrupt as his opponents allege, how does one explain his enduring popularity? Khan has repeatedly denied all charges, calling them politically motivated and orchestrated by the military establishment to exclude him from power.

Several high-profile convictions from 2024 were later overturned or suspended on appeal. Despite his incarceration in December 2023, a Gallup poll identified Khan as Pakistan’s most popular politician. In the 2024 general election, independent candidates backed by his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), secured the highest number of seats—defying a severe state crackdown and the loss of their official party symbol, the cricket bat. Many viewed this as a powerful affirmation of his popularity.

His appeal is often contrasted with his strained relationship with Pakistan’s powerful military, which played a key role in both his rise and fall. He enjoys strong support, particularly among youth and urban middle-class voters disillusioned with traditional dynastic parties.

This popularity was evident in the 2022 by-elections, where his party won six out of seven seats. While supporters see him as an “unbeatable,” incorruptible visionary, critics argue that his tenure was marred by authoritarian tendencies and governance failures. Analysts frequently attribute his legal troubles to the breakdown of his relationship with the military establishment, which once backed him. Khan, however, alleges a conspiracy involving military leadership and political rivals—what he terms the “London Plan”—to sideline him.

Calls for justice have emerged internationally. A group of 14 former international cricket captains—including Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, and Greg Chappell—has urged the Pakistani government to ensure Khan’s safety and fair treatment. Their February 2026 appeal raised concerns about his health and prison conditions. Former teammates Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis have also called for adequate medical care. Reports from his family and lawyers claim he has suffered significant vision loss in his right eye due to medical neglect. The cricketers have demanded access to independent medical specialists, humane detention conditions, and full legal rights, invoking the spirit of sportsmanship and common humanity.

Despite several acquittals, other cases—particularly those related to the alleged misuse of state gifts—have led to fresh convictions or prolonged imprisonment. Reports from late 2025 and early 2026 indicate that sentences of up to 17 years in corruption cases have been upheld. Khan maintains that these charges are politically driven and intended to keep him out of Pakistan’s political arena.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has recently intervened, ordering a comprehensive medical examination, including an eye check-up, and permitting him to communicate with his children. However, despite some relief from higher courts, the sheer volume of cases—over 100—and the rapid filing of new charges have ensured his continued imprisonment. Denial of adequate medical care raises serious humanitarian concerns.

These legal battles unfold amid deepening tensions between PTI and the current establishment. Khan’s supporters argue that he is the target of a systematic political crackdown aimed at erasing him from the political landscape.

His party and legal team have consistently described the proceedings as a “sham” and a “fraudulent set-up” designed to prevent his return to power. Human rights organizations have raised concerns about due process violations, including trials held inside Adiala Jail rather than in open court.

In many instances, defense lawyers have reportedly been denied full access or the opportunity to effectively cross-examine witnesses.

Significantly, several high-profile convictions—including those related to state secrets (the cipher case) and the legality of his marriage—were later overturned or suspended, lending weight to claims of political motivation.

Perhaps the most compelling criticism comes from a United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which concluded in June 2024 that Khan’s detention was arbitrary and in violation of international law and fair trial standards.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age.

19 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org