The world is anxiously waiting for President-elect Donald Trump to take charge of the U.S. principally because of his “America First” foreign policy. He “signaled an eagerness to wrap up the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as quickly as possible,” an idea certainly cherished by ordinary people. Results of a survey suggest “nearly 70% of the Americans want talks to end the war in Ukraine,” while the majority of Americans “now disapprove of Israeli action in Gaza.”
Trump’s next encounter is doable, though not simple. After all, he is a dealmaker, a man who likes “thinking big,” as explained in his book "The Art of Deal." Even though Trump is willing to work for peace, what about the people in power? Would they allow him to make a deal with Russia and Israel?
If you read Bob Woodward’s new book “War” (2024), peace would not be a straightforward deal to make. Woodward noted Trump’s quote, “The world changes. You’ll have wars. Things that are beyond your control in most cases beyond people’s control.” Since politics is unpredictable, let's hope for the best. Can Trump bring peace to the war victim women in Ukraine and Gaza?
For decades, the U.S. has presented itself as the savior. The American invasion of Afghanistan used the themes of "emancipation of the oppressed peoples and especially women of Afghanistan."
Though most of the stories in the American media and Hollywood films show America as a guardian angel of women's rights, the reality is bleak. Aafia is among thousands of Muslim women in war zones from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan to Libya, Myanmar and Palestine, and beyond.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist born in Karachi and moved to the U.S. to study at MIT. She has earned several honors and distinctions for her brilliance in the field of education and research. However, her story turned bitter. Aafia, a mother of three children, was abducted from her hometown Karachi, Pakistan back in 2003 on her alleged links with al-Qaida. Notably, Aafia's story is a “dystopian nightmare” and a "narrative of torture, isolation and a relentless battle against the ensure of her very existence.”
Sorrowfully, Siddiqui’s children were killed, while she has been harassed and assaulted by her inmates. Since then what she has been through became evidence of the Western duplicity on children and women's rights. Today, after two decades, she is a “living corpse” and has been labeled as “Mata Hari of al-Qaida” and “the Gray Lady of Bagram” and later became an “iconic victim of American brutality.”
She is still serving an 86-year sentence for attempted murder of an American soldier, an incident that still seems mysterious. Her volunteer lawyer Clive Stafford Smith exposed a “plot to murder” and revealed disturbing and missing facts in her case.
The American media has portrayed her as an “al-Qaida Mom,” “terrorist facilitator” and “armed and dangerous” to the extent that “in May 2004, the U.S. attorney general, John Ashcroft, listed her among the seven “most wanted al-Qaida fugitives.”
In contrast, the liberal Western press, especially The Guardian, embraced the fact that Siddiqui is a “victim of torture” and a female “war on terror” prisoner who is unlawfully serving a jailed term of 86 years in the U.S. for an attempted murder of an American armed forces personnel in Afghanistan.
Sadly, the “U.S. prison authorities have denied access to spiritual support for Aafia,” which is a fundamental human right. According to Cage International report, she is the “most oppressed woman in the American prison” as “her plight conjures up images of torture, false imprisonment, abandonment and the complicity of governments.
Siddiqui, nicknamed the “daughter of Pakistan” and the “Aafia Movement,” has intrigued hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life globally. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan batted for Siddiqui in his PTI manifesto, and so did the Pak Senate, but she never gets mercy.
British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who originally traced Aafia in Bagram Airbase, calls it “FBI’s mysterious case.” For the invisible powerful elites, the lives of ordinary people do not matter. Long ago, Petra Bartosiewicz wrote an outstanding article, “The intelligence factor: how America makes its enemies disappear,” which is so relevant to today’s world.
Trump is expected to take the oath in several days. All eyes are focused on him, will he do justice? Piles of evidence show many have been wrongly convicted in America. It seems that Aafia’s Muslim identity played a role in her 86-year controversial verdict.
The recent terrible terrorist attack on a German Christmas market brought back the “terrorists are always Muslim but never white” discourse. However, Owen Jones quickly pointed out that the Saudi perpetrator is a “far-right, anti-Muslim, pro-Israel extremist.” Again, the mainstream Western media didn’t bother to talk about terrorist links with Israel and that he was wanted in Saudi Arabia for several criminal activities.
Well, most sections of the Western media shamelessly repeat such a stance over terrorist attacks regularly. A most recent case of Muslim bias is CNN’s reporter Clarissa Ward’s fabricated story of a rescued man who turned out to be a Syrian Assad regime intelligence officer. Journalist Mohamad Elmasry rightly said, “The latest fiasco further highlights the sensationalism, inaccuracy and imbalance that have characterized CNN’s coverage of Gaza and the Middle East more broadly.”
Such manufactured narratives testify Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model” is valid and continues to be relevant as most sections of the Western media, politicians and people in power too often blame Muslims for all problems.
However, as usual, most sections of the Western media were accused of pushing “fake news” of Amsterdam riots coverage as it portrayed “a different reality to what really happened during riots in Amsterdam,” where the Israeli football fans were violent not the Dutch pro-Palestinian activists. Notably, from CNN to the BBC and Bild, none showed any remorse over their scandalous coverage.
Clearly, the “media scripted Amsterdam’s Soccer violence” to enable its decades-old agenda of "innocent Israelis" and "evil Arabs.” Such trends have become normal for the media to blame Muslims for all problems in Europe and beyond. This year after the Romanian rioters turned Leeds in the U.K. into chaos, sections of the Western media and the far-right hurried to accuse Muslims for the unrest but later found they were wrong as usual.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander said, “We must not turn a blind eye to antisemitism” in connection to “attacks on Israeli football fans,” but the king has never expressed the same enthusiastic sentiments on rising “Islamophobia.”
This space is too little to incorporate hundreds of illustrations of the Western media's Muslim bias reporting and the irreparable damage it has caused to millions of Muslims globally.
I would sum up the discussion by citing law professor Caroline Mala Corbin saying: “When you hear the word 'terrorist' who do you picture? Chances are, it is not a white person. In the United States, two common though false narratives about terrorists who attack America abound. We see them on television, in the movies, on the news and currently, in the Trump administration. The first is that 'terrorists are always (brown) Muslims' The second is that 'White people are never terrorists.'"
Now Trump is coming into office. The big question is what will he do for women in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and beyond? Can Trump bring peace to Siddiqui’s life? Let’s hope Siddiqui will be seen free in 2025.
