The Centre for Investigative Journalism present Source! the 10 year anniversary edition of the CIJ Logan Symposium.
Investigative journalism is in flux. Journalists need sources, but in the digital age those sources make contact in different ways, and sometimes don’t want to talk to journalists at all. What’s the best way to protect sources when reporting is often done remotely, when our sources are under threat and when keeping our sources safe can sometimes be a matter of life and death? Should we trust technology to keep us safe, or stay close to traditional journalist tradecraft and trust only our wits?
Led by investigative journalists, the newest edition of the biennial CIJ Logan Symposium, Source! brings together some of the most courageous and innovative new investigative reporters and outlets in the world to forge alliances against official censorship, surveillance and deceit – and to talk candidly about the landscape for the profession and its future prospects.
This time the CIJ partners with Freedom of the Press Foundation in New York, Disclose in Paris, Reporters United in Athens, The Public Source in Beirut and Declassified in London to bring you talks and presentations that tackle the most pressing issues facing us all – how best to protect sources and whistleblowers, to deal with government harassment and gagging orders and to make the most of exciting new investigative tools and methods.
Independent Journalism Awareness Raising: Spotlighting people and communities on the ground
+972 Magazine is an independent, online, nonprofit magazine operated by both Palestinian and Israeli journalists. Founded in 2010, their mission is to provide in-depth reporting, analysis, and opinions from the field in Israel-Palestine. The name of the site is derived from the telephone country code that can be used to dial throughout Israel-Palestine.
The magazine’s core values are a commitment to equity, justice, and freedom of information. +972 believes in accurate and fair journalism that spotlights the people and communities working to oppose occupation and apartheid as well as showcasing perspectives often overlooked or marginalized in mainstream narratives.
+972 Magazine does not represent any outside organization, political party, or agenda. They publish a wide variety of views that do not necessarily represent the opinions of the +972 editorial team.
Johns Hopkins University first-ever Fencing newsletter! Winter 2024
Getting back involved with the Hopkins Fencing community, we are in the midst of another exciting season where women rank #4 (DIII) team holding a 6-3 record most recently beating #5 Tufts. The men are tanked #2 (DIII) and #14 overall having started with a 12-2 record. Twenty-two Hopkins fencers competed at the U.S. Fencing NAC in Atlantic City.
The Abraham Initiatives in the New York Times article "Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling"
From the newsletter:
In May of this year, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman encouraged his readers to make a difference – not just a point. He named The Abraham Initiatives as a crucial organization to support during the emergency period, when what matters most is real, on-the-ground impact.
In other words, supporting The Abraham Initiatives is not just a way to express your values; it makes a shared future possible.“What Palestinians and Israelis need most now are not performative gestures of disinvestment, but real gestures of impactful investment…Invest in groups that promote
Arab-Jewish understanding, like the Abraham Initiatives.”
- Thomas Friedman, nytimes.com
The impact of investing in shared society has never been more evident. Throughout the past year, we have implemented new measures to prevent intercommunal violence in the mixed cities, begun developing a program to improve Jewish-Arab relations in workplaces, and advocated for the full implementation of laws directing resources to Palestinian citizens.
Combatants for Peace Event Recording: Another Way Forward -Co-Creating Amid Catastrophe
This conversation emphasized the vital role of solidarity in times of crisis. Our speakers reflected on the complexities of human agency, the need to move beyond simplistic binaries, and the importance of building coalitions, repairing ruptured relationships, and recognizing the humanity in all people.
Each speaker shared a personal mantra for navigating these painful times and entering 2025 with strength. Mehra offered, "Two truths in one heart," emphasizing the balance of acknowledging diverse realities while fostering unity. Souli shared wisdom from an Arabic scholar: "Two thousand steps to turn an enemy into a friend, not one step to turn a friend into an enemy," highlighting the steadfastness and trust needed to build lasting peace. Avner shared, "Whatever there is that you don't want to be done to yourself, don't do it to others," reminding us to ground political actions in compassion and respect. Let's hold fast to these mantras as we step into the new year.
Human Rights Foundation steps up to help Ukraine
Reposted from HRF’s newsletter!
As we approach the third anniversary of the brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is ramping up his attacks on the country’s critical infrastructure. Hospitals, kindergartens, apartment blocks, electric grids, and power plants come under daily attacks, taking the lives of innocent civilians. Putin’s bombardments are meant to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure and undermine Ukraine’s resolve to fight for its sovereignty and freedom. By attacking these targets, Putin seeks to deprive Ukrainians of access to essential things necessary for survival, such as heat, and force them into submission.
As we enter the winter season, HRF is stepping up to help Ukraine overcome the harsh realities of winter. We are launching a campaign to raise money for generators to make sure as many people in Ukraine as possible have access to energy, the Internet, and heat. Winters in the country can be particularly cold, with temperatures going as low as -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit). For many, a generator can be the difference between life and death.
We hope you will consider donating to our new fundraiser, Power Ukraine. Together with our partners on the ground, HRF will purchase and deliver generators to at-risk communities in Ukraine. We will target regions located near the frontlines, which experience frequent shelling, airstrikes, and prolonged power outages.
Watch HRF’s video to learn why generators are important and how they keep Ukrainians warm and safe amid relentless missile strikes.
Together, we can help local residents there and alleviate the hardships they go through. Every donation counts, and will go a long way in saving Ukrainian lives.
Brandon Silver, RWCHR Director of Policy and Projects, recipient of 2024 Outstanding Human Rights Lawyer Global Magnitsky Award
Brandon Silver, RWCHR Director of Policy and Projects, Convisero mentor, and newest recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Human Rights Lawyer Global Magnitsky Award, in conversation with Bill Browder, head of the Global Magnitsky Campaign, and Kate Gerbeau at Frontline about the urgency of ramping up the use of global sanctions and the challenges ahead in a second Trump era.
Another Way Forward: Co-Creating Amid Catastrophe
Another Way Forward: Co-Creating Amid Catastrophe
Join Combatants for Peace (CfP) co-founders Souli Khatib and Avner Wishnitzer, alongside Mehra Rimer, founder of B8 of Hope, for an urgent conversation about steadfastness, nonviolent resistance, and the struggle for a just peace. Moderated by Tiffany Goodwin-Van Camp, Executive Director of American Friends of CfP, this event will explore how solidarity and collective action connect the struggle for liberation in Israel and Palestine with movements for justice worldwide.
📅 Date: December 17, 2024
🕒 Time: 1:00 PM ET / 8:00 PM Jerusalem Time
📍 Location: Online (Zoom link provided upon registration)
David Mou
Since graduating Tufts and completing my two internships at the Department of Defense in the Acquisitions, Technology, and Logistics Department, I went to law school at Fordham Law, where I interned for the Neighborhood Defenders Service in Harlem, Queens County District Attorney's Office, the United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, and interned for Judge Charles Troia, when he was a City Court Judge and Judge Robert Patterson of the Southern District of New York. Upon graduation, I began working for the New York City Law Department, Labor and Employment Law Division where I tried two federal jury trials. I went to work at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, before going in-house at an aerospace lighting company and commercial auto startup. For the past two years, I have been building up my own law practice Mou Legal PLLC where I focus on client-centered representation in employment law, civil rights, general litigation, and federal criminal defense matters. For the past 10 years, I have served as an Adjunct Professor in Trial Advocacy at Fordham Law, which also prompted my wife to encourage me to start my practice and get back in the Courtroom on behalf of those in need.
All that is to say my journey from Tufts where I was involved in EPIIC '07 Global Crises, NIMEP (Fact-finding Missions- Syria, Israel), ALLIES, Tiufts Energy Forum, and Synaptic Scholars instilled a strong sense of mission in the service of others. Ambassador William Luers wrote one of my law school recommendation letters based on his class Talking with the Enemy. Indeed, the spirit of global citizenship is alive and well as my wife and I decided to forgo a traditional wedding and instead invited are friends abroad for a global dinner series. I proposed to her in Antarctica, we celebrated our engagement in Buenos Aires and had a wedding dinner series in Tunis, Edinburgh, Tokyo, and New York. Finally, we honeymooned in New Zealand. All of this is to say that the reason I stayed at Tufts was due to IGL's place as a second home during my time at Tufts.
My next trial in January involves a Chinese national charged with importing fentanyl precursors whose guidelines are a mandatory ten years to life sentence if convicted. This brings home the failed war on drugs and its shift to Asia, defending those caught in the middle of a policy chess match between China and the United States, and my own identity as a Taiwanese American. Forgiveness is something far too lacking in the American criminal justice system. Alas, life is beautiful and complicated.
Adam Theater Debut - "Library Lion"
Adam Theater, founded by Convisero mentor Ran Bechor, is a one-of-a-kind professional theater company producing plays exclusively for kids and young adults. Our immersive plays speak directly to our young audiences’ growing minds — in a language they can understand, with stories they can relate to. Through our work, we’re helping kids and teens find their voice, discover their identity, and experience the magic of the theater.
Our inaugural play “Library Lion” is set to premiere as a site-specific play September 2024 in the Boston Public Library. The musical play’s adaptation, by playwright Eli Bijaoui, is based on one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Children's Books of All Times, by Michelle Knudsen, set to music by Yoni Rechter. Lion puppet design & build by The Jim Henson Company.
Established, May 2023 Boston based Adam Theater is a non-profit 501(c)3 professional theater offering a repertoire of plays for young audiences and families.
The pillars of Adam Theater | So Much More than Child’s Play
Contemporary Theatre - A theater that constantly questions its relevance and strives to emphasize live performance and the direct encounter between art and its audience.
To present high quality art to children and their families. Our professional theatrical productions stimulate our audiences’ growing minds — we elevate them, nurturing the maturity they have within. And in the process, we set them on a path of self discovery, helping them tell their own story, with themselves at the center of it.
Education & Family - Through stories, fairy tales, and live performances, a child learns to decipher their culture and self, formulating their own personal hero's journey. Adam Theater is a theater for the entire family; it invites families to come and watch together artworks that will serve as a common fictional world for the family and the community, through which it is possible to generate a conversation about everyday life, culture, and ethical questions.
Hebrew Culture - Everything ever written in Hebrew. Hebrew culture is based on Jewish tradition, but interprets it through modern, secular, and universal lenses. During the 18th century in Europe, there was the start of the Hebrew culture renaissance, great emphasis was placed on the narrative and the point of view of the other (not necessarily Jewish). Therefore the roots of this culture carries within it universal values. In order to introduce Hebrew Culture into the American mainstream, we are intentionally seeking and creating collaborations with known American cultural brands, and institutions. Thus, The Boston Public Library and Jim Henson Company are under the same umbrella as S.Y. Agnon and Yoni Rechter. The combination of American culture with Hebrew culture is key to breaking through the cultural glass ceiling placing Hebrew culture front and center in mainstream America.
Vision | Open Curtains, Opening Minds
Educate generations of children in the Boston area, and beyond, for the love of theater as high quality art, storytelling, and universal democratic values. Direct exposure to ethical questions allows children freedom of thought and choice.
Ran Bechor
Ran Bechor is an educator, award winning Hebrew playwright and theater director. In 2016 Bechor was awarded first place at the Akko Fringe Theater Festival for his play Schreber. He is a former fellow of the Mandel School for educational leadership, where he conducted research on the connection between high art and education. He spent two years as the principal of a school for the gifted in Jerusalem. In addition to his deep knowledge of Hebrew culture, he currently teaches Hebrew language & culture at Harvard University. In 2023, he co-founded Adam Theater in Boston.
Nicholas Kelly
Nicholas Kelly is Director of Innovation and Research at the Boston Housing Authority and Lecturer at Northeastern University
Nicholas Kelly is Director of Innovation and Research at the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) where he oversees the agency’s initiatives to improve economic mobility for low-income residents. There, he has launched and managed key programs promoting economic mobility for BHA residents, including BHA’s First Home homeownership program, BHA’s housing mobility program, and BHA’s youth programming. He has advocated for millions in federal and local dollars to support these and other programs at the BHA. In addition, as a member of the BHA’s senior leadership team, Nicholas helps shape the agenda of agency and serve as a main liaison with external researchers.
Nicholas also serves as lecturer at Northeastern University in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, where he teaches the Housing Policy course for graduate students. In that course he provides students with an overview of the history, policy and practice of housing policy, and features a variety of guest speakers including local and national housing activists and government officials.
Nicholas received his PhD in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT in 2021, where he wrote his dissertation on the policy and politics of housing policy programs aimed to expand access to high opportunity neighborhoods in the United States. His research more broadly focuses on efforts to promote racial equality in housing policy. He is a nationally recognized expert on fair housing, having published several journal articles and an edited book, Furthering Fair Housing: Prospects for Racial Justice in America’s Neighborhoods, published by Temple University press in 2021. He serves as a consultant on fair housing issues to federal, state and local government agencies. His work has been featured in national news outlets, including the New York Times and Slate. He received his MPA from Princeton University in 2015, and a BA in Political Science from Columbia University in 2009.
Nicholas’s current work and research builds on years working in federal, state and local government. As a graduate student, Nicholas worked in New York City’s Department of Housing and Preservation and Development, as well as at the National Economic Council in the Obama Administration. Prior to graduate school, he served as Assistant Vice President for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a communications advisor for Elizabeth for Senate, and Deputy Press Secretary for US Senator Charles Schumer. He currently lives in the South End neighborhood of Boston with his wife and daughter.
Ranjan Chak
Ranjan’s experience has been mostly in helping build or advise tech startups across the globe – in the US, UK, Europe, Japan and of course India. He wrote his first computer program on punched cards on an IBM 360 in 1976, studied computer science on green screens at Harvard, and worked on expert systems development at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon in the early 1980s, before heading international business development for Carnegie Group Inc, an AI spinoff out of CMU. In 1987, after a few hectic years circumnavigating the globe evangelizing AI (a few decades too early!), he moved back to India with Hewlett Packard to help plan HP’s entry into the country’s computer market.
A few years later, after experience leading two Indian software startups, he was recruited to establish Oracle Corporation’s India Development Center. Becoming one of India’s earliest and most successful offshore software operations, Oracle IDC grew from systems R&D to encompass Applications development, Support, Consulting and back-end functions, and is today the company’s largest development organisation outside the US.
Eventually, Ranjan moved into VC as a venture partner with Oak Investment Partners, engaging with a wide variety of their global portfolio companies over two decades. Working with Oak introduced him to VenCap International, the UK-based venture fund-of-funds, where he has been an advisory board member since the global financial crisis of 2008. Based on this wide exposure to tech investment, he later co-founded an Oracle IDC alumni group that came together to invest in startup Indian tech companies.
While Ranjan remains involved with the tech and investment world in advisory or board roles, he has most enjoyed his periods of exposure outside the commercial environment, on the International Advisory Board of Tufts University, as a Visiting Fellow with the Cambridge Judge Business School, as chair of the advisory board for Oakridge International School in Hyderabad, and getting actively involved in the fight against the spread of fake news in India. Most recently, he spent an extraordinary twelve years as a member of the governing board of Plan India (the India chapter of Plan International), a remarkable NGO impacting the lives of millions of under-privileged children across the country.
He has had the freedom over the years to “work on projects he enjoys, with people that he likes,” and continues to mentor entrepreneurs and organisations working in interesting impact areas.
"Seeking Relief From Brain Injury, Some Veterans Turn to Psychedelics"
Convisero mentor Boaz Wachtel has researched on ibogaine as a treatment over the course of his career and has been an active advocate of its use (such as in this published September 2024 Haaretz article) for such cases described below.
The article released just on December 16, 2024 below shows ibogaine’s use gaining momentum in mainstream treatment options.
“Unable to find effective treatments at home, veterans with brain-injury symptoms are going abroad for psychedelics like ibogaine that are illegal in the U.S.” Full article found at the New York Times linked here.
Excerpt below:
Their drug of choice is ibogaine, an alkaloid derived from the bark of the iboga tree. It is illegal in the United States and has a reputation for causing dark, harrowing trips. But research on animals has shown it can spur the release of natural proteins in the brain that repair and reconfigure neural networks. That leads some researchers to consider it a potential treatment for traumatic brain injury.
Psychedelic clinics typically administer ibogaine in a single dose, followed the next day by a dose of the poison of the Sonoran desert toad, called 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful short-acting psychedelic that tends to give users an overwhelming feeling of spiritual connection, earning it the nickname “the God molecule.”
In most cases, the patient uses each drug just once, and participates in psychotherapy beforehand and afterward. Navy SEALs in particular have become involved with ibogaine, in part because several ibogaine clinics in Mexico are just a few miles from a major SEAL base in Southern California. Most wait until they have left the Navy, but dozens who are still on active duty make the trip each year, several SEALs said.
Gavin Murphy
Gavin went to law school before starting his career in San Francisco after finishing engineering studies at Tufts. He spent 10 years in SF working as a lawyer and carving out time for running, climbing, and skiing. Gavin is an avid reader - focused mostly on nonfiction and the occasional mystery. Gavin now works as in house counsel for Brex, a fintech startup combining his engineering and legal background. Professionally he has focused on financial services regulation in the US as well as UK, EU, Canada, and Australia including previous stints at Square and several international law firms. Gavin currently lives in Washington DC with his wife, Madeline, and black lab, Hyde.
At Varo he launched a secured credit card for credit building and a payday alternative loan for the under banked in the US. At Square, Murphy launched small business loans in the U.K. and small business lines of credit in the US.
Sam Barzilay
Sam Barzilay grew up in Greece and fell in love with photography at a young age. He attended Tufts University and graduated in 2000 with a BA in philosophy. In 2001, he graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts with a BFA in Photography. Barzilay also got an MFA in photojournalism at the University of Westminster in 2007, That same year Barzilay began working at the New York Photo Festival as Curatorial Coordinator and worked there through 2011 becoming the director of exhibitions and, subsequently, festival director. In 2009, he was a guest curator for the Lishui Photo Festival, a biennial event in Lishui, China. From 2010 through 2011 Barzilay was a member of the board of advisors for the Guatephoto Festival. Barzilay has also participated in prestigious events including the Prix Pictet, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Houston FotoFest, and the New York Photo Awards as reviewer, nominator, and judge.
In 2011 Sam Barzilay cofounded PhotoVille, an annual open-air exhibit in New York City dedicated to building a community around photography, a profession that can be isolating. One of the main principles of PhotoVille is accessibility, removing obstacles so photographers of all backgrounds can break into the field. The organization brings young people into the same space as established artists and gives them the same respect. Through fostering conversations and sharing perspectives photographers and passerbys alike are able to connect through art and humanity.
PhotoVille displays photographs in shipping containers, exhibiting diverse narratives through visual storytelling, from religious and cultural experiences to systemic injustices and many more. Sam Barzilay has been committed to sharing his passion for photography and creating a strong artistic community that extends a hand to those in all stages of their creative careers.
Rashid's Khalidi - Palestinian-American Historian - 'Israel Has Created a Nightmare Scenario for Itself. The Clock Is Ticking'
The story isn't Hamas, religion or terrorism. Rashid Khalidi, the preeminent Palestinian intellectual of our time, is convinced that the Israelis simply don't understand the conflict - living in a 'bubble of false consciousness.' Link to full article here
First EPIIC Symposium on International Terrorism can be found here which includes Professor Khalidi’s talk on The Media, Terrorism and the Palestinians. We invited a wide range of Israeli and Palestinian scholars, journalists, strategic experts, economics, human and civil-rights advocates, religious leaders, and diplomats to engage in a vigorous and free exchange of ideas. They were invited to participate in an academic endeavor, one marked by a spirit of reconciliation, not recrimination.
The implications of terror are profound, reaching the most basic questions of morality, justice, and the fundamental underpinnings of the international system. The nature of the terrorist threat, and the policy the United States government adopts to confront that threat, will have profound consequences for American society and the structure of global relations. The topic is difficult because it arouses feelings of outrage and anger in nearly every observer. Whether the victims are shot by a Salvadoran death squad, blown up by Basque separatists, or thrown down the gangway of a hijacked aircraft, the sudden, seemingly anomic violence of the terrorist touches us with special horror. We are angered, puzzled, stunned. We have struggled to understand "the politics of atrocity" in all its forms, be it revolutionary terrorism or state regimes of terrorism. We have sought to comprehend the resort to terrorism as a political strategy and the repercussions of combatting it. We have also tried to understand the fundamental differences in values and ideologies that prompt the violent cycles of terror and counter-terror and we have tried to imagine ways the international community might limit, if not eliminate this scourge.
Shafiq Islam guest lecture at Krea University - A Talk on Engineering Diplomacy
This lecture will explore the intersection of science, policy, and the politics of water, spanning local to global scales. It will examine the technical, political, and socio-economic dimensions of water resource management, including transboundary water disputes, water scarcity, and water-related disasters. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding the role of diplomacy in fostering cooperation, negotiation, and conflict resolution to ensure sustainable water governance and equitable access to water resources. Using recent floods in India and Bangladesh as an example, the lecture will demonstrate how numbers and narratives shape the understanding of and responses to natural hazards.
The Distinguished Lecture series at Krea University, proposed by Professor Nirmala Rao, Vice Chancellor, Krea University, addresses current issues in world politics to promote local, national, and global engagement among the student body. Upcoming lecture themes include international humanitarian law, water and environmental security, challenges of climate change, war and forced migration, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), global governance and political thought. The lectures will be delivered by a diverse range of academics and practitioners, offering Krea students an invaluable opportunity to connect their academic studies to real-world issues and engage with leading experts. The series will be convened by Sherman Teichman, Emeritus Founding Director of The Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University (1984-2016).
Sameer Arshad Khatlani - Guru Nanak: Guiding Light As Bigotry Becomes Order Of Day
Dear all,
Gurpurab is being celebrated today to commemorate the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, whose relevance has grown more than ever. Guru Nanak preached against religious prejudices and founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion and a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
Guru Nanak’s relevance has grown more than ever before as he preached against religious prejudices and founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion and a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
In August 2019, tensions escalated between India and Pakistan when New Delhi stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status to take full control of the Himalayan region. The two countries have claimed the region in full since the end of British colonial rule in 1947 and fought four wars over it.
Islamabad reacted to the change in the Muslim-majority region’s constitutional status. It downgraded diplomatic ties with India amid a lockdown and a communications blackout in Kashmir to prevent protests over the sweeping changes and restrictions.
The ties between the two countries deteriorated months after they were on the verge of another war. Islamabad retaliated against an Indian airstrike in Pakistan following a car bomb attack in Jammu and Kashmir‘s Pulwama in February 2019.
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Meanwhile, the construction of a corridor to provide visa-free access for Indian pilgrims to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib built at the last resting place of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, in Pakistan continued unhindered. It was finished and inaugurated within a year ahead of Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary in November 2019.
Common Ground
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, participated in the inauguration ceremonies of the corridor on either side of the border as the two countries found a rare common ground amid fraught relations.
Guru Nanak remained a unifier even as ties between India and Pakistan were at their lowest ebb. High-ranking officials of the two countries, who had been avoiding each other like the plague, rubbed shoulders with each other at the inauguration of the corridor on the premises of the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib on the Pakistani side.
Centuries after he passed away, Guru Nanak remained a uniter. Nothing symbolises it more than the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib. The gurdwara stands at the place where Hindus and Muslims are believed to have found flowers under a white sheet when they arrived for Nanak’s last rites.
Muslims buried a part of the sheet and flowers and built a mausoleum in Nanak’s memory. Hindus put their share in an urn and interred it. Both communities revered Guru Nanak equally. Guru Nanak’s relevance has grown more than ever before as he preached against religious prejudices. He founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion and a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
Torn Apart
The composite culture Guru Nanak contributed significantly to is being torn apart with Muslims at the receiving end of bigotry passed off as nationalism for their erasure with full state patronage. Guru Nanak’s family was Hindu. But his association with Muslims was much deeper than is widely known. His teacher was a Muslim. He was the first to understand his spiritual prowess. The teacher called Guru Nanak a blessed and gifted child and attributed his superior intelligence to it.
Rai Bular, a Muslim landlord, was the one to prevail upon Nanak’s father and his employee, Mehta Kalu, to allow Guru Nanak’s otherworldly pursuits. While Guru Nanak wandered with holy men, Kalu wanted him to focus on his education. Bular was also the first to report miracles which indicated Nanak’s holiness.
Bular became Guru Nanak’s first devotee outside his family. He is said to have witnessed a hooded cobra shielding the Guru from the sun while he was sleeping under the open sky. Bular saw this as a sign of Nanak’s spiritualism. Bular also reported how the shade of a tree remained on Guru Nanak even when the position of the sun changed while he slept. He rushed to tell Kalu Nanak was an exalted person upon seeing this.
Bular was totally devoted to Guru Nanak and convinced Kalu that his son was a man of God. He dedicated much of his land to the Guru. Gurdwara Janam Asthan, which stands at the place of Nanak’s birth, and much of the city around it is located on the land Bular bequeathed to Sikhism’s founder.
Rai Hadayat, a 17th-generation descendant of Bular, led Guru Nanak’s 500th birth celebration. Bular’s family has continued a tradition of leading annual processions to celebrate Guru Nanak’s anniversaries in Nankana Sahib in what is now Pakistan.
Bular’s descendants are the custodians of the bequeathed land, whose revenues are spent on the welfare of the Sikh community and the maintenance of their places of worship in Nankana Sahib. Sikh emperor Maharaja Ranjit Singh bestowed the Rai Bahadur title on Bular’s descendant, Rai Issa Khan, a fellow Bhatti Rajput, and made him a revenue collector in recognition of his family’s contributions to Sikhism.
In May 2018, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which manages Sikh places of worship, acknowledged Bular’s ‘immense contribution’ to Sikh history and erected his portrait at Amritsar’s Central Sikh Museum. The SGPC unveiled another Muslim Nawab Rai Kahla’s portrait at the museum in July 2017 for sheltering Guru Nanak’s spiritual successor, Guru Gobind Singh, in 1705. Kahla ruled a small principality in Punjab when he offered Guru Gobind refuge in defiance of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb’s decree.
Guru Gobind gave Kahla a holy pitcher known as Ganga Sagar, which holds water despite its asymmetrical holes, and a sword as a token of gratitude. Kahla’s descendants have preserved the relic, which they took to Pakistan in 1947 after they were uprooted from the Indian side of Punjab at the time of the Partition in 1947. It has remained in the custody of Rai Azizullah Khan, a former Pakistani lawmaker, since 1975.
The courage Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan, the ruler of Malerkotla in what is now the Indian side of Punjab, showed in speaking out against the execution of Guru Gobind’s sons, Zorawar and Fateh, in 1705, ensured his kingdom remained untouched in 1947 when the subcontinent’s division triggered violence.
Centuries-old Coexistence
The violence left around a million dead and triggered a virtual exchange of populations between the Indian and Pakistani sides of Punjab. It damaged the centuries-old coexistence and continues to cast a long shadow.
But Malerkotla has remained untouched by the upheavals. It remained the Indian Punjab’s only Muslim pocket while the rest of the region was emptied of Muslims in 1947. Malerkotla continues to be an exception even amid the fresh wave of violence against Muslims thanks to what is seen as Guru Gobind’s blessings to Malerkotla.
Guru Gobind is believed to have blessed the nawab that ‘his roots shall forever remain green’ when he learnt about his stand against Zorawar and Fateh’s execution. Baba Bulleh Shah, a Muslim saint and direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, also spoke out against the Mughal highhandedness. He was a friend of the ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur and hailed Tegh Bahadur as a ‘holy warrior’ when he was executed.
The saint earlier dissuaded the guru from seeking revenge on Muslims for Aurangzeb’s attitude towards the Sikhs. He followed in Guru Nanak’s footsteps and promoted inter-religious harmony. Nanak travelled to Arabia in the 16th century with his Muslim companion, Mardana, for inter-religious dialogue, which provided him with deep insights into Islam. In Baghdad, Guru Nanak stayed with a Muslim saint. A courtyard at the tomb of the saint in Baghdad commemorates Nanak’s stay in the city.
The Muslim descendants of Mardana, known as rubabis, performed kirtans or devotional songs at Amritsar’s Golden Temple for generations before partition ended the tradition. They began the practice at the instance of the ninth Sikh Guru Guru Tegh Bahadur as Mardana played a musical instrument called rubab as Guru Nanak sang his poetry.
Baptized Sikhs alone have since 1947 been doing kirtans as partition tore apart Punjab’s syncretic culture. But syncretism remains integral to Sikhism, whose scripture Guru Granth Sahib includes the writing of Muslims including Baba Farid.
Guru Arjan, who compiled the first edition of the scripture and had it installed in 1604 at the Golden Temple, is widely believed to have invited Mian Mir, a Muslim saint, to lay the shrine’s foundation in Amritsar. Muslim holy men such as Farid, whose picture adorns the entrance of Gurdwara Janamasthan and is among revered Muslim figures in Sikhism, also made vital literary contributions.
Waris Shah gave full shape to Heer-Ranjha and contributed to Punjab’s syncretic culture until the revivalism in the 19th century weakened it. But Guru Nanak has remained a guiding light, who in poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal’s words ‘awakened India from a deep slumber.’ Iqbal hailed Nanak as ‘mard-e kaamil [perfect]’ in a poem about him.
Iqbal lamented that ‘our people paid no heed to the message of Gautam [Buddha]’; and did not recognise the worth of that ‘jewel of supreme wisdom’. In another poem, Iqbal paired Guru Nanak with Muslim saint Moinuddin Chishti and wrote: ‘The land [India] in which Chishti delivered the message of truth; the garden in which Nanak sang the song of oneness that homeland is mine, that homeland is mine.’
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is a journalist and the author of The Other Side of the Divide.
Alex Gladstein - How to Dictator-Proof Your Money
Cash is king, even if you are an activist leading a democratic movement against some of the world’s worst dictators. That’s why Bitcoin has quickly become the currency of choice for dissidents working everywhere.
April 2024 - Reposted from Journal of Democracy
Human-rights activists around the world have a new tool: unstoppable electronic cash. From Russia to Cuba to Nigeria, advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations are increasingly adopting Bitcoin — an open-source, decentralized, censorship-resistant digital currency — to help keep their donations coming and their payrolls flowing, even when authoritarian regimes and state forces shut down their bank accounts.
In almost every dictatorship, the financial system is weaponized. Whether it be Erdogan in Turkey, the military regime in Zimbabwe, the Gnassingbé family in Togo, the Maduro junta in Venezuela, or Putin in Russia, a “first-choice” tool of autocrats when dealing with dissidents or political opponents is financial deplatforming. Protests are expensive, and if organizers can no longer receive donations or pay community members, democratic momentum can fizzle out. Within this context, Bitcoin’s rise as a dissident currency of choice starts to make sense.
Bitcoin’s spread as a currency of choice for activists accounts for a small portion of its global appeal as money for people living in antidemocratic countries or with access to nothing more than weak currencies. As of today, only about 1.2 billion people enjoy the benefit of a liberal democracy that protects property rights and free speech and a native reserve currency such as the dollar, euro, or yen. Everyone else — meaning more than 80 percent of humanity — lives either under tyranny or a weak currency that is prone to devaluation and very hard to use abroad.
In Gaza today, one of the only ways to get money into the besieged territory is with Bitcoin. In Cuba, a good way to short-circuit the Communist Party’s predatory dual-currency system is to send Bitcoin to family and friends, which they can freely trade for goods, services, or Cuba’s digital currency. In Ukraine, in the days after Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022, the banking system went down, but Bitcoin kept working, and groups like the Open Dialogue Foundation were able to save lives by using it to get equipment and aid where it needed to go. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently frozen the bank accounts of the country’s main opposition party, and has frequently targeted the accounts of environmental groups, labor organizers, and abolitionists. But Bitcoin is beyond his grasp.
In Venezuela, where hyperinflation destroyed a once-proud and productive country, and created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, Bitcoin played a key role in helping people escape with their wealth intact. Many like Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, who now runs a successful payments company in Canada, were able to emigrate with their wealth intact and accessible via a seed phrase of twelve words that could be written down, sent abroad, or memorized.
In Afghanistan, the humanitarian Roya Mahboob started paying her female employees in Bitcoin in 2013, as male relatives would seize cash and other digital-payment forms were sanctioned or not available. Bitcoin, she said, gave the girls and women that she worked with freedom and sovereignty. Since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, Bitcoin remains a critical way for her to get money into Afghanistan to fund underground education for girls who have been out of school for more than two years. Dollars simply don’t work for this purpose, but Bitcoin does, with the teachers on the receiving end able to walk into town and swap the digital currency for cash at hawala brokers.
Bitcoin was invented in 2009, and only really began to find widespread global use after its price bubble in 2017. For many years, it didn’t make a lot of sense as an activist currency, simply because it was something few people would accept. But that has changed dramatically. Today, in nearly every place on earth, there is someone happy to buy Bitcoin in exchange for local currency — whether on Telegram, in person, on WhatsApp, or on some kind of exchange — making it an ideal technology for getting value to some of the toughest places in the world where the banking system can no longer safely meet activists’ needs.
In Hong Kong, activists send Bitcoin to colleagues inside the now-occupied city, who withdraw it at ATMs without needing to show ID, keeping out of the Chinese Communist Party’s watchful eye. In Belarus, democracy protesters keep their marches going and journalists keep their stories flowing with Bitcoin. In Zimbabwe, the military regime is trying to impose a new currency, causing chaos in exchange markets. But Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention keeps working, processing new transactions every ten minutes, without government interference.
Perhaps the most surprising case was revealed at the 2022 Bitcoin Conference in Miami by North Korean human-rights advocate Yeonmi Park. She explained to the audience that most people who escape from North Korea are vulnerable women, who are often sex-trafficked or enslaved without ID and without even speaking the local language. Christian missionaries are one of the only groups working to free them. She explained that it was hard to send dollars to help the pastors on the ground in northeastern China do this work, but with Bitcoin it was much easier. If Bitcoin can work on the North Korean border, or in Gaza, or in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then it can work just about anywhere.
Some of these early adopters are gathering on the University of Virginia campus this weekend, as the Serbian-based Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) hosts its 5th People Power Academy, an event focusing on equipping the leaders of global democratic movements with better tactics and tools for revolutionary change.
CANVAS itself, founded by Srdja Popovic, has recently incorporated Bitcoin education into its global programs. The Freedom Academy — a project of the World Liberty Congress, founded by Garry Kasparov, Masih Alinejad, and Leopoldo López — is in its second year of Bitcoin education, having hosted trainings and events to help its community members in Africa, Europe, and Latin America use this new tool to overcome authoritarian controls and surveillance. They will be in attendance, as will Anna Chekhovich, the financial director of the Alexei Navalny–founded Anti-Corruption Foundation, which started using Bitcoin in 2016 as a reaction to the increasingly censorious and confiscatory Putin regime. Also present will be Félix Maradiaga, a Nicaraguan civil society leader who recently spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, about the Ortega regime’s strategy of freezing the bank accounts of anyone it doesn’t like, ranging from activists to the Catholic Church.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) — where I serve as chief strategy officer — has run Bitcoin and human-rights programming since 2017. Each year, we add more, as we see governments around the world step up their attempts to fluster dissidents and opposition groups by cutting off their funding. HRF focuses on authoritarian regimes, where this behavior is unfortunately commonplace. But the world arguably saw the first major practical use of Bitcoin in 2011, when Julian Assange posted a Bitcoin address on the WikiLeaks Twitter page in response to the U.S.-led banking blockade of the whistleblower organization.
Two years later, HRF was contacted by activists on the frontlines of protests against the Viktor Yanukovych regime in Ukraine. They asked us, and our chairman Garry Kasparov, if we could help them with a Bitcoin fundraiser. Their bank accounts were closed or shut off from the outside world. As they titled their Reddit post about the fundraiser, “Only Bitcoin Can Reach Them.” To our surprise, the campaign was a success, and the protesters received the much-needed aid, despite the government’s efforts to keep them isolated. Over the years, we kept seeing cases like this pop up, eventually prompting us to run regular programming connecting Bitcoin developers and entrepreneurs with dissident leaders in authoritarian countries. In 2020, we launched the Bitcoin Development Fund to make grants to related open-source software and educational projects in authoritarian regimes. Since then, we have made more than a hundred grants across more than forty countries, deploying more than US$4 million.
To be clear, there are many challenges with using Bitcoin. The currency remains volatile day-to-day, prompting some activists to supplement Bitcoin use with “stablecoins,” such as Tether, that are pegged to the U.S. dollar but come with the downside of being centralized and freezable. Bitcoin transaction fees can be high (currently around $5 to $10 at the time of writing), so more and more Bitcoin apps are adding technology called the Lightning Network that can send Bitcoin transactions for pennies. Of course, true bad guys can also use Bitcoin — just as they can use encrypted messaging apps such as Signal — as it cannot discriminate and is money for anyone. The biggest obstacle remains education: Most activists still haven’t heard about Bitcoin being a human-rights tool, and it remains difficult for newcomers to sort through the vast sea of scams and Ponzi schemes in the cryptocurrency space to focus on Bitcoin. Given enough time, however, anyone can learn how to overcome these obstacles.
If you are running a human-rights group and your bank account hasn’t yet been frozen, flagged, or compromised, it likely will sooner rather than later. The human-rights defenders gathered at the People Power Academy in Charlottesville know that. The good news is, there’s a tool they can use to keep their work going, even if dictators want them to stop.
Alex Gladstein is chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation and the author of Check Your Financial Privilege and Hidden Repression.