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Richard Benkin is an American human rights activist, journalist, writer and lecturer. He has been a member of Folks Magazine's editorial board since August 2011. [1]
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Richard Benkin is an American human rights activist, journalist, writer and lecturer. He has been a member of Folks Magazine's editorial board since August 2011. [1]
Lexington Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
Dr. Richard Benkin ran the Lexington Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Lexington, Illinois. In January 2000, Michael Berens of The Chicago Tribune said that, " Benkin, the 48-year-old administrator of the facility as well as a part owner, was accused of luring a 27-year-old woman to the rural facility, improperly admitting her into the home, then arranging for a sexual encounter, according to records released Wednesday by the state Department of Professional Regulation." [2]
The Lexington Nursing & Rehabilitation Center was shut in an emergency operation by authorities in March 2000 after a series of articles by The Chicago Tribune. The Associated Press cited, "John Lumpkin, Illinois public health director, said the suspension of the Lexington Nursing and Rehabilitation Center’s license was necessary because of an ``immediate and serious threat″ to residents’ safety."
The nursing home was closed, "amid allegations that homeless drug addicts terrorized staff and elderly residents after arriving from Chicago to fill beds at the financially troubled center."
Health Department spokesman Thomas Schafer said one staff member was attacked by a drug patient and another worker was injured when a patient jumped on the worker’s back.
In another instance, one of the drug patients tried to slash the throat of another after they returned from drinking at a bar, Lexington Police Chief Spencer Johansen said.
Benkin participated in efforts to release Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was imprisoned after writing articles warning about the rise of Islamic radicals, and urging Bangladesh to recognize Israel. Benkin, like Choudhury, is an advisory board member of Islam-Israel Fellowship. [3] [4] The two together formed Interfaith Strength to disseminate information about Choudhury's case.
Choudhury was released from prison in 2004. Benkin said, "In almost seven years since [he] was arrested, the Bangladeshi government has not brought forward one scintilla of credible evidence against this journalist; and its sole 'witness' continues to not show up." [5]
In September 2005, the Bangladeshi government asked Benkin if he would help build a "positive image" of Bangladesh in the United States. Wanting to help the Bangladeshi people and advance US-Bangladesh relations, Benkin was advised to accept the challenge because Bangladesh had recently taken positive steps. After one month, however, a frustrated Benkin resigned from the role after serious disagreements with the Bangladeshi government. [6]
On February 15, 2007, House Resolution 64 passed the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs without opposition. [7] The resolution called on the government of Bangladesh to drop all charges against Choudhury [8]
Congressman Mark Kirk presented a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition to Benkin on May 22, 2005 at Benkin's synagogue, Temple Chai in Long Grove. This was awarded for Benkin's "commitment and dedication to preserving human rights in the case of Shoaib Choudhury. [9]
Benkin has documented the present-day Hindu genocide happening in Bangladesh. In 2012, he published, A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladesh's Hindus. [10] He believes the best way to stop Islamic militant gang rape of Hindu women and girls, killing of Hindu people, and destruction of Hindu temples is by boycotting the purchase of garments made in Bangladesh and protest allowing Bangladesh to participate in peacekeeping. [11]
In 2008 Benkin compared Islamist militants in Kashmir to Palestinian militants, stating that Kashmir is a transitory goal in the Islamist goal to control India:
"Kashmir is South Asia’s West Bank. Just as Pakistan and its Islamist allies ultimately seek to turn all of India into an Islamic state; so, too, the Arabs have tried again and again to destroy the Israel and even had that as their stated policy. After their colossal failure to do so in 1967, they tried once more to invade Israel with national armies only to fail again. So they changed tactics and stopped talking about their ultimate goal. Instead they focused on “the occupation” (West Bank and Gaza). Their real aim-to destroy Israel and turn it into an Islamic state-never changed. This tactic successfully distracted a gullible Europe which supported Arab calls for their temporary goal. Similarly, South Asian Islamists still want more than Kashmir. Kashmir, like the West Bank, is a transitory goal, but a critical one." [4]
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(September 2015) |
Lashkar-e-Taiba is a militant Islamist organisation operating against India in Pakistan. The organization's stated objective is to merge the whole of Kashmir with Pakistan. It was founded by Hafiz Saeed, Abdullah Azzam and several other Islamist mujahideen with funding from Osama bin Laden during the Soviet-Afghan War.
Hindus have experienced both historical and ongoing religious persecution and systematic violence, in the form of forced conversions, documented massacres, genocides, demolition and desecration of temples, as well as the destruction of educational centres.
The insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, also known as the Kashmir insurgency, is an ongoing separatist militant insurgency against the Indian administration in Jammu and Kashmir, a territory constituting the southwestern portion of the larger geographical region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947.
Hinduism is the second largest religious affiliation in People's Republic of Bangladesh, as according to the Official 2022 Census of Bangladesh, approximately 13.1 million people responded that they were Hindus, constituting 7.95% out of the total population of 165.15 million people. In terms of population, Bangladesh is the third-largest Hindu populated country of the world, just after India and Nepal. Hinduism is the second-largest religion in 61 out of 64 districts of Bangladesh, but there is no Hindu majority district in Bangladesh.
Operation Tupac is the codename of an ongoing military-intelligence contingency program that has been active since the 1980s and run by Pakistan's main intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It has a three-part action plan to provide covert support to anti-India separatists and militants in Indian-administered Kashmir. The program was authorized and initiated in 1988 by the order of the then-President of Pakistan, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami is a Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Which aims to spread Radical Islamist ideology to liberate the rest of Islamic lands from the clutches of the enemies of Islam.
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is a Bangladeshi journalist and the editor of the Bangladeshi newspaper 'Blitz'. Choudhury has faced a number of criminal charges against him including smuggling information out of the country, fraud, sedition, treason, blasphemy, and espionage.
The term Talibanization refers to a type of Islamist practice that emerged following the rise of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, where other religious groups or movements come to follow or imitate the strict practices of the Taliban.
Panun Kashmir is a proposed union territory of India in the Kashmir Valley, which is intended to be a homeland for Kashmiri Hindus. The demand arose after the Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus in 1990. The vision of the homeland was elucidated in the Margdarshan Resolution of 1991. Panun Kashmir is also the name of an eponymously named organisation.
The United Nations categorizes Bangladesh as a moderate democratic Muslim country. Sunni Islam is the largest and dominant religion practiced in the country. In the Constitution of Bangladesh, Islam is referred to twice in the introduction and Part I of the constitution. The document begins with the Islamic phrase Basmala which in English is translated as "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful" and article (2A) declares that :"Islam is the state religion of the republic".
Muslim supporters of Israel refers to both Muslims and cultural Muslims who support the right to self-determination of the Jewish people and the likewise existence of a Jewish homeland in the Southern Levant, traditionally known as the Land of Israel and corresponding to the modern polity known as the State of Israel. Muslim supporters of the Israeli state are widely considered to be a rare phenomenon in light of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the larger Arab–Israeli conflict. Within the Muslim world, the legitimacy of the State of Israel has been challenged since its inception, and support for Israel's right to exist is a minority orientation. Pro-Israel Muslims have faced opposition from both moderate Muslims and Islamists, with many being subjected to harassment, threats and violence.
The Constitution of Bangladesh includes secularism as one of the four fundamental principles, despite having Islam as the state religion by 2A. Islam is referred to twice in the introduction and Part I of the constitution and the document begins with the Islamic phrase Basmala which in English is translated as “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful” and article (2A) declares that :"Islam is the state religion of the republic". Bangladesh is mostly governed by secular laws, set up during the times when the region was ruled by the British Crown. The constitution also states that "the State shall ensure equal status and equal right in the practice of the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and other religions". "Freedom of religion" is its basic structure guaranteed by the Bangladeshi constitution in which it calls for equal rights to all its citizens irrespective of their religious differences and it also bans discrimination on the grounds of religion on various platforms. Bangladesh is one of the few secular Muslim-majority nations and "proselytizing" i.e. conversions from one religion to another are generally accepted and is legalized by law under article 41 of the constitution, subject to law, public order, and morality. Bangladesh was founded as a secular state, but Islam was made the state religion in the 1980s. But in 2010, the High Court held up the secular principles of the 1972 constitution. The High Court also strengthened its stance against punishments by Islamic edict (fatwa), following complaints of brutal sentences carried out against women by extra-legal village courts.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, previously known as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, or Jamaat for short, is the largest Islamist political party in Bangladesh. On 1 August 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court cancelled the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami, ruling that the party is unfit to contest national elections.
Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh is a far-right Islamic Advocacy group of madrassah teachers and students. In 2013, it submitted to the government of Bangladesh a 13-point charter, which included the demand for the enactment of a blasphemy law.
Irreligion in Bangladesh is rare and uncommon publicly. A Gallup survey conducted between 2014 - 2015 found that approximately less than 1% of Bangladeshis identified as convinced atheists as all the respondents reported as having or believing in a religion. Bangladesh has 166.3 million people as of 2021 estimation.
The Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, or Pandits, is their early-1990 migration, or flight, from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in Indian-administered Kashmir following rising violence in an insurgency. Of a total Pandit population of 120,000–140,000 some 90,000–100,000 left the valley or felt compelled to leave by the middle of 1990, by which time about 30–80 of them are said to have been killed by militants.
Bangladesh and Israel do not maintain diplomatic relations. Bangladesh said that it will not recognize Israel until there is an independent Palestine. Some reports and statistics revealed that Bangladesh and Israel maintain some trade relations indirectly and sometimes secretly, although the government always denies these allegations.
Attacks by Fundamentalist in Bangladesh refers to a period of turbulence in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2016 where attacks on a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and publishers in Bangladesh; foreigners; homosexuals; and religious minorities such as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Ahmadis were seen there is evidence of very offensively attacking the religion of islam and its prophet by them which ultimately influenced the retaliation in form of killings as government took no action to calm the situation and bloggers kept insulting prophet through there writings. By 2 July 2016 a total of 48 people, including 20 foreign nationals, were killed in such attacks. These attacks were largely blamed on extremist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Bangladeshi government was criticized for its response to the attacks, which included charging and jailing some of the secularist bloggers for allegedly defaming some religious groups; or hurting the religious sentiments of different religious groups; or urging the bloggers to flee overseas. This strategy was seen by some as pandering to hard line elements within Bangladesh's Muslim majority population. About 89% of the population in Bangladesh is Sunni Muslim. The government's eventual crackdown in June 2016 was also criticized for its heavy-handedness, as more than 11,000 people were arrested in a little more than a week.
Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind is an Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militant group active in Kashmir. The group's stated objective is to create Kashmir as an independent Islamic state under Sharia law and jihad against India.
Abdul Hamid Bhatt was a commander in the Islamist militant organisation Hizbul Mujaheddin. He was killed in an encounter on 13 March 2000 by Indian security forces. Hamid Gada, at the time of his death, was the most wanted North Kashmiri militant. He had been called "Jammu and Kashmir's most important terrorist leader" by Indian journalist Praveen Swami, responsible for the massacres of numerous Kashmiri Hindus, including the 1998 Wandhama massacre. Press Trust of India said that in total, over a period of ten years of militancy, he was responsible for killing over a hundred civilians.
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