Hussain Day: Religious leaders warn against politicisation of faith
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Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
‘I don't know what Quran he is reading': Eric Adams slams Zohran Mamdani over prostitution stance; questions religious values
File photo: Mayor Eric Adams (left) and Zohran Mamdani (Picture credit: AP) Mayor Eric Adams has taken aim at his main rival in the upcoming New York City mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani , criticising the Democrat's record of backing the decriminalisation of prostitution and questioning how such a stance aligns with his religious faith. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Adams said, 'I can't be more clear. I'm a man of God, just as Mamdani says he's a Muslim. I don't know where in his Quran it states that it's okay for a woman to be on the streets selling their body. I don't know what Quran he is reading. It's not in my Bible. As a man who said he is of faith, I don't quite understand what religion supports prostitution.' Mamdani's religion is Islam, which prohibits prostitution under its laws of morality. The comments followed reporting by the reports highlighting Mamdani's history of pushing to change state law so that selling sex would no longer be treated as a crime. As per the New York Post, Adams argued that such a policy would fuel trafficking and crime, saying, 'I think he's lost on the fact that sex trafficking is very much part of prostitution. We are trying to bring down crime and he is talking about legalising sex work.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Could This NEW Collagen Blend Finally Reduce Your Cellulite? Vitauthority Learn More Undo He added, 'You're not doing any service to a woman who is on the street who is forced to sell her body for whatever reason. No one should be on our streets selling their bodies. No one.' Mamdani's record on sex work According to the New York Post, Mamdani has been a consistent advocate of decriminalisation since his first run for the state Assembly in 2020, when he declared: 'Not only must we decriminalise sex work, we need a comprehensive platform of justice for all.' Since then, the 33-year-old Socialist has co-sponsored several bills in Albany that would remove criminal penalties for sex work across New York state. In 2021, he told colleagues at an Assembly meeting, 'I would like to register my support for [decriminalising sex work] legislation, my eagerness for that debate and for my fundamental belief that sex work is work', as per the New York Post. Despite that record, Mamdani has said little about the issue since entering the mayoral race, raising concerns among critics that he may attempt to advance such measures from City Hall if elected. As mayor, he would not be able to change state law on his own, but he would hold a powerful platform to campaign for reforms and could also deprioritise prostitution enforcement by the NYPD. Supporters vs critics Supporters of decriminalisation argue that legalising sex work makes those in the industry less vulnerable to violence from pimps, clients and police. However, research in places such as Nevada and parts of Europe has shown that trafficking often rises when prostitution is legalised, as organised crime expands to meet demand. Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the National Organization for Women NYC, has warned that Mamdani's plans could turn the city into a 'sex tourism destination' comparable to Amsterdam's Red Light District. Rosa Sanchez of the Restore Roosevelt Avenue Coalition was cited by the Post saying her Queens community is already struggling with prostitution and gang activity, and predicted matters would worsen under Mamdani. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa also warned the city risked seeing 'all 350 neighbourhoods' turned into red-light districts if Mamdani wins. Mamdani's campaign hit back on Sunday, though it stopped short of confirming whether he still supports decriminalisation. A spokesperson said, 'Mayor Adams' reckless budget cut over $3 million in funding from Safe Horizon, putting thousands of victims of crimes related to sex trafficking and prostitution in harm's way. As Mayor, Zohran will prioritise genuine public safety for all, including investing $40M through his Department of Community Safety towards victims services.' Former governor Andrew Cuomo stressed he had long opposed attempts by Mamdani and other progressives to decriminalise prostitution during his time in Albany. Adams, running as an independent for re-election, framed the debate as a question of protecting vulnerable women and ensuring public safety. 'Our city needs to be a safe city. It should not be a city where women are standing on corners, or boys are standing on corners, or young men standing on corners selling their bodies,' he said. 'If that is his belief, it is a danger for our city.'
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
In industrial belt near Delhi, Trump's tariffs cloud outlook for export of engineering goods
In one of the many cavernous sheds dotting Ghaziabad, the industrial suburb on the outskirts of the Capital, a giant stands silent. The massive metal forging machine, hauled from China only months ago at a cost of Rs 20 crore, glints under the dim factory lights, its steel body collecting a fine coat of dust. It was meant to be the future: sleek, electric-powered, capable of shaping metal with precision and scale. Yet, in its shadow, the old ritual continues. A knot of workers, sleeves rolled, faces flushed with heat, gather around a much smaller press, striking molten metal with steady, rhythmic blows. The clangs echo through the workshop like the heartbeat of an older era. For Ghaziabad-based CD Industries, a manufacturer of metal flanges feeding oil and gas exploration rigs across the US, the dormant machinery was supposed to answer the shifting demands of its overseas clients. Instead, it waits, inert. 'Baal mundwaate hi ole padne lage (It started raining hail stones as soon as one got his hair shaved),' Pankaj Agarwal, Director, CD Industries, told The Indian Express at his manufacturing plant in one of Ghaziabad's biggest industrial belts on the Bulandshahr Road. Agarwal had purchased the electric metal forge to exclusively service client requests from the US, who had asked him to make flanges of up to 16 inches, as opposed to his current capacity of eight-inch flanges. But, with US President Donald Trump's decision to raise tariffs on several Indian goods – to 25 per cent, with a further 25 per cent increase threatened by August 27 – new orders have dried up for Agarwal, and many engineering goods exporters like him. Increasingly, several US-based vendors are even cancelling earlier orders, resulting in significant financial losses for several Indian medium and small enterprises. Engineering is the largest industrial sector in India and accounts for 3.53 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The engineering goods export of India had a share of 25.22 per cent out of the total exports during the financial year FY24, as they jumped to $109.22 billion as compared to $106.93 billion during FY23. In FY25 (April to December), India's top five export destinations in the sector were the US (15.82%), the UAE (7.36%), Saudi Arabia (5.24%), Singapore (4.46%) and Germany (3.52%). Industries like auto components and metal works are particularly at a disadvantage. For CD Industries, the US is its exclusive export market, accounting for 50 per cent of the company's turnover. 'While we are continuing to deliver the previously placed orders, new enquiries have stopped coming in. For some companies, their previous orders have been cancelled, as importers are seeking a discount, which many manufacturers are not in a position to accept,' Agarwal said. His products are supplied across the length and breadth of the US, from the West Coast to the East Coast, and Texas to New York. 'The tariff situation is bothering us, haunting us, and we are really, really worried,' he said. His plant in Ghaziabad employs 225 people, including floor workers, project managers and quality control managers. For now, he says the older orders not getting cancelled – a fact he attributes to his long-standing relationship with his vendors, dating back 20 to 30 years – has allowed him to not trim the workforce. But if the situation continues for a longer time, he may have to let go of some workers, Agarwal said. Sanjeev Sachdev, general secretary of the Industrial Area Manufacturers' Association in Ghaziabad, said there are more than 400 manufacturing plants in the belt, which employ over 75,000 people. 'If the tariff situation is not resolved, and the government does not alternatively help the industry financially in the meantime, easily 5,000-7,000 people will lose their jobs. Many companies, who have purchased raw material and made finished goods, are staring at generations getting into debt,' Sachdev said. Pankaj Chadha, chairman of the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) of India, said about $5 billion worth of engineering goods exports are at risk due to US tariffs. 'Unlike other sectors, for us the pain started early on when the US announced 50 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium. At this tariff rate, we cannot be competitive and we are not in a position to retain our market share in the US,' he said. Sachdev speaks with the quiet fatalism of someone who is anticipating to see too many balance sheets bleed red. Between raw metal and a gleaming finished part lies a steep markup – not just in price, but in labour, skill, and the hours of heat and noise that shape it. Yet that value can vanish in an instant. If an overseas buyer pulls the plug, the goods, tailored to a single client's specifications, are suddenly orphaned, with no other market to call home. In that moment, there are only two doors left open: swallow the buyer's demand for a deep discount, or consign the work to the scrap heap, where months of craft and capital dissolve into a fraction of their worth. For some manufacturers, it is not just a bad deal – it is the slow tightening of a noose. One too many of such blows, and the factory floor falls silent. Many in the industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned that the real weight of the new tariffs will fall not on the industry's giants, but on the small and medium enterprises. The big players can simply pivot, scouting for new markets, absorbing the shock with the comfort of deep reserves. For the smaller firms, there is no such cushion, no easy escape route. The blow, when it lands, goes straight to the bone. Agarwal, Chadha and Sachdev, all said that the government's help to support companies in distress is the need of the hour. 'We expect the government to extend Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) to the steel sector and restart the interest subvention scheme to ease the pain,' Chadha said. Vinod Kumar, president of the India SME Forum, said that export-focused countries like China have heavily invested in promoting their products globally. 'India has not done that over the years. This is a systemic problem. The nature of trade has changed over the years. Only production is not going to solve your problem, we have to market them effectively,' he said.
The Wire
5 hours ago
- The Wire
‘Legitimisation Cell': The Israeli Military Unit Tasked With Linking Gaza Journalists to Hamas
The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the 'Legitimisation Cell', tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel's image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to 972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit's existence. Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas's use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave. It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel's killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week. According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell's motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were 'smearing [Israel's] name in front of the world', its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said. The source described a recurring pattern in the unit's work: whenever criticism of Israel in the media intensified on a particular issue, the Legitimisation Cell was told to find intelligence that could be declassified and employed publicly to counter the narrative. 'If the global media is talking about Israel killing innocent journalists, then immediately there's a push to find one journalist who might not be so innocent — as if that somehow makes killing the other 20 acceptable,' the intelligence source said. Often, it was Israel's political echelon that dictated to the army which intelligence areas the unit should focus on, another source added. Information gathered by the Legitimisation Cell was also passed regularly to the Americans through direct channels. Intelligence officers said they were told their work was vital to allowing Israel to prolong the war. 'The team regularly collected intelligence that could be used for hasbara – say, a stockpile of [Hamas] weapons [found] in a school – anything that could bolster Israel's international legitimacy to keep fighting,' another source explained. 'The idea was to [allow the military to] operate without pressure, so countries like America wouldn't stop supplying weapons.' An Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) tour shows weapons and ammunition from the field used by Hamas on October 7, at the Julis Military Base on November 10, 2023. Photo: Mishel Amzaleg/GPO via 972 Magazine. The unit also sought evidence linking Gaza's police to the October 7 attack, in order to justify targeting them and dismantling Hamas's civilian security force, one source familiar with the Legitimisation Cell's work said. Two of the intelligence sources recounted that, in at least one case since the war began, the Legitimisation Cell misrepresented intelligence in a way that allowed for the false portrayal of a journalist as a member of Hamas's military wing. 'They were eager to label him as a target, as a terrorist – to say it's okay to attack him,' one source recalled. 'They said: during the day he's a journalist, at night he's a platoon commander. Everyone was excited. But there was a chain of errors and corner-cutting. 'In the end, they realised he really was a journalist,' the source continued, and the journalist wasn't targeted. A similar pattern of manipulation is evident in the intelligence presented on Al-Sharif. According to the documents released by the army, which have not been independently verified, he was recruited to Hamas in 2013 and remained active until he was injured in 2017 – meaning that, even if the documents were accurate, they suggest he played no role in the current war. The same applies to the case of journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul, who was killed in a July 2024 Israeli airstrike along with his cameraman in Gaza City. A month later, the army claimed he was a 'military wing operative and Nukhba terrorist,' citing a 2021 document allegedly retrieved from a 'Hamas computer'. Yet that document stated he received his military rank in 2007 – when he was just ten years old, and seven years before he was supposedly recruited to Hamas. 'Find as much material as possible for hasbara ' One of the Legitimisation Cell's first high-profile efforts came on October 17, 2023, after the deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. While international media, citing Gaza's Ministry of Health, reported that an Israeli strike had killed 500 Palestinians, Israeli officials said the blast was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket and that the death toll was far lower. The day after the explosion, the army released a recording that the Legitimisation Cell had located in intelligence intercepts, presented as a phone call between two Hamas operatives blaming the incident on a Islamic Jihad misfire. Many global outlets subsequently considered the claim likely, including some who conducted their own investigations, and the release dealt a severe blow to the credibility of Gaza's Health Ministry – hailed within the Israeli army as a victory for the cell. A Palestinian human rights activist told 972 and Local Call in December 2023 that he was stunned to hear his own voice in the recording, which he said was simply a benign conversation with another Palestinian friend. He insisted he had never been a Hamas member. A source who worked with the Legitimisation Cell said that publishing classified material like a phone call was deeply controversial. 'It's very much not in Unit 8200's DNA to expose our capabilities for something as vague as public opinion,' he explained. Still, the three intelligence sources said the army treated the media as an extension of the battlefield, allowing it to declassify sensitive intelligence for public release. Even intelligence personnel outside the Legitimisation Cell were told to flag any material that might aid Israel in the information war. 'There was this phrase, 'That's good for legitimacy,'' one source recalled. 'The goal was simply to find as much material as possible to serve hasbara efforts.' After the publication of this article, official security sources confirmed to 972 and Local Call that various 'research teams' had been established inside Israeli military intelligence over the past two years with the aim of 'exposing Hamas's lies'. They said that the goal was to 'discredit' journalists reporting on the war on broadcast networks 'in allegedly a reliable and precise way', but who they claimed are actually part of Hamas. According to the sources, these research teams do not play a role in the selection of individual targets to be attacked. 'I never once hesitated to convey the truth' On August 10, the Israeli army killed six journalists in a strike it openly admitted was aimed at Al Jazeera reporter Al-Sharif. Two months earlier, in July, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had warned it feared for Al-Sharif's life, saying he was 'targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign, which he believes is a precursor to his assassination'. After Al-Sharif posted a viral video in July of himself in tears while covering Gaza's hunger crisis, the Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, published three different videos attacking him, accusing him of 'propaganda' and of participating in 'Hamas's false starvation campaign'. Al-Sharif identified a link between Israel's media war and the military one. 'Adraee's campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction; it is a real-life threat,' he told CPJ. Less than a month later, he was killed, with the army presenting what they said was declassified intelligence of his membership in Hamas to justify the strike. Israeli soldiers work on their tanks in a staging area on the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on August 13, 2025. Photo: AP/PTI. The military had already claimed in October 2024 that six Al Jazeera journalists, including Al-Sharif, were military operatives, an accusation he vehemently denied. He became the second from that list to be targeted, after reporter Hossam Shabat. Since the October accusation, his whereabouts were well known, leading many observers to question whether killing Al-Sharif – who regularly reported from Gaza City – was part of Israel's plan to enforce a media blackout ahead of its military preparations to capture the city. In response to questions from 972 Magazine about Al-Sharif's killing, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson reiterated that 'the IDF attacked a terrorist from the Hamas terrorist organisation who was operating under the guise of a journalist from the Al Jazeera network in the northern Gaza Strip,' and claimed that the army 'does not intentionally harm uninvolved individuals and journalists in particular, all in accordance with international law.' Prior to the strike, the spokesperson added, 'steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weapons, aerial observations and additional intelligence information.' At just 28, Al-Sharif had become one of Gaza's most recognised journalists. He is among 186 reporters and media workers killed in the Strip since October 7, according to CPJ – the deadliest period for journalists since the group began collecting data in 1992. Other organisations have put the death toll as high as 270. 'If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,' Al-Sharif wrote in his final message, posthumously published on his social media accounts. 'I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.' Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem. A version of this article, republished here with permission from 972 Magazine, was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here. 972 Magazine is an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
