When India launched its forceable occupation of Kashmir, it seemed like Canada would take a stand. But four years later, the federal government remains silent.
For more than a week, leading Western media outlets led by the New York Times and CNN, had a field day berating the Taliban’s new policy about women’s education.
Despite decades of illegal sanctions and the pandemic, the Islamic Republic has coped with the twin crises far better than those that have imposed sanctions on it. The reason is that Iran has made immense progress in the medical field and pursued people-friendly policies.
Donald Trump who believes he is the ‘best president’ America has (n)ever had, is complaining, “nobody likes me”.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today that he was self-isolating himself as his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau was exhibiting mild flu-like symptoms and had a low fever last night. Results came back later confirming she had tested positive.
There is great potential to boost Pakistan-Turkey trade. The two-day visit of Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan to Pakistan will help boost trade and other relations. Islamic Iran, too, must be brought into the equation.
Switzerland claims to be a 'neutral' country but as recent revelations about one of its companies, Crypto AG, show, it has been involved in facilitating espionage by the CIA, German intelligence, Britain and Israel against other countries for decades.
That fascism is now well entrenched in the corridors of power in India is not in doubt.
After two days of heavy Israeli bombardment of Gaza, a ceasefire was agreed through the efforts of Egypt and the UN.
Another Western terrorist mastermind responsible for much propaganda and mayhem in Syria has died.
Muslim 'religious' leaders have exposed their cowardice over the Kashmir crisis. It matters not which side of the sectarian divide they come from, they have all surrendered to Hindu fascism.
Zionist Israel is a racist entity, discriminating against indigenous Palestinians. Its racism has now seeped into the educational system as well where Palestinian children are being forced to accept the Zionists’ falsified history that Palestine belongs to the Jews and that Palestinians are aliens on their own land.
Two unelected leaders, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Head of the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth II, carry out a coup in Britain.
The deployment of tens of thousands of additional troops in the troubled state of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir has raised fears that Delhi may be preparing for a genocide of the Kashmiris.
What would Donald Trump say if we got an opportunity to interview him? We decided to speculate and come up with some answers.
Demand for the release of Shaykh Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), has grown worldwide. The campaigners demand proper medical care for the Shaykh and his wife Zeenat and their immediate release.
If Palestinian children are not shot and killed by heavily armed Israeli soldiers, they are attacked and even run over by arrogant Zionist settlers. This is what happened to 7-year-old Tareq Zabania on July 15 evening when he was run over.
Extremism seems to have afflicted the gentle society of Malaysia as well. A seminar slated for July 13 to promote Muslim unity had to be cancelled due to ‘security reasons’, according to the organizers.
Iran has reacted angrily to Britain’s seizure of it oil tanker in the early hours of July 4 near Gibraltar. British commandos seized the supertanker Grace 1 as it sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was carrying 2 million barrels of oil, reportedly destined for Syria.
Nicki Minaj, a female rapper known for her vulgar lyrics and semi-nude dresses will be performing in Jeddah on July 18. The primitive regime made the announcement on July 3 as part of its drive to what it calls “easing restrictions on entertainment”.
Donald Trump is a narcissist and exhibitionist. He demanded—and got—tanks and planes for his 4th of July parade at the Lincoln Memorial but nature did not take kindly to it.
By shooting down a US spy drone that deliberately violated Iranian air space, Tehran has signaled that it will defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity with full force.
Nothing could more graphically capture the barbarism being practiced by Egypt’s Pharaoh, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi than the sudden death of Mohamed Mursi, the first-ever democratically elected President of Egypt.
The US is run by lunatics; they should not be holding the levers of power. They should all be locked up in a lunatic asylum, starting with Donald Trump but must certainly include people like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton.
Zionist Israel’s relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip on the eve of Ramadan has killed 17 Palestinians and injured 110 others in three days of strikes.
We reproduce below an article published by Times of Israel (April 30, 2019) about the racist and hate-filled teachings of two rabbis at a government funded academy in Zionist Israel. Readers can judge for themselves the true nature of Zionist ideology and those that promote and support it.
Shaykh Abbasi Madani, the leader of the Algerian Islamic movement, passed away in Qatar on Wednesday (April 24). He was 88. Following Salatul Janaza (funeral prayers) in Doha, capital of Qatar, his body was flown to Algiers for burial today (April 27).
what should one make of claims by owners of a Jewish café in Winnipeg that their café was spray painted with anti-Semitic graffiti on April 18 night when in fact it was all staged?
Bani Saud and barbarism are synonymous. The Najdi Bedouins re-confirmed this by the mass execution of 37 people on April 23.
The Easter Sunday carnage in Sri Lanka has revived painful memories of the long-drawn out Tamil campaign of suicide bombings that was crushed a decade ago. According to reports from Colombo, several Catholic Churches as well as hotels popular with foreign tourists were targeted leaving about 300 dead and more than 500 injured so far.
The arrest and kidnapping of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has sent shockwaves among justice and freedom-loving people worldwide. The Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, a Canadian peace movement, issued the following statement regarding Assange’s ordeal.
In a long list of outrageous pronouncements and actions, the latest by the Trump regime on April 8 to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a “foreign terrorist organization” is the most outlandish.
On Saturday March 30, peace and anti-war activists held rallies in different capitals to demand that NATO be dismantled as well as to support the Palestinians’ right of return.
The Zionist occupation regime continued with its barbarous policy of causing death and destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip. In the missile and aerial attacks on the tiny enclave on March 25, the Zionists destroyed 30 houses completely and caused damage to 500 others.
Donald Trump is not only a narcissist he is also a complete moron. In simple terms, he is thick and stupid. How can he say he recognizes Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights?
Self-confessed Australian terrorist, a rightwing white extremist, killed 49 people and injured at least 48 others at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand today.
The Independent Commission of Inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council did not mince words. At a Geneva press conference on February 28, its spokesperson said that by shooting unarmed civilians in Gaza, Israel “may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Commenting on Legault’s remarks, Thomas Woodley, President of Canadian for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), stated, “If Mr. Legault wants to know if there is Islamophobia in Quebec, he has only to ask his fellow Muslims who face Islamophobia in all aspects of their lives – especially when it comes to finding a job.”
Used to terrorizing Kashmiris seeking independence from India’s brutal occupation, Delhi thought it could force Britain also to adopt a similar policy. The All Parties Parliamentary Group on Kashmir in the British Parliament will hold Kashmir Solidarity Day in the British Parliament today.
For a group claiming to promote human rights, Bnai Brith, the hardcore Zionist entity, takes a lot of liberties with truth. Its latest example is the vicious attack launched against ICIT director Zafar Bangash accusing him of ‘anti-semitism’ and ‘homophobia’.
In addition to illegally supporting the Israeli occupation army, CRA auditors said Beth Oloth had funded projects totaling $1.2-million for illegal Zionist squatter camps euphemistically called ‘Jewish settlements’ in occupied Palestinian territories
Within 48 hours of his release on Thursday, January 24, the Erdogan regime re-arrested the leader of the Furkan Islamic movement in Turkey, Sheikh Alparslan Kuytul. He was arrested one year ago.
Press TV anchor, Marzieh Hashemi was released from detention today (January 23). She appeared before a grand jury in Washington DC and after completing her testimony, she was released.
Marzieh Hashemi, one of Press TV’s most popular anchors, has been detained in the US. The American-born newscaster had arrived at St Louis Lambert International Airport in the US on January 13 to visit her sick brother and family members when she was detained.
That the US is an outlaw regime controlled by gangsters is not in doubt. What is truly appalling is that it presents itself to the world as if it is governed by the rule of law. It tortures innocent people but insists “it is not who we are.”
“Islamic awakening is spreading and with strong faith in Allah, the Resistance movement is winning,’ said the Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Sunday November 25.
Addressing the opening session of 32nd International Unity Conference in Tehran on November 24, President Hassan Rouhani condemned the “Zionist tumor” implanted in the Middle East and offered to defend Saudi Arabia “for free”.
Within the last 48 hours, the Gaza Strip has witnessed another major Israeli military escalation. Zionist warplanes bombed residential neighborhoods in the tiny enclave while artillery shells rained down every few minutes.
The October 30 call by US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis for ceasefire in the war on Yemen “within 30 days” may be the first positive sign out of the war-torn country in nearly four years.
Why would the rulers of Oman welcome the war criminal Benyamin Netanyahu in their midst?
The dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has not been seen since he entered the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2. This has raised fears that he was murdered at the consulate.
Donald Trump is rude and crude. If he is not molesting women that he says he can get away with because he is rich and powerful, he is threatening regimes to pay up.
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran rejected claims by Donald Trump that he or any of his officials had ever sought a meeting with the US president. Such a meeting, said the Iranian President, would not be “appropriate”.
Donald Trump always travels light. And we are not talking about baggage as in suitcases or brief case. Completely bereft of manners and with a low IQ, Trump’s rant at the UN General Assembly yesterday (September 25) exposed these traits completely.
Foreign-backed terrorists attacked a military parade in Iran’s western province of Ahvaz earlier today killing at least 29 people among them women and children and wounded 53 others.
Ever since the New York Times published mysterious op-ed on September 5, political pundits in Washington have been tearing their hair out to find out whodunit.
Egypt under General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is a fascist state. This was reconfirmed today (September 8) when the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced 75 people to death.
The Saudi regime seems to have gone totally berserk. While its policies under crown prince Muhammad bin Salman are completely erratic, in recent week a pattern has emerged that shows that the regime has become even more vicious and brutal.
B’nai Brith is in the forefront of making scandalous allegations against any individual or group that dares to criticize Israeli crimes.
In the week since the Bedouin-dominated kingdom of Saudi Arabia went berserk over Canadian criticism of its atrocious human rights record, things have not cooled off. The Saudis ordered the Canadian ambassador to leave Riyadh in 24 hours. It also recalled its own envoy from Ottawa and ordered 15,000 Saudi students at Canadian universities to return home by September 1.
Initial results of the July 25 elections show that Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) led by cricket-hero-turned-politician seems to have swept the polls.
On July 7 and Sunday July 8, 2018, Friends of Kashmir Committee Canada (FKCC), and the Canadian Council for Justice and Peace in collaboration with a number of other organizations held two successful conferences on Kashmir in Toronto and Hamilton. President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Masood Khan was the chief guest.
When the media reported that Dr. Tariq Ramadan had “admitted to having a relationship” with one of his accusers, many Muslims that had hitherto defended him against the French state’s blatant Islamophobia got confused. Corporate media that habitually attack influential Muslims should not automatically be trusted. Even if the reports of Dr. Ramadan’s admissions are true, this is not what the case is about.
To understand why the people and leadership of Iran distrust the US, one only has to recall the US’ deliberate shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane on July 3, 1988 in the Persian Gulf.
‘Saudi’ Arabia’s court preacher, Abdulrahman al Sudais was confronted in a Geneva Mosque after he praised US President Donald Trump as “peacemaker” and supporting the Saudi genocidal war on Yemen.
In keeping with its tradition of hosting the largest Quds Day rally in North America, Toronto once again maintained this position on June 9.
The annual Quds Day rally has got the Zionists all riled up. Unable to prevent the marh despite using illegal tactics, they have resorted to spreading lies about it.
As 40,000 Palestinians from Gaza Strip participated in the Great Return March, the Zionist occupation army opened fire with live ammunition. As of this writing, the gun-toting Zionists have killed at least 52 and wounded 2238 Palestinians in Gaza.
Like a mad uncle coming down from the attic wielding a cane to sort out noisy children, Mahathir Mohamad has once again stormed Malaysian politics. At 92, the coalition he led, Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope), achieved a stunning victory against the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN).
The people of Lebanon voted for stability and security in the parliamentary elections giving the Hizbullah-led alliance a comfortable majority with 67 out of 128 seats.
While he had repeatedly said that he would pull the US out of the multilateral Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump’s announcement on May 8 still came as a shock.
The French have always been virulently Islamophobic. The latest call by 300 leading figures, however, demanding that Muslim leaders “reject parts of the Qur’an” has sparked outrage across a broad cross section of society.
Thousands of Syrians poured into the streets of Damascus on Saturday (April 14) to denounce the latest US-UK-French aggression against Syria. Late Friday/early Saturday morning, the terrible trio launched 103 missiles from ships, submarines and planes at three sites in Syria.
America’s dogs of war are straining at the leash. Led by US ambassador at the UN Nirmata Kaur Randhawa (who changed her name to Nikki Haley to sound more American), they want more wars and are pushing the moron Donald Trump to launch one against Syria even though the generals are reluctant to do so.
In a tit for tat, China has imposed retaliatory tariffs against the US on a range of goods including pork and wine after the US slapped tariffs on Chinese produced steel and aluminium.
The people of Indian occupied Kashmir have seldom experienced a day of peace. The last few days, however, have witnessed intensification in Indian military brutality against the people. Indian occupation forces killed at least 20 people in Kashmir, according to police sources on Sunday April 1.
Israel’s killing of Palestinians has become so frequent that much of the rest of the world treats each new massacre with a hardly repressed yawn.
Used only to flattery from sycophants in the medieval kingdom, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman faced widespread protests during his visit to London starting today.
Crescent International speaks to Dr John Andrew Morrow about his life’s journey and scholarly works.
The sea of humanity stretched as far as the eye could see. The iconic Azadi Square in Tehran, the traditional location for celebrating the anniversary of the success of the Islamic revolution, was packed with people.
In a major development in the region, the Syrian air defence shot down one, and possibly two Israeli F-16 fighter jets that were involved in terrorist attacks against Syria.
Ansarullah would not have accomplished what they have so far if the Yemenis believed this was an Iranian takeover or that it’s a Sunni vs Shia conflict.
The arrest of Sheikh Kuytul is another manifestation of Erdogan’s duplicity. It will add to the growing cracks among AKP’s primary constituency and increase the chances of internal destabilization within Turkey.
Thousands of people from all over Britain have converged on London to join a rally led by Lord Nazir Ahmed. The rally to observe ‘Black Day’ will be held outside the Indian High Commission to protest Indian State brutality and oppression in Kashmir and other places across India.
Incredible as it may sound, one can begin to understand Donald Trump’s frustration that began with his angry tweet fired at Pakistan at 7:12 am on January 1 from Mar-a-Lago.
Holding huge banners and the country’s flag as well as placards denouncing the US, Zionist Israel and Britain, millions of Iranians poured into the streets today in support of the Islamic government and system.
Over the past several months, NATO’s despotic allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have cornered themselves into myriad political, social and military quagmires.
To ignore the foreign hands behind the riots in Iran would be to close one’s eyes to reality.
Protests by a few dozen people—even the British propaganda mouthpiece the BBC admitted that they were no more than a hundred or so (BBC World news, December 30)—are being projected as being against the government and the Islamic system.
Donald Trump exposed Israel’s complete dependency on Washington and is weakening US imperialism, let the ignorance march on.
For nearly a decade, the militant-secularist French ruling caste has demonized a prominent Islamic academic, Dr. Tariq Ramadan for his principled Islamic position on socio-political matters concerning the Muslims of Europe.
Couched in the language of ‘fighting corruption’, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is trying to eliminate all potential rivals and their supporters in his drive to grab absolute power.
The greatest hurdle in the way of Muhammad bin Salman to become king is Moteib bin Abdullah, head of the National Guard. In a new twist, King Salman created on November 04 a new committee charged with fighting ‘corruption’ in the kingdom.
Like Kashmiris and their friends around the world, Canadians too observed Kashmir ‘Black Day’ in Toronto, Canada. At a well attended conference on October 28, Canadians from all walks of life that included members of the Kashmiri community as well as others such as Canadian peace activists and journalists were at hand to observe Kashmir ‘Black Day’.
Suppose a Dalmatian (a dog breed, in case there is some confusion!) says it wants to get rid of its spots. Suppose further, that a scorpion says it would no longer sting. How much credibility should one give to these claims? Something similar has happened in “Saudi” Arabia where the Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman announced yesterday that “We are returning to what we were before—a country of ‘moderate’ Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.”
Donald Trump has become totally unhinged. And he confirmed this yet again on October 13 when he announced that he would not certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The Saudi-led attack on tiny Qatar has moved beyond the stage of comedy even if clowns keep popping up periodically in the theatre of the absurd. To be sure, the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar that has been joined by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain—dubbed “the gang of four” by Lord Nazir Ahmed of Britain—has caused immense suffering to Qatari citizens.
Donald Trump’s crude remarks against the Islamic Republic of Iran and North Korea have evoked strong reaction from both countries. The Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei while meeting members of the Assembly of Experts in Tehran today (September 21) condemned Trump’s comments at the UN as “ugly”, "foolish” and “sheer lies.”
American psychiatrists have called him mentally unstable; politicians have called him dangerous. In his first speech to the UN General Assembly yesterday, Donald Trump did nothing to dispel these concerns.
Tens of thousands of people in different cities worldwide held rallies on September 16 to condemn the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. In Canada’s most cosmopolitan city, Toronto, there were two separate rallies a few blocks from each other.
In a clear sign of nervousness, the Saudi regime has arrested a number of prominent clerics as well as intellectuals. In all, about 20 people have been taken into custody over the last few days, according to activists on social media as well as the London-based Saudi opposition group, ALQST.
While the world is gradually waking up to the horrors visited upon the Rohingya community in Myanmar, some Muslim regimes are deliberately undermining efforts to help them.
Not the most civilized people, the Myanmar army and Buddhist vigilantes are involved in genocide of Rohingya Muslims. Nearly 90,000 have been forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh since August 25.
In keeping with past tradition and as leader of the Ummah, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei issued his message to the hujjaj assembled in Makkah for the performance of their pilgrimage.
Has Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman finally realized that his policies have failed? He has suffered defeat at every turn except perhaps in engineering the ouster of his cousin and former crown prince Muhammad bin Nayef who is currently under house arrest.
Gaza has been referred to as the “largest open-air prison” in the world. Besieged on three sides by Israel including the Mediterranean Sea, the fourth side is blocked by Egypt.
Amr Musa, the new secretary general of the Arab League, has announced reforms that he claims will transform the moribund 55-year-old organisation into an effective agency that is less bureaucratic and more responsive to the needs of the ‘Arab nation’.
Canadians from all walks of life participated in a rally outside the Israeli consulate in Toronto on Saturday July 29 to condemn the Zionist siege of Masjid al Aqsa. Participants included Muslims, Christians and Jews. Among the latter group there was also a large contingent of rabbis.
Corruption has finally caught up with Nawaz Sharif and his family. In a landmark decision on Friday, a five-member bench of the Supreme Court disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from holding public office over what came to be called the Panama Papers scandal.
Jubilations in Iraq are well deserved. After eight months of brutal fighting in and around Mosul, the last pockets of takfiri terrorists were eliminated on Saturday July 8.
People in Occupied Kashmir and their supporters around the world observed the first anniversary of Burhan Wani’s martyrdom on July 8. Indian occupation troops fearing protests imposed round the clock curfew in all major cities as well as blocked all Internet services.
Omar Khadr’s long hard struggle for justice is about to end. The Canadian government will offer an official apology and $10.5 million in compensation for what he suffered for 10 years at Bagram and Guantanamo Bay at the hands of his American captors.
With the recapture of al-Nuri Mosque in the heart of West Mosul (Old City), the Iraqi army has all but completed the liberation of Mosul, the self-proclaimed seat of government of the terrorist outfit, Daesh/ISIS and its command centre.
King Salman’s dismissal of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and elevation of his own son Mohammed bin Salman to the post while widely expected still came as a surprise.
Four terrorists armed with guns and pistols attacked the Majlis (Parliament) in Tehran today (June 7) while simultaneously, three terrorists attacked the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini in south Tehran.
As suspected, US-Saudi-backed takfiri terrorists were behind the twin attacks in Tehran earlier today in which at least 12 people were killed and another 42 injured.
Barely two weeks ago, the Arabian rulers were rubbing noses against each other (their way of showing friendship!) on the occasion of their collective surrender to the new imperial warlord, Donald Trump. Now they are at each other’s throats.
While the Theresa May regime in Britain has put the country on maximum alert with armed troops patrolling the streets following the Manchester terrorist bombing of Monday (May 23) night, news has emerged that the alleged bomber, Salman Abedi was known to the authorities.
The plight of 1600 Palestinian hunger strikers held illegally in Israeli dungeons has deteriorated so much that it has even moved the lethargic UN human rights body to react.
The most bizarre part of Donald Trump’s three-day visit to Saudi Arabia was his rambling speech to the Arabian potentates and Muslim heads of State from some 50 countries on May 21.
In keeping with the tradition of past presidential elections, Iranian voters returned President Hassan Rouhani to power for a second term with a comfortable majority in the May 19 presidential election.
Never before has an American regime been in such disarray as the one led by Donald Trump. Even Richard Nixon’s travails in 1973-1974 relating to the Watergate break-in do not come close.
As the Najdi Bedouins assemble their Arabian cousins and an assortment of Muslim rulers and dictators in Riyadh for a collective pledge of loyalty to the new master in the White House (aka Donald Trump), other news in the region appear to have fallen off the radar screen.
With a few days left for the presidential vote (May 19), Tehran mayor and a candidate in Iran’s 12th presidential election, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, withdrew from the race and threw his support behind the Principlist candidate, Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi.
Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey has plunged the US into a civil war like situation that few dare talk about in public.
At the University of Dar es Salam (Tanzania), the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies took a bold step in organizing a seminar under the theme, ‘Religion and Universal Human Values.’ Held on May 6 in the Nakrumah Conference Hall at the sprawling campus, there were three Christian and four Muslim speakers. The Christian speakers were from the Department of Philosophy while the Muslim speakers included two local ulama, a youth leader and ICIT Director Zafar Bangash. Nearly 500 people—mostly students from the university attended the one-day conference.
Canada’s intelligence agency, the ‘Canadian Security Intelligence Agency’ [CSIS] often indulges in behavior outside its mandate that most people find intimidating. The Canadian Parliament has set up a review committee—the ‘Security Intelligence Review Committee’ [SIRC]—that appears to be a toothless body unable to rein in the intelligence agency’s activities that go beyond its mandate, as the case of peace activist, Mr. Ken Stone shows. Read on…
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel refused to take a call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because of the latter’s obnoxious behavior.
The fickleness of Arabian potentates was again on display today as the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fatah el Sisi landed in Riyadh. The aged and dementia-afflicted Saudi King Salman received him at the airport as Sisi stepped off the plane. Did Salman recognize the balding man from Cairo?
What is certain is that if a massacre can be spun into blaming the Syrian government, it will be repeated endlessly with screaming headlines and angry denunciations on television. If the killings expose Western-backed terrorists, then the story is either ignored or obfuscated to confuse readers and listeners.
Russia may not be the world’s superpower but its officials from President Vladimir Putin down know how to act statesmanlike. This was evident when Rex Tillerson arrived in Moscow on April 11 for his first meeting with Russian officials after assuming the post of US Secretary of State in the Trump regime.
The April 6 illegal US missile strikes on a Syrian air base have not only put a chill on US-Russian relations, they have increased the risk of a full-fledged war between the US and Russia—essentially a Third World War.
Lynne F. Stewart, a courageous human rights lawyer who championed the cause of the under-privileged and took on unpopular cases, died yesterday at her home in Brooklyn, New York. She was 77.
Not since the impeachment hearings against then President Richard Nixon’s wiretapping orders of the Watergate Hotel in 1974 has the US government been in such disarray as it is under Donald Trump’s presidency today.
He gained prominence during the Sadat dictatorship and his staunch opposition to the so-called peace treaty with Zionist Israel that he denounced as a complete surrender and betrayal of the Egyptian and Palestinian people. Sheikh Omar called for an Islamic revolution in Egypt to rid the corrupt system and bring about an Islamic socio-political order in society.
Yes, you read that right. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the American spy agency that specializes in killing foreign leaders and is the principal sponsor of global terrorism, has awarded a medal to Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef for fighting terrorism.
America has never been a safe place for sane people. How can it be when its claim to fame rests on its ability to kill the largest number of people worldwide (at least 4 million people since 2001) and incarcerated millions of its own people (2.3 million and counting)?
The outpouring of sympathy from Canadians for their Muslim neighbors following the terrorist attack on a Quebec City mosque on January 29 has been absolutely stunning. Total strangers have reached out to members of the Muslim community all across Canada to offer condolences and support. This must be unique among people of different faiths across the globe.
The Sunday (January 29) night shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada has left six dead and eight wounded, six of them in critical condition. The heavily armed attackers were all white and fired into a crowd of about 50 worshippers as they were offering the night prayers.
On what authority does Donald Trump say that he wants to establish ‘safe zones’ in Syria? Is he politically naïve or has he never heard of the concept of state sovereignty?
I did not have to deal with sectarianism on the same level as people in Iraq or Syria have had to contend with; my interaction with this devilish phenomenon has been more mundane, but also very practical.
At the conclusion of the two-day International Parliamentary Seminar on Kashmir on January 6, 2017, a ringing declaration was issued condemning Indian atrocities against the innocent people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Crescent International invites aspiring journalists and columnists to submit voluntary analytical reports.
At the recent RIS Conference in Toronto, Hamza Yusuf spoke disparagingly of Black Lives Matter movement and the Muslim Brotherhood. His remarks did not sit well even with some of his ardent supporters. Is there a trend among some white converts to Islam that become celebrities that dismiss widespread racism in the US? Does Islam in any way tolerate oppression and tyranny of the rich and powerful?
Some bizarre theories are doing the rounds in Washington that have even been joined by the White House. Senior government officials, members of Congress and of course the media led by the Washington Post have alleged that Russian hacking of the November 8 presidential election benefitted Donald Trump giving him victory.
With 98 percent of East Aleppo already cleansed of terrorists, liberation of the remaining two percent came quickly today December 13. Under a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, the terrorists were allowed to leave the city with only light weapons.
Two Kashmiri youth, among them Majid Zargar, were abducted by Indian occupation forces in the Arwani area of Islamabad district in Occupied Kashmir on December 8. The youth were subsequently tortured to death by the occupation forces.
As the Syrian army backed by local militias punches its way into East Aleppo, the desperation in Western capitals is clearly visible. Publicly claiming to be opposed to the terrorists, their actions belie their statements.
Tarek Fatah has gained notoriety for his foul-mouthed language against Muslims, especially those of Pakistani origin. Because of his anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan stance, he has become a darling of the Zionists and Hindu chauvinists.
The Ansarallah fighter’s missile strike at a Saudi air base near Jeddah has sent the Saudi regime into frenzied panic. The Bani Saud have unleashed their paid agents worldwide accusing the Houthis (the label used for Ansarallah fighters) of firing the missile at the Kaaba with the intention of destroying Islam’s holiest site. Nothing could be further from the truth but as the saying goes, a lie is half way around the world before truth has had a chance to tie its shoelaces.
2Donald Trump’s stunning victory has left not only the American establishment but the rest of the world also shell-shocked. This is not how it was supposed to have worked out.
3After several months of selfless work by individuals seeking no worldly benefit whatsoever, with minimal material resources, we are grateful to Allah (SWT) that we have finally put together a new website for our readers. We hope to continue serving as we have been for the past 45 years and like Imam Hussein (RA) we are also crying out, "Is there anyone to help us?" How does one can help? Please donate, share our material or write for us from time to time.
5In an otherwise bleak political landscape for Muslims, there was some good news yesterday when a motion condemning Islamophobia won unanimous approval in the Canadian Parliament. The motion was presented by NDP leader Tom Mulcair.
2Sectarianism is destructive whether indulged in by Sunnis or Shias. It is important for Muslims to be on guard not to fall into this trap since it only benefits the enemies of Islam. In the month of Muharram, some Shia preachers have a tendency to resort to the worst aspects of sectarianism. Such acts do not advance the cause of Islam.
2With failure staring them in the face in their ill-conceived military campaign against Yemen, the Saudi regime has intensified attacks on civilians. Their latest outrage was committed on October 8 when more than 140 civilians were killed and some 525 injured in a missile strike on a gathering at a funeral ceremony. The Saudis have murdered more than 10,000 civilians in Yemen since March 2015. There are 22 million people facing starvation.
2For the first time during Barack Obama's presidency, the US Congress has overridden his veto of a bill. It relates to the Congress approving a bill that would allow families of 911 victims to sue Saudi Arabia and seek compensation for their losses. The Saudis are shell shocked and cannot believe what has happened despite spending tens of millions of dollars in lobbying efforts.
3Shimon Peres, who served twice as Israel's prime minister and once as president, died earlier today. Who was Peres and what was his role in the Israeli war machine are subjects that need closer scrutiny despite the hypocritical accolades being heaped on his after his death.
1Eid al Adha commemorates the sacrifice of Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail (as). As Muslims celebrate this great event, they must keep in mind that without sacrifice, nothing can be achieved. In fact, the trials and tribulations demanding sacrifices are the pre-requisites to get closer to Allah subhanahu wa taala.
1By arresting the leading human rights activist in Indian occupied Kashmir, India wants to hide the ugly reality of its crimes against the Kashmiri people. This will only intensify the determination of the Kashmiri people to overthrow the yoke of Hindu hegemony and occupation. No occupation has lasted forever; India's will certainly not last too long either. Indian crimes in Kashmir may result in the disintegration of India itself.
2In tandem with the US establishment dominated by the neo-cons, the US media has drummed up support for the latest war-mongering plans. The people have been scared into believing that there are takfiris sleeper cells in the US that pose serious danger to every American. Most Americans have been scared into supporting military aggression against countries in the Middle East.
The Obama regime has announced an increased military aid package--$38 billion over the next tens years--to the Zionist entity even as it kills and maims Palestinians at an alarming rate. This makes the US complicit in Zionist crimes.
1Is this man (shown in the picture) fit to issue fatwas about who is a Muslim and who is not? This man, the so-called of mufti of 'Saudi' Arabia, is blind and believes the earth is flat and that men can cannibalize their wives. Can Muslims really take him seriously? Further, the Saudi rulers have serious character flaws that make them unfit to be in control of the affairs of Hajj.
1European politicians in general and French politicians in particular have clearly taken leave of their senses. In their determination to control women's bodies, they insist Muslim women cannot wear the burkini, a swimsuit that covers their entire body. What is the problem with these men that are forever trying to undress women everywhere in the name of freedom when it fact they are sexual perverts?
1Will Barack Obama be able to close the notorious prison camp at Guantanamo Bay before he leaves office early next year? He may want to--as was stated by his Vice President Joe Biden one more time in Sweden today--but will Congress allow him to do so? Further, will Obama be able to muster the courage to oppose Congress and end the barbaric practice that has sullied America's already tarnished reputation?
1Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan met Russian President Vladimir Putin in an attempt to patch serious difference arising out of the shooting down of a Russian plane over Syria last November. While the meeting was arranged before the failed coup in Turkey, it added significance to the meeting because Putin was among the first world leaders to call Erdogan to condemn the coup and offer support.
1Bullies and career-wreckers target professor Joy Karega at Oberlin College. Professor Tony Hall takes on the thought police in defence of free speech and academic freedom.
1A Filipino domestic worker has died in hospital after being gang-raped by her Saudi employer. Will her employer face the death penalty for not one but two crimes: rape and murder?
1The Holy Sanctuary of Masjid al Aqsa that houses the Aqsa Mosque, Dome of the Rock and a number of Islamic madrassas is under attack again. Illegal Zionist squatters aided and abetted by the occupation army in violation of international law, have again barged into the compound on the pretext of offering "prayer". This is forbidden both under Jewish religious law as well as an agreement signed with the Jordanian regime in June 1967.
1In the 17 months since the Saudi regime launched its bombing campaign against Yemen, more than 10,000 people have been killed. The country's infrastructure has been destroyed resulting in severe shortage of food, clean drinking water and medicines. The Norwegian Refugee Council in a report released August 8 confirms Yemen's dire straits and warns the catastrophe may prove "irreversible".
1Between July 9 and 31, the Indian occupation troops shot and killed 74 Kashmiris, most of them young men but also some children. In a new tactic, the use of pellet guns has resulted in hundreds of youth being blinded when hit by rubber-coated steel pellets. Had a Muslim government been guilty of such crimes, there would be universal condemnation. In the case of India, there is deathly silence. Why?
1The Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that went into effect between Hamas and the zionist killers early Tuesday August 5 morning is holding and is to last for 72 hours. The aim is to hammer out a permanent cease-fire in which Hamas' demands especially about lifting the siege of Gaza are to be discussed and finalized. In the meantime, Gaza's Ministry of Health has issued the names of those murdered by the zionists.
More than 7,000 heavily armed police surrounded the Incirlik airbase in Adana, southwest Turkey amid speculation that it was meant to thwart another coup attempt. The police came with armored personnel carriers as well as dump trucks.
1On Friday July 29, John Nuttall, 41 and his common law wife, 32-year-old Amanda Korody were acquitted of terrorism charges because Justice Catherine Bruce ruled the police actively planned the terror plot and pressured the defendants into committing the crime.
1Arab League summits are pretty pathetic affairs. Arabian rulers talk big but there is little action. Nothing can be expected from puppets but last week’s summit in Mauritania hit new lows!
1The police in America can do no wrong even when they kill innocent people. Since the police investigate themselves, they destroy the evidence. In the unlikely event of a case going before the court, racist judges ensure police are exonerated. Not surprisingly, so many blacks have been killed in recent months. Black anger is understandable in view of such brutality. Even President Obama says the justice system is broken but is helpless to fix it.
1Many people naively believe that history-making is something good. What difference does it or will it make if Hillary Clinton has made history by becoming the first woman to win the nomination of a major political party for the presidential post? Donald Trump's grab of the Republican nomination is also unprecedented but both are dangerous for the world. Either could easily start a nuclear war.
1What kind of people would behead a 10-year-old boy in public and even film the gruesome act? If they happen to be Western-backed rebels, they would indulge in such crimes but they can rest easy that the Western corporate media would give this barbaric act a pass. CNN and Fox News did not report this horrific crime; the BBC gave it short shrift. Imagine if a group opposed to the West had indulged in such an act!
1There has been widespread revulsion at Indian crimes in Kashmir. Over the past two weeks, there has again been an escalation in violence by the Indian army of occupation against innocent Kashmiris. Hundreds of Canadians of all backgrounds also added their voices to condemn the violence and brutality unleashed by the Indian occupation army on the Kashmiri people. A rally was held outside the Indian Consulate July 16 to condemn India.
1The coup attempt by a group of military officers in Turkey seems to have fizzled out. After several hours of tense standoff, the coup plotters were beaten back and the police and people were able to reclaim control. Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan who flew into Istanbul airport from his holiday said the military will be cleansed of these elements.
1The Najdi Bedouins are so consumed by hatred of Islamic Iran that they have openly embraced the well known terrorist group, the Mujahideen-e Khalq organization (MKO) better known as Munafiqeen. This was evident at a Paris rally on July 9 that the group organized at which the former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal also spoke, calling for the overthrow of the Islamic government in Iran.
1Pakistan's best known social worker, Abdul Sattar Edhi passed away today in Karachi. He was 88. May Allah shower His mercies upon his soul and grant him Jannatul Firdaus for all the good work that the did for the poor, needy and downtrodden without asking for anything in return.
1There were no Eid celebrations in Baghdad as people mourned the death of more than 250 people in the deadliest terrorist attack since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the takfiri terrorists claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, the real perpetrators are the Saudi, Qatari, Turkish regimes that provide support to terrorists. Beyond that, US rulers--Bush, Cheney et al--must be held directly responsible for such crimes.
1As we mark the end of the month of Ramadan, we wish all our readers, supporters and friends a Happy Eid.
1This year's Quds Day rally in Toronto again attracted thousands including Christian and Jewish speakers who condemned Zionist crimes against the innocent Palestinians. Starting in a park north of Queens Park because the Zionist-dominated provincial government and security establishment refused permission to use the legislative grounds for the start of the rally, participants marched through the streets to the US consulate.
1When you dig a grave for others, don't be surprised if you fall into it yourself. This is what seems to be happening in Turkey that has for years backed the takfiri terrorists against the Syrian government hoping to overthrow it and install a puppet regime in Damascus, with the backing of the West. The Istanbul airport terrorist attack may not be the last of the terrorist group's dastardly crimes.
1Europe is in political and financial turmoil following the referendum in Britain where 52% voted to leave the European Union (EU). It has forced the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron who wanted Britain to stay. The EU leaders are angry and want the Brits to get the hell out and not wait until October to start the process of separation. The EU itself may not survive the shock.
1Is Islamophobia on the rise in Canada as well in the wake of the racist Islamophobic rhetoric of Donald Trump south of the border? The June 20 assault by an ugly woman on a hijabi sister at a London, ON supermarket definitely gives cause for concern. The assailant has been charged but not with hate crime; only assault. From what has transpired, it definitely appears to be a hate crime.
1Does any regime, especially an illegitimate one like that in Bahrain, have the right to strip native-born sons of citizenship rights? This is what the Khalifa regime in Bahrain has done against the respected scholar, Shaikh Issa Qassem evoking universal condemnation. The regime may have signed its own death warrant.
1As more and more information comes out about Omar Mateen, the alleged nightclub shooter in Orlando, it raises more questions. Was he gay, as the nightclub patrons have revealed or mentally unstable as his ex-wife has said, or both? And was he used by the FBI to carry out this dastardly crime? These questions need answers.
1The Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida by a deranged New York-born Muslim has again given anti-Muslim bigots and xenophobes the opportunity to target the beleaguered community. The assailant, Omar Mateen was of Afghan parentage and that was enough for the likes of Donald Trump to come out blazing with both guns demanding shutting of all mosques and banning Muslims' entry into the US. Did easy access to guns have nothing to do with it?
1The UN is a toothless body and a tool in the hands of predatory powers. Its Secretary General Ban ki-moon is totally spineless. This was demonstrated yet again when the Saudis used blackmailing tactics against the UN threatening to withhold funds unless their name was removed from the list of countries guilty of crimes against children. The Saudis and their Arabian allies have murdered more than 510 children in Yemen since March 2015.
Ramadan is a month of blessings. The noble Messenger (peace be upon him) has said that this is the month of the Ummah. In another hadith, he is reported to have said that Allah will reward His faithful servants for their good deeds from 10 to 50 but for the person fasting for the sake of Allah, he/she will be rewarded abundantly by the Merciful Lord. Ramadan Kareem!
The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been under India's illegal and brutal occupation since 1947. There are several United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a referendum to determine the wishes of the people. Do they want to join Pakistan or India? Far from fulfilling its international obligations, India has perpetrated horrific crimes against the innocent Kashmiri people. We report on a recent Seminar.
Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxing champion the world has ever known, died in a Phoenix, Arizona hospital late last night. Inna lil Lah-e wa inna ilayh-e rajioon (We are from Allah and to Him is our return). His family members were around him at his hospital bed. We pray to Allah to bless his soul.
The Arabian rulers, all agents of imperialism and Zionism are aware that their survival depends of appeasing the Zionists in Occupied Palestine. Jordan has just proved this once again when the puppet ruler of the kingdom dismissed parliament and appointed Hani Mulki as prime minister. Like the king, Muki too is a Zionist puppet.
How deeply is Zionist Israel involved in instigating, arming and supporting the terrorists in Syria? One only has to hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak and read it in Israeli newspapers. Even Israeli Channel 2 has reported the Zionists' deep involvement in undermining Syria.
The world is becoming more exciting. Cyber warfare is heating up and many players are joining the fray. In the latest revelations, Iranian hackers have been hacking into American and Israeli military and political leaders' accounts. That should be exciting.
Canadians will not be able to see Saudi camels on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, after all. The Saudi embassy abruptly cancelled the so-called cultural event citing "logistical reasons". Really, or they feared massive protests that would have exposed their true nature as barbarians and public head-choppers? Whatever the reason, no camels in Ottawa this spring or summer. Good!
Long-standing pillar of the Islamic revolution, Ayatullah Ahmed Jannati was elected head of Majlis-e Khobargan (Assembly of Experts) today. His election has laid to rest all the misleading speculation about who would win this important position.
Recep Tayip Erdogan is a ruthless politician. He acts like a street thug insisting on having his way. This is what has just transpired in forcing his long-time friend and ally Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu to resign. Since Erdogan wants to change the constitution to grab all powers in his hands as president instead of allowing the prime minister executive authority as per the constitution, Davutoglu is being pushed out. Erdogan wants to be king!
This is not a joke: the head choppers are coming to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to display their culture. And what does the Bedouin culture include? They say there will be presentation of dances (by men only, of course), music, artwork and food. If they are honest, they should also bring some head choppers to display their skills on Parliament Hill. We can think of a number of candidates that need their heads separated from their bodies!
With the rapid concentration of wealth in a few well-manicured hands and the right-wing US Supreme Court declaring money to be speech, the American surge toward oligarchy has gained what looks like an unstoppable momentum, as JP Sottile explains.
The Hamas-PLO reconciliation has upset both the US and the zionists. They want to keep the Palestinians divided so that they cannot successfully struggle for the rights. Will the latest deal last?
The mystery of the missing Malaysia Airline plane has finally been solved. It did not crash into the sea; it has landed safely as our spooks report from Kabul. This picture of Flight MH370 was taken as it approached Tora Bora on March 8, 2014 before touchdown! Read on.
Zionist Israel occupied the Golan Heights from Syria and other lands from Egypt and Jordan during the June 1967 War. That defeat of the Arabian armies puffed up the Zionists so much that they have started to usurped various parts of these territories. The Zionists' latest outrageous claim came today when Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the Syrian Golan Heights will remain "forever" part of Israel. It truly takes chutzpah!
The mindboggling cruelty of the Zionist occupiers of Palestine can be gleaned from the mistreatment and torture of Palestinian children. Even minors are not spared such barbarism as was the case of 12-year-old Dima al-Wiwa showed who was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned. The Zionists get away with such crimes because Western regimes and their media outlets cover-up such crimes. Dima's case received scant coverage in the West.
The Syrian people are showing resilience in the face of foreign-instigated terror in their country by turning out in large numbers to participate in parliamentary elections. For the first time, a number of opposition parties are also allowed to contest the elections. Until the time of filing this report, there were no reports of terrorist attacks although that is a possibility as they would like to disrupt the process, if they can.
Dr Kalim Siddiqui was a leading intellectual of the 20th century. He was also a political activist who founded the Muslim Institute in London as well as established the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain of which he was the leader. He died 20 years ago. The ICIT and Crescent International are organizing a Memorial conference ot pay tribute to this great son of Islam.
Will the Saudis achieve their political and military objectives by building a bridge across the Red Sea to link-up with Egypt? If the bridge between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is any guide, it will merely mean more Saudis satiating their carnal desires, this time going West. As far as the Saudis creating an anti-Iran alliance is concerned, which is what the bridge is reality meant for, it will be a non-starter. The Saudis will not survive.
On the run from the Syrian army and its allies, the takfiri terrorists have once again resorted to using chemical weapons. There is, however, no condemnation of such crimes from the UN, the US or other Western do-gooders. Their only mantra is, 'Asad must go'. He is not going anywhere, primarily because the Syrian people do not want him to go, seeing what the alternative would be: head-choppers and organ eaters!
The Najdi Bedouins in illegal occupation of the Arabian Peninsula are notorious savages. Even the UN agency, UNICEF has now confirmed this in its latest report on the first anniversary of the Saudi-led assault on Yemen. UNCEF reports that children are the principal victims of Saudi barbarism. Nothing is safe in Yemen: hospitals, schools, playgrounds, houses and even open air markets where civilians go to buy food.
Zionist Israel can do no wrong even when its soldiers execute wounded Palestinians lying unconscious on the ground as happened in Hebron on Thursday March 24. Equally disturbing is the non-reaction of other soldiers to the cold-blooded murder. It is clear that Zionist soldiers murder Palestinians without any regard for human life or any worry that they may face the law. Killing Palestinians is a way of life in the Zionist utopia.
After a five-year trial, Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian terrorist and mass murderer was sentenced to 40 years in jail for killing 8,000 Bosnian men and children in Srebrenica in July 1995. His other crimes--crimes against humanity and war crimes--were in addition. Most people felt it was not enough. He should have been given at least a life sentence. After all, he got only 1.85 days for each murder. Is that justice?
The terrorist attacks in Brussels killed at least 34 people and injured hundreds of others. The attacks have been widely condemned. Beyond such condemnation, what is needed is to go to the root of the problem: alienation of Muslim youth because of rampant racism in Europe, and the terrorist producing factory called Saudi Arabia. If Western governments turn a blind eye to Saudi poisoning of the minds of Muslim youth, this problem will fester.
The Kurds are spread over different countries, the victims of colonial carve-up of the Muslim East (aka the Middle East) but they tend to make decisions that are not in their own best interest. Their latest move, a declaration of autonomy in northeast Syria is one such example. This is likely to complicate the possibility of achieving a political solution to the 5-year-old war on Syria.
While there is war raging in the inner sanctums of Bani Saud, the two head honchos are also going head-to-head to accumulate brownie points to prove their eligibility for the throne. The majority of senior princes are extremely unhappy with the way the kingdom's policy is being conducted. Defence Minister Mohammad bin Salman's failures are piling up but being son of the king is his big advantage. Mohammad bin Nayef has struck back.
The Takfiris may be seeing the end of their short-lived glory marked by gore and horrific acts of public beheadings and burning people alive. Iraqi government forces backed by militias--both Shia and Sunni--have made significant gains in and around Tikrit, hometown of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Husain. Further west in Syria, the Syrian army is making steady gains against them in Aleppo. The takfiris are being squeezed from both sides.
Have the Bani Saud been sufficiently chastened and beaten to sue for peace in Yemen? Recent reports suggest they have held secret talks with the Houthis and will be holding further discussions. Their one-year-long war has caused a lot of civilian casualties leading to war crimes charges. Perhaps they want to cut their losses and end the war that is going nowhere. The next few days and weeks will tell.
Statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyu that Arabian rulers are keen to cultivate relations with the Zionist regime point to the fact that something big is about to happen. Netanyahu is one of most obnoxious rulers the Zionist State has ever had. The Arabian rulers led by the Bani Saud are about to embrace this man and his racist ideology. They deserve each other as it exposes the true nature of Bani Saud.
One of the leading Islamic political thinkers and activists, Dr Hasan al-Turabi passed away today in Khartoum. He was 84. A specialist in Islamic Law (he had a PhD in Islamic Law), he had contributed many books on the subject as well as served in various capacities in political office. Close to many Sudanese leaders, he eventually fell out with them ending in prison on numerous occasions.
American presidential primaries are meant to entertain people and make them believe that they have a say in whom they choose to be their next president. With money being the primary decider of such races, it is not surprising the statement 'America has the best democracy money can buy' has stuck. This year's primaries are laced with angry rhetoric and racism. It is all very scary.
Vicious Islamophobic bigots miss no opportunity to accuse Muslims of all kinds of wrongdoing. Their latest victim is 21-year-old U of T student Zahra Vaid who commented on her Facebook page that a 14-year-old girl, accused of stabbing fellow students and teachers, was being bullied at school. This emerged from reading the 14-year-old's Facebook. The Islamophobes immediately accused Ms Vaid of being the culprit.
Defying Western predictions and negative propaganda, Iranians in their tens of millions turned out for two crucial elections on Friday February 26 to elect 290 members to a new Majlis (Parliament) and 88 members to a new Assembly of Experts. Both elections are seen as important landmarks as they come less than a year after a nuclear deal was signed with the group of P5+1 countries. The Rahbar, Imam Khamenei was among the first to cast ballot.
Weeks of discussions between the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his American counterpart John Kerry resulted in the following terms for a truce in Syria. This will go into effect on Saturday February 27 subject to acceptance by the various parties to the conflict.
After five years of bloodletting, there is a glimmer of hope that the Syrians' long nightmare may end soon. A truce agreement was announced by Russia and the US today under which a ceasefire will go into effect in Syria on February 27. Humanitarian aid will be delivered to besieged towns and villages. The truce does not extend to such terrorist outfits as Daesh, Jabhat al Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham.
The Saudis and their Arabian allies were never a match for the lightly armed Ansarallah fighters in Yemen. They had to rely on Blackwater mercenaries to do the fighting for them but the Ansarallah fighters have put these mercenaries also to flight as the latest news from Yemen indicates. The Saudi war on Yemen is a total failure and will end up in even more humiliation for the Bani Saud.
As the Syrian army makes steady gains against the Saudi-Turkish-Israeli-American backed terrorists, some of the terrorists' backers have freaked out. There are reports that Turkey might launch a direct ground invasion of Syria with frightening consequences for the region. Even the incompetent but brutal Saudis have said they would send their troops into Syria. There seems to be no limit to the madness of these rulers.
As the Syrian army makes steady progress on the ground in Aleppo and elsewhere in the country, Syrian opposition groups and their foreign sponsors conspire to sabotage the peace talks, albeit indirect, in Geneva. Talks were suspended today when opposition groups refused to meet the UN Special envoy, Staffan de Mistura. It was pointless to continue with the charade if no one was talking to each other.
The dictatorial regime of Ilham Aliyev, a throwback to the Soviet era, clings to primitive methods to block accurate news, especially relating to imprisonment of Islamic movement activists, from reaching the people. Islamazari, one of the most popular websites in Azerbaijan is the frequent victim of such attacks, the latest being just two days ago. Such tactics will backfire on the regime.
What kind of people calling themselves Muslims would target the shrine of Seyyeda Zainab (ra), the sister of Imam Husain (ra)? These cannot be committed Muslims since such attacks result in the killing of innocent Muslims--as has just happened in Damascus at the hands of the takfiri terrorists--and expose the extreme hatred they have for the revered personalities of Islam. These so-called Muslims are the enemies of Allah.
The Najdi Bedouins (aka the House of Saud) have been involved in spreading terrorism throughout their miserable existence. Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have had enough of their barbaric practices and has threatened to bomb them back to the Stone Age unless they desist from further mischief. Najdi Bedouins, beware, you have been warned!
Stealing money from Masjid al Islam accounts, a registered charity, must be a new low. Imam Musa, founder and leader of Masjid al Islam, has faced many challenges in his life including the killing of his grandson and shooting of his son. Now he is faced with a new challenge: theft of funds from Masjid al Islam accounts. Who are involved in this act of grand larceny? We shed light on them.
The on again, off again talks on Syria seem to be going nowhere. The Saudis and Americans want to include some terrorist groups whose presence is rejected by Syria, Russia and Iran. They argue, quite rightly, how can terrorists be allowed at the table to talk about peace. For now, the UN Special envoy for Syria says he hopes the talks would begin on Friday January 29. It is yet to be seen whether they will occur.
Colleagues and friends of the late Dr Kalim Siddiqui participated in a memorial conference on April 23 to pay tribute to his remarkable academic as well as social and political work. It was Dr Kalim's 20th anniversary since his untimely death in South Africa in April 1996. Rich tributes were paid to his great work that has inspired a generation of scholars and activists.
The Bani Saud (aka the House of Saud) that have illegally occupied the Arabian Peninsula, are feeling the heat these days. They have compounded their dilemma by executing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr that has evoked international condemnation. They are seeking Pakistan's help as was evident during Saudi FM Adel al-Jubeir's visit, to bail them out. One hopes the Pakistani rulers have better sense.
When a puppet regime leads other puppets, the result is often disastrous. The Saudi regime of Najdi Bedouins cut off relations with Islamic Iran followed by their puppets in Bahrain and Sudan. The crime was committed by the Najid Bedouins in unjustly executing a respected alim and human rights activist, Sheikh Nimr al Nimr. The Najdi Bedouins will pay a heavy price for this crime.
Among the many problems with dictatorships is that they cannot blame anyone else for their follies. This is what the Bani Saud are discovering. Their policy of over production has led to the collapse of global oil prices. This in turn has caused drastic fall in Saudi revenues forcing them to slash subsidies on essential commodities increasing resentment against the regime.
The killing of the terrorist leader Zahran Alloush has caused panic among other terrorists. The Russian and Syrian air force planes are coming after them. There is also much grief among the imperialists, Zionists and their Arabian puppets. Who was Alloush? Read and find out.
Islam places great emphasis on the preservation of life. Pakistan is officially an 'Islamic Republic' but take the VIP culture that arrogates special privileges to the rich and powerful even to the point of causing the death of poor people. The latest victim of this VIP culture was a 10-month-old infant girl Bisma (pictured) who was denied entry to hospital and died outside because Bilawal Bhutto was visiting inside!
The massacre of Muslims may have occurred in Nigeria but it aroused the concern of people from all walks of life worldwide. Rallies protesting the horrific massacre have been held in London (UK), Washington DC and New York (US) and Toronto (Canada). There have also been protest rallies in Iran, Pakistan, India and a host of other countries. In each locale, there were calls for the arrest and trial of the Nigerian army chief Tukur Buratai.
Soldiers are trained to kill but their job is to do so against external enemies and in defence of the State. The Nigerian army, like that in Egypt and other parts of the Muslim world, revel in killing their own citizens. The December 12 attack on the Islamic movement in Nigeria has resulted in the cold blooded murder of nearly 1000 innocent Muslims. Will the murderers face trial for their crimes? It is not even being mentioned.
The Nigerian army, like armies in most Muslim countries, has perpetrated a massacre of innocent Muslims in Nigeria. It targeted the headquarters of the Islamic movement in Nigeria and murdered some 20 people in cold blood. Hundreds of others were injured.
Republican presidential contender Donald Trumps thinks everyone in America, especially Barack Obama is stupid. He (Trump) is the only one smart enough to save America from Moozlems! There are enough stupid people in America that believe him. Among them is the police chief in a small Texan town. This is not surprising. Wasn't George Bush also from Texas?
The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world hate the terrorist outfit Daesh that goes by several names--ISIL, ISIS or takfiris (for Muslims). Yet this is not something one would find reflected in the Islamophobic media of the West. Instead, they deliberately mislead people making them believe that all Muslims are either terrorists, potential terrorists or their sympathizers. Pew Research has discovered something very different.
Crescent International is providing a brief chronology of the confrontation between the Aliyev regime and the Islamic movement in Azerbaijan as the regime is severely restricting most of non-regime controlled media through coercive action.
"The bitter events brought about by blind terrorism in France have once again moved me to speak to you young people." In less than a year, the Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei issues his second letter to the youth of Europe and North America. In it, he touches on the terror attacks in France and invites the youth to examine the root causes of such events in order to find corrective measures.
The dictatorial regime in Azerbaijan massacres innocent Muslims, and arrests the leader of the Islamic movement, Sheikh Tale Baqirzade. What has prompted the illegitimate regime to resort to such tactics and whose interests does it serve. We examine the issue as information is still trickling in from Azerbaijan...
Turkey's shooting down of a Russian plane over Syria has dangerously escalated tensions in an already volatile region. Fearing its consequences, Turkey has also requested a meeting of Nato ambassadors. This exposes Nato and its allies' support for the terrorists in Syria. No amount of rhetoric can camouflage this fact...
Muslims in Canada have had to face the brunt of racist attacks following the terrorist acts in Paris last Friday. A Mosque has been set on fire, a woman in hijab was attacked and two others were subjected to racist slurs on the Toronto subway. These are disturbing developments. While the immediate reason is the Paris attacks, some politicians and media outlets have also played a role in stoking anti-Muslim hatred...
French prosecutors confirmed that the alleged mastermind of the November 13 Paris attacks, Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, was killed in the early morning raid yesterday in Saint Denis...
His anticipated arrest, the third by the Aliyev regime, will only enhance the prestige of Sheikh Tale Baqirzade in Azerbaijan. The Islamic Movement in Azerbaijan is gaining huge popularity while the illegitimate regime is in panic...
The arson attack at the sole mosque in Peterborough, ON, has been roundly condemned by a wide spectrum of the political leadership in Canada, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau...
Nearly 150 people have been killed in separate attacks in Paris. In one attack, on a stadium in the French capital, President Francois Hollande was also present...
There are some really scary reports coming out of Moscow about the downing of the Russian plane over the Sinai Peninsula. Two American mercenaries of Colombian origin have been captured by Russian Special Forces in Yemen. They are being flown to Moscow on orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose special envoy Mikhail Lesin was found dead in a Washington hotel on November 5. What's going on?
The illegitimate rulers of Saudi Arabia insist President Bashar al Asad has no role to play in Syria' future...
Members of Bani Saud (aka House of Saud) are rotten to the core but how rotten can be gleaned from their recent activities. 'Prince' Abdel Mohsen bin Walid was caught earlier today smuggling two tonnes of drugs through Beirut Airport on their way to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia...
What is an Israeli colonel from the Golani Brigade doing helping the takfiri terrorists in Iraq? Colonel Yusi Oulen Shahak was captured by Iraqi security forces according to an announcement by a commander of the popular mobilization forces. The Israeli colonel has already provided much useful information.
Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister-elect, has made a number of very encouraging promises. Will he be able to deliver on them is the big question. He has a lot going for him but whether he will be able to break the stanglehold of powerful lobby groups has yet to be tested. He is off to a good start with a clear majority in parliament. And the Muslim community had a lot to do with his resounding victory.
Is Canada a racist society? Stephen Harper has tried level best to present his largely white supporters, made of up rednecks, as "Old Stock Canadians" in an attempt to appeal to their base instincts and dismiss other Canadians. By end of tomorrow, people will find out which vision of Canada will win: that of the racists and bigots or of decent people that have over the years welcomed newcomers in their midst...
Why is Imam Abdul Alim Musa being assaulted repeatedly and issued death threats? And who is behind these attacks and threats? We investigate the matter. Clearly agents provocateurs are involved acting at the behest of the police and the FBI to undermine the work Imam Musa is doing...
Heart-breaking scenes were witnessed in Kobane at the funeral of three-year-old Aylan Shenu Kurdi, brother Galep and mother Rehana. The three were buried in their ancestral home, Kobane where their bodies were transported from Turkey earlier in the day. The boys' father Abdullah was heart-broken and sobbed uncontrollably saying he had lost everything in the world. The family's tragedy also reflects the West's hypocrisy in refusing them asylum.
Mosques have become battlegrounds in more places than one can imagine. In the West, regimes are refusing permission for Muslims to open new mosques...
If Iraqi military claims are true, the takfiri terrorist outfit, Daesh (aka as ISIS/ISIL) may have been dealt a severe blow. The Iraqis said they hit the convoy of takfiri leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as he was heading for a meeting with senior commanders in Anbar Province. The meeting venue was also hit and a number of commanders killed. Bombed by Russia in Syria and hit by the Iraqis, the takfiris are on the run...
What are death threats being issued against Imam Abdul Alim Musa and why is the Oakland police siding with the saboteurs and agent provocateurs trying to disrupt the activities of Masjid al Islam? Imam Musa's grandson was shot and killed and his son was shot and critically wounded. Those targeting him are determined to silence him because he refuses to be cowed by terror tactics...
It appears that neither Russia or China is prepared to allow NATO countries led by the US to create another Libya-type scenario in Syria. The stakes are too high for both. Given US duplicity in fighting against the takfiri terrorists (actually non-fighting), Russia and China have decided to go after the terrorists for their own reasons. Iran and Hizbullah are also helping the Syrian government to confront the terrorist threat...
Has the US dollar finally met is match as a global reserve currency? Since the Second World War, the dollar has held sway thereby boosting America's economy but as with its military, so with its currency, challengers have emerged. China has made a strong presence by introducing an alternate currency clearance system through the China International Payment System to bypass the European-based SWIFT. Is the US dollar about to lose its clout...
When it comes to chopping hands or heads, the Saudis are unmatched. Abusing poor domestic workers from countries like India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia etc is routine. If the poor abused women try to escape, the brutal employers chop off their hands or even their heads. Here is the case of two poor Indian women whose hands were chopped by their abusive female employers...
The blind, deaf and dumb anti-Muslim court preachers of Saudi Arabia have called for backing the takfiri terrorists in Syria. They have declared these organ eating cannibals as "mujahideen" and "defenders of the Arab country" calling on 'Sunni' Muslims to support them with moral, material, military and financial means. What ayah of the Qur'an or hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) has ever supported such barbarism...
Why are the Americans complaining as Russia bombs the takfiri terrorists in Syria? Washington says its favorite terrorists are being bombed. The terrorists have already started fleeing; so much for their bravery. Russia has vowed to intensify attacks and cleanse the throat slitters and organ eaters from the Levant...
The Zionists are great at bullying weaker opponents and then come out thumping their chests. When faced with an equal opponent, they flee. This is what happened over the Mediterranean Sea when six Sukhoi SU-30 Russian jets intercepted for US-supplied Israel F-15s trying to violate Syrian airspace. Instead of putting up a good fight, the Zionists fled. Now that is an interesting development...
International Law Professor Francis Boyle says the Pentagon’s new Law of War Manual (LOWM) sanctioning nuclear attacks and the killing of civilians, “reads like it was written by Hitler's Ministry of War.” ...
The Najdi Bedouins ruling the Arabian Peninsula have demonstrated their total disregard for human life. They are attacking civilians in their homes, hospitals and now even wedding receptions. In the latest strike on a wedding reception in the village of Wahijah near the Red Sea town of Mocha, at least 131 people, most of them women and children, were killed...
Pig is a filthy animal. Muslims and observant Jews do not consume its meat. In the West, especially in Europe, pig meat is much cherished. It is their choice but a school in France forced Muslim and Jewish students to wear colored discs so that canteen staff would not serve them pork meat at lunchtime. It outraged parents and revived memories of the Nazis' practice of forcing Jews to wear the yellow star during WWII.
The deaths of such a large number of pilgrims--2,000 according to latest count and perhaps more--in a single day has renewed calls about the culpability of the Saudi regime...
very year as leader of the Ummah, the Rahbar Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei delivers a message to the hujjaj (pilgrims) gathered in Arafat. This year’s message has special significance because of developments in the Muslim world whether in Makkah, Al-Quds, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Burma or elsewhere.
There is not going to be any let-up in the West's anti-Iran propaganda despite the July 14 nuclear agreement. The vicious propaganda has simply assumed a more subtle form but the underlying objective is to undermine the Islamic Republic because it has established a successful Islamic model that is a challenge to the Western-imposed world order.
Rape is a very serious charge to be leveled against anyone. When a Saudi diplomat was accused of repeatedly raping two Nepalis women for several months, the police registered a case against him. But under pressure from the Saudi regime, the diplomat was whisked out of India last night. Isn't rape a very serious crime and don't women have any rights to secure justice for the horrific indignity they have suffered...
The Rahbar has warned officials in the Islamic Republic that they should be vigilant against the enemy's 'intellectual, cultural and political infiltration.' He said this was more dangerous than economic infiltration. The Rahbar's warning came against the backdrop of the JCPOA that has led people including some officials in the Islamic Republic to assume that the US would be welcomed back in Iran...
In what must be a first, a court in Kuwait has sentenced seven people to death and another 15 to prison terms for aiding and abetting terrorism. Today's sentences were handed to people that had connived with a Saudi suicide bomber who killed 27 people in Imam Sadiq Mosque in Kuwait City on June 26. More than 230 others were injured...
Should Muslims be following Saudi Arabia, as ISNA and Fiqh Council of North America say, or the Qur'an and Hadith? The question has grave implications for Muslims in North America because the start of Ramadan, celebration of Eid al Fitr and Eid al Adha cause endless confusion. This year, ISNA and Fiqh Council have been caught in their own contradiction. But don't expect them to change their erroneous ways...
The illegal Zionist squatters are at it again: storming the Masjid al-Aqsa, vandalising it and attacking Muslim worshippers. The armed Zionist marauders are backed by the occupation regime's police and other forces. Palestinians are left alone to defend the first qibla of Muslims and the third holiest site in Islam. What will it take to arouse the Muslim world to realize their responsibility toward Masjid al-Aqsa...
Jeremy Corbyn has shaken British politics to their roots. A quintessential anti-establishment figure and anti-war activist, he won leadership of the Labour Party by a landslide securing nearly 60% of the vote. He has also energized the youth and promised to make Britain more tolerant and reduce the grotesque levels of inequality. While he will face many challenges, his leadership campaign has shown he has what it takes to mobilize people...
Another disaster has struck pilgrims in Makkah. This time a construction crane collapsed inside the Masjid al Haram as pilgrims were busy performing the tawwaf. At least 107 pilgrims were killed and another 238 injured. The floor of the Haram was soiled with blood in the most holy of Islam's places...
Try as they may, the predatory Western powers and their regional puppets--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Israel--cannot hide the fact that the uprising in Syria is a foreign-backed and supported conspiracy. Julian Assanage of WikiLeaks fame has confirmed yet again in his latest book, the WikiLeaks Files, that as early as 2006, the US had planned to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad...
Why has the refugee crisis evoked such strong sentiments in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere? We look at the figures that provide clue to what is afoot...
Yemen's revolutionary forces dealt a massive blow to Saudi, Emirati troops killing more than 100 of them. The biggest losses, some 75 troops killed, were suffered by the Emiratis when a rocket fired by Ansaralllah scored a direct hit at an ammunition dump at al-Safer Airport in Ma'arib province causing a huge explosion. A Yemeni general has warned that Saudi cities--Jeddah, Abha and Riyadh--would now be targeted.
The UN Inquiry Commission on Syria has just confirmed what the rest of the world has known for more than four years: the war on Syria is foreign-instigated with mercenaries indulging in rape, murder and mayhem. The UN report coincides with the heart-wrenching story of a Syrian family fleeing from Kobani. The body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed ashore yesterday in Turkey. The family had applied for asylum in Canada but was rejected.
Who is behind the crisis in Lebanon? A genuine concern of the people--piles of garbage in Beirut--has been turned into a political crisis with demands for the government's resignation. How would that solve the garbage crisis or indeed the lack of electricity and water in the country has not been explained. There is mounting evidence that Western, Zionist and Saudi agents are involved in instigating trouble. Their ultimate target is Hizbullah.
Spreading poisonous propaganda against Muslims and calling for war on Islam are a growing industry. A notorious American professor who has lied about his academic and military credentials has joined the list. He does so while holding the position of "assistant professor" at the West Point Military Academy where American cadets are trained. He is likely to poison the minds of some American officers.
Public executions have become alarmingly high in the 'Saudi' kingdom. In a report released on August 24, Amnesty International has raised concerns about the arbitrary nature of the Saudi judicial system that does not meet even the minimum standards of justice. Over the past 12 months, 175 persons have been executed; that is one person every other day. But don't wait for protests from London or Washington.
Saudi army commanders are known for putting on a show of bravado but are grossly incompetent. Major General Abdul Rahman bin Saad al Shahrani was killed as he was out inspecting troops in the border region. The Saudi Press Agency carried an announcement from the Saudi Armed Forces today confirming his death. Yemen is turning into a Saudi graveyard.
Pakistan's best known former ISI chief, General Hamid Gul passed away in the evening of August 15, 2015. He was well known for his support of the Afghan jihad as well as the struggle of the Kashmiris to overthrow the yoke of Indian imperialism. He was an outspoken critic of Western policy and a strategic analyst expressing his views without fear or favor.
War is murky business but it gets even dirtier when the enemy's alleged crimes are amplified and those of their own covered up. This is what is happening in the besieged villages of Kafarya and Foua in Syria's Idlib province. The Jabhat al Nusra terrorists have perpetrated a bloodbath of civilians but there is nary a mention of this in either the Western corporate media or that of the Arab world. Sarah's letter (pictured) is given below.
Multiple bomb attacks in different parts of Turkey point to the problems President Recep Tayip Erdogan has created for himself. He only has himself to blame for refusing to listen to the people by respecting their wishes that they so clearly demonstrated during the June 7 elections. The AKP was reduced to a minority in parliament.
When you dig a hole for others, there is a risk of falling into it yourself. The Najdi Bedouins whose obscurantist ideas of Wahhabism have spawned the Takfiri terrorists are now getting a dose of their own medicine. The Takfiri terrorists attacked and killed 15 people, 12 of them members of an elite force, in a mosque in Abha Mosque.
Four years after his sentencing, Sheikh Abgul Suleymanov is turning into a major symbol against the corrupt Aliyev regime.
To bring clarity to the issue of media imperialism, Crescent International conducted an interview with a veteran Muslim journalist Roshan Muhammed Salih.
1What the Najdi Bedouins ensconced in Riyadh had set out to do--regime change in Damascus--has come to haunt them. Think of digging a hole for others and falling into it. The Saudis have been forced by circumstances to appear to change their policy of supporting the takfiri terrorists for regime change in Syria because the group poses far greater threat to Saudi regime itself.
Toronto has the distinction of holding the largest Quds Day rally in North America. Toronto’s rallies are attended not only by Muslims but also fair-minded, justice-seeking Christians, Jews, and members of other faiths.
Attacking and killing Palestinians is nothing unusual for the Zionists. The burning death of 18-month-old baby Ali Saad Dawabsheh, surpassed even the Zionists' horrific record. It puts them in the same league as the takfiri terrorists, Dash (aka ISIL/ISIS). They have the same mindset: total disregard for human life.
The anticipated release of Sheikh Taleh Bagirov from prison is likely to have wider implications for the political landscape in Azerbaijan. While the regime and secular opposition forces have lost credibility, the Islamic movement is gaining strength and adherents. The Aliyev regime, however, will not take it lying down and may strike in its customary vicious ways.
This report is from an Aleppo resident whose identity is protected for the sake of his entire family’s safety and security. They are living through the daily hardships of life in an externally created war zone. Water and electricity shortages, NATO- and US-backed terrorists embedded in multiple areas of the city creating random buffer zones where the risk of being sniped or shelled is a daily occurrence.
In another act of illegality, Turkey and US have announced that they are creating a no-fly zone over Syria that would be 90 km long and will include territory 50 km inside Syria. The two predatory powers have vowed to attack any Syrian planes that enter this territory. Think of air piracy and gangsterism!
Marking the end of the glorious month of Ramadan, the Crescent International Editorial Board and staff would like to wish all our readers a Happy Eid and pray the months ahead will be less painful than what we have witnessed so far.
Organizers of the Quds Day rally can be truly proud of their achievement in bringing out thousands of people onto the streets of Toronto for the annual Quds Day rally. Toronto has the proud tradition of hosting the largest rally in North America. This year was no exception despite the Pan Am Games that had resulted in many roads being closed.
An Iranian NGO has found a novel way to express solidarity with the oppressed and brutalized Palestinian people. A mass Iftar (breaking of fast) was organized at the Aqsa Compound on July 8 by the International Union of Unified Ummah. Despite attempts by the Zionists to prevent Palestinians from entering the Aqsa Compound, the Iftar went ahead and was a huge success.
Iran's Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif has told his negotiating partners from the P5+1 countries to make up their minds: do they want an agreement or continue with coercion that has never yielded results. “Getting to yes requires the courage to compromise, the self-confidence to be flexible, the maturity to be reasonable, the wisdom to set aside illusions and the audacity to break old habits," he told them.
True to their violent and illegal nature, the Zionist occupiers of Palestine attacked the Gaza-bound Swedish humanitarian boat, the Marriane on the high seas and pirated it. All 20 passengers on board including the former President of Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki and members of the European Parliamentar were also kidnapped and taken against their will to the Israeli port of Ashdod for interrogation.
Another horror has been perpetrated in the US, this time by a 21-year-old white racist supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina. Dylann Roof shot and killed nine members of a black church while they were studying the bible in the evening on June 17. The police have described the killings a hate crime and the state governor has called for the death penalty for the accused.
While unable to directly block UN-brokered peace talks on Yemen in Geneva that started today, the Najdi Bedouins, displaying childish behavior, forced the Egyptian regime to refuse permission for the plane carrying Yemeni representatives from flying over its territory. In the absence of Ansarullah and representatives of the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the talks are bound to fail.
Some human beings are less important than others. Take the case of the Rohingya Muslims that have been attacked, hacked to pieces and burnt alive by "peaceful" Buddhist monks. They have found few supporters and even less people willing to speak on their behalf. Even the Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi refuses to speak for their rights. Pity the Rohingya Muslims adrift at sea, and indeed around the world.
There is chaos in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. The Arabian rulers have unleashed the takfiri terrorists to indulge in macabre rituals of slitting throats, raping women and burning people alive when they are not eating their organs. The Zionists and imperialists are fully behind this mayhem. While the Arabians kill Muslims, the Zionists smugly watch all this.
The Turkish cabinet led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu resigned today and was then asked by President Recep Tayip Erdogan to continue in their posts until a new cabinet is formed and sworn in by the newly elected parliament. Turkey is heading for political uncertainty because of the erratic policies of Erdogan. People are no longer happy with his performance as was evident from the June 7 parliamentary elections.
Turkish voters have repudiated President Erdogan's attempts to change the constitution by making the president all powerful. By denying his not only the two-third majority but even a majority in the new parliament, the Turkish people have cut Erdogan to size.
Since 911, Western regimes have launched a crusade against the Muslim world as well as against Muslims residing in the West. It makes little difference whether they are naturalized citizens or were born there, Muslims are presented as the "other" and targeted. Scandalous allegations are made against them to evoke fear in the general population while drastically curtailing the rights of Muslims. Lord Nazir Ahmed speaks out against this.
The intensity of the Najdi Bedouins' hatred of Islam and Muslims and their love for the Zionist war criminals was evident in Washington on June 4. General (retired) Anwar Eshki of "Saudi" Arabia met and warmly embraced Dore Gold, designated Director General at the Israeli foreign ministry. Both men spoke of their strong desire to have close relations with each other against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Muslims please note!
The Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei, addressing a large gathering of faithful Iranians at the burial site of the Founder of the Islamic Republic on Thursday June 4, said the Imam Khomeini school of thought was the promising roadmap drawn for the Iranian people.
Claiming to be the Khalifah (caliph) of Muslims is not a trifle matter; it carries grave responsibilities in Islam. Unfortunately, even a venerable institution like the Khilafah has been turned into a plaything by mass murderers at the behest of their Wahhabi-Najdi masters as well as imperialists and Zionists. We examine the case of two self-proclaimed caliphs: Mullah Omar and Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
For more than a century, Aboriginal children were subjected to horrific torture, sexual abuse and other forms of degrading treatment in a deliberate policy of assimilation. An official report has just confirmed this but the Harper regime is refusing to commit to the 94 recommendations made in the report headed by Justice Murray Sinclair. What hope can there be for reconciliation?
There was a howling mob of Iranian monarchists, the MKO munafiqeen and Communist Party of Iran outside the Islamic Society of York Region premises where Imam Khomeini's anniversary was being commemorated on May 31. Sobre speeches inviting deep reflection were observed inside while the disparate goups outside started to fight each other. When the police intervened, they attacked them as well. They have the gall to complain and demand freedom!
Islamic Republic's nuclear negotiators have made clear that there will be no discussion about visits to military sites or interviews with Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi was quoted by IRNA that this message has been communicated to the other side.
"Saudi" royals are nothing if not vulgar. Take the case of Mohammad bin Salman, Defence Minister and Deputy Crown Prince of "Saudi" Arabia. He is on a honeymoon--not with his first wife, incidentally--while his air force kills thousands of innocent Yemenis and "Saudi" soldiers die in border skirmishes. Many "Saudi" soldiers prefer to flee rather than fight. Why die for a dying dynasty?
With thousands of civilians murdered in "Saudi" bombing raids in Yemen, the Medical Academy of the Islamic Republic of Iran has urged the UN Secretary General to take note of the ongoing genocide and urged immediate action. The Iranian doctors have asked the UN chief to not only stop the genocide but also facilitate the delivery much needed medicines and food to the injured people of Yemen.
The Najdi Bedouins have a strange sense of peace. Even while they resumed the savage bombing of Yemen after declaring a halt to attacks five days earlier, they organized a so-called peace conference in Riyadh. The Houthis, the principal aggrieved party boycotted the farcical conference because the "Saudis", far from being honest peace brokers, are the main aggressors against the people of Yemen.
The Najdi Bedouins are living up to their savage nature. They have just advertised the hiring of eight new executioners because the current number of head choppers is simply not enough to do the job. The executioners need no qualifications or training; they only need to be willing to chop heads, in public!
The Islamic resistance movement, Hizbullah, has inflicted massive blows on the takfiri terrorists in Qalamoun mountains on the Lebanese-Syrian border. Hizbullah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah declared this in a televised address tonight (Saturday May 16 night). He said at least 300 kms of area had been cleansed of the takfiri terrorists.
The Arabian rulers led by the Najdi Bedouins, are like frightened mice. They want the US to provide them assurances that their illegitimate hold on power would be guaranteed. The US is unwilling yet it lashes out at Islamic Iran accusing it of supporting terrorism. The US and Najdi Bedouins are the real instigators and financiers of terrorism. Al Qaeda, the Takfiris and a host of other terrorist outfits are the poisoned fruit of Wahhabism.
Developments in the region are not helping the illegitimate rulers in the Muslim East (aka the Middle East). They were expected to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington on May 13 and 14 at which more multi-billion dollar arms contracts were to be signed but the US refused to provide them a security umbrella they were seeking. Four of them have opted out of the meeting!
The Bani Saud thought they could scare the Ansarullah fighters in Yemen with threats and dropping bombs and after a few days, or at most a couple of weeks, they would beg for mercy and surrender. This has not happened. Instead, the Bani Saud are now stuck in the Yemeni quagmire. They have dropped all their original demands and simply asking that the Ansarullah respect the ceasefire the "Saudis" have proposed starting May 12.
The "Saudi" capital Riyadh is beginning to look like Detroit or New York. Just as American police officers are ruthless and shoot without even asking any questions, the "Saudi" police are equally notorious. But in recent weeks, they have faced a string of attacks in which policemen have been shot and killed. The latest was an attack on a patrol commander who was shot and killed today in the south of the capital.
After spending 13 years in various prisons including 10 years at the notorious torture chamber at Guantanamo Bay undergoing torture, Omar Khadr walked out as a free man on bail. His lawyer Dennis Edney is largely credited with securing his release despite the determined efforts of the Harper regime to prevent Khadr's release. Justice has triumphed over meanness and hatred. Most Canadians are not bigots, only a small minority are.
The armies of Arabian dictators have joined the US and its allies in war games in Jordan. Forces from nine Arabian countries are involved. Their purpose is clear: to find a pretext to launch a direct attack on Syria using ground troops to overthrow the government of President Bashar al Asad who has held out against the grand foreign conspiracy against all odds.
Countries subjected to US-led sanctions are finding creative ways to overcome their ill effects as demonstrated by arrangements made between Iran and Russia. Arrangements have been made for exporters in the two countries to receive payments in local currency using branches in their respective capitals. This is a major step forward in thwarting the illegally-imposed sanctions on both countries.
There is a humanitarian disaster in the making in Yemen. The Najdi Bedouins have imposed a total blockade of the country preventing food, water and medicines from reaching the people. Iran plans to send a humanitarian aid ship that would include a large number of international peace activists. This would be a repeat of the aid convoys sent to Zionist-besieged Gaza.
The Americans under orders from their Zionist masters, are pushing for the break-up of Iraq. This has once again become clear from the House Armed Services Committee bill that was presented on April 27. The redrawing of borders in the Middle East is part of the broader plan to safeguard the Zionist state by destroying other states in the region.
Zionist society is deeply racist. Ethiopian Jews, like the Palestinians face the brunt of this racism. Ethiopian Jews are expected to sacrifice their lives for the racist entity but they are not treated as equal citizens. Instead, they routinely face police brutality, just like that other great democracy, the US where police brutality has been rampant targeting and killing unarmed African-Americans.
Face of the future king of the Bani Saud but for how long? By appointing his own son as Deputy Crown Prince, King Salman has opened the way for his upstart and vicious son Muhammad to become future king. He dismissed Muqrin as Crown Prince as well as deputy prime minister although according to the archaic constitution, it was Muqrin's turn to be king. Was he dismissed because his mother is Yemeni?
Police brutality against blacks has escalated alarmingly in the US. There appears to be no accountability for these mass murderers in uniform that are being increasingly militarized. Baltimore City has witnessed the latest incident of a 25-year-old black man being lynched by police in their custody.
Zionist crimes in Gaza were so egregious that even the UN has been forced to confirm them. Summary of an inquiry commission's findings were released on April 27 confirming that the Zionists attacked seven UN-run schools killing 44 Palestinian civilians and injuring 227 others.
Not all Western writers have succumbed to Islamophobia. This has become evident in the way some writers, among them Francine Prose (shown in photo) and Peter Carey have reacted to PEN American Center's award to the Islamophobic magazine Charlie Hebdo. They have decided to boycott the award ceremony on May 5 in New York.
The IAEA has been forced to retract its allegation, made in March, that Iran was not being transparent with its nuclear activities. The IAEA head, Yukiya Amano appears to have a special aversion towards Iran but he had to eat crow when the IAEA April report admitted that Iran is fully compliant. Negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 group of countries are meeting in Vienna to finalize the deal by June 30.
The slow wheels of justice have finally turned granting bail to Omar Khadr, the wrongfully convicted Canadian citizen who was captured in Eastern Afghanistan in July 2002. Barely 15 and badly wounded, he miraculously survived two gaping wounds when bullets pierced his body completely. He was endlessly tortured and confessions extracted thus were used in a military court to convict him.
Peace and justice loving Canadians have not been swayed by the nasty propaganda of the Saudi regime and its supporters in the west that their attack on Yemen is justified. Instead, hundreds of people braved strong winds to denounce the illegitimate Saudi regime for its equally illegitimate war on the poor people of Yemen. There were also demands to put the Saudi rulers on trial for war crimes.
If news about the killing of Ezzet Ibrahim al Douri is correct, it would definitely be a big blow to the terrorist operations in Iraq. He was the one who facilitated the alliance between the takfiri terrorists and Ba'athist military personnel.
The UN Security Council has once again shown that it is a tool in the hands of the US and its allies. On April 14, it passed a resolution presented by Arab dicators demanding not a halt to Saudi-led aggression against Yemen but the disarming of Houthi militias that are struggling for their rights. Further, the resolution put a travel ban on a number of anti-regime leaders as well as a freeze on their assets.
The Hindu fascist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi has made no secret of its plan to incorporate the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir into India, in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Now using the pretext of resettling Hindu Pandits who were allegedly forced to flee Kashmir, it has been proposed that special secure colonies were built for Hindus to resettle them in Kashmir.
The Arabian potentates are furious with Pakistan for taking a sensible stand over the Saudi-led assault on Yemen. Pakistan's parliament voted overwhelmingly not to get militarily involved in the fighting and instead work towards a resolution of the crisis. The Arabian dictators think that is not good enough; Pakistan should jump the moment they say so. For once, this is not the case.
The Saudi-led aerial attacks on Yemen are killing a lot of civilians but they are not likely to achieve their strategic objective. Will the Saudis launch a ground invasion? It seems highly unlikely since they are rank amateurs and cannot even scramble an egg in a hurry much less launch a successful ground operation. That explains why they want to hire mercenaries to fight their war.
The Rahbar of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei has cautioned about reading too much into the framework agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries. He pointed out that specific details will determine its final outcome. While he expressed support for Iran's negotiating team, he said he did not have much confidence in the honesty and integrity of the other side.
Drive-by shootings have increased in Riyadh and other parts of the medieval kingdom that uses the erroneous title, Saudi Arabia. The shootings appear to be related to the Saudi attack on Yemen that is illegal under International Law. Saudi rulers may be charged with war crimes. The war may also short-circuit the tortuous existence of the archaic family-ruled kingdom.
The Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei tells the visiting Turkish president Recep Tayip Erdogan to not exacerbate the crisis in Yemen and Syria by aiding the warmongers or the takfiris terrorists. Will Erdogan take heed? Time will tell but his past conduct does not give much hope. Still the Iranians were as gracious as ever in hosting the Turkish president.
US President Barack Obama has given a blunt message to the illegitimate Arabian rulers: your problems are internal--lack of representation, high unemployment and corruption--rather than any imaginary threat from Iran. The message can only add to the jitters of these frightened rulers.
A joint session of the Pakistani parliament has been called for Monday April 6 to consider the rising crisis in Yemen as a result of "Saudi" aggression. The Najdi Bedouins want the Pakistan army to be deployed to defend their southern border and perhaps also join in a possible Saudi land invasion of Yemen where the Houthis have made impressive gains. Will Pakistan be forced to join another war?
Iran and the P5+1 group of countries have reached a framework agreement after marathon sessions over the last eight days. Drafting of the agreement with all its technical details will begin soon to complete the process by June 30. Once completed, all sanctions against Iran whether by the UN, US or EU will be lifted in return for Iran limiting its nuclear activities for 10 years.
The The takfiri terrorists have been dealt a severe military and psychological blow. They have been defeated by a combination of Iraqi government forces and Sunni and Shia militias in Takrit, hometown of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Husain. It appears Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, will be next in a campaign to fold up the Saudi-Zionist-American backed fitnah.
True to form, the "Saudis" can only kill civilians as they have been doing in Yemen over the past several days. In their latest assault, at least 45 people were killed at al-Mazrak refugee camp in north west Yemen. If the fighting drags, there is every likelihood that the "Saudi" regime itself will collapse.
In the absence of confirmed news, western media outlets have resorted to their favorite ploy of wild speculation aimed at projecting the western point of view. Iranian officials have dampened such speculation saying good progress has been made but some tough decisions need to be made by the other side. The next two days will tell whether a framework agreement can be finalized.
Has the "Saudi" regime shot itself in the foot by attacking Yemen? Motivated by extreme hatred of Houthis as well as complete paranoia of people getting their legitimate rights, the medieval kingdom has launched air strikes in Yemen causing huge civilian casualties. A number of other oppressive regimes have joined them in this war of aggression. There may be war crimes charges levelled against "Saudi" rulers.
The Bedouins from Najd, the "Saudi" clan has never fought the enemies of Islam but they are quick to attack Muslims. Their forces have brutalized the people of Bahrain; they have unleashed the liver-eating terrorists in Syria and Iraq and have now started bombing revolutionary fighters in Yemen. Perhaps, they may have overstretched themselves. Their Yemeni misadventure may turn out to be their undoing. If so, it would come none too soon!
If a Muslim is involved in any violent activity, it is called terrorism. If there is a non-Muslim, it is not terrorism! This has become the standard fare with law enforcement agencies, government officials and the media in most Western countries. Nor surprising then, that an average person believes the allegation that all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims! Read on...
The US is involved in a slick game to hoodwink war weary Americans about its true intentions in Afghanistan. Despite repeatedly announcing that US combat mission in Afghanistan ended in December 2014, it is still continuing. The US has kept 10,000 or more troops and these are likely to remain in the country beyond 2016.
The US is addicted to war regardless of who is in the White House--a Democrat or Republican. There is also increasing opposition to such wars as yesterday's protest rallies in LA and Washington DC showed. Organizations such as ANSWER and CodePink have stood up to the warmongers and mobilized public opinion. More Americans need to join such rallies to end the violence and aggression.
Muslims are under pressure and suffer oppression virtually everywhere. We look at the situation of Muslims in Georgia by interviewing Mirtagi Asadov, Chariman of the Supreme Administration of Georgian Muslims.
Women are greatly oppressed in Afghanistan's tribal society but the lynching and burning of a 27-year-old woman in Kabul has horrified people worldwide. In Kabul, women took the unprecedented step of carrying the coffin of the victim, Farkhunda, to the cemetery amid calls for the arrest and punishment of the culprits and the police that stood by watching the mob perpetrate the crime.
The takfiri terrorists backed by the primitive Saudi regime only know how to destroy and kill. Their latest outrage was committed in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, where two takfiri suicide bombers in a hurry to go to hell, blew themselves up inside two mosques killing 130 people as they had gathered for Jumuah (Friday) Prayers. Hundreds of others were badly injured. The takfiris claimed responsibility for the attack, as reported by the BBC.
Harper's cynical fear-mongering and Islamophobic rantings to push through the oppressive Bill C-51 have not gone unchallenged. On March 14, tens of thousands of Canadians rallied in 70 cities across Canada to oppose the bill. It is a serious assault on Canadian civil liberties and will criminalize dissent. Here is Ken Stone's presentation at the Hamilton & District Labour Council held in the Council chambers of Hamilton City Hall.
You can run but you can't hide seems to be the message being delivered by one ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh to another, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Saudis forced Saleh to resign in February 2012; the Houthis drove Hadi from power last month and put him under house arrest in Sana'a. Hadi fled to Aden making it his temporary capital but trouble seems to have followed him there as today's attack on Aden Airport showed.
By appealing to the deep-seated racism of the Zionists, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party once again came out ahead with 30 seats in Israeli elections. He will now have to cobble together a coalition in the snake pit of Israeli politics. Netanyahu has vowed no Palestinian state, more illegal settlements and an even more belligerent policy. The choices for the Palestinians are now very clear.
An Egyptian court has handed down another batch of mass death sentences. The victims include leader of the Ikhwan al Muslimoon Mohamed Badie and 13 others. An additional 31 persons in prison will be sentenced on April 11. Egyptian courts have earned the dubious distinction of delivering farcical verdicts that have nothing to do with the law and everything to do with pleasing their masters in uniform.
The US has been forced to shut down its fortress-like consulates in several "Saudi" cities because of security threats. While the Saudi embassy in Riyadh did not specify the threat, it closed its consular services and warned Americans in the kingdom to "take extra precautions." In recent weeks, several westerners have been attacked or killed.
Has the US finally realized the futility of its policy in Syria? US Secretary of State John Kerry's latest statement seems to give the clearest indication that US policy of trying to topple the government of President Bashar al Asad has failed. Instead, takfiri monsters have emerged that go around beheading people, eating their organs and burning people alive. Even America's warlords seem to have had enough. Kerry wants to talk to Asad. Good!
Canadians from all walks of life denounced today Stephen Harper's fear mongering and Islamophobic bill that is being rushed through parliament. Rallies were held in Toronto and 70 other cities attended by tens of thousands of people. It was the strongest expression yet of the rejection of the politics of hate and fear mongering by the right wing Conservative party.
Egypt under the pharaoh General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a basket case but regional potentates are going to pump another $12 billion into its economy to shore it up. They are wasting their money. The thugs in uniform are professional thieves. Besides, Egypt has been pushed, unfortunately beyond recovery. The tyrants are clinging to each other in hopes of saving their own skins.
Is the Zionist State's nastiest politician about to be consigned to the dustbin of history? Opinion polls show that Netanyahu's ruling Likud-led coalition is trailing behind the Zionist Union alliance for the March 17 elections. Would the victory of the Labour-led coalition make any difference as far as the long-oppressed Palestinians are concerned?
Not only the US military but even the media including European have resorted to using drones. If the military drones incinerate people with hellfire missiles, the media drones will capture you in all your 'natural' glory. Nobody will be able to hide anymore; not even in their bedroom or bathroom. Get used to it: Big Brother is really watching you!
American senators are in the pocket of the Zionist lobby but they have just proved they are also dumb. In an attempt to "teach" the Iranian leadership how the US Constitution works, they made the preposterous claim that the senate "ratifies" treaties. It does not; only the president of the United State has the authority to ratify a treaty by signing it. Who elected these "geniuses" to the Senate?
It is open season on Muslims in the US. In the wake of the triple murder in White Chapel (NC) last month, a recent immigrant from Iraq was shot and killed in Dallas, TX as he watched his first snowflakes in life while his wife took photographs. Islamophobia is running rampant and no Muslim seems to be safe in America anymore.
The American spy agency, CIA, is going rogue, officially. It no longer feels the need to indulge in illegal acts covertly; the gloves are off and the whole world will now be under total surveillance. How long before everyone is under US lock down because some warmonger in Washington feels an individual, group or country poses a “threat” to US interests?
There are strong indications that Hamas-Iran relations have gone back to their old warmth. These had been marred by Hamas' negative attitude over the crisis in Syria. Now that it has become apparent that the conspiracy to overthrow Bashar al Asad's government has failed, Hamas has sobered up. This is a positive development.
The Saudi regime and its court system are run by primitive savages. This was proved yet again when a gang-rape victim was sentenced to 200 lashes and six-month jail term for speaking to the media against the court verdict. The rapists--seven men--got away lightly.
Turkey's involvement in supporting the takfiri terrorists in Syria has been talked about but only now has it been officially acknowledge. A statement from the Office of the Governor of Denizli province confirmed that a terrorist commander injured in Syria had been admitted to hospital in Denizli and was receiving treatment there.
Islamic Iran's negotiators have made clear that if the P5+1 group of countries led by the US are really serious about a deal over Tehran's nuclear program, then all sanctions must be lifted. The latest round of talks have been underway in the Swiss city of Montreux. Iran's Foreign Minister Dr Javad Zarif and his US counterpart met yesterday and talks are continuing at expert level today. March 31 has been set as a deadline for a deal.
Benjamin Netanyahu is supremely arrogant. He displayed his arrogance--and hypocrisy--once again when he came to address the US Congress without even consulting the White House. Barack Obama was visibly upset at such an insult. Netanyahu thinks he can insult the American president and get away with it. He came to rant about Iran's non-existent nuclear bomb program. What hypocrisy when the Zionist regime has 400 nuclear bombs!
The US is a virtual police state where everything an individual does is monitored. America's notorious spy agencies now want to extend this power to hack into any computer in the world. The proposal has come from an Advisory Committee of the US Justice Department. What kind of justice is being proposed and what happened to the independence and sovereignty of other countries and the privacy of individuals?
What is the reality of Al Jazeera's "leaks" over differences between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his intelligence chiefs? Are these really genuine leaks, carefully planted stories or they are meant to achieve an altogether a different agenda? Read on...
Appalling conditions in Texas prison leads to riots by inmates causing massive damage. The privately-run institution--prisons are increasingly being privatized--has very poor living conditions and due to lack of oversight and rules, many prisoners are physically and sexually abused.
The US military-industrial-banking complex and its political agents have no permanent friends, only permanent interests. They will use anybody, including people that they call friends to achieve their nefarious agenda, as is becoming apparent in how so-called "moderate Sunni" Muslims are being used to advance the US agenda against the takfiris, the very creation of America!
The artificial and un-Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia has seldom known stability if we discount the reign of terror that is imposed through the sword. With the death of the aged King Abdullah and the line of successors also in very old age, the kingdom faces the prospect of oblivion. Its days appear numbered.
The takfiris are a threat not only to the region but to the entire world according to Hizbullah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah. He was speaking on the occasion of the commemoration ceremonies for martyred leaders of Hizbullah.
The Zionists can do no wrong, even when they murder, in cold blood unarmed non-violent peace activists. Rachel Corrie, a young American peace activist was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in March 2003. Her grieving family has been seeking an explanation from the Zionist regime and went all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court but to no avail. The US finances the Zionist regime to the tune of some $15 billion annually.
When is an act of terrorism not terrorism? When the perpetrator is not a Muslim. The corporate media in the West, especially the US, is on a Crusade to demonize Muslims but virtually ignores acts of terrorism against innocent Muslims as happened at White Chapel, NC, February 10 where three young American Muslim students, a young husband and wife and her sister (photograph on the left), were brutally murdered by a man shown in photo on the right.
Afghanistan’s US-created artificial government has run into serious problems as various factions demand privileges for supporting the two contending candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah. The government appears to be dysfunctional.
In light of the intensification of Islamophobia in the West--Europe and North America--the Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has issued the following message to the youth there. We reproduce it in full for the record.
The death of King Abdullah has finally opened up space for the next generation of Saudi royals to step into the limelight. The new King Salman announced that Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, currently serving as Interior Minister, has been appointed Deputy Crown Prince. This ensures his position as future king from among the grandsons of Abd al Aziz ibn Saud. Mohammed's choice as future king reveals the regime's nervousness about internal threats.
rue to its criminal nature, the Zionist regime's military helicopter fired two missiles at a vehicle carrying six Hizbullah fighters and an Iranian general in the area of Syria's Amal Farms yesterday. All seven were martyred in the attack. Amal Farms are inside Syrian territory in the town of Quneitra and are separated from the Zionist occupied Golan Heights that also belong to Syria.
Hizbullah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah has spoken out forcefully against the takfiris' attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. At the same time, he condemned Western regimes for facilitating the promotion of these takfiri outfits to advance their own nefarious agenda. He correctly rejected th binary categorization of either being with Hebdo or with the terrorists. Most Muslims condemn both.
Charlie Hebdo is cashing in on the blood of its slain journalists and cartoonists. And it continues to be as provocative as before realizing that insulting the Prophet (pbuh) sells well because most people have been turned into Islamophobes.
Different strokes for different folks? The breast-beating over the killing of journalists working for the Islamophobic French magazine Charlie Hebdo stands in sharp contrast with lack of concern for three Al Jazeera journalists languishing in Egypt's dungeons. Equally revealing is Western silence over the killing of 10 journalists last year by the Zionist regime.
The secularists in Egypt are gradually waking up to the reality of the military's brutal nature. It brooks no opposition. The secularists thought that by joining the campaign against the elected government of President Mohamed Mursi, they would have a free hand to continue their activities. They have had a rude shock: many of them have been jailed and their best known figure, Wael Ghoneim has fled into exile.
There was no let up in the takfiris' brutal campaign in Syria last year. At least 76,000 people were killed that included 17,790 civilians, among them 3,501 children. Given these horrendous casualties, 2015 is likely to be just as deadly if not worse. Syria has been destroyed all as part of the US-Saudi-Zionist plan to weaken the Resistance Front against Zionist aggression. The takfiris are part of this diabolical plot.
Press Release - ICIT announces the availability of its Digital Library service.
There is no let up in the US-Saudi-Zionist-backed takfiris' murderous campaign in Iraq. The Christian New Year was ushered in with more killings of innocents. The year 2014 was declared the bloodiest since 2007 according to figures released by the UN. The year 2015 looks like even bloodier unless the takfiri terrorists are stopped in their tracks and put out of business, and soon.
Islamophobia is rampant in the Jewish community as Menachem Freedom found out. He believes in justice and fairness and expressed horror at the support being expressed for the extremist group, the Jewish Defence League.
The illegitimate Azeri regime is pushing the country towards civil war because of its brutal tactics against the opposition.
India is under the grip of Hindu Nazis and their true colors, always known, are becoming clearer by the day. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signaled that he plans to embrace the Zionists more tightly and abandon support for the Palestinians.
While celebrating the birthday of two great Prophets of Allah, the question that must be addressed in earnest is why are so many people killing each other and indulging in other violent acts.
With Muslims engrossed in the fitna created by the takfiris, the Zionists are busy tightening their grip on al-Masjid al-Aqsa and digging their claws deeper into Palestine.
The takfiris and their backers must be relentlessly exposed because they have caused havoc in the Ummah.
By destroying the sacred sites of Islam, the Saudis are wiping out Islamic history. The Zionists are involved in a similar criminal enterprise in Occupied Palestine.
Muslims must take control of their own destiny if they want to make progress in the world and end their current plight.
The murderous attack on the Islamophobic French magazine Charlie Hebdo is being used to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria and make fascism respectable. Pity the marginalized Muslims of France, indeed anywhere else in the Western world.
Hiding behind the excuse that ISIS might threaten Americans, the Pentagon refuses to release torture photos of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. Those crimes were committed in 2003 when ISIS did not exist. In any case, ISIS is a creation of the US and its Arabian allies such as Saudi Arabia.
The upbeat message by US commander General John Campbell that Nato is leaving Afghanistan in better shape and has given the Afghans hope was belied by the secret flag lowering ceremony in Kabul. It was not even broadcast live. Do victorious armies hold ceremonies in secret?
Not only are the US and its allies not serious in fighting the takfiris but they are actually supporting, financing and arming them. There is ample evidence of this despite loud claims by the US to fight them. The real aim is the destruction and destabilization of the entire region.
The sordid tale of how the CIA buys journalists and the manner in which their newspapers facilitate such activities. Is there any such thing as ‘objective’ media? Read and ponder.
As globe trotting Americans head out on holidays abroad, the US State Department has issued an advisory warning them about the potential risks that lurk everywhere. While we consider some of them, Americans might wish to reflect why their government is so hated globally.
While a legal victory of sorts for Hamas, the European Union top court's ruling removing the resistance group from the list of terrorist organizations will have little practical impact. Hamas officials have welcomed the ruling; the Zionists are furious despite the court saying a freeze on Hamas funds would continue.
In an attack on a school in Peshawar, capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province bordering Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 146 people, most of them children. Their spokesman said it was to avenge the military operation against them in North Waziristan. The attack lasted several hours and ended only when the seven terrorists were killed. The army is sweeping the area looking for more terrorists.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an internationally renowned scholar. He is also head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. Yet at the behest of the Egyptian dictator, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Interpol on December 5 issued an arrest warrant against the Sheikh. Will Interpol act on it and if so, what ramifications will it have?
America's pretense about fighting the takfiri terrorists is gradually being unmasked. In a new expose, Martin Chulov of the Guardian reveals, based on his conversations with a former detainee at Camp Bucca where the terrorist leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was also held in 2004, that he was given wide access to other groups as well as promoted as a “mediator” whenever disputes arose between the Camp's inmates.
International Criminal Court complaint filed against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice and Gonzales. In the wake of the US Senate report into CIA torture, the complaint by respected International Law Professor Francis Boyle against former US officials assumes greater urgency and significance
Report says CIA misled the public and policymakers about interrogation program. American doctors (psychologists) were also inducted into the program and even participated in the torture of detainees although the Senate report continues to use the expression “interrogation program.” Two doctors set up a company and collected $80 million for torturing detainees! President Obama says we want to put this behind us.
The US economy has taken a tumble faster than anticipated. This was confirmed by the International Monetary Fund when it released figures on December 4 showing that China has surpassed the US as the world's largest economy. America had been the world's dominant economic power since 1872. No more.
Saudi-backed al Qaeda terrorists targeted the residence of Iran's envoy to Yemen today. Three people were reported killed in the car bombing and several injured but according to Iran's Foreign Ministry spoekswoman Marzieh Afkham, Iranian diplomats were safe. Ambassador Hossein Niknam was not at his residence at the time of the blast.
The French National Assembly became the latest elected body calling for the recognition of a Palestinian State. The French follow Britain, Ireland, Sweden and Spain in support of Palestine. The ball was set rolling by a vote in the UN General Assembly in November 2012 upgrading Palestine's status to a non-member state.
Far from closing it as Barack Obama promised soon after being sworn in as president in January 2009, the US plans to expand the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
The law has finally caught up with Zionist writer Ezra Levant who thought he could defame Muslims without facing legal consequences. No more. Judge Wendy Matheson ruled on November 27 that Levant had defamed lawyer Khurram Awan when the latter testified before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal about Mark Steyn's Islamophobic article published in Maclean's magazine in 2006. Steyn called for Muslim genocide.
Judicial lynching is still a part of life in the US, especially for blacks. The grand jury's verdict to not indict police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown reflects this grim reality. Thousands of people have been protesting for the second night running in more than 90 cities across the US
The takfiri phenomenon that has erupted in the Middle East and parts of Africa is the creation of the imperialists and Zionists and their puppets in the Arab world. Addressing the issue, the Rahbar Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei asked the assembled scholars to deconstruct this latest menace to unity in the Muslim world.
After three days of talks in Vienna, no significant progress seems to have been made between Islamic Iran and the P5+1 group of countries. As the deadline of November 24 approaches, all sides are making efforts but the major stumbling block is US refusal, under Zionist pressure, to lift the illegal sanctions it has imposed on Iran. Tehran wants them lifted immediately while the US wants gradual lifting.
The Zionists have escalated their attacks on Palestinians resisting the illegal occupiers' attempts to take over Masjid al-Aqsa with a view to its destruction to build their Temple there.
Living up to his horrific nature and use of bombastic language, the takfiri terrorist chief has threatened "volcanoes of jihad" against the "Jews and the Crusaders." This is akin to Saddam Hussain's hyperbole of the "mother of all battles." The takfiri chief seems to show even greater degree of brutality than the now dead Saddam.
For the Saudis nothing is sacred. They have not only wiped out 98 percent of all Islamic heritage sites, the latest casualties were the columns that marked the Prophet's (pbuh) nightly journey from Makkah to al-Quds and onward to miraj. Now the house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born, is slated for demolition. In its place, a larger palace for the king would be built!
The Saudi regime is in total disarray. Its policies at home and abroad have failed and are failing. Internally, there is great discontent because of lack of job opportunities. Abroad, the Saudis have got into a deeper tangle in Syria but their policy is unraveling. How long can this situation last?
Without admitting that it has murdered innocent civilians, the US government has been handing out “bags of cash” to victims' families of US drone strikes in Yemen. One outspoken family member took the money but distributed it among families struggling after the loss of loved ones. Evidence of US hush money was provided by lawyers for Reprieve, the British organization looking into US drone strike victims.
Dr Mads Gilbert at the Shifa Hospital in besieged Gaza Strip. He has dedicated his life to treating the badly injured Palestinians, many of them children, victims of the Zionist killing machine. Dr Gilbert has been banned from entering Gaza by the Zionist occupiers of Palestine citing “security reasons.” Whose security, one wonders!
Far from shutting it down as Barack Obama promised soon after he was sworn in as president for the first time in January 2009, Guantanamo Bay prison camp is being expanded. The Pentagon has sought $69 million for expansion work. There are still 150 prisoners held there despite no charges being brought against them except for a few but even they have not been tried in any court of law.
How wicked can these Mooslem terrorists get? They even plotted to kill Her Majesty the Queen, the kindly 88-year-old grandmother and Head of the Commonwealth and Colonies. Thanks to great work by the London police and MI5, the plot was nabbed just in time before Remembrance Day to allow for a smooth celebration. The alleged terrorists were going to use a knife. Really!
The UN has finally mustered the courage to establish an Inquiry Commission into Israeli war crimes during its onslaught on Gaza in July/August 2014. The Inquiry Commission announced by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today will comprise five members. The UN chief had visited Gaza last month and come away visibly shaken after witnessing Israel's destruction of civilian infrastructure including UN buildings.
There was no progress in two days of talks in Oman despite the three top diplomats--Iranian Foreign Minister Dr Javad Zarif, US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton--held 10 hours of discussions. The talks were described as “intense, serious and tough”. What this meant was that both sides held to their positions without making any concessions.
There are conflicting reports about Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's condition . One claim from Iraqi defence minister says that he was wounded in a US air strike on November 7 only to be contradicted by a claim from Iraq's interior ministry official claiming he was wounded in an air strike on November 8 morning at Qaim about 460 kms away. Does this indicate Iraqi incompetence or they are simply indulging in wishful thinking?
Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient (2009) is in fighting mood. He wants the newly elected Republican-controlled Congress to give him authorization to wage war that he launched three months ago. Now that's legality for you!
The claim that Facebook has developed a secure way for people to communicate is a fraud. This is a deliberate attempt to mislead people and lull them into believing that following revelations about the intrusive activities of western regimes monitoring internet traffic, there is finally a “secure” way to communicate. There is no such thing as secure communication on the Internet.
Had they been animals instead of humans, there would be much hue and cry in the west about the killing of civilians in Iraq. Since Muslim life is considered cheap, snuffing it out does not evoke even a yawn in the “civilized” west whose shock troopers, the takfiris, are busy doing the west's and the zionists' dirty work. The number of civilians killed in Iraq in October surpassed the staggering figure of 6700.
The Zionist occupiers deliberately target Palestinian children to maim and kill them while the illegal squatters from North America and Europe run them over with their vehicles. Eva Bartlett narrates the moving account of one Palestinian child–Abed–that she knew and traces his ordeal from being shot by an Israeli sniper till his death. Abed's sketch is by Palestinian artist Ahmad Barqawi.
America's warlords continue to cause mayhem and destruction worldwide, armed with a messianic mission that they have the right to shape the world to suit their interests. The latest evidence of this megalomaniac mindset was revealed by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's insistence that the US policy of degrading the takfiri terrorists is actually helping Bashar al-Asad, whose overthrow is the real US objective.
A suicide bomber, believed to be from a Taliban-linked group killed 55 people and injured more than 100 inside Pakistan's Wagah border with India. The blast occurred outside a crowded restaurant soon after the flag lowering ceremony was completed in the evening. It is normally watched by huge crowds.
The US has become a vast surveillance state; everyone is being spied upon. No one is trusted except the inner core of operatives that carry out such activities for the benefit of the few at the top. It has been described as Oligarchy but in reality, it is a worse than a police state. Journalist Tom Englehardt describes it as “Shadow Government”.
Even while encroaching on the Haram al-Sharif (the holy precinct) in al-Quds (Jerusalem), the Zionist occupiers have gone on a killing spree of unarmed Palestinians. At least two Palestinians were killed today following attack on an American-born extremist rabbi, Yehuda Glick who is leading the campaign to demolish Masjid al Aqsa and build in its place the so-called Third Jewish Temple.
The Saudi regime brands protests against its oppressive rule "terrorism." Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr has been sentenced to death for demanding reforms. Such barbaric sentences have failed to cow the people down. Protests have been held in the Eastern Province coupled with women defying the ban on driving cars.
The takfiri terrorists are facing serious problems these days. The Kurds have proved far more tougher than they had anticipated and now the takfiris are beset with defections. Many senior commanders, aware of the dire straits they are in, have started to desert the group. Can their end be very far?
The attack on Canada's parliament has resulted in a virtual lockdown of the whole country. The 33-year-old gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was known to have a criminal record. He was shot and killed inside the parliament building after he fatally shot a soldier standing guard at the Canadian War Memorial earlier today. Why he was not captured alive is a big question. Crucial information could have been obtained from him.
The takfiris are using the Internet to lure young Muslim and convert girls into their web of evil. Most of these girls are used virtually as slaves.
Every act of the zionist regime is illegal, starting with its occupation of the Palestinians' land. It compounds its crimes by arresting, imprisoning in Israeli jails and then abusing and torturing Palestinians including children. There are at least 250 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons suffering abuse and torture.
The Saudi regime seems to be short-circuiting its tortuous existence by upholding the most barbaric sentences against those that dare to criticize lack of basic freedoms in the kingdom. The death sentence passed against Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr reflects the regime's extreme nervousness and exposes its brutal nature.
While symbolic, the vote in the British House of Commons today in favor of recognizing the Palestinian State has great political significance. It has boosted the morale of the Palestinians while bringing grief to the Zionist occupiers of Palestine.
About 30 envoys from different countries plus UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were in Cairo to mobilize resources for Gaza's reconstruction. Although $5.4 billion were pledged, will this materialize and if so, what conditions would be imposed on the Palestinians?
Malala Yousafzai's Nobel peace prize award, together with Kailash Satyarthi for 2014 has evoked mixed reaction in her native Pakistan. She is currently studying in England and is unlikely to return to Pakistan any time soon. Two other girls wounded with her when the Taliban attacked their van, have received scant attention leading to speculation that she is being used to promote the west's agenda.
An American rabbi's call for extermination of Muslims has evoked little condemnation from officials and media outlets in the US, including many otherwise respectable members of the Jewish community. Islamophobia has not only gone mainstream, it has become respectable and is in fact vigorously being promoted by the mainstream media in America.
The Turkish-proposed “buffer zone” on the Syrian side of the border is being seriously considered in Washington, London and Paris. This would inevitably lead to clashes with Syrian forces and therefore an attack on the government of President Bashar al-Asad. The US and its allies plan remains regime change in Syria.
Boycott of Israeli goods and services is expanding as was evident from the refusal of longshoremen in Oakland, California. They refused to unload an Israeli cargo ship forcing it to turn and head towards Los Angeles.
America's latest bogey: the Khorasan Brigade emerges just in time to launch crusade against another Muslim country. Scaring Americans into surrendering their rights is a time tested policy. It never fails but it also reveals the criminal nature of American elite.
Every year the Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei, as leader of the Islamic Ummah, delivers his message to those assembled in Arafat for Hajj. In following the Sunnah of the noble Messenger (pbuh), his message also touches on the burning issues facing the Ummah. Here is the full text of this year's message.
The cold blooded murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza during July-August assault was not enough to satiate Israel's blood lust. Two Palestinians accused of kidnapping and killing three Israeli illegal squatters on June 22 were brutally murdered in their hiding place. Even this, however, would not deter the zionists from murdering Palestinians because it has become a way of life for them.
The US never negotiates in good faith. Its obstructionist attitude is frustrating progress at the Iran-P5+1 talks, the latest round of which was held in New York during the 69 session of the UN General Assembly. Talks will resume in two weeks time but if the US does not change its attitude in making outlandish demands, then the deal will not be signed by the November 24 deadline.
Narendra Modi as prime minister of India may have overcome the hurdle of getting a visa to the US but his gory past in which he directed the pogroms of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 cannot be washed away so easily. Protests have greeted him at each stop. He should be put in trial for war crimes.
Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a swipe at the US and Pakistani accusing both of not wanting peace in Afghanistan. Installed by the US following the ouster of Taliban from power, Karzai presided over massive corruption in the country. He had also spend nearly a decade in refugee camps in Pakistan. Ashraf Ghani will be sworn in as president on September 29.
Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan refuses to join the US-led air strikes against the takfiri terrorists. At the same time, he has called for a no-fly zone over Syria. This strengthens speculation that the US policy is a backdoor attempt to sneak into Syria to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Asad. Turkey is part of this diabolical plot whose other members include Zionist Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Hizbullah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah said his group would not join the US-led coalition to fight the takfiris because America itself was the biggest source of terrorism. He also accused Washington of aiding, arming and training the terrorists.
What kind of a deal did Turkey make with the takfiri terrorists to secure the release of its diplomats is unknown. For now, there are celebrations in Turkey but questions are being asked about Turkey's contact with the takfiris and what kind of support it is offering them. Turkey has supported groups fighting to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Asad in Syria.
The people of Scotland voted by 55% to 47% to stay in Britain but their referendum has shaken the usually smug politicians in London to take note. British Prime Minister David Cameron whose job was on the line, promised after the result, to allow more powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Obama regime wanted James Foley dead rather than alive. James Foley's younger brother Michael told Fox News that he was threatened by the US State Department not to raise ransom money to rescue his brother from the clutches of the takfiris. His mother said it did not fit into US strategic policy [to have her son come out alive].
Is there any such thing as a 'moderate rebel'? If the US plans to fight the takfiris, why is it training these so-called moderate rebels to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Asad? One does not have to admire Asad but he is legitimately elected by the Syrian people. What right does the US, Saudi Arabia or Israel have to decide who should be in power in Damascus?
When the west says peace, it means war. Consider the drumbeating in Washington that has just got louder as Barack Obama prepares to make an important announcement about extending the bombing campaign into Syria from Iraq. The pretext for this latest belligerence is the group of takfiris rampaging through the region. They are a creation of the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia but a handy tool to advance western war agenda.
The Islamophobe Cheryl Benard (pictured) and her Afghan-born Americanized husband Zalmay Khalilzad, member of the neo-con cabal, have had their Austrian bank account frozen. There are suspicions of money laundering. Will the notorious couple face jail time?
The mercenaries' gift to the Syrian people: the pulverized city of Homs. Most parts of Syria have been left in ruins, thanks to financial and material support by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, among others, to the foreign mercenaries in Syria.
Are the takfiris really that great fighters or they are being projected for a sinister western agenda?
The harassment and attacks on Imam Abdul Alim Musa have intensified. In the latest episode, he was arrested in the middle of the night when some 12 police officers swarmed Masjid al-Islam in Oakland, California and locked him up for 15 hours. The allegation was that he was “trespassing” the property that is registered in his name. It is not a simple case of police action; there is much more going on behind the scenes.
Under the primitive Saudi clan, nothing is safe as far as Islam's holy sites are concerned. A new report has emerged that recommends destroying the Green Dome over the Prophet's (saws) tomb and relocating his body to Baqi Cemetery to be interred in an unmarked grave. Muslims worldwide should take note and act before this sacrilegious act is perpetrated by the sworn enemies of Allah, His Prophet (saws) and Islam.
In a terse statement that must have deeply disappointed the beleaguered Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the army expressed its “concern” about the escalating political violence. It also said force was not the way to deal with the situation. The crisis must be dealt with through political means. Sharif is under pressure to resign; how much longer can he hold out in these circumstances?
Nawaz Sharif, Pakistani Prime Minister-under-siege, has been forced to beg the army chief, General Raheel Sharif (no relation) to rescue him. Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf led by Imran Khan and Pakistan Awami Tehrik led by Tahirul Qadri are both demanding his resignation, Imran more forcefully than Qadri. The next 24 hours may prove crucial for Pakistan.
Excerpt from the forthcoming book, Islamic Resistance to Imperialism by Eric Walberg.
The Islamic resistance has dealt a stunning blow to Zionist Israel in Gaza. Despite lacking weapons and bottled up in the tiny enclave, the Islamic resistance forced the zionists to accept their terms for a truce. Most Palestinian demands have been accepted reflecting the zionists' defeat in the brutal war in which they murdered nearly 2200 innocent Palestinian civilians.
The zionist regime continues to perpetrate crimes against humanity as well as other countries. In its latest attempt to send a spy plane over Iran's Natanz nuclear facilities in Isfahan, the IRGC shot down the so-called radar-evading spy plane. Iran's scientists are examining the remnants of the plane some of which have been retrieved intact.
In a long list of war crimes, the zionist regime perpetrated another one by firing two missiles from US-supplied warplanes on a 12-storey apartment building in Gaza. There were 44 apartments in the block that came crashing down. Massive damage was caused to neighboring buildings as well.
Armed agent provocateurs attack Masjid al-Islam in California and violently assault Imam Abdul Alim Musa. Muslims worldwide need to contact him and offer immediate support.
Davutoglu to Erdogan: Are you sure I can be prime minister? Will I get to move into your office?
Even while holding indirect talks in Cairo with the Palestinians to agree on a long-term cease-fire, the zionists launched murderous attacks on the Gaza Strip today. Their duplicity and criminality know no bounds.
Police in America shoot and kill black men, especially teens, first and worry about their guilt later. Even in death, their character assassination continues as the case of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO shows. The unarmed teen was shot six times execution-style even after he had raised his hands in surrender. Life for black teens is extremely precarious in the US even if one of them makes it to the White House!
Will PTI chief Imran Khan succeed in removing Nawaz Sharif from power and get his wish to have re-elections in the country? He is leading a massive rally in Islamabad demanding Sharif's resignation because of rigging and corruption charges. Imran has given two days for Sharif to resign before he storms the inner sanctum of Islamabad.
The Zionist killing machine has resumed its genocide of defenceless Palestinians in Gaza. Some Israeli politicians have called for their annihilation including the mothers of Palestinian children. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan has called this Zionist policy the same as that of Hitlers.
Calling for reforms in Saudi Arabia is considered “terrorism”. A prominent human rights lawyer Waleed Abulkhair has been tortured and being moved from prison to prison because he had dared to defend those that called for reforms in the kindgom. His case has moved even Human Rights Watch to issue a statement about his torture.
Even as a truce has been declared between the Houthis and al Qaeda in Yemen, the Saudi regime will not stop its disruptive tactics to allow the people of Yemen to live in peace. The obscurantist Saudi regime wants to undermine Yemen and bring it under its control fearing that the rise of Houthis will undercut Riyadh's influence.
With his backers and indeed his own party--the Dawa Party--deserting him, Nouri al-Maliki was left with little choice but to relinquish the post of prime minister. Will Iraq now be able to rise above sectarianism and develop into a stable entity? It will depend on the policies the Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi adopts.
Human Rights Watch has accused a dozen Egyptian officials including the current president General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of perpetrating crimes against humanity during last year's attack on peaceful protesters and called for an international investigation. Will these materialize? Given the international environment and the outlaw regimes backing Sisi and his thugs, it is highly unlikely but HRW's exposure of such crimes is welcome.
Recep Tayip Erdogan, until now Turkey's Prime Minister, has just been elected president in the first-ever direct adult franchise. Comparisons with Vladimir Putin of Russia have been made. Are these accurate or fair? Erdogan certainly wants to retain power but time will tell what his real motives are.
Kissing in Jeddah and killings in Cairo and Gaza. The Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Saudi King Abdullah are partners in crime against innocent Muslims whether in Egypt, Gaza, Syria or Iraq. Mass murderers of the world, unite!
Torontonians come out in the thousands and from all faiths and walks of life to denounce zionist crimes in Gaza. Following Sunday's rally, they vowed to continue the struggle until the siege of Gaza is completely lifted and zionist occupation of Palestine is ended.
Torontonians come out in the thousands and from all faiths and walks of life to denounce zionist crimes in Gaza. Following Sunday's rally, they vowed to continue the struggle until the siege of Gaza is completely lifted and zionist occupation of Palestine is ended.
The zionist regime's vile propaganda is no longer accepted by people, as the worldwide rallies show. Toronto is gearing up for its own massive rally on Sunday August 10 outside the Israeli consulate. The American consulate has issued a warning to its citizens to avoid the rally and to not take photos or videos because of possible backlash against US policy of blind support for Israeli war crimes.
The zionists, itching to kill more Palestinian civilians, especially children have resumed attacks on the tiny enclave of Gaza. They stubbornly refuse to life the illegal siege where people are being slowly strangled to death. The Palestinians demand an end to the siege. Egyptian-brokered negotiations collapsed over the zionists' refusal to lift the siege ending the 72-hour cease-fire.
The military regime in Egypt is determined to kill as many Ikhwan leaders and supporters as possible. It has already murdered in cold blood thousands of them but its blood lust seems not to have been satiated. It wants to murder a lot more.
Committing war crimes is so much in the blood of the American establishment and its surrogate, the Zionist state of Israel that it hardly needs proving. August 6 marks the anniversary of the US dropping the first of two atomic bombs on Japan 69 years ago. Three days later another one was dropped on Nagasaki.
The CIA has always been above the law. As long as it violated the rights of other countries or peoples, it was business as usual. It has now reached into spying on Senators' work as well. With the agency be reined in? Perish the thought. America is truly a police state; in fact it has gone beyond that. It is a fascist state.
Far from supporting the Palestinians, the Saudi regime and its court ulama have opened their big guns against the people of Gaza. They have gone so far as to denounce any solidarity marches in favour of Palestinians. The Saudis are working hand-in-glove with the zionists to destroy Hamas.
Muslim regimes suppress their own people and thus ignore the plight of the hapless Palestinians in order to serve the interests of zionism and imperialism. Their specialty is to finance terrorists against governments they do not like.
The zionist regime continues to perpetrate war crimes murdering civilians with US-supplied weapons and destroying Gaza's fragile infrastructure. Houses, schools, hospitals and centers for the disabled have all been attacked and destroyed. The latest institutions bombed and destroyed were Al-Shafi Mosque and the Gaza Islamic University. Gaza's only power plant has also been destroyed.
While the puppet Arab regimes are conspiring with the zionists and imperialists to undermine the resistance in Gaza, Iran has pledged total support. In an emotional letter, General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of Iran's Quds Force has said that the Islamic Republic will never allow the disarming of the resistance or abandon the Palestinians to their fate.
The London Metropolitan Police have named the assailant of British Respect Party MP, George Galloway. He is Neil Masterson of Campden Hill and has been charged with assault causing bodily harm. Galloway suffered severe head injuries as well as a suspected broken rib and jaw. The zionists are becoming brazen in their attacks on critics of zionist crimes in Occupied Palestine especially in Gaza.
The zionists are slaughtering innocent Palestinians in Gaza while their agents around the world are busy killing those that protest such crimes. This is what happened in Nigeria when the army opened fire on Quds Day rally participants killing 25 instantly. Another 12 people were arrested and executed at an army compound. The dead included three sons of Mallam Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic movement in Nigeria.
Muslims in North America, and those in the southern hemisphere celebrated Eid al-Fitr on Monday July 28. In the rest of the Muslim world, except Saudi Arabia and its satellites, Eid would be celebrated tomorrow, Tuesday July 29.
Toronto holds the biggest Quds Day rally in its history attended by people of all faiths--Muslims, Christians, Jews and others--in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine, especially in Gaza where they have faced a relentless barrage of Israeli bombs for more than three weeks. At least 1,000 Palestinians, 80 percent of them civilians, have been murdered by the zionists.
America's neo-cons have found Hillary Clinton's aggressive policies to their liking and are flocking to her like flies to filth. Pity the American people for they will end up even more isolated--and hated--globally. The military-industrial complex will get a major boost in their projects for endless wars and killing of innocent people.
Gaza's Ministry of Health issued the list of those killed in the Israeli onslaught on Gaza from July 8 to July 23. Their ages are also given where available. Zionist war crimes against Gaza's defenceless population must be recorded so that the world can know what zionist israel is all about.
Israeli occupation forces have struck the Shujaeya Camp in Gaza City perpetrating a blood bath. Reports are still coming in of casualties.
Norwegian doctor, Dr Mads Gilbert has dedicated his life to serving the besieged and traumatized people of Gaza. He sends this heart-wrenching letter from Shifa Hospital in Gaza where he has been working virtually 24-hour shifts treating to the wounded, traumatized as well as those that could not be saved. He exposes the extreme brutality of the zionists. In the photo he kisses goodbye to a child that could not be saved.
We reproduce Khaled Meshaal's interview with Adnan Abu amer of Al-Monitor. Meshaal is head of Hamas Political Bureau and he explains Hamas' position vis-à-vis the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza and his organization's position about the ceasefire and the broader situation.
Zionist Israel's brutal assault has exposed yet again the criminal nature of this illegitimate entity. People of conscience throughout the world have protested such brutalities. This year's Quds Day rallies held over the last weekend of Ramadan are expected to draw tens of thousands. Toronto has the honor of hosting massive rallies each year. This year's would be historic.
Canadian political parties have become cravenly pro-zionist. Even the so-called leftist NDP has come out in support of the zionists without any concern for the Palestinians suffering zionist crimes and barbarism.
The Israeli war criminal Benhamin Netanyahu, with backing from western rulers, has rejected calls for a ceasefire as his murderous attacks continue against defenceless Palestinian population in Gaza. Even centres for the disabled and mosques are not spared.
Thousands at Toronto rally slam Israeli crimes and the Harper regime's shameless support for them. Tiny Gaza has been under attack again since July 8. The zionists have murdered at least 125 Palestinians, most of them civilians, especially children.
The zionists cannot do anything wrong. Western rulers are there to defend them regardless of the level of brutality they indulge in. This is once again evident in the zionist onslaught on Gaza. Western rulers, reading from the same script, say Israel has the “right to defend itself.” Palestinian men, women and children do not matter.
The Zionists think they can kill Palestinians simply because they have a right to do so but Palestinians must neither complain nor defend themselves. The Zionists' latest assault on Gaza has resulted in 25 deaths and dozens injured in two days. The tiny Strip's bombardment continues and more casualties are expected.
There is universal condemnation by Islamic scholars of the hijacking of an important Islamic concept as the Khilafah by a bunch of hoodlums. Al-Baghdadi's project is not likely to last long but in the process it will cause immense damage to the Ummah.
The Saudi regime has lost its mind. Waleed Abulkhair, a prominent human rights lawyer and activist, has just been sentenced to 15 years in jail and fined 200,000 Saudi riyals ($54,000). His only crime is to call for reforms and release of political prisoners.
The zionist regime claims to be the “only democracy” in the Middle East but its conduct would put the Nazis to shame. Last week, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped in broad daylight from a Jerusalem street, tortured and set on fire while alive. His badly burnt body was discovered a few hours later. His 15-year-old cousin Tariq visiting from the US, was beaten and knocked unconscious by Israeli border police. The Nazis would be proud!
Few Muslims have accepted al-Baghdadi's declaration of the Khilafah in parts of Iraq and Syria. Most scholars see him as an upstart and usurper. The entire project is likely to end in disaster causing immense damage to the Ummah. In the photo, al-Baghdadi is seen wearing a suit and tie: some Khalifah, this man!
If anyone harbors any illusions that the Zionist thugs are peaceful, they should have seen the thugs from the so-called Jewish Defence League (JDL), Israel's storm troopers in Canada, in action yesterday. They assaulted Palestinians at Palestine House, just as Zionist occupiers assault and murder Palestinians in Occupied Palestine. The group is banned in the US as a terrorist outfit but not in Canada.
The US-Saudi-zionist backed ISIS terrorists will more than meet their match in Hizbullah, the resistance group whose leader, Sheikh Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to confront them in Iraq. He said it was not to defend any particular sect but to defend Iraq as a whole. Hizbullah has already successfully confronted and defeated the takfiris in Syria.
The ISIS-created chaos in Iraq has provided an opportunity for Kurds to break away and create an “independent” state. It may become independent from Iraq but will be totally subservient to imperialist and Zionist forces. Destabilization of the entire region is in full swing.
The Muslim Ummah is faced with many problems but often Muslims themselves are to blame. Consider the latest phenomenon of the thug al-Baghdadi and his declaration of the Khilafah. The noble concept of the Khialfah is being ridiculed by mass murderers and rapists using Islamic terms. The ill-conceived project is bound to collapse soon and with it will die the misplaced hopes of thousands of Muslim youth.
Zionist killing of Palestinians is so routine that it hardly evokes any reaction anywhere, least of all in the racist Western media and the equally racist Western governments. When the bodies of three Israeli squatters were discovered in the West Bank, all hell broke loose but before that, at least 10 Palestinians among them a 7-year-old and 15-year-old Palestinian youth were already murdered by the zionist occupiers.
Sacking of princes shortly after their appointment and the failure of Saudi policies both at home and abroad point to growing uncertainty in the ruling family. The latest prince to get the boot was Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz who had been at his post for merely two months. Clearly, the rotten “royal” family is on its way to oblivion.
Although all charges against Dr Sami al-Arian, the former Florida professor, have finally been dropped, he still faces the threat of deportation. The US government should do the honorable thing and drop this charge as well immediately to prove it is based on the rule of law. His family has also suffered immensely all these years.
By sentencing three Al Jazeera journalists to long prison sentences, the Egyptian regime of General (retired) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has served notice that it will not allow any independent reporting even by foreign media outlets. The Egyptian media was already serving as propaganda mouthpiece for the regime; now it wants foreign media outlets to toe the line as well or else.
American Senator Rand Paul says the US government is involved in training and arming ISIS terrorists and its allies that have caused havoc in Syria and Iraq. The Republican Senator from Kentucky said had it not been for American support, ISIS would not be spreading terror in Iraq today. In the photo, ISIS terrorists are seen shooting and killing civilians dumped in a ditch in Tal Afar in Iraq.
Mahmoud Abbas whose shelf-life has expired, continues to survive by trying to promote US-zionist interests against the wishes of the Palestinian people. His latest admission that he is helping Israel find three missing Jewish students has done nothing to improve his jaded image among Palestinians that continue to suffer zionist brutalities on a daily basis.
The judges in Egypt act as executioners for the military while the thugs in uniform brandishing guns shoot and kill without mercy. Thousands of innocent people have been murdered in cold blood since the illegal military coup of July 3 against the first-ever elected President Mohamed Mursi. Family members of the just-sentenced victims cry on hearing about death sentences against their loved ones.
Under pressure from the US, the Pakistani military has launched massive strikes on North Waziristan in what is termed as going after "foreign terrorists" from Uzbekistan. How do they distinguish between foreign and local militants? Thousands of people--women, children and the elderly--have started fleeing their homes and have been turned into refugees. Many have fled to neighboring Afghanistan.
ISIS-led sectarian terror is causing havoc in the region. The Maliki government in Baghdad, however, cannot be absolved of responsibility either for contributing to the alienation of tribal elders in places like Mosul that facilitated the takeover by ISIS of the country's second largest city. Sectarianism cuts both ways; it must be condemned no matter who indulges in it.
How widespread is child sex abuse in the Catholic Church? Two UN panel reports have issued scathing reports against the church and the Holy See. The problem has gone on for decades but is not likely to be solved any time soon, or at all because of the Vatican's refusal to deal with it honestly. The other problem is celibacy, an unnatural lifestyle that does not address the natural urge for sexual activity.
Can the West led by the US bring itself around to accepting Iran's rights under the NPT? It will all depend on whether Washington has the ability to withstand zionist blackmail. If US President Barack Obama is serious about a deal with Iran, he can get one by sticking to principles rather than putting forward ludicrous demands.
How can the Taliban carry out such a brazen attack at Karachi airport especially when they have carried out previous attacks in the city and elsewhere? They had attacked the Mehran Naval base two years ago destroying several aircraft. In 2009, they attacked the Military Headquarters in Rawalpindi. What is going on in Pakistan and why do the intelligence and security personnel appear so clueless?
Why the sudden eruption of sectarianism in Turkey resulting in the burning of mosques of Shias and Sunnis? Informed observers believe this is meant to undermine growing ties between two regional giants--Turkey and Iran--despite their differences on such issues as Syria. President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has arrived in Turkey and is expected to sign the Iran-Turkey High Council of Strategic Cooperation agreement.
America has the highest murder rate in the world yet it wants to export its way of life to others. The ready availability of guns and frustrating any debate on gun-ownership by the National Rifle Association (NRA) means Americans will continue to kill each in large numbers. Families pay the price while vested interests ensure murder statistics keep climbing.
Pakistani media outlets have sold themselves for a few dollars to run down Islam and Pakistan as the tragic murder of Farzana Parveen shows. What was a cold blooded murder by the family has been turned into 'stoning to death' story to please the media's Islam-hating Western masters. Once the truth is established, the media outlets, anchors and their owners ought to be brought before the court and given exemplary punishment for spreading lies.
Western media outlets have had to eat crow and admit that President Bashar al-Asad has widespread support in the country. This story by Associated Press that was reprinted in many media outlets including the Washington Post, acknowledges that without support of the Sunni majority, Asad could not have garnered the support that he did. This was already confirmed by independent observers on the ground in Syria such as Canada's Tony Seed.
Reflecting their criminal nature, the MQM mafia has torched businesses, buses, cars and trucks in Karachi as their boss is arrested in London on money laundering charges. Why should Karachi burn if the mafia don is in police custody in London?
By turning out in massive numbers for the presidential poll, the people of Syria have exposed the vile propaganda of the West as well as their Arabian puppets, among them the tribal owned network, Al Jazeera. The Takfiri terrorists and their foreign sponsors also stand exposed.
Imam Abdul Alim Musa, founder and Imam of Masjid al-Islam is under attack in the US. His grandson was shot and killed last year; his son was shot six times and left for dead earlier this year. Messages left on his phone have threatened him with death. He needs the support and help of Muslims as well as non-Muslims that believe in fairness and justice. His only crime is speaking out against US-zionist injustices worldwide.
The people of South Africa have once again reposed confidence in the African National Congress but there are challenges ahead both from the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Front (EFF) that have made inroads in urban and rural areas respectively.
Rape is becoming so widespread in India that many women are now afraid to come out. Women are targeted everywhere: in the cities as well as villages as the horrible case of two young girls gang-raped on May 27 shows. The assailants included two police officers. Where should the victims turn to for help if the police themselves are involved? India claims to be the world's largest democracy; it is the world's biggest rapist nation.
Elections are popular with dictators because they can get the results they want but they can also throw up surprises. This is what has just happened in Egyptian. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi thought by going through the process he will confer legitimacy on his dictatorial rule but the Egyptian people have slapped him on the face by refusing to participate in the farce.
While Syrians outside the country in overwhelming numbers cast ballot in the advance poll on May 28, in Egypt by contrast the turnout was very low. Western governments reflecting cynicism and duplicity, rejected the Syrian poll while hailing those in Egypt and Ukraine. People around the world have begun to understand western hypocrisy better.
The people of Egypt have delivered the only verdict they could possibly do in the circumstances: treat the entire election process with utter contempt. Officially the voter turnout was put at 37 percent but observers on the scene said it was no more than 10 to 15 percent with many polling stations registering not even a single voter for many hours. Does the photo show overcrowding at a polling station?
The issue of Kashmir may be ignored by the UN and other organizations and countries but not by committed people--Muslims as well as non-Muslims--that want to ensure that the gross injustices perpetrated against the Kashmiri people for several decades should not be buried under the debris of history. On May 24, the Friends of Kashmir organized an international conference in Toronto addressed by an array of international speakers.
Violence, it is said is as American as apple pie. Violence is also glorified by Hollywood. It came home with yet another example when Elliot Rodger, son of a Hollywood director, shot and killed several people and injured dozens more before shooting himself in the head. He had posted his murderous plans on You Tube!
Russia and China have again frustrated Western imperialist plans to intervene directly in Syria. By vetoing the Security Council resolution that would have paved the way for referring Syrian officials to the International Criminal Court, the West thought it could disrupt the government of President Bashar al-Asad through the backdoor now that their mercenaries are on the verge of defeat.
China's security arrangement proposal with Russia and Iran has caused panic among warmongers in Washington DC. The US is definitely on its way out as other powers assert themselves.
Renewed military attacks in Pakistan's restive tribal region of North and South Waziristan have exposed the Pakistani government's insincerity about peace talks with the Taliban as well as lack of respect for human life. In the latest attacks early this morning, 70 people, among them women and children were killed in Mir Ali Tehsil in North Waziristan.
The fiery Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, Abu Hamza, has been found guilty by a New York jury of kidnapping and terrorism charges. He was extradited from Britain in October 2012. The charges date back to 1998. He will be sentenced on September 9 and will likely get life. Abu Hamza had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan when America was an ally of these fighters.
Palestinians may have been forcibly expelled from their lands but they are not willing to forget, as the Nakba (Catastrophe) commemorations show. Such commemorations were held not only in Palestine but also other parts of the world including Pakistan where an entire week was dedicated to Nakba events organized by Palestine Liberation Pakistan (PLP).
Will the latest mining disaster in Turkey affect Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political future adversely? Some observers feel he is losing touch with popular sentiment by the manner in which he has issued statements in the wake of this latest disaster.
The US and its Nato allies have destroyed Libya. It has descended into lawlessness with heavily armed militias staking claims to various pieces of real estate and assets. People, especially Muslims elsewhere looking for US/Western help ought to keep Libya in mind before deciding.
Narendra Modi, India's prime minister elect has been compared to Adolf Hitler. He comes with “impressive” Nazi credentials to earn the epithet. India's minorities, especially the 150 million Muslims, will find life even more difficult now under Modi who has won a clear majority to rule.
Can the Saudi announcement that they want to improve relations with Islamic Iran be taken seriously? Face with multiple crises, internal as well external, the Saudis may be trying to secure their flanks but it would be wise to deal with them with caution. They are not trustworthy.
Egypt's pharaoh Abdel Fattah Sisi tries to present a soft image to the outside world but comes down brutally hard on people inside. His special wrath is reserved for the Muslim Brotherhood thousands of whose members have been murdered, thousands of others consigned to dungeons and sentenced to death through kangaroo trials.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have successfully cloned the US manufactured RQ-170 Sentinel drone that it had captured in December 2011. At the time of its successful safe landing, the Americans first claimed it had crashed and then said its systems were too sophisticated to be copied. Iran has proved them wrong on all counts showing that people led by muttaqi leadership can achieve great things.
Muslims around the world are once again faced by a criminal act perpetrated by a group of terrorists in the name of Islam. The kidnapping of hundreds of school girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria should be addressed by going to the source of the problem: the ideology being propagated by the Saudi regime and its court preachers.
Even while millions of African Americans languish in poverty, Barack Obama, himself an African American, cannot say no to the zionist regime's demands for more weapons and money. His National Security Advisor Susan Rice claims “shared values” and “shared history” with the zionist occupiers of Palestine!
Thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails have gone on hunger strike in solidarity with the 120 other prisoners held in “administrative detention” who are on hunger strike since April 24. Palestinians held in administrative detention are not charged with any crime and have never been convicted in a court of law but continue to be illegally held by the zionist regime.
Caught red-handed: FBI agent Joel Cox Eugene, in blue striped shirt, being escorted by Pakistani security officials to court in Karachi on terrorism-related charges. He was caught with bullets and a loaded magazine before boarding an Islamabad bound flight from Karachi. What was an FBI agent doing in Pakistan and why was he carrying bullets and a loaded magazine with him?
Tiny Qatar is trying to punch way above its weight in regional affairs. It has just been revealed through hacked emails that it tried to smuggle chemical weapons into Syria using a British arms contractor. The plot also involved using Russian speaking Ukrainians, Serbs and Croats to implicate Russia as well and thereby create a pretext for direct US attack on Syria.
Students and faculty at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, have achieved a rare victory by forcing Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Adviser and former Secretary of State in the Bush regime to cancel her commencement speech at the university. She was to receive an honorary degree as well as $35,000 fee. Students and faculty accused her of lying and justifying torture while in office.
Zionist Israel is an apartheid state and Netanyahu is about to prove it in law as well. Apologists for the zionist regime, however, are not going to be deterred.
There are only two things the Saudis know: spreading sectarianism and using the oil wealth to buy loyalty of people, especially politicians in different Muslim countries. Emile Lahoud, the former Lebanese President made a candid revelation in an interview with Iran's Press TV on May 3 saying that he was offered a suitcase full of dollars when he became the commander in chief of Lebanese armed forces.
Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), an organization representing non-zionist Jewish persons, has come out strongly against the Harper government's designation of the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN), a Toronto-based charity, as a terrorist organization. IRFAN's charitable status was suspended in 2009. It appealed the decision and was to have a court hearing later this week when the government pre-empted it.
The US justice system is grossly unjust, as a new study into the number of people convicted of murder has just shown. Conducted out by legal experts, the study has found that more than 4.1 percent of people on death row, most of them African-Americans or Hispanics, have been wrongfully convicted.
It is difficult to tell who is worse: the men in uniform or those in robes on the benches in Egypt? Both kill innocent people for no other crime than demanding their fundamental rights. The men in uniform kill with guns and bullets while those in robes sentence people to death in trials that are so outlandish, they cannot even be described as farcical. In the photo, Mohamed Badie, Murshid (supreme guide) of the Ikhwan is shown in a court cage.
The US and its British allies are running secret prisons in Afghanistan away from any oversight or control of the Afghan government. The US-run torture chamber at Bagram was taken over by Afghan forces earlier this year releasing many people that were never charged with any crime. Two secret prisons have been discovered at Qandar and in Helmand province; the latter being run by the British. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is very upset.
Saudi Princess Sahar, the daughter of King Abdullah has issued a call for the people to rise up against the regime. Sahar and her three sisters are kept hostage in two separate houses in Jeddah while their mother, Al-Anood al-Fayez, divorced from King Abdullah, fled the kingdom to live in exile in London. Princess Sahar's call is supremely courageous and could cause her more harm but it seems she is not afraid.
The killing of peaceful protesters continues unabated in Egypt. Every Friday, thousands of people pour out into the streets to denounce the military coup and demand restoration of the first-ever legally elected President Mohamed Mursi. The regime and its thugs respond with bullets, tear gas and other lethal weapons. The people have not been deterred.
The tide is turning in favor of President Bashar al-Asad and against the foreign-backed mercenaries in Syria. Presidential poll date has been set for June 3 while the Syrian army is making steady progress against the mercenaries that have perpetrated horrible crimes against civilians.
The deteriorating ethics of most Pakistani journalists have tarnished the once-noble profession and turned it into a blackmailing tool at the behest of their foreign masters. The social fabric has been messed up and turned into a veritable zoo. The attack on TV anchor Hamid Mir has brought this out clearly.
Most parts of Indian occupied Kashmir were completely shut down today in response to a call by Kashmiri leaders to boycott Indian elections. They refuse to accept that they are part of India and have denounced Indian elections as a “sham.” They want a referendum to determine their own future.
American officials are forever launching wars; shooting wars as well as wars on concepts whether it is poverty or terror. Apart from its war on Muslims, America has lost every war, none more thoroughly than the one on poverty
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 77, has been declared winner in the Algerian presidential election that his nearest rival, one-time prime minister Ali Benflis said was marred by massive fraud. Bouteflika won a fourth five-year term. He was first elected in 1999.
Another setback for Saudi policy as the regime is forced to retreat on its threats against Qatar from where it had withdrawn its ambassador last month. Bahrain and the UAE had followed suit but Kuwait and Oman did not. An agreement has now been reached to patch differences and get back to business as usual--rubbing noses and kissing.
While appearing for a court hearing, albeit behind closed doors, human rights lawyer and activist Waleed Abulkhair was sent to prison. He was out on bail following his three-month sentence last October for “insulting the judiciary,” the “authorities” and “holding unauthorized meetings.” The regime has become totally paranoid but its oppressive tactics seem not to work as people are posting messages on YouTube demanding basic rights.
The New York Police Department claims it has ended its mass surveillance of Muslims in New York State. Is this true? Have they disbanded all their illegal activities or is it just an attempt to deflect criticism from civil rights groups that have exposed NYPD wrongdoing causing embarrassment to the US abroad where US officials never tire of lecturing others about human rights?
The mystery of Bandar bin Sultan's absence from the kingdom has finally been resolved with his removal from the post of intelligence chief. He had lost the Syria file to cousin and Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef earlier this year. What will Bandar do now? Given his penchant for mischief-making, it would be premature to write him off but his major role in the kingdom's affairs is over. Good riddance!
This year's Pulitzer prize went to two newspapers, The Guardian of Britain and the Washington Post in the US. The Pulitzer board recognized the contribution of two mainstream newspapers that exposed massive official wrongdoing in the US. Other mainstream media outlets did not. The Pulitzer board did not name individual reporters, like the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald (picture) who took Edward Snowden's documents and published them.
The tragedy of Muslims in India is that they face two enemies: the fascist Hindus that closely follow the Nazi ideology, and their own religious leaders. The maulanas of India are a bunch of opportunists that issue statements to benefit themselves, not the broader Muslim community. Pity the Muslims as the Hindu Nazis of the BJP are poised to come to power in India with elections underway.
Terrorist mercenaries have attacked international peace activists visiting Syria. Rockets landed close to their hotel in Damascus. While two people were reported injured, none of them was a peace activist. The group is on the third day of its visit to Syria and hope to meet different groups, including members of the opposition and bring out the correct news about what is underway in Syria.
An outrageous case of attempted murder registered against a 9-month-old infant Muhammad Musa Khan has been withdrawn after the police removed his name from the First Information Report (FIR). The case, however, shows the unruly nature of the police as well as the dysfunctional legal system that would allow an infant to be brought to court on such charges and fingerprinted. Have they lost their minds?
The US continues to behave in a manner that confirms its outlaw status. Its latest outrageous act has been denial of visa to Iran's ambassador-designate to the UN, Hamid Aboutalebi. The warlords in Washington think they have the authority to decide who should be a country's ambassador to the UN. It is time the UN was moved out of New York. The US is unfit to host the world body.
American politicians of all stripes are a salable commodity. The US Supreme Court's April 2 verdict just made it a lot easier for rich people to buy them. Welcome to America's democracy for oligarchs.
Brandeis University in the US has been forced to withdraw an honorary degree it was to confer on the notorious Islamophobe, Ayaan Hirsi Ali who had lied on her refugee application to enter Holland. There was mounting pressure from students and other concerned groups and individuals about honoring a well-known hate-monger.
The US is supplying heavy weapons to the terrorists in Syria. The US military is also training takfiri terrorists in Jordan while claiming to be fighting al-Qaeda type terrorists worldwide.
The Parti Quebecois has been delivered a stunning defeat in Quebec's provincial elections to the relief of many people in Canada for very different reasons. Her anti-religious and anti-minority agenda has also been thrown out.
The media in Pakistan display the most negative characteristics of any group in the country. Most of them are on the payroll of foreign masters including the Americans and Indians, they indulge in the most nonsensical allegations against people they do not like. The new amir of the Jamaat-e Islami, Sirajul Haq has also been subjected to vicious attacks.
Iran's Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif has dismissed the European Parliament's conditions about its delegation's visit to the Islamic Republic. Dr Zarif said Tehran would not allow such insulting demands and would not allow any such delegation to visit.
Crimeans do not know what they got themselves into when they voted last month to join Russia. McDonald's has decided to close its restaurants in Crimea depriving people of satiating their cravings for a Big Mac! They are in big trouble.
American Boeing Corporation has been granted license to sell spare parts to Iran after blocking such sales for more than 30 years. Some observers have suggested that the US is planning to position itself for future sales to Iran once there is an agreement on Iran's nuclear deal.
Iran and Russia are moving closer to each other over Western hostility toward both. The latest sign of this came in the announcement that Iran and Russia are working on a $20 billion oil-for-commodities deal. Of course, Washington has expressed anger but neither Tehran nor Moscow seem to be worried.
The Pakistan-Taliban talks continue their uneven course with both sides playing coy. The recent release of some prisoners has led to contradictory statements. Were they Taliban members, innocent tribals or petty criminals? The answer depends on who is making the statement.
The Egyptian military wants total control of the state but it seems people are not prepared to accept this without a fight. There has been an escalation in protests as well as bombings since General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the now-retired army chief and defence minister, announced on March 26 he wants to be president.
An open letter from AlAnood Al-Fayez, ex-wife of Saudi King Abdullah to US President Barack Obama who failed to raise the issue of Abdullah's four daughters held hostage by the king. The Washington Post and New York Times declined to publish this important article so as not to offend the Saudi Monarchy.
Islamic Iran's leader, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned the zionist regime and its irresponsible rulers that if they were to make the mistake of attacking the Islamic Republic, the zionist entity would pay a heavy price. Tel Aviv and Haifa would be razed to the ground. If the zionist rulers had any sense, they would take this warning seriously and stop issuing their childish threats.
President Barack Obama's two-hour meeting with Saudi king Abdullah touched on US policies on Iran and Syria but not about the Saudis' atrocious human rights record and abuse of women. Obama was also subjected to subtle form of racism, something widespread in the primitive desert kingdom.
Something is not well in the desert kingdom. King Abdullah made a sudden announcement about appointing his half-brother Prince Muqrin as deputy crown prince. No wonder he is grinning from ear to ear. The announcement from the royal court said in case the position of king and crown prince became "vacant." Very interesting indeed.
Will Saudi Arabia become the next target for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)? It cannot be ruled out based on statements posted on the Internet. There is much support for the group inside the kingdom where people are donating generously to it, not to mention sending volunteers to join it. The Saudi regime may have created a monster that will now come to bite it.
In what was a foregone conclusion, General (or Field Marshal) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced today on television that he is hanging his military uniform and wants to be president of Egypt. The notorious coup-maker whose hands are drenched in the blood of innocent people claims he wants to serve them.
Syrian refugees are pawns in the hands of foreign-backed terrorists and their political allies. The more misery they can inflict and project about the refugees, the greater degree of sympathy they hope to garner by blaming the Syrian government for their plight. Yet, in Geneva, it has been proved that it is the terrorists that refusing any help to the refugees or allow them to leave besieged towns.
The military-installed regime in Egypt is determined to crush all forms of dissent. Its recent victims are students, even those at Al-Azhar University. Riot police have stormed the premises and attacked and injured scores of students. The protests continue and show no sign of dying down despite the brutal crackdown.
People of the Caribbean are demanding reparations from European colonial powers for the slave trade that ruined the lives of millions of people from Africa. Will they get anything from the Europeans? While monetary compensation may not be forthcoming, the issue has put spotlight on one of the most egregious crimes perpetrated in human history.
What is the purpose of Bahraini ruler's six-day visit to Pakistan and why did he meet Pakistan's top military officials? Speculation is rife that he wants the Pakistan military to protect his tottering regime, the same as the Saudis. There was also a large protest against his visit and condemnation of the killings of Bahraini civilians by its security forces, many of them recruited from Pakistan.
New round of talks over Iran's nuclear program are about to begin in the Austrian capital Vienna in a few hours. How much progress will this round make depends on whether the West is serious about resolving this artificial crisis or is it merely using it to exert pressure on Iran in an attempt to force it to change its independent policy.
Crimeans have defied Western calls to boycott the referendum and have voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. Early results from more than 50 percent count showed that 95.7 percent of the vote was in favor of joining Russia. Western rulers are livid with the result and have vowed not to accept it but what can they do?
Saudis are finding that even their petro-dollars can no longer buy the loyalty of some Muslims. Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama of Lucknow in India has shown rare courage by openly condemning the Saudis for declaring the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon in Egypt and Hamas in Palestine as “terrorist” organizations. Nadwa's principled stand was immediately endorsed by a number of other organizations and Muslim political parties in India.
Syria's cyber warriors calling themselves the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) have successfully hacked into the US Central Command systems and retrieved hundred of military documents that they promise to make available to the general public soon. There must be many red faces in CENTCOM and Washington. Perhaps Uncle Sam has got a dose of his own medicine.
In the age of super technology, lack of information about Malaysian Flight MH370 has become a really mystery. How could a jumbo jet with 239 passengers on board simply disappear without a trace and even after nearly a week, nobody has the faintest clue where it went.
While the warmongers are beating their drums louder to get the US involved in another destructive war, this time in Syria, peace activists have intensified their efforts. The Syria Solidarity Movement has launched a week long telephone blitz to target members of Congress urging them not to support war. Instead, they are calling for unconditional negotiations to give peace a chance.
The CIA has always been a rogue outfit. It has now emerged that it has even been spying on the US Senate Intelligence Committee, the body that overseas CIA's work. Nobody is safe from its tentacles. Perhaps, Obama should check how many bugs does the CIA have in his bedroom.
How could a Boeing 777 simply disappear from radar screen and vanish into thin air? Why was the transponder on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Friday March 07 turned off? Relatives of passengers have reported being able to make cell phone calls that connect and ring but obviously there is no answer. How could cell phones ring unless their batteries are charged and are near some signal tower?
Zionist apologists do not want any discussion of the crimes against innocent Palestinians. They want to deny this even in an academic environment where freedom of opinion and thought are touted as cherished values. This is what is happening at Chicago's Columbia College where a zionist student's objection to a course on Palestinian suffering has been suspended because it exposes zionist crimes.
After enduring three months of captivity following their kidnapping by Western-Arab-backed terrorists in Syria, 13 nuns and three of their helpers were finally released today. In return, the Syrian government agreed to release 153 women prisoners. The swap was facilitated by Lebanese and Qatari intelligence agencies. The nuns arrived, exhausted in Syria earlier this evening.
With the death of warlord, 'Marshal' Mohammad Qasim Fahim (of natural causes, mind you), Afghanistan's stock of warlords is dwindling. President Hamid Karzai expressed grief at losing his 'first” vice president. Three days of mourning have been declared. Who will mourn the butcher from the north?
Who is a terrorist? Is it someone who kills innocent people or someone who defends his legitimate rights? The Saudi regime is known to sponsor terrorist outfits worldwide yet it has the gall to declare the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt a “terrorist” organization. The Bedouins from Nejd that have illegally occupied the Arabian Peninsula are financing the murderous thugs in uniform, the Egyptian military, with $15 billion in aid.
Zionist threats to Masjid al-Aqsa and the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem have intensified as is evident from the frequent storming of the Noble Sanctuary. Heavily armed zionist squatters backed by Israeli soldiers against stormed the Haram al-Sharif today. They have made no secret of their plans to occupy the noble sanctuary. Muslims worldwide must mobilize their resources to prevent such annexation.
The military-backed regime in Egypt is determined to tighten the siege of Gaza on orders from their zionist masters. The latest move comes with international peace activists, all of them women including Nobel Laureate, Mairead Maguire, denied entry into Egypt on their way to Gaza to participate in Women's Day celebrations and to express solidarity with them. The zionists are ecstatic.
Rulers of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE are not amused. They think Qatar is trying to be extra smart by backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and even supporting MB activities inside their countries. They have withdrawn their ambassadors from Doha. How long with this last? Not very long, if their past behavior is any guide.
Are they really serious about peace talks or simply going through the motions is a question many observers have asked about the Pakistan government and Taliban talks that remain suspended. Even when they were conducted, they were held indirectly. Can there be hope for a peaceful resolution to this decade-long crisis?
The Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of the peninsula who are Muslims, have been completely ignored in the gladiatorial tussle between the Western-backed neo-Nazis that have grabbed power in Kiev and the Kremlin bosses led by Vladimir Putin.
The Takfiris, whether in Iraq or Syria, are determined to kill as many innocent people as possible. Their murderous spree took more than 700 innocent lives in February. March is unlikely to be any better.
There is a great deal in common between South African and Israeli apartheid policies. There are also many differences with the zionists often surpassing even the Afrikaaners. Who is better placed than an anti-apartheid struggler of South Africa to talk about these issues? Yusuf “Jojo” Saloojee, a former South African ambassador will speak at Israeli Apartheid Week events across Canada.
To the uninitiated it may sound strange but Obama and the zionists are actively supporting the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and leading fascist groups after ousting the elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Tensions have also escalated between the US and Russia.
Twenty years may have elapsed since Baruch Goldstein, the zionist mass murderer with help from the Israeli occupation army slaughtered 29 worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque and injured 100 others. More Palestinians were killed by the occupation army during the day bringing the total to nearly 70. Palestinians remember their dead while zionists "celebrate" the horrific deed of Goldstein.
Whether fake or genuine, the 'Erdogan tapes'--a series of alleged phone conversations between Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and his son Bilal--have gripped Turks in a frenzy of excitement. The tapes in which Erdogan tells his son to hide a billion euros, have gone viral. Erodgan is calling foul while the opposition parties are calling for his head. It will be interesting to see how this latest round of "revelations" play out.
The US and its Western and Arabian allies are determined to intensify the conflict in Syria. Recent reports suggest the Saudis are planning to supply missiles to the takfiris in Syria in a bid to turn the tide of war. The net result will be more bloodshed and the suffering of Syrian people.
The Saudis do not consider anything to be sacred. In their drive to build concrete and steel structures so that the so-called royals can make money, they are planning to demolish the last vestiges of Prophetic history. Now they have plans to demolish the house where the Prophet (pbuh) was believed to have been born. A massive shopping complex will be built on the site.
The trial of deposed President Mohamed Mursi has been postponed until Monday February 24 by the Cairo Criminal Court. At his court appearance today, President Mursi urged his supporters to continue their “peaceful revolution.”
The uppity Bandar bin Sultan has been given the boot as Saudi spy chief. The Syrian file has been taken away from him and handed over to Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef in a clear indication that the Saudi regime has come around to accepting defeat in its destructive policy in Syria. It is trying to cut its losses and find a face-saving exit from the mess.
Even as the Bahraini regime released a female Bahraini activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, another activist was handed a death sentence. Six others were given life sentences allegedly for killing a policeman a year ago.
The Western-inspired unrest in Ukraine can only go so far. Russia will not allow its interests to be undermined in such a brazen manner by the US. Without European Union support, that has no stomach for a fight on its borders, the US will not achieve its objectives.
Bilawal Zardari is a spoiled brat. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, spent most of his time in the nightclubs of London but now he wants to lead the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He made his debut by condemning the Taliban and called the Islamic Sharia a throwback to the Stone Ages.
Local ceasefires agreed between the Syrian army and rebels in several Damascus suburbs has given rise to hopes that similar deals could be struck elsewhere in the country. The ceasefires have brought relief to the besieged people. The government has agreed to an amnesty for Syrian rebels but they must give up their heavy weapons. This amnesty does not extend to foreign mercenaries backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the US and Israel.
A Mossad agent who was involved in the killing of Hamas leader Dr Mahmoud al-Mabhouth in Dubai in January 2010 has been given a new identity and Canadian passport, according to a story in the rightwing news agency, QMI. The Canadian government refuses to comment on the story. Opposition parties are also silent on this most serious issue. Are Mossad terrorists welcome in Canada?
Who was behind the kidnapping of Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan from his house in Islamabad? He told a press conference after his release that 20 men, some wearing police uniforms kidnapped him in the middle of the night. Khan was about to leave for Europe where he was to testify before European parliaments about the massive civilian casualties caused by US drone strikes. He lost a brother and son to such strikes in 2009.
Seyyed Moqtada al-Sadr, one of the most prominent political-religious figures in Iraq has made a surprise announcement to quit politics. If he sticks to this decision, it will have serious repercussions for Iraq's politics that is heading for elections in two months' time.
Money and self-interest always trump human rights. The Harper regime has just announced a $10 billion sale of military equipment to one of the most notorious regimes in the Middle East--Saudi Arabia. While the Saudis are so incompetent that they will not be able to use them against any external threat, their real use would be against its own civilian population as well as keeping other notoriously oppressive regime, such as in Bahrain, in power.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said there will be no deal with the zionist regime on compensation for victims of the Mavi Marmara attack (May 31, 2010; depicted on banner on the Mavi Marmara in photo) unless the zionists give written guarantees that the siege of Gaza would be lifted. If Erdogan can stand his ground, this will be a great morale booster for the people of Gaza as well as millions of their supporters.
Slaughtering people like animals and chewing organs of dead opponents are signature marks of the takfiris operating in Syria. Now they have added another macabre ritual: strangulation of girls. A recent video shows this in stunningly graphic form. What kind of beasts are these?
The Lebanese intelligence has made steady progress against Saudi-backed and financed terrorists in Lebanon. Another leader of al-Qaeda terrorist group was captured in Beirut, according to an army communique today. This followed the arrest of the Saudi-financed terrorist Sheikh Omar Ibrahim al-Atrash (seen in photo) who revealed under interrogation his links with terrorist outfits in Syria and his role in car bombings in Lebanon.
Despite illegal sanctions, sabotage and other difficulties placed in the path of the Islamic Republic by imperialists and Zionists, the people's support for the Islamic Revolution has not waned. This was witnessed once again today as millions joined the 35 anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution at Azadi Square in Tehran.
The Pakistani Taliban have put forward a set of proposals for negotiations through their nominees (shown in photo). Will the Pakistan government respond positively or unleash its media dogs to discredit it without even looking at the proposals? Some points may not be workable but others should be seriously considered if the government wants to bring an end to the chaos that has engulfed the country.
Muslims in the US seem to clutch any straws that would make them feel as if they are welcome in the US. The latest episode is the announcement by New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio that he would fulfill his campaign promise to recognize Muslim holidays in the public school calendar. The illegal surveillance of Muslims and infiltration of mosques by NYPD agents provocateurs, however, will continue.
Officials and the people of the Islamic Republic should not fall for the guile of American officials, said the Rahbar in a speech to Air Force Commanders. He said the US would, if it could, overthrow the Islamic system of government. It has failed not for lack of trying but because it is based on Islamic principles and is backed by the Iranian people. He also called upon officials and people to continue with the resistance economy.
The increasing frequency of zionist attacks on Masjid al-Aqsa and the Haram al-Sharif compound is extremely worrying. Muslims must mobilize worldwide to prevent the zionists from implementing their criminal agenda. Masjid al Aqsa, shown in the picture, should not be confused with the golden Dome of the Rock that is also located on Haram al-Sharif.
Under a UN-brokered deal, food aid has started to the besieged city of Homs. This follows on the heels of a similar deal to send food packages to the Yarmouk refugee camp. According to Palestinian sources more than 5,000 packages have been delivered to Yarmouk at the rate of 1000 packages per day. Also, militants holed up in the two locales want to negotiate a deal and surrender their weapons.
The US continues to play a duplicitous role vis-a-vis Iran. It has just slapped sanctions on dozens of companies doing business with Iran. The Islamic Republic has reacted angrily to these latest sanctions.
he brutes in uniform are never content with their own job. They want the top spot in the country not because they are capable but because they have the guns and can terrorize people. Those that dare oppose them end up in jail or at the end of a rope. General (Field Marshal) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the arch zionist, has just confirmed he will seek the presidency. No one is surprised although the military council said he was misquoted.
The Saudi regime insists it has a perfect system in the kingdom. People have achieved nirvana. Therefore, anyone seeking reforms is a “terrorist” and will be punished for it. The chopping bloc is ready in the public square.
The zionists are nothing if they are not racists. They would even oppose something as harmless as building a seniors' home if it is for Muslims. This is what the Shia Muslim community is facing in Thornhill, a suburb outside Toronto. Ultimately, the Muslims will succeed because they are acting within their right but the entire episode once again exposes the racism of zionists.
Eleventh hour cancellation of peace talks between the two committees representing the government and the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan has raised doubts about peace. Maulana Samiul Haq, who heads the Taliban committee even expressed fears that a military campaign may be launched. He urged the Taliban to show patience and not do anything rash. There are many players, both in Pakistan and outside that do not want the peace talks to succeed.
The rush for Persian black gold is on. European business executives have made a beeline to Tehran to line up deals in the lucrative oil and gas arena with the easing of some sanctions against the Islamic Republic. While only a small fraction of sanctions have been eased, European oil executives know the rush is on. They do not wish to be left out even if the Americans--and Canadians--are absent from the scene.
Barack Obama to King Abdullah: We are still your masters--er, friends. Do not worry, just keep smiling. Can puppets demand any respect?
The American political system has been described as the best democracy money can buy. Financial scandals are rampant but even in this business of sleaze, some politicians show greater flair for it than others. Democratic Senator Robert Menendez is one of them. He is under FBI investigation for bribes as well as consorting with prostitutes. Some might say this comes with the turf.
The zionists' recent aggression against Lebanon is being raised at the UN Security Council by the Lebanese government while Hizbullah has vowed to retaliate at a time and place of its choosing. Israel's US-supplied warplanes attacked the village of Janta in South Lebanon on the night of February 24/25 causing no casualties but there was material damage according to Hizbullah sources.
The zionists have been involved in destabilizing the government of President Bashar al-Asad from day one. They have, however, denied such involvement until now. With mounting evidence and this claim becoming untenable, they have had to admit involvement but still hiding behind the excuse of offering “humanitarian” assistance.
Both Iran and Turkey have taken important steps not only to mend relations marred by their divergent outlooks on Syria but also deepen them, especially in the economic and cultural spheres. There is enormous potential if the two powerhouses come closer together.
The infighting between various takfiri groups, all sponsored by the US and its Arab puppets, has exposed the true nature of the conflict in Syria. It is not a conflict between Shias and Sunnis since all the takfiris claim to be "Sunnis;" rather, it is a foreign-sponsored conspiracy to weaken the resistance front against zionist Israel.
Egypt is heading into a permanent crisis and perhaps state collapse. Three explosions rocked Cairo today. While the casualties are not very high by Egyptian standards (six dead and almost 100 injured) they come on the eve of the anniversary of the January 25 uprising that led to the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. The date January 25 is symbolically important for Egyptians.
Tehran has announced that it plans to sue the Saudi regime for terrorist attacks against Iranian targets in the region. In making the announcement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said Tehran had compiled and was continuing to compile evidence that would be presented at appropriate international organizations.
Few informed observers expect anything of substance to emerge from the Geneva-II talks currently underway in Switzerland. The only hopeful sign is that at least some Syrian opposition groups are sitting across the table talking to Syrian government representatives even if they have been cajoled into coming there by their foreign masters. Will it lead to a solution? There is little hope at present unless there is a change of mind.
The UN has once again exposed itself as a body totally subservient to the US. While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon knows that without Iran's participation in the Geneva-II conference, there cannot be a peaceful political resolution to the Syrian conflict, the Americans are not interested in peace, only in regime change. This appears increasingly unlikely.
The Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei addressed several thousand assembled guests in Tehran on the occasion of the birthday of the noble Messenger of Allah (saws). While warning the assembled gathering and Muslims beyond against the divisive tactics of the enemies of Islam, he also gave the glad tidings that Muslims were on the rise and making good progress.
The constitutional referendum in Egypt is not meant to give the people their rights. It merely entrenches the military's grip on the political scene. It opens the way for General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the coup-maker, who overthrew a democratically elected last July, to assume direct power. The Egyptian military is back in power with all guns blazing.
Rape has become a common feature of life in India. Women are humiliated and suppressed and their rape is considered a normal part of life. The latest assault and rape of a 51-year-old Danish tourist right in the heart of Delhi once again shines light on this very serious problem.
The Lebanese army shown in photo, arrest Jamal Daftar-Dar, a Saudi-backed terrorist in Lebanon. He is believed to be involved in the car bombings of Iran's Embassy in Beirut on November 19 that killed at least 25 people. Another Saudi intelligence operative, Majed al-Majed died in mysterious circumstances in a Beirut hospital only a few days after his arrest. He could not be interrogated about his Saudi-backed terrorist operations.
Terrorist bomb attacks have escalated alarmingly in Iraq in recent weeks. Facing almost certain defeat in Syria, the Saudi-backed terrorists have intensified their murderous campaign in Iraq. The Saudi regime is arming, financing and training these terrorists to destabilize the region. The Saudi aim is to divert attention from their own illegitimate rule.
With mercenaries fighting and killing each other in Syria, government forces have a relatively free hand to deal with the terrorists. The Syrian army has been making steady progress in the strategic northern province of Aleppo and if it retakes the area, this will staunch the flow of weapons to the mercenaries from the north.
The sight of heavily armed troops backed by tanks and helicopters is not very conducive to a democratic vote. That, however, is not the point. The military wants to go through the exercise of holding a “vote” on the referendum to create the impression of people's participation so that it can continue to rule with an iron fist.
Aitizaz Hassan, a 15-year-old boy who sacrificed his own life to save 2,000 fellow students has been hailed a hero in Pakistan. He tackled a suicide bomber on January 6 outside his school and prevented him from detonating his bomb inside that would almost certainly have killed most of the students present there. He has been awarded Sitara-e Shujjat, Pakistan's highest civilian award, posthumously.
One of the most evil persons ever to walk on the face of earth, Ariel Sharon, has died, at last. He was 85 and had been in a coma since January 2006 after suffering multiple strokes. He was a mass murderer and went to his grave with the blood of tens of thousands innocent Palestinians, Lebanese and Egyptians on his hands. May he receive punishment commensurate with his vile deeds.
Robert Gates, the former US Defence Secretary has confirmed in writing what Afghan President Hamid Karzai had said all along: that the US wants to manipulate the 2014 presidential election in Afghanistan the way it tried in 2009. In his about to be published memoirs, Gates says the late US diplomat for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke was actively involved in undermining Karzai.
For frequent flyers, going through airport security checkpoints has become a nightmare. The so-called screeners are more like sexual predators. They are rude, ill-trained and have an attitude of do not give a damn. Are such intrusive searches really necessary or they are part of an elaborate scheme to create paranoia to take even the few rights people have in the West?
Foreign backed terrorist groups are fighting each other more than the Syria forces. They are also indulging in gruesome acts that have appalled most Syrians. They wish to have nothing to do with such barbarism.
It seems American soldiers take special pleasure in insulting Muslim sensitivities as happened yet again in Afghanistan's Wardak Province last night. American soldiers barged into a village mosque in the province and not only desecrated the mosque with their filthy boots but also desecrated copies of the Quran. There were immediate protests when word spread of the latest American outrage.
The military-backed regime in Egypt is becoming extremely brutal. Ousted President Mohamed Mursi is not permitted even to consult his lawyers before his scheduled court appearance on January 8. How is he expected to defend himself against bizarre charges that are politically motivated?
The Saudis appear determined to create massive conflict in the Ummah. Having failed to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Asad in Syria, they are now going after Lebanon. Their aim is to instigate sectarian conflict in the strategic town of Sidon that is a gateway to the south where Hizbullah has faced the zionists for several decades. Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan heads the campaign.
Poverty and violence are two characteristics frequently associated with Bangladesh. Today's election that was boycotted by all the opposition parties was marred by killings and firebombing of polling stations. Turnout was extremely low. While the “incumbent” prime minister Hasina Wajed may claim victory, the extremely low turnout and boycott by international observers have cast serious doubts about its validity.
Majed al-Majed, head of the Saudi-backed Abdullah Azzam Brigade, has died in mysterious circumstances in a Beirut hospital. He was captured from Sidon only last Monday and DNA tests had confirmed his identity. The group had claimed responsibility for the Iran Embassy bombing of November 19 resulting in 26 deaths. Iran wanted to join the investigation by questioning Majed. By killing Majed, this possibility has been eliminated.
The military has ordered the police to use maximum force against peaceful protesters in Egypt. The police are happy to oblige as the rampage after Juma prayers today demonstrated yet again. At least 19 protesters were shot and killed across Egypt and dozens injured. Their crime? They were protesting against the forthcoming referendum on a new constitution that has been drafted by a committee hand-picked by the military.
It would be unrealistic to assume that Arabian dictatorships or their masters in Washington have really changed their behavior. They have been forced by circumstances to adopt a different posture but caution in dealing with them would be in order.
The latest terrorist car bombing, as all previous ones, can be traced directly to the Saudis. More particularly, Saudi intelligence chief Band bin Sultan is the one financing car and suicide bombings from Syria to Lebanon and from Iraq to Pakistan. Bandar is desperate because his plan to destabilize Syria and drive Bashar al-Asad from power has failed. The people of Lebanon, Iraq and Syria are paying the price.
The Saudi terrorist mastermind, Majed ibn Muhammad al-Majed, has been captured by Lebanese intelligence forces and is being interrogated in Beirut. He is believe to be head of the Saudi-funded Abdullah Azzam Brigade that had masterminded the November 19 twin car bombings of Iran's embassy in Beirut. The terror bombings killed 26 people and injured another 150. It will be interesting to see what information Majed provides.
We present our assessment of the past year: what was good and what was not so good or outright bad. The past, as it is said, is a mirror to the future. Since life is a continuum, events of the past have a bearing on the future. We present our pick of the past year.
The once strongman and military dictator of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf is a worried man these days. Under house arrest since April, he faces a number of charges, the latest being treason that could send him to the gallows. While this is highly unlikely, his fall from grace and humiliation offer salutary lessons for would-be dictators.
The miltiary and its henchmen in Egypt are getting desperate. While the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon, the country's only organized and most popular group has been banned and most of its leaders imprisoned, the regime has also unleashed thugs against them. In any other society, this would be roundly condemned. Instead, puppet media outlets are egging people on to attack the Ikhwan. Civil war cannot be very far.
Will Karzai sign the deal or won't he is the question giving sleepless nights to the Washington warlords. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is playing coy about signing the deal that would allow US forces to remain in Afghanistan indefinitely under the erroneously labeled Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA). Will Afghanistan come to America's rescue if the latter were attacked? The US wants a free hand in Afghanistan after 2014.
A massive car bomb exploded in Beirut's commercial district early today killing the former finance minister, Mohammad Shatah and five other people. At least 10 buildings were set on fire as ambulances rushed to the scene to pick up the wounded and dead. The explosion is bound to sharpen divisions in Lebanon. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri hinted at Hizbullah's involvement, something the resistance group does not indulge in.
Egypt's military-installed regime and the military itself, are going after the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon with a sledgehammer. The organization has been banned by declaring it a “terrorist” group. Not only its leaders and members but anyone raising their voice in support are being hauled to prison. Many charities dependent on donations from the Ikhwan have closed down. The so-called liberals have applauded the ban.
The US continues to murder innocent people in Pakistan under what it describes as targeting “militants.” No proof is ever provided; what the US says, goes. Under mounting public pressure, Pakistan has said it will raise the issue at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Will the Washington warlords listen, or care?
Turkey is gripped by a corruption scandal whose roots are entirely political. Foreign players such as the American CIA and the zionists are also involved through the secretive character Fethullah Gulen who runs a multi-billion enterprise across the world. Claiming to be a spiritual man, his links cast deep suspicions on his activities. Will the latest crisis in Turkey expose his true nature?
Killing unarmed Palestinian civilians is a favorite policy of the zionists. This is what they did again today when US-supplied Israeli warplanes bombed the tiny Gaza Strip several times killing two civilians, among them a three-year-old girl. While the cowardly Arab rulers have remained totally silent, Islamic Iran condemned the attacks in the strongest possible terms.
Unable to crush the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon movement, the military-installed regime in Egypt has resorted to more crude tactics. The Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) has been declared a “terrorist” organization by appointed prime minister Hazem Beblawi (in photo) ahead of the January 14-15, 2014 referendum in order to isolate it. Pro-Ikhwan, anti-military regime protests continue in Egypt.
By common consent, Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to Washington Dc, Bandar bin Sultan, is a nasty character. He has now been named as being deeply involved in the 911 conspiracy. Who else from his contacts within the ruling circle in America and Israel are involved? Would Bandar end up on the US terror watch list for his role in the 911 attacks?
Turkey is in the midst of a major scandal whose roots can be traced all the way to Philadelphia in the US and to the zionists there. A series of dramatic arrests on December 17 has rocked the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan. The sons of three of his ministers, including Interior Minister Muammer Guler (photo) as well as businessmen and chief of the Halkbank have been arrested. Erdogan calls it a deep conspiracy.
The Saudi regime uses different means to divide Muslims. One is to spread hatred against some Muslims thereby confusing others. Many innocent Muslims think that just because a Saudi preacher is appointed to lead prayers in Masjid al-Haram or Masjid-e Nabawi, that he must be a great scholar of Islam. One such preacher, Adel al-Kalbani was denied entry into Britain because the authorities felt he would merely create divisions.
The apartheid disease is spreading even if it ended in South Africa nearly two decades ago. The Zionists have continued their apartheid policy on the Occupied West Bank by building a separation wall and now the Indian occupiers of Kashmir plan to build a similar wall. As usual, the excuse is to keep Kashmiri militants from “infiltrating” into its side. The Kashmiris have never accepted India's occupation of the state.
American officials habitually tell lies about their adversaries. The chemical weapons attack in Syria last August was blamed on the Syrian government but Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed through sources in the intelligence community that Barack Obama cherry-picked through information to make it look as if the Syrian government was responsible.
The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is trying to wriggle out of its agreement with Iran to construct the gas pipeline that would provide major relief to energy starved Pakistan. Industrial production has been badly affected by shortage of electricity with many industrialists shutting their factories and relocating abroad. The people of Pakistan have historical suffered at the hands of incompetent and selfish rulers.
Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right of Return, has issued an urgent appeal to end the siege of Gaza. Unusual torrential rains have flooded the tiny Gaza Strip whose infrastructure was already twice destroyed by zionist barbarism in 2008- 2009 and in 2012. Gaza's sole power plant remains shut because of shortage of fuel and spare parts. The zionist regime and Egypt's military are collaborating in this crime against Gaza. The siege must end now.
The people of Gaza suffer shortages of food, water and medicine. They have also been subjected to 12-hour power outages because of the lone power plant shutting down last month as a result of lack of spare parts. Now nature has imposed another challenge: unusual rains have caused massive flooding. Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected. The zionist-Egyptian siege, meanwhile continues.
The Saudis have become so desperate that they no longer feel the need to hide their alliance with the zionists. The alliance is against Islamic Iran. The caste of Saudi villians leading this crusade, ostensibly on behalf of “Sunni Muslims” is Bandar bin Sultan and Walid bin Talal. The Ummah must challenge these obscurantist zionist agents and tell them they have no right to speak on behalf of any Muslims, anywhere.
Addicted to killing innocent people with drones, this time the US targeted a wedding party in Yemen. At least 17 guests were murdered yesterday when a drone strike hit a car that was traveling in a wedding convoy. It was the second strike this week in Yemen. Obama calls drone strikes as precision weapons but the number of civilians killed show a callousness that borders on the scandalous.
American hypocrisy became evident, yet again, on December 12 when the Treasury Department slapped new nuclear-related sanctions on Iran even while the Obama regime has said it would not do so. At the same time, Wendy Sherman, the top US nuclear negotiator told Congress it could impose new sanctions if they were not nuclear-related. The deal appears to have been placed in jeopardy.
Hasina Wajed is determined to push Bangladesh into civil war. The hasty manner in which Jamaat-e Islami leader Abdul Qauder Molla was executed by hanging within hours of the Supreme Court rejecting his appeal to review his death sentence shows the vindictiveness of the current prime minister. Violent protests erupted in many cities across the country. Bangladesh is heading for more turmoil as polarization deepens.
Without mincing words, the Saudi Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh has condemned suicide bombings as haraam. He has said that anyone who blows himself up with explosives is hastening his departure to hell. This is a very strong statement coming from the highest religious authority in the kingdom that specializes in producing suicide bombers, of course against people they consider to be their enemy.
Western hypocrisy was on full display in South Africa today as scores of leaders from around the world gathered to pay respects to Nelson Mandela, the father of South Africa's liberation struggle who died on December 5. He was 95. The same western rulers whose countries had aided and abetted the apartheid regime that had tormented Mandela and his fellow strugglers for decades were now singing his praises.
There appears no limit to the hatred of Bangaldeshi Prime Minister Hasina Wajed. She insists on seeking revenge from her political opponents that had opposed her father's quest to break Pakistan with Indian military help to create Bangladesh. Her government has announced it will hang Abdul Qauder Molla, a leader of the Jamaat-e Islami after midnight today. Observers believe it will lead to more chaos in the country.
Droning innocents to death in Pakistan is official US policy. This is implemented by US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on behalf of Barack Obama who has escalated drone strikes alarmingly since becoming president. Hagel was in Islamabad today to insist the drone attacks would continue while the people of Pakistan are adamantly opposed to them. There have been protests for several weeks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to get such attacks stopped.
The Saudis have intensified their subversion of any chances of a negotiated settlement in Syria. The purchase of nearly 16,000 anti-tank missiles from the US at a price of $1.1 billion in meant for the Saudi-sponsored mercenaries in Syria. Will the latest move succeed or merely add to the misery of the people.
Nelson Mandela has exposed the hypocrisy of Western rulers that have made a beeline to join his funeral in South Africa. Kings, presidents, prime ministers and others will be there to proclaim Mandela’s greatness while they indulged and continue to indulge in the worst kinds of crimes against humanity imaginable.
Nelson Mandela, the first popularly elected president of post-apartheid South Africa died today at home in Johannesburg. He was 95. Surrounded by family, he breathed his last at around 8:50 pm local time. This was announced by a sombre Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa, on TV. He said a “light had gone out in the world.” Mandela would be given a state funeral. All flags were ordered to fly at half-mast.
Most Muslims do not subscribe to the divisive ideology of hate and killings among different schools of thought in Islam. This, however, needs serious effort to bring the majority together and to isolate the hate-propagating minority. In recent weeks, some tentative steps have been taken that are likely to yield positive results. Unity and harmony in the Ummah are desperately needed to overcome the myriad problems confronting Muslims.
he Americans find themselves at their wits end with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Even as lame duck president, he has put his spanner in the Bilateral Security Agreement that the Americans desperately want signed immediately. They have threatened to withdraw all their forces and leave Afghanistan to its fate unless it is signed immediately but Karzai remains unfazed. He seems to dare them to walk away.
Failure of the foreign conspiracy to topple the government of Bashar al-Asad has resulted in fighting spilling over into Lebanon. In addition to fightnig, such as in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, assassination of Hizbullah commanders and fighters has also intensified. Hassan al-Laqqis, a prominent Hizbullah commander was the latest victim, assassinated last night as he returned home. Two gunmen shot him at close range.
Within a few days of Iran signing the interim deal with the sextet (US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany), there have been quick moves by Tehran to approach its Persian Gulf neighbors. These regimes have also realized that change is coming and it would be in their interest to mend fences with Tehran. The speed with which the moves are occurring is quite astonishing.
Shaykh el-Qaradawi continues to grab headlines. His latest announcement about resigning from the advisory Committee of Ulama at Al-Azhar has been welcomed by most sincere Muslims. He resigned because he accused Al-Azhar and its shaykh of failing to condemn the military coup and its massacres of the Egyptian people. Muslims, however, have questioned el-Qaradawi's sectarian outbursts and his acceptance of patronage of the Qatari amir.
The Saudi regime has become extremely jittery and, therefore, even more oppressive than before. Omar al-Saeed, a member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) was sentenced to 300 lashes and four years in jail for merely demanding a consitutional monarchy in the country. His trial was held in secret and he had no access to a defence lawyer.
Egyptians are beginning to realize that the military and the regime it backs are not there to serve the interests of the people. Hitherto, only supporters of the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon (Muslim Brotherhood) were concerned; now this has spread to the wider society. Students have also joined in large numbers.
Hamid Karzai is furious at the Americans. They have killed another innocent child and injured two women in a bombing raid in Afghanistan. Karzai has been demanding a halt to such attacks and total ban on night raids in people's homes before he signs the Bilateral Security Agreement that would allow American troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline.
Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI), the party headed by cricket-star-turned politician Imran Khan, has named CIA director John Brennen and the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Craig Osth as the principal accused in the murder of six people in a drone strike on a madrassa in Tall, Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district. PTI Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mazari made the announcement at a press conference in Islamabad on Monday.
While the people of Syria continue to suffer as a consequence of the foreign-inspired war in the country, the so-called poliitical opposition led by the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) as well as the mercenary rebel and takfiri forces refuse to participate in dialogue scheduled for Geneva on January 22, 2014 to resolve the crisis. They are, however, losing the battle inside Syria, both politically and militarily.
Details of the Iran-six powers interim nuclear deal have now been released. For limited sanctions relief (though the major sanctions would remain in place), Iran has agreed to cap its nuclear program at its present level. It has also agreed to provide access to IAEA inspectors. This allows a six-month time period for the parties to work on a comprehensive agreement. US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel are most upset over the deal.
Kashmir dispute is the longest unresolved issue facing the world. The rights of the Kashmiri people to self-determination have been denied since the problem arose in October 1947. Unfortunately, there is little information about the dispute outside a core of Kashmiri activists and the people of Pakistan. The Toronto seminar was meant to break this situation by bringing together a vast array of speakers to highlight the issue.
Iran and the six powers finally agreed on the wording of an interim agreement in Geneva over Tehran's nuclear program. The deal is for six months during which Iran will not expand its nuclear program. In return, it would get relief of about $4.2 billion in oil revenue sales. Relief on medicines and import of gold and metals would also be provided.
People's anger over continued US drone strikes was evident in the massive rally organized by the Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) party led by Imran Khan. Tens of thousands blocked the ring road in Peshawar leading to Torkham border with Afghanistan. They demanded an immediate end to drone strikes that have killed thousands of people in Pakistan since they were first launched in 2004.
President Hamid Karzai wants American troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline and he has agreed to all their terms but he does not want to take responsibility for the deal. He is trying to be clever by asking the Loya Jirga to take responsibility while at the same time he has said its signing should be postponed until after the presidential elections next April.
General Sisi wants to be the president of Egypt. His zionist cousins in Tel Aviv would be pleased. They have been waiting for this for 65 years. Now they have a great opportunity with one of their own taking direct control in Egypt, arguably the most important country in the Arab world.
The House of Saud is in panic mode. Its policies are unravelling both at home and abroad. Its long standing ally and protector, the US, is no longer as keen to lend a helping hand or ear, as it used to. The Saudis can read the writing on the wall. They see their end coming soon. What will come first: King Abdullah going to his grave--he is 90 years old--or the collapse of the Nejdi clan?
he choice of Pakistan's new army chief has the chattering classes in a tizzy. Who will get the nod: will it be Lt Gen Haroon Aslam, Lt Gen Rashad Mahmood, Lt Gen Tariq Khan or Lt Gen Raheel Sharif? In less than 10 days, people will find out but the question on everyone's mind though not uttered is whether the new chief would keep out of politics.
The third round of talks between Iran and the sextet started in Geneva today amid guarded optimism that there may be an interim deal at last. It is still too early to tell but all signs point to progress. The next two days will show what can be expected.
The main terrorist sponsors in the Middle East--Saudi Arabia and zionist Israel--collaborating closely with each other, appear to be behind the twin suicide attacks earlier today in Beirut. Their target was the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Lebanon. At least 23 people have been killed and 146 injured according to Lebanese health ministry officials.
An updated list of Guantanamo Bay detainees' list has been released by the Pentagon but it does not include the name of Aamer Shakir, the British detainee. Instead, the US has provided a second list of detainees who will not be released. They will also not be charged with any offence but since the US considers itself above the law, it claims it can do what it likes.
There is immense suffering in Gaza, the tiny Strip that is sandwiched between Israel, the Red Sea and Egypt. The zionist regime has blockaded the tiny Strip with its 1.5 million inhabitants from all sides (including the sea), the Egyptian regime is also collaborating with the zionists adding to the suffering of the people of Gaza. Raw sewage flows in the streets forcing people to walk through it (photo). 90 percent of Gaza's water is undrinkable.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan announced in Islamabad today that the government would press treason charges against General Pervez Musharraf. The charges relate to Musharraf's suspension of the constitution, imposition of a state of emergency and the sacking of judges that refused to provide legal cover to his illegal moves in 2007. Most people, however, are skeptical about whether Musharraf would be punished.
Afghans are adamant that they are completely against the presence of US troops in their country. This was confirmed again today when thousands of angry Afghans protested in the eastern city of Jalalabad. They are also totally opposed to the immunity clause the Americans are demanded for their troops if they stay in Afghanistan past the 2014 deadline.
There are clear signs that Turkey is making important changes in its policies that had led to serious disagreements with many of its neighbours. These primarily related to its policy on Syria where the AKP government had made the overthrow of Bashar al-Asad a central plank of its policy. This has failed and Turkey is changing course. It is also taking steps to reduce sectarian tensions. These are welcome developments.
Toronto--and by extension--Canada had a good reputation. No more. A child pornographic ring has just been busted in Toronto as well as several other countries. The pornographic company was based in Toronto. These revelations come on the heels of scandals involving Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (shown in photo) who has admitted to taking illegal drugs, and drunk driving. He refuses to resign.
Zionist provocations at Masjid al-Aqsa and the Haram al-Sharif are likely to lead to another intifadah in Palestine. The zionist occupying regime is discussing a draft law that would provide access for zionist Jews to set foot on the Haram al-Sharif and pray there. Muslims consider this to be an extreme provocation. Muslim reaction is likely to be strong and widespread. Perhaps this is what the zionists want.
In a stunning disclosure, lawyers read a statement from ousted President Mohamed Mursi who said he was kidnapped by the military on July 2, a day before it carried out the coup. He said he plans to sue the coup perpetrators for treason. Yesterday, an administrative court in Cairo announced that the state of emergency imposed since August 14 has been lifted.
Repeated polls have shown that Americans have complete contempt for Congress. The latest Gallup poll shows that only 9% of Americans approve of Congress. This means a massive 91% disapprove of the legislative body. Americans are also beginning to realize that its members are corrupt, and morally bankrupt. So much for American democracy that it wants to export to the rest of the world using cruise missiles.
While former US vice president Dick Cheney is universally despised and considered a war criminal, the elite consider him their hero. The Toronto chapter of the International Economic Forum of the Americas has invited him to speak in Toronto tomorrow. Massive protests are planned to denounce Cheney as a war criminal. the International Lawyers group has called for his arrest. It will be an interesting Halloween night in Toronto.
Is Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan going ahead with the missile defence deal with China? There has been strong reaction in Western capitals against the proposed deal by a Nato member with a serious rival of the West. What is Erdogan thinking and why is he so upset with the US and Nato to go elsewhere?
The Palestinians have suffered not only at the hands of the zionists but the truth about their suffering is also deliberately suppressed and distorted worldwide so that people would not learn about it. This may be changing, slowly but surely. The saga of the zionist theft of Palestinian land is being graphically depicted through maps that are finding their way onto the transit systems in the US. This is a small but significant victory.
Together with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International released a 62-page report today about US drone strikes in Pakistan. We give below extract of two cases. Eight-year-old Nabeela (in photo), saw her 68-year-old grandmother blown to pieces by two US drone Hellfire missiles on October 24, 2012. US drone strikes had also killed 18 labourers about to have dinner in Miran Shah, North Waziristan.
With their policy in disarray over Syria, there is confusion and panic among the hordes of princes in Saudi Arabia. Based on recent statements and developments, there are clearly deep divisions on how to handle the fast changing situation. There are those (Bandar, for instance) that want to intensify interference in Syria while others want to cut their losses since they see the writing on the wall.
The US regime has turned into a monster. Its surveillance programs are so intrusive that they spare no one, even close allies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has found this out as have the Spaniards. They are not amused but the issue has gone beyond amusement. They are furious at such betrayal. There will be consequences. The whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has meanwhile warned of the dangers in such a policy.
Instead doing what is logical and correct, the Saudi preachers give rulings that expose their lack of Islamic knowledge. On Friday a Saudi preacher claimed that women that drive cars will damage their ovaries and will develop complications when bearing children. He did not cite any scientific or medical study for his fantastic claim. Why don't they allow women to drive cars, as they do in almost every other country in the world?
Terrorism has never been a successful strategy. Its only consequence is suffering for ordinary people. This is what is happening in Syria. The terrorist groups, however, are now fighting each other because they are unable to dislodge the government of Bashar al-Asad. Their foreign masters--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, the US, France, Britain and Israel, to name a few--have also realized that these terrorists cannot deliver.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry met in New York to discuss ways of resolving the standoff about Iran's nuclear program. This was the first official meeting between Iran's foreign minister and his American counterpart in 34 years. While there has been much media hype about the meetings between officials of the two countries, it is yet to be seen whether any breakthrough will occur.
For the first time in 34 years, top officials from Iran will meet the Americans under the umbrella of the P5+1 talks over Iran's nuclear program. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York. Will this meeting lead to any meaningful progress on the nuclear issue? We will see after the meeting that is scheduled to begin at 4 pm.
Unable to crush the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon completely, the military junta has attacked the party's newspaper. In a late night raid, all its equipment was stolen by the police as they ransacked the headquarters of Al-Hurra wa al-Adala (Freddom and Justice), the same name used by the party. The regime will only allow its own dogs to bark.
The Americans were very anxious for President Barack Obama to have a "chance encounter" with President Hassan Rohani of Iran at the UN. The meeting, however, did not take place because Iran felt the proper ground was not prepared for it. Unlike the US, Iran is not interested in photo-ops; it wants serious discussion on all issues and is anxious to resolve these through dialogue held in an atmosphere of mutual respect and dignity.
The zionists have become so brazen that they have started to assault critics of Israeli crimes in the streets of Western cities. Paris, Toronto and London have all witnessed assaults by zionist thugs of critics of Israeli policies. The latest victim is George Galloway, a Member of the British Parliament for Respect Party. He was assaulted in Notting Hill, a western suburb of London today. He suffered a broken jaw and bruises to his face and head.
Who is General Sisi? There are multiple personalities rolled into one but it is the whispering campaign in Egyptian households backed by various sources that is causing serious concern. Neither Sisi nor any of his military or civilian spokespersons have responded to allegations about his questionable background. What is the truth? Not only Egyptians but Muslims worldwide would like to know.
Millions of people across the US and Canada plan to march against the US war on Syria. An attack on Syria appears imminent despite massive opposition to such aggression among Americans and Canadians. The warmongers are looking for excuses, however, flimsy, to perpetrate more aggression against another Muslim country.
While the military-appointed "interim president" of Egypt changed the oath the military must take removing their pledge to the president, another politician, this time the leader of the Salafi Nour Party, Youness Makhioun denounced those that oppose the military as "traitors." Grovelling at the feet of the military has become fashionable for some politicians in Egypt but it is a betrayal of the proud people of Egypt.
British MPs mustered enough courage and common sense to reject David Cameron's motion to launch a war, this time against Syria. Aware of public weariness with wars that have caused havoc with the lives of ordinary people, the MPs, some from Cameron's own Tory party, rejected the motion leaving him humiliated. Cameron will not be able to join his American master in a new war.
The Rahbar, Imam Seyyed Ai Khamenei of Iran has warned against any attack on Syria saying it will have catastrophic consequences not only for the region but also for the US. He said the results would be no different from what the US faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jeffrey Feltman has never hidden his true intentions: like all hardcore zionists, he represents the interests of the zionist state of Israel. Previously, he used his post in the US State Department as cover to advance the Israeli agenda; now he is using the UN hat. He cannot, however, hide his spots.
Pakistan has a new president but few people are celebrating. In the month of Ramadan, most people are concerned about their livelihood and the stifling heat to worry much about who will occupy the opulant presidential palace in Islamabad.
The Egyptian military has exposed its brutal nature very quickly. The blood splattered walls of Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque and the surrounding pavement where hundreds of unarmed protesters were gunned down before Fajr prayers on Saturday provides ample proof of their criminal nature. Nothing short of an Islamic revolution can bring these criminals to justice. Nothing less would do.
While Pakistanis cannot wait to get rid of Asif Ali Zardari, a venal character who has occupied the presidency since 2008, jockeying for the post among political parties has intensified. Selection of the president is seldom done on the basis of merit; it is based on connections and whose interests you serve that determine the outcome. On July 30 Pakistanis will find out. It is most likely to be Mamnoon Hussain (picture left) of the PML-N.
The US-zionist-Saudi-backed takfiris in Syria are determined to instigate sectarian warfare in the Ummah because they are so consumed by hatred. Their tactics include attacks on shrines of the Ahlul Bayt as well as Sahaba that supported them. What kind of people that call themselves Muslims would indulge in such behavior?
The Egyptian military regime is getting desperate. Unable to suppress Mursi supporters that are keeping their vigil, the military dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for massive show of support for Friday. The turnout of his hired thugs was less than anticipated but it does not matter since he just wants to use this as an excuse to clamp down even harder on the Muslim Brotherhood. The mass killings of Mursi supporters proves this.
The takfiris are exposing their demonic ideology of hate and killings in Syria. Egged on by the court ulama of Saudi Arabia, they recently beheaded three Christians including a priest in the western city of Homs. The video makes gruesome viewing and would send shudder down the spine of any human being. 15-year-old Mohammad Qataa (left) was shot in the face and killed on June 9 after an argument with a takfiri terrorist.
The dramatic announcement by Altaf Hussain as head of the MQM early Sunday morning (Pakistan time) has taken many observers by surprise. Is the godfather of MQM serious or is this another of his political stunts to shore up support when his popularity has declined dramatically in recent months? His quick retraction a few hours later proved this was all a show.
America's illegal activities against other countries as well as its own citizen are being exposed as never before. To Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA's snooping on all Americans as well as citizens of other countries, must now be added the news that a four-star retired US general, James Cartwright is being investigated by the Justice Department for leaking information about the US Stuxnet virus attack on Iran in 2010.
Despite Nawaz Sharif's announcement that treason charges would be laid against the former dictator General (ret'd) Pervez Musharraf, people remain highly skeptical. Some see it as political theatre; others believe Sharif is simply trying to divert attention from the serious problems facing Pakistan that Sharif has little ability to rectify despite making tall promises prior to may 11 general elections that his party won.
Saudi preacher, Muhammad al-Arifi (left), has issued a fatwa saying prostitution by Muslim girls to service takfiri fighters in Syria is permissible. Has the Ummah fallen so low that such filthy fatwas can be issued and Muslims remain silent? At the same time, Arifi and Sheikh al-Qaradawi have launched an anti-Shia crusade leading to the lynching of four Shias in a village outside Cairo.
Millions of Egyptians, some armed with sticks and iron bars, have occupied various squares across the country. Opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi demand his immediate resignation and fresh elections while his supporters insist they will not allow a president to be pushed out of office a year after he was constitutionally elected. There are real fears of a civil war breaking out and the military taking over, once again.
Tehran peace conference on Syria attracts representatives from 40 countries
Starting June 1 Canadian citizens visiting the UAE will be able to obtain a visa without charge upon arrival in the Persian Gulf shaikhdom.
The royal court has not issued any statement about the king’s condition. What should it say: that the monarch is in a vegetative state?
The Obama regime will continue practicing assassinations.
Nijat Aliyev, Editor-in-chief of Azadxeber.net, an Islamic news website was tortured by an unidentified person from the Israeli embassy in Baku.
US President Barack Obama shook the blood-soaked hands of Thein Sein of Myanmar at the White House.
Islamic activists, scholars and intellectuals gathered in Tehran for the annual Islamic Awakening conference.
Russia acknowledges Hizbullah's strategic influence in the Middle East.
Egyptian leadership is beginning to realize that the Western instigated war in Syria can only be ended through political negotiations.
Ilham Aliyev’s oppressive tactics are raising the credibility and influence of the Islamic movement in Azerbaijan.
When Jews from all corners of the world travel to Palestine to join the Zionist occupational army, Western corporate media never refers to them as foreign fighters.
Mossad did suffer a security breach. To what degree is hard to tell.
The rabbi's daughters are expected to testify against him in court but it is virtually a given that his lawyers will plead insanity, claiming that no sane person could do such a thing.
Resistance to the US occupation continues in Afghanistan.
The endgame is causing panic in official circles in Kabul.
Welcome to the new global economic order free from the chains of US imperialism.
Is this the beginning of the west coming to grips with reality?
Does Buffett believe, as some have speculated, that the financial markets are about to collapse and that gold and silver would not be much help in feeding people?
It seems Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan is trying to outdo Qaddafi in all aspects of his despotic policies.
Using terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e Jhangvi and the SSP, the Saudis want to create a permanent breach between Shias and Sunnis in order to check the influence of Islamic Iran.
How prepared are Islamic organizations to use the new emerging situation in the region.
The arrest of Mossad’s Pakistani spy, whose name has not been released, is a blow to Israeli attempts to destabilise Pakistan
On the political front the US backed “opposition” is in even worse shape.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes in Pakistan have killed nearly 5,000 people since June 2004.
You know you live in the US when...
China is gearing up to fill the vacuum.
While Muslims are impatiently awaiting the collapse of the US-backed al-Saud family rule through domestic uprising, Yemen might end up being the decisive factor in starting the process of al-Saud’s demise.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which compiles figures on drone strikes, the US has killed up to 3,378 people in 350 drone strikes in the past eight years in Pakistan.
The US has notoriously liberal gun laws, backed up by an entertainment culture that glorifies violence.
Foreign meddling in the uprisings in Arab countries will force Muslim socio-political organizations to come up with Islamic based designs of governance that are less vulnerable to one-sided Western manipulation.
Facts show that the conflict in Georgia can take on international dimensions at any time.
The US is bound to make another strategic miscalculation in the Middle East as it is failing to come to terms with its declining power.
Anti-government protests that were relatively small were talked up as bringing out hundreds of thousands of people into Tahrir Square.
To extract maximum advantage from the ongoing chaos, groups within the SNC might begin playing both sides for their own mundane interests.
Israel’s claim to “victimhood” is no longer automatically accepted.
If the electoral crisis that occurred within a French political party would happen to an Islamic party, Western media would turn it into a main headline.
The king is on life support while the kingdom is on autopilot for now.
Independent Muslim communities and even ordinary Muslims are beginning to realize the divide-and-rule plot of imperialist powers. This positive phenomenon is particularly visible on social-networks and Internet forums where Sunni-Shia unity is a popular topic.
The Zionist regime’s warplanes could not have reached Khartoum without using the airspace of regional countries.
The ongoing clashes in Gaza show that if the tribal, US-backed Arabian regimes were genuinely concerned about innocent lives, they would have asked the UN for military intervention to stop the decades’ long oppression of Palestinians.
The challenge for the American people is to break the Israeli lobby’s grip on their political system.
Hurricane Sandy is likely to affect Obama’s campaign more adversely than Romney’s because his supporters were hoping to get the early voters out in the last week before November 6. The storm has disrupted this plan.
The unfolding events in Tatarstan clearly show that Russia is facing a serious challenge in maintaining its current borders.
In 2007 the palace “scholar” Abdulaziz al Sheikh called for the demolition of the graves of Prophet Muhammad (saws) and his two companions buried beside him, Abu Bakr (ra) and Umar (ra).
The MKO has been responsible for hundreds of terrorist acts in Iran during the decade of the eighties in which some 17,000 Iranian officials and civilians were murdered by this gang of criminals.
Hillary Clinton underlined the need to keep governments like Egypt on the payroll in order to advance US foreign policy objectives in the region.
Khadr was 15 when captured in Afghanistan. Under the Child Soldiers’ Protection convention, he should have been treated as a child soldier and provided help to rehabilitate. Instead, the Americans branded him an enemy combatant and tortured him for more than 10 years.
This is not the first time the US has attempted to criminalize Assange.
Zionists love to boast how those affiliated with their regime are supposedly the brains behind every technological invention, but now Netanyahu has proved that in reality they are a bunch of PowerPoint morons.
Even circumspect Canadian journalists have been forced to speak out against the award given Harper’s record of shutting human rights organizations and riding rough shod over democratic norms. Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star wrote on the editorial page: “Stephen Harper’s democracy award a sad joke on Canadians.”
Western institutions were eager to see what sectarian ammunition Dr Mursi may provide in order to amplify differences within the Muslim Ummah. His performance left them greatly disappointed.
Only Islamic Iran truly embodies the principles for which NAM was established: aligned neither with the East nor the West.
The economic decline of the US is beginning to affect women.
US backed elites banded together with the CIA to train and arm death squads to terrorize the country, in which over 70,000 people were killed in a 10-year period.
The US government has not commented on the scandalous verdict even when relating to one of its own citizens killed—crushed to death—by an Israeli army.
The NYPD has a track record of excessive surveillance of ethnic and racial minorities, including blacks, Hispanics and Muslims.
Many Iraqi Turkmens are growing eager to form their own defense force.
Underemployment will continue to be used as one of the main tools to stall an uprising against the ruling caste in the West.
The real oligarchic nature of democratic polities and societies, and the fact that “freedom” is actually a cover for the untrammelled exercise of power by the strong in society, are subjects that I have written about before in this column and elsewhere.
There is heated debate in Washington about what to do with the runaway debt crisis. And this time it is real. Both halves of the American body politic — the Republicans and the Democrats — have finally been stung by the uncontrollable debt that is officially acknowledged to be around $14.4 trillion.
Colonel Muammar Qaddafi is an easy figure to hate. Given his eccentric behaviour, he is the butt of many jokes that are easily conflated into hate against the man and his policies. Qaddafi need not be our favourite tyrant but the West’s attack on his regime as well as the country’s infrastructure is not motivated by the desire to rescue the Libyan people.
Islamic movements, intellectuals and activists long tended to have a love-hate relationship with democracy. On the one hand, democracy has been associated with the aggressive, brutal, exploitative, hegemonic policies of the post-colonial Western power.
The Islamic Arab East has fire in its belly. The popular mood is: “fa-al-yasqut al-nizam — down with the regime.” Masses of people are breaking the fear barrier and expressing their century-old, pent-up feelings. Some dictators have been toppled, others are teetering, and still others are trying to change laws and make amends before they, too, are swept away by the people’s fury.
Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi has been forced out of office in the face of determined demands of protesters. Ghannouchi announced his resignation at a press conference in Tunis after a long rambling speech on television extolling his virtues and his record in government.
The UN Security Council passed a unanimous resolution on February 26 imposing sanctions on the Qaddafi regime freezing assets of the beleaguered ruler and his close associates as well as referring him to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague for war crimes.
The Egyptian Military High Council apologised on February 26 about attacking civilians in Tahrir Square on Friday night. The protesters were demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq.
The Raymond Davis saga is beginning to assume the proportions of a spy thriller, literally. Presenting himself as a security contractor with the US Consulate in Lahore.
After Friday prayers, mass demonstrations were held in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, with protesters voicing solidarity with the struggle in Libya and vowed their determination to continue struggling for their rights.
The 10-day Libyan revolution has taken a bloody turn, as Qaddafi mobilizes paramilitary groups against protesters demonstrating for regime change.
The Egyptian military is exposing its true face. Two days after Hosni Mubarak was driven from power, the old regime, including the much-despised Omar Suleiman, has been retained. Earlier in the day, a military spokesman announced they were dissolving parliament and suspending the constitution but did not lift the state of emergency.
After serving as the centre of protests for 18 days, Tahrir Square in Cairo became the place of thanks giving as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians offered their Fajr prayers on Saturday February 12. The announcement early the day before that Hosni Mubarak had resigned was greeted with outbursts of joy not in Cairo but throughout the country. Almost all major cities witnessed massive rallies of joy.
Displaying mule-like stubbornness, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's unpopular and beleaguered president, confounded critics and observers alike by refusing to quit even while his departure was much anticipated throughout the day on February 10.
The Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak is to make an address on national television, leading to speculation he will announce his resignation as president. This dramatic development followed a meeting of the Military High Council early in the day that was broadcast on television.
Pro-democracy and pro-dignity protests, into their 17th day, have now spread to Egypt's rubber-stamp parliament as well and joined by workers from many sectors, including textile, steel, hospital and docks at the Suez Canal.
Arab dictators--kings, presidents-for-life, generals and colonels--feeling the heat from Egypt's determined protesters, have urged US President Barack Obama not to press the Egyptian tyrant Hosni Mubarak too hard.
While clinging to power with the backing of the military and his US-zionist masters, Hosni Mubarak's thuggish regime has targeted journalists. Al Jazeera has been singled out for particularly harsh treatment because its reports have exposed the regime's crimes most clearly. It chief correspondent in Cairo.
Raymond Davis, the CIA agent operating as a "security consultant" at the US Consulate in Lahore, will be set free, Crescent International has learned. Davis shot and killed two people riding a motorbike in Lahore on January 26 whom he accused of trying to rob him.
Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators are camped in Tahrir Square in Cairo, refusing to leave despite attempts by the illegitimate regime of Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian military to force them out.
Former US President George Bush canceled a forthcoming trip to Geneva fearing that he might be arrested. Bush was to be keynote speaker at a gala dinner organized by the Jewish group, Keren Hayesod, on February 12.
"In Azerbaijan the government has never arrested leaders of secular political parties. However, the IPA leadership was imprisoned on numerous occasions without any legal basis."
The people of Egypt refuse to be intimidated by curfews, violence and US-supplied tear gas shells fired at them by the police. For several nights, people have defied the curfew as government control begins to crumble.
The fourth day of protests in Egypt has reached “the point of no return,” as numerous commentators on the street have noted. President Mubarak recently imposed a country-wide curfew, bringing in the military to complete the job that the police force failed to do—contain the Egyptian population’s mass protests.
Tunisia’s popular revolt over the month of January 2011 has produced a domino effect over the Middle East, sparking demonstrations and revolts in countries such as Yemen, Algeria, and also Egypt.
Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator, fled the country on January 14 amid mounting protests over high unemployment, escalating food prices, widespread government corruption and severe restrictions on people's freedoms.
The Lebanese government collpased on January 12 following the resignation of 10 Hizbullah cabinet ministers. Another minister, Adnan Sayed Hussein, an ally of Hizbullah, resigned a few hours later bringing the total to 11 ministers quitting the 30-member cabinet.
Haiti was the first African colony of slaves in the New World to declare independence from its colonial (French) overlords in 1804. The United States refused to recognize this new expression of freedom.
Even as Egyptians anxiously await news of the death of their aging Pharaoh, the octogenarian president Hosni Mubarak continues to work hard to please his zionist and American masters.
Reflecting the true hierarchy of power in Pakistan, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani got an extension of three more years to serve as army chief. The announcement was made by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.
How widespread is Islamophobia in Europe, especially in Germany where a three-month pregnant Muslim mother, Marwa el-Sherbini was stabbed 18 times in a crowded courtroom in Dresden last year, can be seen
Consumed by hatred of Islamic Iran, the US zionist lobby frequently papers over issues that really threaten US policies in order to advance its own agenda.
American neo-cons are alarmed at the proposal by some US officials that the Islamic resistance movement, Hizbullah in Lebanon, should be engaged. The neo-cons' concern springs primarily from the consequences such engagement would have on Israel.
On his first visit to curry favour with the Indians, Britain's still green prime minister, David Cameron left his manners at home and lashed out at Pakistan. The July 28 remarks in Bangalore were not only crude but completely off base when he accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to terrorists and exporting it east and west.
Fifteen years ago Azerbaijan went through one of its most traumatic events in modern history. For many Azeris this date represents the consolidation in power of a brutal dictatorship that rules Azerbaijan to this day.
The Truth of the Life of this World by Harun Yahya. Pub: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1 Wynne Road, London SW9 0BB, 1999. Pp: 221. Pbk: UK5.95. By Imtiaz Adam
The Process: 1,100 Days that changed the Middle East by Uri Savir. Pub: Vintage Books, New York, USA, 1999. Pp: 336. Pbk: $15.00.
It was bound to happen; in fact, the US wants it this way. Its gross failures in Afghanistan are not only blamed on others, the war is also deliberately being spread to Pakistan and the Central Asian republics with frightening consequences. The expan
Imperialist countries have created a vast array of instruments to force the rest of the world to follow their diktats. To such high sounding bodies as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that respectively manipulate
The Islamic Republic’s successful test in late May of a medium-range, solid-fuel missile diminishes Tel Aviv’s potential threat to the Islamic East. This should be the conviction of all Islamic observers, whether they are totally involved in or opera
What can we say about the inevitable and long-awaited expansion of the US’s war on Islamic self-determination into Pakistan, with tragic results for the millions of people directly affected, and potentially disastrous effects for the country as a who
The British go one step further: the police storm houses in highly publicised raids to create the impression they are arresting terrorists, as happened last April
In recent months, politics in the UK has been dominated by debate over how long the authorities should be allowed to hold suspected terrorist before they are charged or released. Fahad Ansari points out that in fact many Muslims are already held for years in British jails without trial.
In a clear illustration of the extent to which the US can influence the policies of Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the member-states of the OIC held a summit inDakar, the capital of Senegal, on March 13 to "update" its charter, amend it to address "Islamic terrorism", and entrench secularism in Muslim countries.
When Palestinians in Ghazzah broke down the fence dividing the city of Rafah into Egyptian and Ghazzan sections, and crossed into Egypt to obtain vital supplies that they have been starved of by Israel’s blockade of Ghazzah, it was a clear demonstration of both their plight and their determination to survive, despite the hardships and suffering. Perhaps most significant of all was a point noted by many journalists and other observers: that despite their situation in Ghazzah, few Palestinians were trying to remain in Egypt.
The US midterm elections in November 2006, in which the Democrats took control of the House of Congress for the first time in twelve years, was perhaps the moment when most commentators in the US realised that the country had turned decisively against Bush and the neo-cons. As analysts dissected the implications of the results, Bush took himself off for a tour of friendly countries in south-east Asia, to generate pictures of himself appearing powerful and statesmanlike and counter the bad political news at home.
In all the reams of articles and columns in the western media analysing the background and implications of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report published on December 5 that fatally damaged the anti-Iranian war lobby in Washington, one thing that few dared acknowledge was that it is a massive victory for the Islamic Republic of Iran. And yet that is undoubtedly the case, and the celebrating throngs in the streets of Iranian cities, which have lived for years under the threat of imminent US attack, were quite right to celebrate it as such.
When the Bush administration first let it be known that it was planning a major “peace conference” between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmood Abbas, administration sources told journalists that it would be a Middle Eastern equivalent of the Dayton conference that ended the Bosnian war in 1994.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Egypt and Jordan were the poster-countries of political reform and democratisation in the Middle East. In those days, parliamentary elections like those held in Jordan last month would have been hailed as massive progress and a model for all Arab states, especially as the country’s Islamic party lost considerable ground. And even Husni Mubarak, so long the US’s main ally in the Arab world, would have been gently chided for his persecution of opposition journalists, even if his treatment of the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, Egypt’s main Islamic movement and most popular opposition party, was quietly ignored.
In recent years, the long story of the Palestinian struggle has been punctuated by meetings, conferences and summits of various kinds between Israeli and Palestinian officials, usually mediated by international leaders or institutions. Yet there was a time, only a few years ago, when it was assumed that everything could be sorted out if only the two sides could be persuaded to sit together and talk. Then, the great object of all the politicking was to persuade the leaders of the two sides to come together and, it was assumed, listen to what each other had to say.
One can imagine the furore that would erupt if a Muslim group were to launch a "Judeo-Christian Fascism Awareness Week" on American university campuses and then circulate a petition asking people to sign; those refusing to do so would be accused of supporting ‘Judeo-Christian Fascism’. Something similar took place for a week at nearly 200 American university campuses from October 24 but Muslims, not Jews or Christians, were the targets of this vicious campaign.
For those who spend time observing and analyzing the US’s policy toward Iran objectively, it is commonplace to point out that there always seem to be two entirely different trends to developments, which point in different directions and yet maintain an uneasy co-existence. This understanding is based on both what is happening now with regards to Iran, and parallels with what happened a few years ago, in the build-up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The reasons for the current political turmoil in Pakistan are not difficult to see. We have a government, led by Pervez Musharraf, that has been utterly discredited by its subservience to the United States of America, which is regarded as a sworn enemy by the majority of Pakistan’s people, and by its willingness to wage war on its own people at the US’s behest. And we have opposition politicians angling to replace Musharraf who have no more credibility because of their own records in power in the past, and the fact that they too are perfectly willing – even eager – to kowtow to the US in order to secure their own position.
What is the key constituency whose support all rulers of Pakistan desperately seek and need? Considering that Pakistan is looking forward to a supposed return to democracy, one might be forgiven for thinking that the answer to this question lay somewhere among Paksitan’s long-suffering people. Alternatively, bearing in mind the role that the military has played in politics for much of Pakistan’s 60-year history, thoughts might turn to the army and the officer corps.
On September 25, Iranian president Mahmood Ahmadinejad addressed the General Assembly of the UN. Here we reprint a slightly abridged translation of text of his address.
Blackwater: the rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army by Jeremy Scahill. Nation Books, New York, 2007.Pp: 464. Hbk: $26.95.
When Hizbullah drove the Israeli military out of southern Lebanon in August last year, winning a stunning victory in a war by which the US and Israel had hoped to destroy Lebanon’s main Islamic movement and secure control over the country, it was a defeat not only for Israel but for the US as well.
Later this month, Muslims all over the world will mark the beginning of the blessed month of Ramadan, undoubtedly the most special time of year for all Muslims. The obligation to fast in the month of Ramadan was laid upon Muslim by a Divine commandment conveyed through Allah’s Messenger (saw) in the second year after the hijra, when the new Muslim community in Madinah was still in its early, formative period.
When Turkey’s secular elites, led by the military, declared war on the ruling AK Party earlier this year, in order to prevent foreign minister Abdullah Gul from being elected president, it appeared that the “Islamist” AK Party was going to go the same way as the Refah Party led by Necmettin Erbakan a decade ago.
The fact that the US has suffered a massive defeat in Iraq is no longer disputed by any but the most slavish apologists for the Bush regime. As the reality of the US’s position first became apparent, many Western commentators went through a process of retroactive redefinition of the justifications and objectives of the war, to try ways of making the war look less disastrous that it actually is. Now few even try that.
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges. Pub: Free Press, New York, 2007. Pp: 272. Hbk: $25.00
Last month’s developments in Palestine are no great surprise. Basically, we have seen a political coup by an established, pro-Western political elite against a popular Islamic movement that was growing in power and credibility, and threatened to take a Muslim people and country in a direction unacceptable to Washington and Tel Aviv. The fact that this particular coup has taken place in the particular circumstances of zionist-occupied Palestine, rather than in one of the many Muslim nation-states where similar events have occurred, should not distract from that fundamental reality
Although Western propaganda portrays the Hamas takeover of Ghazzah as a coup against the legitimate power there, this is an exact inversion of the real situation. While the world’s attention turned to the West Bank and the politicking there after Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas government, people in Ghazzah were celebrating what many regarded as liberation from the oppression and exploitation of Fatah security officials, who were particularly known for their extortion from shopkeepers, businessmen and others, and for living well on the proceeds.
The creation of Israel in 1948 is commonly referred to as the nakba: the catastrophe. It is a measure of the disaster of the Arab defeat in June 1967, when al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the Haram al-Sharif were captured that, of all the disasters that the Palestinians have suffered since 1948, that is the one known as the second nakba. This month, the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War will be marked all over the world.
As this issue of Crescent went to press, the Iranian and American ambassadors to Iraq were meeting in Baghdad to discuss the appalling situation in country.
Target Iran: The Truth about the White House's Plans for Regime Change by Scott Ritter. Pub: Nation Books, New York, 2006. Pp: 316. Hbk: US$25.95.
The countrywide protests that began in Pakistan when President General Pervez Musharraf declared the country’s Chief Justice (CJ), Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, “non-functional” on March 9 are continuing, with no sign of the crisis being resolved in the foreseeable future. For the CJ’s supporters, the ideal outcome would be the withdrawal of charges against him at the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) – a forum for internal accountability of the judiciary – and his restoration to his position; in other words, a return to the status quo existing before March 9.
In recent years, Syria has come to occupy a somewhat paradoxical international profile. On the one hand, it is an authoritarian dictatorship in the best traditions of the modern Middle East. On the other, it is a constant target of US political attack; accused of being a sponsor of terrorism because of its enmity to Israel, and relations with Hizbullah and Islamic Iran.
The fact that virtually every regime in the Muslim world, except the Islamic state of Iran, is a dictatorship of some kind or other is widely recognized. In the last month, we have seen high-profile protests against the authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Pakistan. Similar protests, usually on a smaller scale, are commonplace in both countries and in many other Muslim countries.
For years the Arab League has been a symbol of the incompetence and impotence of the Arab states. Every time there has been a major issue in the Muslim world, the League has met and done absolutely nothing of note. Yet now, for some reason, the summit that is taking place in Riyadh at the end of March (as this issue of Crescent goes to press) is being hailed around the world as crucial for the future of the region
In last month’s issue of Crescent International we published an article about an anti-war conference convened in Malaysia by former prime minister DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD. We received this letter in response, which we are publishing in full.
The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex by Dr Helen Caldicott. Pub: The New Press, New York, 2004. Pp: 304. Pbk: US$17.95.
Although US and Iraqi officials talked up the successes of the new Baghdad security plan implemented in early February, events on the ground suggest little has changed. Speaking to the media, officials said that the numbers of deaths in the capital dropped by up to 80 percent in the first five days of the plan.
Was it a coincidence that Israel suddenly started unscheduled demolition work at the Haram al-Sharif in al-Quds, launching protests across occupied Palestine, just as Fatah and Hamas leaders were on the verge of a landmark power-sharing agreement in Makkah? Probably not, for the Makkah Agreement signed on February 8 marks the failure of the US and Israel’s strategy of forcing Hamas to relinquish the mandate to lead the Palestinian people that Hamas won in Palestine’s parliamentary elections in January last year.
Whenever the issue of political and civil rights in the US comes up, we should remember first and foremost the case of Sami al-Arian. The Palestinian former professor of computer science remains in a federal prison in Florida despite having completed the 57-month sentence he was given in May last year (which included time already served in prison).
On Friday 23 February, after the Muslim community of Britain will have prayed jumu'ah, Save Chechnya Campaign and its friends will gather at the Yalta Memorial, South Kensington, London, at 3pm to remember the quarter of a million victims of 1944 and the subsequent years spent in exile. The speakers will include Chechens, long-time activists and friends. Messages of support from around the world will be read, along with memories of the Day of Deportations of those who are now long dead.
Transforming Saddam Hussain from a monster to a martyr might seem an impossible feat; but that is what the Iraqi authorities have achieved by bungling his execution so appallingly. The haste with which the hanging was carried out on the day some Muslims were celebrating Eid al-Adha, the insulting taunts to which he was subjected, and Saddam’s composure just before his execution, captured on a cell phone and seen globally on the internet, have all turned one of the vilest creatures of the last century into a martyr for millions of people around the world.
Once again the Hajj season is back with its spiritual tidings, and again it presents a precious opportunity to the Islamic world. While many eager hearts are attracted from all over the world to attend this annual congregation, there are only a fortunate few who actually realize their dream. This is the reason for the perpetuity of this flowing spring.
On the face of it, George W. Bush’s determination to increase the US military presence in Iraq, and his escalating political warfare against the Islamic State of Iran, despite the mounting chaos in Iraq, appear illogical to the point of madness.
A few short weeks ago, some in the Muslim world were bold enough to suggest that America’s problems in Iraq represented the beginning of the end for its hegemonic power. That may yet prove to be true; but George W. Bush’s belligerent warmongering against Iran suggests that celebrations may be premature.
Painful though it is to admit it (it would be so much easier to focus on the successful resistance to the US occupation), it is undeniable that the communal strife in Iraq is resulting in a frightening increase in sectarian tensions throughout the Muslim world.
For a few tense days in December, after the attempted assassination of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh as he re-entered Ghazzah at the Rafah border crossing, apparently perpetrated by gunmen associated with the Fatah movement led by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, it appeared that Palestine might slide into civil war. As so often in the past, the Palestinians drew back from the brink, knowing that the slightest slip would play into the hands of their enemies.
Just how much more courage and fortitude can the Palestinian people display in their battle against zionis occupation and oppression? Muslims were amazed, and the rest of the world shocked, when the Palestinians last month revealed a new strategy to counter Israeli attacks on them
Even before the midterm elections in the US last month, many Republicans had recognised that their president had become a liability rather than an asset, and had requested that he stay away from their pre-election campaigns. The perception that the mood in America had turned against Bush and the neo-conservatives was confirmed when the elections’ results came in: the Democrats took control of the House of Congress for the first time in 12 years, and gained enough seats in the Senate to match the Republicans, with 409 seats each; two seats were won by independent candidates allied with the Democrats, giving them control of the Senate
In Iraq, tens of people are dying every day as a result of Iraqi resistance operations against US, British and Iraqi government forces, operations against resistance groups, and fighting between militias representing various political factions (most of them sectarian). No one doubts that the US has failed utterly in its agenda there, and that the country is in chaos.
It is sometimes tempting to read the news coming out of Palestine and regard it simply as more of the same. Nonetheless, there are significant developments over time, which need to be considered. The latest of these is a renewed effort by the US and international bodies to promote Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah party as the Palestinians’ true leaders and real representatives.
It is widely argued that the United Nations is needed for the promotion of international peace and security, as well as for the protection of human rights and the advancement of human development worldwide. But it is also widely held that the UN is unequal to its tasks, mainly because a few powerful states have a monopoly over its decisions and control the selection and functions of its secretary general and other officials. It is not, therefore, surprising that it is those very countries, led by the US, which oppose every attempt to improve the functions, procedures and powers of the UN and its various officials and agencies. Worldwide attention on these fault lines was focused by the appointment of the foreign minister of South Korea (which is a close ally of the US) as secretary general to succeed Kofi Annan, whose term of office ends in December.
According to a poll published on October 24, only 32 percent of Turks still want to join the European Union: less than half of those who were in favour of it two years ago. This dramatic drop in enthusiasm for EU membership is due mainly to the undisguised arrogance shown to Turkey in recent months by the EU and its members, notably France. This shabby treatment of an old ally of the West contrasts sharply with the recent speedy admission of new applicants from Eastern Europe to the EU.
In view of the present situation in Iraq, where bloodshed is widespread, and where aggression on assets and property, perpetrated under the guise of Islam, is daily occurrence, and in response to the invitation of the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and under the umbrella of the OIC International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA), We the scholars of Iraq, from both the Sunnis and the Shiites, having met in Makkah Al-Mukarramah in Ramadan of the Lunar Hijra year of 1427H (2006) and deliberated on the situation in Iraq and the disastrous plight of the Iraqi people, issue and proclaim the following Declaration
This year again, as so often in the past, the Ummah has been divided unnecessarily on the dates of Ramadan, primarily by a blatantly nonsensical announcement of moon-sighting by the Saudi government.
The annual meetings of the UN General Assembly are sometimes surreal experiences. Formally, the General Assembly is the seniormost element of the UN structure, representing the coming together of the heads of the states that constitute the “international community”. In reality, everyone knows that real power in the UN rests with the five permanent members of the Security Council, and that the General Assembly has little real power, as reflected by the utter ineffectiveness of its routine resolutions condemning Israel for its policies against the Palestinians. Every now and then, however, it becomes the occasion for what appear to be significant political developments that transcend the limitations of the Assembly’s position.
I seek God's protection against the cursed Satan; in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate; praise be to Almighty God: blessings and peace be upon our master and prophet, the last of the prophets, Muhammad, upon his good, righteous, infallible family, upon his noble companions; and upon all the prophets and messengers.
On September 19, the opening day of the UN General Assembly session in New York, Iranian president MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD gave a speech that was applauded around the world. Here we reprint the full text of that speech.
Kyrgyzstan was an ally of the US during the 15-year rule of president Askar Aliyev, who was toppled in an unexpected uprising last year. By contrast the new president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was elected on July 10 to replace his predecessor (who had fled the country), has turned to Russia and China for support.
Qana has become synonymous with Israeli crimes. On July 30 the zionists repeated an outrage they perpetrated ten years ago by firing missiles into buildings where families were sheltering from just such bombing attacks. At least 54 civilians, 37 of them children, were murdered in the latest outrage; one of the dead was a baby girl only a day old. Several buildings were completely destroyed.
The current invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops – armed and funded by the US, which has military and intelligence units placed in neighbouring Djibouti – has already rekindled Somali fellow-feeling and pride in Islam. The result is that the people of Somalia are now united in strong support for the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and opposition to the almost vanished transitional government in Baidoa.
1The fighting in Darfur has taken a new turn since the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) split up into two factions that are now locked in battle with each other, ending their unity against the Sudanese army.
The case of the 17 Muslims arrested on terrorism-related charges in Toronto took a bizarre turn on July 13 when the police informant who had infiltrated the group went public with his role. Although it was already known to the Muslim community that he was a police plant, Mubin Shaikh went on CBC television to claim that he did it "to protect Canada".
The Holy City was host to a very different gathering of Muslims from all over the Ummah, the “Kings, Heads of State and Government, and Emirs of the Member States” of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the club of Muslim countries established after the burning of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1969
Sitting alongside US senator John McCain at a White House press conference on December 15, announcing that he would support a new law banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of terrorist suspects, president George W. Bush looked the very picture of reassurance. “We’ve been happy to work with [McCain] to achieve a common objective,” he said. “And that is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention on torture, be it here at home, or abroad.”
In October, Crescent International (South Africa) issued a booklet called The Struggle for Al-Quds to mark Yaum al-Quds 1426AH. Here we publish an adaptation of the second part of this booklet, focusing on the evolution of the Palestinian liberation movement. The first part, focusing on the problem of Israel and the threat to al-Quds, was published in the last issue of Crescent International.
President Ali Saleh of Yemen often boasts publicly that his country's "all-out war on terror" is the most effective weapon against international terrorism. He has even claimed that he regularly compares notes with US president George W. Bush and heads of US intelligence agencies, who seek his advice and admire his contribution.
The Charter of Peace and National Reconciliation – approved in a referendum in early October – is ostensibly intended to lay to rest the aftermath of a conflict that lasted for more than a decade, in which at least 150,000 Algerians lost their lives.
The decision of the European Union summit at Luxembourg on October 4 to hold accession talks with Turkey (over Austria's objections) was hailed by both Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, and Jack Straw, Britain's foreign minister (Britain holds the current EU chairmanship), as “historic”.
President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, his Black secretary of state, are so desperate to defend their now-discredited campaign to establish democratic rule in the Middle East, and in Central Asia, that they are evoking the history of the civil rights movement in the US.
In recent months the world's richest countries, led by the US and Britain, have been claiming noisily that they plan to have the world's poorest regions, particularly Africa, lifted out of poverty; they also intend to improve human rights there, they say.
1As the first presidential election since 1981 that can be contested by more than one candidate – at least in theory – approaches, president Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 24 years, is stepping up his already formidable rigging programme to secure re-election for his fifth term.
The unprecedented deal to give 30 poor countries debt-relief, freeing them from the crippling burden of their debts to the West, was presented by the group of seven rich countries approving it as a noble achievement that is certain to eradicate world poverty.
The controlled elections in Kyrgyzstan on March 13, in which parties supporting president Askar Akayev routed opposition groups, turned out to be pivotal. Fearing that Akayev would extend his third term of office (due to expire late in the year) or transfer power to his two children (a son and daughter who were members of parliament), people organised street unrest that ended in his overthrow within a fortnight.
The United States, which last September accused Sudan of committing genocide in the Western region of Darfur, is now charging it with “crimes against humanity” and has even dropped its usual assertion that the Sudanese government has the ability to control the so-called Arab Janjaweed militia, who had been accused of arming to kill Africans in Darfur.
The timing could hardly have been better: within days of Tony Blair’s confirming that Britain’s general elections will be held on May 5, an illegal immigrant from Algeria was convicted at the high court of what government officials, police and the media described as an international conspiracy, planned by al-Qai’da, to manufacture ricin poison and use it for a mass terrorist attack in London.
It was inevitable: US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's seven-hour visit to Kabul, the Afghan capital, on March 17 was bound to cause some joking: the only relief available to a people traumatized by 27 years of war and bloodshed. "We wanted bread but got Rice instead," said many Afghans.
It is perhaps ironic that a part of the heart of the Muslim world that has been under western occupation for over half-a-century should have some of the most vibrant politics in the modernMiddle East. For the west, the presidential elections in the area of Palestinian autonomy was proof of their commitment to bringing democratization to the Muslim world.
The top posts of some of the world’s most prominent international agencies have fallen vacant and must be filled soon. Three of the agencies that need new or reappointed heads are the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The two car-bombs that rocked the Shi’a holy cities of Karbala and Najaf on December 20, killing at least 62 people and wounding 120, have focused attention once again on the deepening sectarian passions in Iraq that have opened the door to speculations about a looming civil war and the possible “Lebanonization” of Iraq.
hat a proposal to use the Shari‘ah to arbitrate in Muslim family disputes in the province of Ontario should evoke vehement opposition from a Muslim group--the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW)--has shocked the 700,000-strong Muslim community in Canada...
Yasser Arafat survived the latest, and perhaps greatest, challenge to his authority in Ghazzah last month, when Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei withdrew his resignation on July 27...
TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL ISLAM: RELIGION, IDEOLOGY AND POWER edited by Azza Karam. Pub: Pluto Press, London, December 2003. Pp: 157. Pbk: £15.99.
For a year after the US invasion of Iraq, it was the epicentre of military resistance to the occupation, becoming a virtual no-go area for Westerners until the US decided less than two months ago that it had to be pacified by overwhelming force...
The Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the holiest shrines in Iraq, was reportedly damaged by shell-fire on May 25, as US troops maintained their pressure on the al-Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr...
While Palestinians across the world commemorated the 56th anniversary of the Nakba on May 15, Palestinians in Ghazzah were on the verge of another nakba as Israeli troops engaged in an orgy of violence in Ghazzah that left at least 45 dead and about 300 homes destroyed, rendering an estimated 3,000 people homeless...
The assassination of Ahmed Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Kremlin president, on May 9 has thrown into chaos president Vladimir Putin's plans for ending the Chechen resistance to Russian imperialism...
When thousands of Muslims fled the town of Yelwa in early May, after an attack by Christian tribesmen that killed more than 800, left many more injured and destroyed hundreds of homes and farms, there was hardly any reaction in Europe and America. Apart from the odd Reuters report, there was no comment or condemnation...
Dr Abdul Aziz Rantisi, who was appointed head of Hamas in Ghazzah following the martyrdom of Shaikh Ahmed Yassin in March, was himself assassinated by the Israelis on April 17. His car was hit by seven missiles fired from Israeli helicopters near his home in Ghazzah...
Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher witnessed the strength of Palestinian anger at Egypt’s duplicitous role in talks with Israel on December 22, when he was heckled and abused by dozens of angry Palestinians during a visit to the Masjid al-Aqsa...
In political science, power is defined as the ability to achieve a desired outcome; to translate’s one will into reality. Power is recognised as having various aspects, which theorists have described in various ways. Some distinguish between the "power to do" something and "power over" others...
The tortuous saga of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s inspection of Iran’s nuclear program finally reached a conclusion of sorts on November 25, when it was announced that the powers represented on the body and of the UN Security Council had agreed the text of a new resolution accepting the conclusions of an IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program...
Three years after the outbreak of the latest Al-Aqsa intifada -- which has lasted so long and moved on so far that few even remember how the troubles began -- the world has tired of Palestine...
The Nobel peace prize has always been based on political considerations; advancement of peace has had very little to do with it. The Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel--after whom the award is named--reflects the irony of the situation: he invented explosives, hardly the stuff to promote peace...
A prominent human rights campaigner in Saudi Arabia told western journalists last month that the government plans to hold national elections in three years’ time.
Azeri authorities launched a major crackdown on political opponents and critical journalists last month, after observers and opposition parties denounced major irregularities in the presidential elections of October 15.
Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Muslims took to the streets in Khartoum and other Sudanese cities on October 13, to celebrate the release from house arrest of Shaikh Hasan al-Turabi, the leader of Sudan's Islamic movement and of the Popular National Congress (PNC) party.
Britain’s ruling Labour Party expelled its dissident Member of Parliament George Galloway on October 23, after a special hearing of the national constitutional committee found him guilty of bringing the party into disrepute. His case is seen by some commentators as evidence of how worried British prime minister Tony Blair is by popular opposition to his pro-American foreign policy.
When US president George W. Bush came to the UN General Assembly on September 23, there was some expectation that his tone would be magnanimous and conciliatory. Six months after the US rode roughshod over the UN by launching a unilateral war against the wishes not only of the majority of the world’s unimportant states, but also of senior members of the Security Council, it was expected that the US might come to mend fences, as if from a position of strength, but with the underlying reality that the US needs international cooperation in the administration of occupied Iraq, given the problems it is having in securing its catch.
Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) begins its annual conference on September 26, as Crescent goes to press. On the face of it, the conference will no doubt be an impressive political occasion. It is expected to be attended by up to 2,200 party members, and will be chaired by party chairman Hosni Mubarak. His son, Gamal Mubarak, is due to address the conference’s first session in his capacity as chairman of the party’s influential Policy Secretariat, on the coordination that has been taking place between the party and government.
As the end of the year approaches, American political circles are getting into gear for the electoral campaigns which will dominate 2004, culminating in the presidential elections at the end of the year.
Eighty-three Muslim worshippers were martyred by the bomb that exploded outside the mosque at the Imam Ali mausoleum in Najaf immediately after juma prayers on August 29, but there was little doubt that its main target was Ayatullah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of Majlis al-Aala l’il-Thawra al- Islami f’il-Iraq (The Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq).
The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was formed in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh state, in April 1977. Its founding president was Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, now professor of journalism and public relations at the University of Western Illinois. SIMI originally emerged as a student wing of the Jamaat-e Islami Hind (JIH).
Two years after the US’s invasion of Afghanistan, there are increasing signs that the US may be looking for potential partners among the Taliban leaders for a possible peace agreement. At a time when its proxy regime under Hamid Karzai lacks all legitimacy, and anti-American forces representing both the Taliban and other mujahideen groups increasing their pressure on the US forces in the country, it is hardly surprising that the US should be looking for a way out of Afghanistan’s quagmire.
The bombing of the UN office in Baghdad on August 19 was the largest resistance attack on the Western occupiers since the invasion in March. At least 20 people were killed, including Sergio de Mello, the diplomat heading the UN’s mission in Iraq...
The Central Committee of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) announced the death of its leader, Ustad Salamat Hashim, on August 5. The MILF’s official spokesman, Eid Kabalu, said that Ustad Hashim had died of heart failure in the town of Butig...
Political controversies seem to be brewing in both the US and Britain about the evidence that the Bush and Blair governments used to justify their Iraq war. Bush was forced to admit on July 7 that his State of the Union speech in January contained false allegations about Iraq’s nuclear programme...
That the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon gave the US an invaluable opportunity for a massive projection of power — as predicted by Crescent International (Editorial, October 1-15, 2001) — is now widely accepted...
After months of Iraq dominating the headlines, the focus seems to have shifted to Islamic Iran. It began with American accusations that Iran was interfering in Iraq’s affairs, because of the close links between the Islamic state and some Iraqi Islamic leaders and movements...
Few doubt that the Iraqi Governing Council that met in Baghdad for the first time on July 13 exists primarily to serve the US’s objectives. The members of the council have been handpicked by L. Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Baghdad, rather than elected by Iraqis, either directly or indirectly...
The "suicide bombing" by two young women (both apparently Chechens) on July 5, which killed 14 people at an open-air rock festival on the outskirts of Moscow, has proven to be a blow to president Vladimir Putin’s efforts to convince the Russian people that the war is over, and has been won.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is one of Central Asian’s most repressive rulers. Yet the US, which claims to be the world’s main protector of human rights, has made him its ‘best friend’ in the region since September 2001.
Last month’s bomb-blasts at Western targets in Saudi Arabia and Morocco followed the conclusion of the US invasion of Iraq. The bomb-explosions in Riyadh on May 12 killed 24 people and wounded dozens. Four days later another 24 people were killed in five blasts in Casablanca, Morocco...
Several weeks after the US’s occupation of Iraq, its rule is in chaos. Iraq was the most advanced Arab country before the US destroyed its infrastructure in 1991; even after 1991, despite UN sanctions, there was a modicum of civil infrastructure and service provision...
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon became a champion for peace on May 25, when he persuaded his cabinet to accept the US’s ‘roadmap’ for peace.
President Vladimir Putin is now even more determined to resist the Chechen people’s fight for independence, as he faces parliamentary elections this year and a presidential poll next year. Anxious to give the impression that the pledge he was elected on–to end the Chechens’ struggle for independence–has in fact been carried out...
The Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, was rocked by four massive explosions late on May 12, as Crescent was going to press. They were apparently aimed at Western targets in the city, including residential compounds where Western expatriates live, and the headquarters of an American-owned company, the Saudi Maintenance Company.
Few empires have ever justified their enslavement and exploitation of subject peoples in such terms; the US is no exception. The Romans justified their imperialism by offering law and order...
The Oslo ‘peace process’ was finally buried at Camp David in July 2000 when the Palestinians refused then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s ‘generous’ offer of a final settlement. It was immediately clear that Israel’s object was to kill the peace process, while blaming the Palestinians for its demise...
Tariq Ayoub, an correspondent for the independent Arab satellite television channel al-Jazeera, was killed in Baghdad on April 8 when the al-Jazeera office was attacked by a US aircraft while showing some of the mounting slaughter being committed by US troops throughout the Iraqi capital.
As the end of the Iraq war draws near, attention is turning back to Palestine for a number of reasons. One is the zionists’ hope of exploiting the Iraq situation for their own ends.
The US invasion of Iraq has been widely described as the latest stage of a new American imperialism. It has also been described as intended to create a new regional order in the Middle East, often compared to the Sykes-Picot agreement after the first world war...
The sudden collapse of the Ba’athist regime in Iraq is not surprising, although most Muslims would have liked to see the US given a bloodier nose in the process. It can be attributed to two main factors...
While Iraqis are being killed by American and British bombs in Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi towns, Arabs and Muslims across the world have stepped up their protests against the war.
When the US and British leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, decided to meet at Camp David on March 26, they probably imagined that the war would be close to over by then. They would not have expected to have to discuss Iraq’s unexpectedly stubborn resistance and the mounting casualties their own troops are suffering.
Eleven Palestinians, almost all non-combatants, were killed in the northern Ghazzah town of Jabalya on March 6, during the Israeli military’s third major incursion into Ghazzah in less than a week.
The US and Great Britain (effectively one entity, the US/GB, in terms of their Iraq policy) proposed a draft resolution supposedly authorising military action against Iraq to the UN Security Council on February 24...
As this issue of Crescent International goes to press, an attack on Iraq seems inevitable. The US and Britain are expected to put their revised draft resolution before the UN Security Council at any moment, giving Iraq until March 17 to "disarm completely" or face attack...
Although millions of people from Manila to Montreal joined peace rallies on January 18, these may not prevent the US war-machine, fuelled by raw imperial ambition and lust for oil, from attacking Iraq. Americans are now playing a leading role in the peace movement...
Despite continuing politicking, now predominantly between the US and allies worried about its increasingly aggressive and destructive behaviour, America’s eventual occupation of Iraq seems inevitable...
The large number of North American Muslims, mostly Algerians, who have been arrested in recent weeks throughout Europe and America for their alleged connection with al-Qa’ida has focused unprecedented attention on the Algerian ‘civil war’. But the wrong conclusions have been drawn...
The only Russian officer to be charged for war crimes in Chechnya has been acquitted on the basis that he raped and murdered a teenaged girl while suffering from temporary insanity. Colonel Yury Budanov was cleared of all charges against him on December 31.
The elections in Gujarat, won for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by Narendra Modi, the architect of the anti-Muslim pogroms in the state last year, overshadowed the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya...
One result of events since September 2001 has been some realization of the true nature of the West even among stubbornly pro-Western Muslims. Although Muslims around the world had long been aware of the malign nature of Western power, some had been dazzled by the glamour of the West’s culture and lifestyle...
The world of Islam has lost a great scholar in Professor Muhammad Hamidullah, who passed away quietly in Jacksonville, Florida, US, on December 17. He was 94.
The international community that installed Hamid Karzai as ruler of Afghanistan, after the Americans’ toppling of the Taliban in 2000, celebrated the first anniversary of his appointment as ‘interim leader’ on December 22 with a conference of regional leaders in Kabul.
The US government is not a single-issue organization. While huge attention is now being paid to preparing the ground for America’s occupation of Iraq, another arm of the administration is engaged, with a lower profile, in pursuing Washington’s interests in Venezuela...
Although Muslims worldwide started the month of Ramadhan on the correct day, there is growing concern that similar unity may elude them when it comes to celebrating Eid. The Saudis’ Um al-Qura calendar has already declared Eid on Thursday, December 5...
Hamas leader Khaled Misha’al said on November 9 that Palestine’s main Islamic movement would not give up military operations against the Israeli occupiers of Palestine.
On October 3, the International Awakening Centre (IAC) recommended the names of the Indian prime minister, AB Vajpayee, the US president, George W Bush, and the British prime minister, Tony Blair, to the Norwegian Nobel Institute for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Tens of thousands of Muslims are living in renewed fear in Gujrat as Crescent goes to press, after government and police officials blamed Muslims for an attack on a Hindu temple in Gandhinagar on September 24.
When Richard Armitage, US deputy secretary of state, announced in Beijing on August 26 that the US has classified the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organisation, the move was interpreted as a “nod to China”, in acknowledgement of its apparent agreement not to sell missile technology to “aggressive states”.
In a move that is certain to test president Mubarak’s determination to avoid a public quarrel with the US, the US government has refused to give more aid to the Egyptian government. Syria announced that Farouq Shara, its foreign minister, would visit Egypt to express solidarity against the US and protect Arab interests.
Few politicians in Turkey’s recent history have stirred interest as have the secular and pro-Western Ismail Cem and Kemal Dervis.
Yemen has settled its territorial disputes with its neighbours, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea, thereby removing the main regional threats to its security. Yet it is enlarging its navy and air force, although it is one of the poorest countries in the world...
The war-clouds of Indo-Pak nuclear conflict have cleared temporarily, and so has media attention. The Vajpayee government had to keep the media and public distracted, lest they turn their attention to Gujrat.
Having bludgeoned the Sudanese government into cooperating with the “war on terrorism”, American officials now appear to believe that they can also bully it into accepting their plan to end the 19-year war between Khartoum and southern Sudanese rebels.
A referendum in Tunisia, held on May 26 to approve amendments to the constitution proposed by president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, secured 99.52 percent of the votes cast. This result makes it possible for Ben Ali to stay in office until 2014, and gives him immunity from prosecution for life.
When on June 3 ‘president’ Yasser Arafat overruled a decision by the very court he had set up as an independent tribunal the previous month, he was not only caving in to American and Israeli pressure but also taking a leaf out of the book of fellow Arab dictators, such as Egypt’s Husni Mubarak.
The US government set off another round of anti-terrorist hysteria on June 10 by announcing that it had arrested an American Muslim alleged to have been planning an attack on a major US city.
The UN’s long-awaited Food Summit, which was postponed after September 11, opened in Rome on June 10, only to be snubbed by western governments only sending junior-level delegations to attend it, although UN officials and leaders of African countries regarded it as crucially important when there are currently famines looming in several southern African countries.
f the purpose of the new sanctions rules, passed by the UN on May 14, is – as the media imply – to relieve the Iraqis’ suffering, and shift the blame for their ordeal from the US and its allies back to Saddam Hussain, then Washington must think again...
When Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia issued a declaration to denounce all forms of violence as terrorism at their summit on May 16 at Sharm al-Sheikh, many Muslims were astonished that Damascus could so suddenly and without any warning ditch the Palestinian cause and Hizbullah by agreeing to a definition of terrorism identical to that of the US and Israel.
Yasser Arafat’s diminishing standing and credibility among Palestinians was highlighted on May 13, when he was forced to cancel a visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp because of fears for his life.
A month after an attempted coup by pro-American right-wingers in Venezuela failed to overthrow the popularly-elected government of Hugo Chavez in the world’s fourth largest oil-producing country, more and more details are becoming known of the US’s role it.
The long-awaited report on the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces in the UN ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica in 1995 blames the Dutch government, its army and the UN for the genocide. Prepared by the Netherlands Institute for War Documents (NIOD) and published on April 10, the 7,000-page document strongly criticises the government for sending ill-prepared troops on a vaguely defined mission to the UN safe haven...
It was officially confirmed by different Chechen sources late in April that mujahideen commander Omar ibn Khattab has been martyred.
Pakistan goes to the polls on April 30 (after Crescent press time) in a Zia-ul-Haq style referendum designed to legitimate general Perwez Musharraf’s continuing as ‘president’ for another five years.
Let us be grateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala that the Islamic Revolution is five years old this month. Five years ago who could have imagined the events that have actually occurred since?
This month marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Dr KALIM SIDDIQUI, one of the leading intellectuals of the contemporary Islamic movement. Here we reprint an abridged version of an article first published in 1983.
An epic of sacrifice and heroism in Balata and Jenin, and a call for the Ummah to launch jihad
In a chilling reminder of sights common during the Serbs' war against the Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina a decade ago, Israeli troops rounded up all males aged from 15-45 in the Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem on March 11, forcing them to strip to the waist before handcuffing and blindfolding them, standing them for hours in the sun, and then force-marching them into an empty factory for interrogation.
Georgia, a member of the former Soviet Union, is in Moscow’s own back yard. So when America’s military links with Georgia were first announced, senior Russian officials were outraged by the prospect of the forces of their former cold war adversary being so close.
Vladimir Putin — a former KGB operative plucked from obscurity by President Boris Yeltsin, who appointed him prime minister of Russia — used the Chechen war to secure his election as president in March 2000, and continues to exploit it to maintain his popularity while conceding privately that victory is not on the cards.
In addition to suffering caused by the Saudis’ well-known incompetence, this year the hujjaj are being confronted by another ordeal: new security measures in Jeddah. Ostensibly intended to prevent pilgrims from disappearing after completing their Hajj, the plan is both sinister and degrading.
US diplomats in Yemen, have been travelling through the country in recent weeks conferring with tribal leaders, particularly in areas allegedly serving as safe-havens for al-Qaeda activists, and inspecting religious schools suspected of receiving funding from Bin Ladin.
Israel went on the offensive, both militarily and in propaganda terms, on January 9 after a Hamas operation inside 1948 Palestine (Israel) in which 4 Israeli soldiers were killed and two Hamas activists martyred. Israeli soldiers responded by demolishing 73 homes in nearby Ghazzah, according to the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), making 123 families — adding up to more than 800 people — homeless.
President Putin has intensified military operations against the Chechen people, trying to break their spirit. But the Chechens refuse to be intimidated: Putin now privately admits that the war is unwinnable and is proving a severe strain on Russian military resources.
The US and its allies have intensified military activities in Somalia and along its 2000-mile coastline to prevent ‘al-Qaeda terrorists’ from finding refuge or setting up new bases there, according to American officials.
Algerian President Abdulaziz Bouteflika claimed spectacular diplomatic success last month when he concluded security accords with the US and NATO and signed an economic agreement with the EU that provides, on his own insistence, for cooperation in the “war against terrorism”.
Hamas announced on December 21 that it was suspending martyrdom operations inside “the land occupied in 1948.” The announcement, in a notice issued in Ghazzah, came after weeks of intensified Israeli military pressure on Palestinians aimed at making life unbearable for civilians, and at forcing the Palestinian Authority to crack down on Islamic groups on Israel’s behalf.
Mubarak has ordered the arrest of 94 Islamic activists and their appearance before a military tribunal, accusing them of plotting terrorism against American, Israeli, Russian and Balkan targets. According to Muntassir al-Ziyat, an Egyptian lawyer representing 87 of those appearing before the military tribunal...
Two Palestinian children, one of them just three years old, were killed in al-Khalil (Hebron) on December 10 when two missiles fired from Apache helicopters — supplied to Israel by the US after the current intifada began last year — slammed into cars at the city’s busy al-Salaam junction during the afternoon rush-hour.
The Saudi ‘royal’ family rarely commits the error of publicly expressing anxiety or doubt about the durability of the House of Saud, or of openly criticising its US protectors’ backing for Israel.
John Danforth, the US president’s peace envoy to Sudan, arrived in Khartoum on November 12 with four proposals that favour the southern warlords and seem to be designed for partition of the country rather than for the peace his mission is supposed to be working for.
The massacres of Palestinian women and children in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps nineteen years ago, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, brought the camps into public consciousness.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Turkey offered its airspace and military bases for use by the US and its allies in their ‘war’ on Afghanistan, reaping ample praise for its “loyalty to the West”.
President Husni Mubarak of Egypt has been fighting Islamic movements since coming to power in 1981. Exploiting Egypt’s influence in the Muslim world, he has been instrumental in the adoption of anti-terrorism conventions and resolutions by the Arab League, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and the General Assembly of the UN.
Palestinians across the occupied territories marked the first anniversary of the intifada against Israel on September 28, setting off another round of fierce Israeli blood-letting that cost more than 40 lives in the next two weeks.
Palestinian ‘president’ Yasser Arafat and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres shook hands —briefly and sullenly — on a new agreement for a ceasefire and confidence-building measures towards a restoration of the ‘peace process’ at Ghazzah Airport on September 26, two days before Palestinians were planning massive protests to mark the first anniversary of the intifada.
A few days after Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, had declared that Russian troops would never leave Chechnya, Chechen mujahideen killed 10 members of the Russian General Staff, comprising two generals and eight colonels, and at the same time attacked Gudermes, the republic’s second largest city.
Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, called on Wednesday for a serious campaign against terrorism, and said that US officials’ definitions of terrorism are unacceptable.
Violence in Algeria has increased considerably in recent weeks and has now spread from outlying districts to Algiers, the capital, and holiday resorts in its vicinity. The attacks apparently occur at random, and responsibility for them is seldom claimed by anybody, with the result that Algerians throughout the country feel unprotected and bewildered.
Ahmad Kadyrov, the Moscow-appointed head of Chechnya’s puppet administration, members of his cabinet and local government chiefs gathered on September 3 for an official meeting at the government’s headquarters in Johar-Gala (Grozny), where they were protected by Russian troops and Chechen policemen...
The Sudanese mediation game is beginning to look more like the Middle East ‘peace process’, now that president George W. Bush has appointed a ‘peace envoy’ to bring “sanity and compassion” to a land ravaged by decades of civil war; there is even talk of the US being the only country that can bring ‘peace’ to southern Sudan.
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has been the mainstay of the al-Aqsa Intifada in Palestine. In this issue, we reprint two recent communiqués explaining their approach to the conduct of the Islamic resistance struggle to the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Ahmad Awyahya, Algeria’s justice minister, has announced that Ali Bilhaj, the deputy leader of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), who has been serving a 12-year prison sentence since 1991, will not be released early, and that the ban on FIS will not be lifted. The announcement was made because of speculation that Bilhaj was about to be released and that FIS, which was banned in 1992, would soon be able to resume its activities as a legally recognised political organisation.
As Indonesians celebrated their independence from Holland in 1945 on August 17, western governments congratulated president Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Nineteen years after the gruesome massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut, there is renewed interest in the issue, largely because a lawsuit has been lodged in a Belgian court against Ariel Sharon, now Israeli prime minister, for his role.
China is studying how European immigrants to North America wiped out the indigenous peoples and seized their country.
General Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, came, saw and returned without conquering: not Kashmir but his ancestral home at Naharwali Haveli, Delhi. Yet another summit-level talk between India and Pakistan had collapsed.
The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan arrested 24 staff members of a German charity working in Kabul on August 5, setting off yet another international outcry about their alleged inhumanity.
Until a month ago it was a firm western policy to arm the Macedonian military and isolate Albanian fighters by branding them as ‘terrorists’ out to break up the country in their alleged pursuit of ‘Greater Albania’.
Since China and Russia recently signed a treaty of friendship in Moscow, supposed by some to be a response to US president George W. Bush’s missile project, trade and military contacts between Moscow and Washington have mushroomed.
Colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi, Brother Leader of the Revolution in Libya, arrived in Khartoum on July 17 for two days of talks with president Omar Hassan al-Bashir in connection with the peace proposals sponsored jointly by his country and Egypt.
Abdurrahman Wahid finally lost his tenuous grip on Indonesia’s presidency on July 23, when he was dismissed from office by a unanimous vote in Indonesia’s parliament, shown live on national television.
The Chechen mujahideen lost a prominent commander late last month; with the martyrdom of Arbi Alaa-Eddin Barayev on June 23 during heavy fighting in the village of Alkhan-Kala, about 15km southwest of the Chechen capital, Johar-Gala (Grozny).
Turkey’s constitutional court has banned Fazilat (‘Virtue’), the Islamist opposition party, for undermining the country’s secular order. The court’s decision, delivered on June 23, came just a few days after general Huseyn Kivrikoglu, chief of general staff...
On June 4, when members of the United Nations security council failed to reach agreement on a new sanctions plan proposed by the US and Britain, they decided to extend by one month, instead of the usual six months, the programme under which Iraq can sell oil to raise funds to buy food and to pay “reparations” to western governments.
Iraq won a significant political victory on July 4, when the US and Britain were forced to abandon their ‘smart sanctions’ proposals and agree to a five-month extension of the ‘oil-for-food’ programme.
The Albanian Muslims of Macedonia, who constitute more than a third of the country’s population, are fighting for the constitutional rights enjoyed by the Slav majority but denied to them, and for autonomy only in the regions inhabited predominantly by them.
Among the few notable results in Britain’s general election on June 8 was the strong showing of the British National Party (BNP) in the constituencies of Oldham East and Oldham West in Lancashire.
For more than a year irrefutible new evidence of war crimes committed by French forces during the Algerian war of independence has been surfacing in French newspapers and in memoirs by senior French generals. These men personally directed the atrocities now being revealed...
Colin Powell, the first black US secretary of state, began a tour of four African countries on May 22. He gave the continent first place on his schedule over Asia and Latin America, which are at first sight far more vital to US interests.
Khalid Misha’al is Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamic movement. He represented Hamas at the International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in Tehran last month as Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin was unable to travel to Iran from Occupied Ghazzah. Here we present an excerpt of his address to the conference.
The International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada hosted by the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran from April 24-25 was opened by the Rahber of Islamic Iran, Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Khamenei. Here we present an abridged translation of his speech.
When Moscow celebrated the 56th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany in the second world war on May 9, there was no mention of its latest military challenge, the fighting in Chechnya, stepped up by the Chechen mujahideen on the arrival of spring...
The indomitable Chechen fighters and their supporters have done it again, catching Vladimir Putin on the hop. On April 14, Adam Deniyev, the second most senior leader of the pro-Kremlin administration in Chechnya, was assassinated by a bomb as he left a television studio.
The first regular Arab league summit in ten years concluded its business in Amman (capital of Jordan) on March 28, failing to solve the problems it had set out to tackle.
Credit where credit is due: to the Chechen people, whose successful defiance of the Russian army’s might has come to dominate the policies and activities of president Vladimir Putin and his aides in recent weeks, although he insists (with little credibility) that Moscow has won a resounding victory and will soon withdraw the Russian army.
A Texan politician with oil interests and extensive links with both multinationals and Church groups in the US becomes president in Washington...
The Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic and defence arrangement among the six Gulf Arab monarchies, is twenty years old. Yet Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have only recently signed the first ever cross-border agreement in any utility sector by members of the GCC, which between them hold 43 percent of all oil-reserves and nearly 15 percent of world natural-gas reserves.
Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, sprang a surprise on March 19, when she announced that she would not seek a second term when her current four-year period of office ends next September.
Switzerland, which is totally surrounded by European countries and has a population that is mostly Christian and speaks French and German, has overwhelmingly rejected accession talks with the European Union, at least for several years to come.
Western pharmaceutical companies, which monopolise the right to fix the price of life-saving drugs throughout the world by patents protected by the World Trade Organization and governments, are facing new challenges that demand unprecedented concessions.
Mass-graves containing bodies of civilians executed in the last four months have been discovered near Russian military bases in Chechnya by a Moscow-based human-rights group.
It is true that American and European traders and expatriates are the backbone of the multimillion-dollar market for smuggled alcohol in Saudi Arabia, and take the lion’s share of the proceeds.
As president Jacques Chirac of France received Robert Kocharyan, the Armenian head of state, who arrived in Paris on February 12 for a five-day state visit...
Throughout his long rule, Egypt’s president, Husni Mubarak, has paid lip-service to ‘traditional Islam’ and to ‘freedom of expression’, while in practice repressing Islamic activists. Even the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, who cannot possibly be accused of being Islamic revolutionaries, are banned as a political party.
The recent parliamentary report on corruption under the late King Hassan II, the appointment of a judicial commission to examine it, and the limited political reforms introduced since his death in 1999 have given rise to widespread speculation that the new king, Muhammad V, is determined to distance himself from his father’s murky legacy.
The decision of the three judges sitting in the special Scottish court in Zeist, Holland, to convict one Libyan for responsibility of the Lockerbie bombing, and to acquit the other, may cynically (but realistically) be seen as a politically astute judgement, giving every party involved some ground for satisfaction.
Russian president Vladimir Putin signed three major decrees in one week last month, making important changes to the Russian occupation regime in Chechnya...
Laurent Desire Kabila, the assassinated president of the Congo Democratic Republic, is finally buried, and his son, Joseph, is to succeed him.
The trusted adviser of Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev on oil-matters, economic planning, education, investments, health-care, pensions and communications is an American deal-fixer who shuttles between his offices in Almaty (the Kazakh commercial capital) and the New York headquarters of his company, Mercator.
In Algeria the year 2000 was one of undiminished violence and bloodshed, very different from the harmony that president Abdul-Aziz Bouteflika claims to have ushered in by his offer of amnesty to the country’s armed groups.
The six member-states of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) signed a defence pact on December 31, pledging themselves to come to each other’s aid in the event of attack.
Hizbullah secretary-general Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah gave renewed hope to the families of prisoners in Israeli jails last month, when he declared that a German mediation over an exchange of prisoners with Israel should cover all Arab detainees in Israel, not just Lebanese prisoners.
Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace-deal in Algeria on December 12 and formally ended a two-year border-war that has cost tens of thousands of lives, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and wrought havoc on the economies of two of Africa’s poorest countries
In a country blessed with vast oil and gas reserves, nine million Algerians, out of thirty million, live below the poverty line. A million children suffer from malnutrition, with a fifth of them suffering very serious consequences to their health.
During his recent official visit to Libya, prime minister Massimo D’Alema of Italy, the North African country’s former colonial ruler, had the agreeable experience of seeing Mu’ammar Qaddafi trying to ingratiate himself to the west by pledging to join the west’s war on Islam and using his influence to unlock African doors for Rome.
Indonesian president Abdur Rahman Wahid raised eyebrows on December 4 when he told his new economic affairs commission that Israel had agreed to invest $200 million in Indonesia.
The plight of the Chechens trapped in Johar-Gala (‘Grozny’) was briefly brought to the west’s attention earlier this month when the western media highlighted a leaflet dropped in the city by Russian aircraf
The agreement concluded between Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir and opposition-leader and Ummah Party chief Sadeq al-Mahdi in Jibouti on November 25 sets out the principles on which these men think that any political settlement of the Sudanese conflict should be based.
The arrival of the holy month of Ramadan normally evokes greater degrees of piety and solidarity among Muslims, but its approach this year has already triggered a bitter and dirty competition between Arab television stations for audiences.
The plight of the beleaguered Afghanis placed under UN sanctions on November 14 was relieved a week later, when Iran opened its border for trade with Afghanistan.
Muslims in the Central African state of Malawi, west of Lake Tanganyika, are living in constant fear of violence from armed Christian fanatics who have already destroyed scores of mosques and killed dozens of people throughout the country.
The Assads of Syria have a great deal to learn from Jordan’s Hashemite family about the arrangement of a peaceful succession. When, early this year, the dying king Husain dismissed his younger brother and crown-prince of 33 years, the 53-year-old prince Hassan, to clear the way for his son to succeed him, the matter ended there...
President Husni Mubarak stepped up his assault on the Ikhwan al-Muslimun in Egypt earlier this month by issuing a presidential decree transferring the cases of 20 of the movement’s most senior and prominent members, who were arrested last month, from the civil court system to military courts.
Over 3,000 Egyptian migrant workers in Kuwait were rounded up by police and packed off to desert internment camps at the end of last month, following two days of street troubles on October 30-31.
The Muslims of Ichkeria are facing a long, hard winter as over 250,000 have been forced to flee their homes to avoid Russian military operations and air raids, and many are stranded in the open or with little shelter as the region’s harsh winter weather sets in.
The Muslim people in east Turkestan (officially the Xinjiang province of China), who have successfully resisted Chinese attempts to assimilate them for centuries, and have in recent years organized a credible struggle for independence...
Zamfara, an overwhelmingly Muslim state in northern Nigeria, adopted Shari’ah law on October 27, amidst celebrations by the area’s Muslim population and widespread support among other Muslims in the country.
The second round of Niger’s presidential elections are due to take place on November 24. They will be contested by the two highest placed candidates in the first round, (which took place on October 17), retired Colonel Mamadou Tandja...
The plight of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) under Zionist occupation is one of the most serious issues facing Muslims in the world today, and is also inseparable from the wider issue of western hegemony over Muslim lands, societies and minds.
When Algerian press-reports in mid-October alleged that president Abdul-Aziz Bouteflika’s failure to appoint a cabinet since his inauguration in April was because of interference from Algeria’s generals, he was indignant.
Egyptian president Husni Mubarak’s new regime has arrested 20 of the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon’s most senior and prominent members this month, in the most severe crackdown since 1995.
Morocco’s king Muhammad VI is being hailed in his country and abroad as a reforming monarch who is far more sensitive to human rights issues than his late father, king Hasan II, who died in July.
Shaikh Rachid Al-Ghannouchi, the exiled leader of Tunisia’s An-Nahda Islamic movement, led a five-day hunger-strike by 20 protestors outside the Tunisian embassy in London fron October 20-24. The protest was in support of Islamic activists imprisoned in Tunisian jails...
The UN security council has passed two resolutions this last month, ostensibly against ‘international terrorism’, but in effect backing state terrorism against Islamic movements worldwide.
Had the king of Saudi Arabia or a member of the House of Saud been insulted by the western media, chances are that all hell would have broken loose. There would be diplomatic protests and the Saudi ambassador from the offending country’s capital--London, Paris etc--would be recalled to Riyadh for consultations.
Egypt, Jordan and Yassir Arafat’s ‘Palestinian National Authority’ (PNA) recently concluded a formal treaty with the US and Israel on combatting Islamic movements, according to Israeli and British media reports quoting senior security and other officials.
In the wave of democracy that has recently broken across the Arab world, long-standing autocrats apparently vaccinated against political death have been returned in fool-proof referendums or rigged elections...
Less than a month after Sudan became an oil-exporting country, Sudanese opposition groups claimed responsibility for an attempt to destroy a section of the pipeline linking the Hegleig oilfield in the west of the country to the Bashair terminal on the Red Sea.
Atal Bahari Vajpayee, leader of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and prime minister of the country for the last eighteen months, was invited to form the country’s next government on October 11 by the country’s president, K R Narayanan, on October 11.
In the last issue of Crescent International, we reported the ruling of the South African Human Rights Comission (HRC) that a Muslim schoolgirl who was suspended from a top private school in South Africa for writing an essay about Palestine had had her human rights violated.
Gul Aslan, a journalist with Selam, a weekly Islamic newsmagazine in Turkey, was released from jail on August 20, 1999. She had been held since May 1996, accused of being a member of an Islamic organization. At the time of her arrest, she was just 21 years old and the mother of a six-month-old daughter.
Imam Khomeini (r.a.) was born on Jumadi Al-Akhir 20, 1320AH. Events to mark the centenary of his birth are taking place around the world. Here Crescent International presents an abridged extract from Dr Kalim Siddiqui’s paper Error, deviation, correction and convergence in Muslim political thought (1989), in which he presents his understanding of the Imam’s political contribution...
Arab governments and their media claimed last month to have helped Iraq on the road to international rehabilitation by allowing it to chair the Arab League foreign ministers’ conference held in Cairo on September 11 - 12.
After 30 years as a false revolutionary, Colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi is now marketing himself as an African hero and a hater of ‘everything Arab’, opening a racial can of worms with the potential of dividing the Muslims of the continent and setting ‘Arab’ against ‘African’ on a larger stage.
The Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), the military force which grew from nothing to become the main representative and protector of the Kosovars against the Serbs during the years of persecution and oppression before NATO intervention in the region earlier this year, was formally disbanded on September 20, when talks with NATO and KFOR commanders were finally concluded nearly 24 hours behind schedule.
When, like Kyrgyzstan, you are a small land-locked country in a volatile region, with a poorly-equipped army, you do not engage in battle highly-motivated groups that even mighty Russia is not confident of defeating and that are not targeting you.
The routine bombing of Iraq by the US and Britain, and the UN sanctions kept in place by their vetoes, have taken a heavy toll of Iraqi lives, destroyed the country’s once-thriving economy, and reduced its people to poverty.
A Kashmiri alim based in Oldham, UK, is fighting government attempts to deport him to Pakistan. Shafiq ur-Rahman, who came to the UK in 1993 as an imam, is accused of being the UK leader of the Lashkar Tayyaba (LT) Islamic group fighting the Indian occupation of Kashmir.
When the Saudi defence minister, prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, appeared in Islamabad in May, and reportedly toured Pakistani nuclear installations with prime minister Nawaz Sharif, he congratulated his hosts on the acquisition of the latest military technology of which ‘the Muslim was proud’...
The two Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, occupied by Spain for more than five centuries, are unlikely to be returned to their rightful owners in the forseeable future, if Madrid’s reaction to a recent Moroccan call for a ‘bilateral rethink’ on the issue, and Rabat’s anxiety to avoid a confrontation, are anything to go by.
Arab interior and justice ministers met in Jeddah, in the Hijaz, on August 1 to establish structures for the implementation of the Arab treaty against ‘terrorism’ which came into force on May 7 following its ratification by seven Arab League member states.
With a new king in Morocco, and a recently elected president in Algeria, relations between the two North African neighbours - frosty at the best of times, over the western Saharan issue - have suddenly thawed.
Shaikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian alim and leader of the Gama’a Al-Islamiyya who is being held in solitary confinement in a US jail on spurious terrorism charges, is gravely ill. His already failing health has deteriorated rapidly in the last few months.
Despite centuries of strong Russian influence and decades of communist rule under the former Soviet Union, Muslims in the region - now consisting of countries organized as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - never lost their Muslim identity.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis marched in the streets of Lahore on July 25 to protest against prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s acceptance of a US-imposed settlement to the confrontation with India in occupied Kashmir which amounted to a humiliating withdrawal by Pakistan.
The genocide in Kosova has transformed many of the survivors from self-sufficient, productive people with a virtual shadow-government of their own into objects of charity. Although some Muslim agencies and individuals have strained their resources to offer aid to the Kosovars, the relief-work has been clearly dominated by western secular and Christian groups.
The Secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council condemned in unequivocal terms police-action against students on the night of Friday, July 9, in which one student was killed (not five, as some reports said) and several were injured at Tehran University.
If, as is generally accepted, there is a language time-bomb ticking away in Kazakhstan, then it seems likely to explode sooner than anyone thought possible only two years ago; the issue was then believed to have been resolved by the 1997 language law, which declared Kazakh the language of the State and Russian that of common use.
If Turkish editors and commentators are right in their assessment of the effect of Abdullah Öcalan’s conciliatory gestures from prison on popular and establishment attitudes towards Kurdish rights and on the question of whether or not to execute him...
Richard A. Gephardt, a Democratic congressman from Missouri, and leader of the House’s minority group, withdrew his nomination of a ‘moderate’ Muslim to serve on a congressional commission on July 7 after the country’s Jewish lobby attacked him for being ‘anti-Israel’ and an ‘apologist’ for terrorist groups.
If the reports that Saddam Hussain has joined the exclusive club of the world’s billionaires, boasting an estimated fortune of $6 billion, are even partly true, he will then have even greater contempt for the Iraqi opposition-groups in exile whose proudest possessions are fax-machines and an expensive rented office in London provided by the US.
Any person - or for that matter, any group of people - anywhere in the world, who, being under pressure for whatever reason, declares himself or herself to be Jewish, and is accepted as such by the rabbinical authorities in Israel, acquires an automatic right to Israeli citizenship and can look forward to being settled in lands being ruthlessly confiscated from indigenous Palestinian owners.
Nato’s intervention in Kosova failed to save the country’s infrastructure from destruction and its Muslim population from genocide, but it has saved the territory for Serbia, asserting the ‘principle’ that it is an integral and inalienable part of Yugoslavia, and disarming the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA).
The world’s probably most obsequious elite is still celebrating the Egyptian parliament’s nomination of president Husni Mubarak for a fourth term in office on June 2, with ‘representatives of Egyptian society’ - from Sheikh-ul-Azhar and the Coptic patriarch, to chairpersons of feminist organisations - trekking to the presidential palace to declare their mabaya’ah for the ‘national hero’.
The six member-states of the Gulf Co-operation Council marked the 18th anniversary of the pact’s signing on May 24. Only two days later, two members, Qatar and Bahrain, announced that they would continue to pursue their border dispute before the International Court of Justice...
Kuwait, the proud owner of the only elected parliament in the Arab Gulf states, has further consolidated its democratic credentials by giving Kuwaiti women the right to vote and to stand in parliamentary and municipal elections.
After seven years of vicious fighting and the failure of several mediation attempts, the warring factions in the west African state of Sierra Leone have finally agreed to a ceasefire - but only because of strong pressure exerted by the US, Britain, the United Nations and Nigeria. Washington’s role in the deal is said to have been the ‘clinching influence’.
Ismail Omar Guelleh was sworn in as Djibouti’s new president on May 8, becoming its second leader since independence in 1977. But, having frequently stood in unofficially for his ailing and elderly uncle
The US suffered what should have been a major international humiliation on May 3, when it was obliged to unfreeze the assets of Salah Idris, the Sudanese owner of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum which the US bombed in August
Thousands of non-Palestinian Muslims are languishing in Israeli jails, some of them for more than 20 years. They are routinely subjected to torture, hunger, disease and isolation at the hands of Israeli ‘security forces’ in a systematic attempt to extract information and destroy their Islamic identity.
The war in Bosnia was a defining chapter in the development of the global Muslim Ummah. The sight of Muslims being slaughtered by the thousand for their religion in the heart of Europe moved Muslims to previously unimagined feelings of solidarity and brotherhood.
A new scientific fad, not disimilar to to the current craze about genetically-modified food, has taken hold of Arab dictators. Ailing and ageing and encouraged, if not inspired by the ruthless transfer of power to the late Jordanian monarch’s eldest son, king Abdullah II...
Libya, a international pariah for nearly seven years, received a guarded welcome back into the international community this month. The rehabilitation came after the two Libyan nationals accused by the US and Britain of involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988...
Elections have become the latest fad around the world. It seems everyone has discovered that elections can be a useful tool to fool almost all the people almost all the time. At the end of February, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, held elections to end military rule but brought to power a former military dictator, general Olusegun Obasanjo.
An estimated 1.7 million Kosovar Muslims have been expelled from their homes in the three weeks since NATO launched its airstrikes to protect them on March 25. Tens of thousands of men have been killed, and at least 100,000 men more are missing, feared dead.
Hajj is often called the annual assembly of the Ummah. Unfortunately, the reality falls far short of the ideal ordained by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and exemplified by his Messenger, upon whom be peace.
The Arab world is often commented on for the longevity and durability of its leaders. However, the result (from the western perspective) is a set of aging allies for whose deaths contingency plans must be made
Crescent International interviewed Ustadz Salamat Hashim, Chair of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Amirul Mujahideen and Imam of the Bangsamoro People, at his main base at Camp Abu Bakre As-Siddiq, Central Mindanao, last month.
The west finally accepted the necessity to bomb Yugoslavia on March 25, after their repeated attempts to help Milosevic to solve his Kosova problem were rebuffed. Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy on the Balkans, had left Belgrade on March 23 admitting that he had failed to persuade president Slobodan Milosevic...
The west finally accepted the necessity to bomb Yugoslavia on March 25, after their repeated attempts to help Milosevic to solve his Kosova problem were rebuffed. However, the strategy they implemented, and the predictable results of the first few days of their attacks, raise serious questions about their genuine intentions.
The controversy over the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, and the subsequent backlash from Kurds inside and outside Turkey, have tended to overshadow the fact that Islam remains the Turkish secular establishment’s greatest fear.
Hizbullah mujahideen killed the Israeli general commanding Israeli and South Lebanese Army (SLA) forces in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon on February 28, in a carefully planned and impeccably executed ambush. Three other Israelis were killed with him.
Crescent International interviewed Ustadz Salamat Hashim, Chair of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Amirul Mujahideen and Imam of the Bangsamoro People, at his main base at Camp Abu Bakre As-Siddiq, Central Mindanao, last month.
The status of Bosnia-Hercegovina’s northern town of Brcko, the only territorial issue in Bosnia left unresolved by the Dayton Accords in December 1995, was finally settled this month, by a typically indecisive western fudge.
America’s senior envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton Accords which ended the Bosnian war in December 1995, flew to Belgrade on March 9 to negotiate a final Kosova peace deal directly with Slobodan Milosevic, confident of having finally obtained the Kosovars’ agreement.
Abdullah Öcalan is a brutal and murderous terrorist. Let us make no bones about that. But the sight of him on television, a pathetic, blindfolded figure paraded for the cameras in front of two large Turkish flags while tens of thousands of Kurds demonstrated their anger at his arrest in cities across Europe, was evocative nonetheless.
When the Iranian soccer team beat the US team at the World Cup Finals in France last year, the west was shocked to see Muslims pouring into the streets in cities across the world to celebrate.
The killings in Račak took place on January 15. Serbian troops and police attacked the town with armoured vehicles and infantry shortly before dawn. They left at sundown, leaving 45 dead bodies. Other villagers either escaped into nearby woods or were arrested.
On April 24, 1996, the Palestine National Council had voted to support ‘cancelling articles that are contrary to the letters’ of mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation before the 1993 Oslo accord.
Some Muslims, unfortunately, have a fixation with things western including ideas. The assumption is that since the west has made material progress, it must be the result of their superior thought-process.
The dogs of war are once again barking in western capitals. US president Bill Clinton, off the hook for his sexual encounters by a promiscuous American public, feels he must now prove his virility in other ways.
If prime minister Mahathir Mohamed believed that by dismissing Anwar Ibrahim and accusing him of moral turpitude would destroy his reputation, the people of Malaysia have proved him dead wrong. Showing uncharacteristic defiance, the people have held massive rallies in support of Reformasi, the reform movement launched by Anwar.
With the Ummah confronted by so many burning issues - Kosova, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan - it may appear a trifle incongruous to focus on the question of Kashmir at this time. But of all the other areas, together with Palestine, Kashmir stands at the top of the agenda.
Anwar was brought to court with a swollen eye and bruises on his right arm, the result of being severely beaten by police when he was first arrested ten days ago.
The Taliban in Afghanistan reflect the danger of Muslims playing pawns in the hands of others, especially anti-Muslim forces. The product of British and American intrigue, the Taliban have now assumed a life of their own but are still susceptible to manipulation by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two regimes beholden to the US.
Over the last two weeks, American officials have outdone themselves telling blatant lies in public. The attempted justifications for US missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan have revealed the depth to which they can sink.
Notwithstanding American allegations against Muslims, there are strong suspicions pointing towards Israeli involvement in the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salam.
America is a land of contradictions. It calls itself ‘the land of the free and the brave’ but the reality is very different, as far as Muslims are concerned. They have been targeted as the ‘new enemy’ and harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...
Most Muslims would probably have a hard time explaining where exactly Acheh-Sumatra is. This is not entirely their fault.
The deep attachment Muslims have for the noble Messenger of Allah, upon whom be peace, is reflected in celebrations of his birthday with great reverence and enthusiasm throughout the world. This is exactly how it should be. After all, he is the final messenger of Allah and the best of examplars for all mankind. The Qur'an says: 'You have in the messenger of Allah the most beautiful pattern of conduct' (33:21). The Qur'an also commands the believers to 'obey Allah and His messenger' (4: 59). By following his Seerah and Sunnah, Muslims are assured success in this world as well as reward in the hereafter.
Res 101 (Nov 24, 53): Expressed 'strongest censure' of Israel for the first time because of its raid on Qibya. Res 106 (Mar 29, 55): Condemned Israel for Ghazzah raid. Res 111 (Jan 19, 56): Condemned Israel for raid on Syria that killed 56 people. Res 127 (Jan 22, 58): Recommended Israel to suspend its no-man's zone in Jerusalem. Res 162 (Apr 11, 61): Urged Israel to comply with UN decisions.
Imam Khomeini passed away on June 3, 1989 after successfully leading the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Khalil Osman looks at his personality and leadership qualities.
The embattled government of general Omar Hasan al-Bashir cannot but heave a sigh of relief as the escalating border dispute between neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea throws into a spin US regional plans for the destabilization of Sudan, and as Uganda, a vital element in those plans, begins to see advantages in settling its quarrel with Khartoum.
Receb Tayyob Erdogan, the ‘Islamist’ mayor of Istanbul, was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment on April 21 after being convicted of inciting ‘hatred based on religious differences’ by a special security court sitting in Diyarbakir.
'O people, your blood and your property [and your honour] are sacrosanct, until you meet your Lord, even as this day and this month are sacrosanct. You shall meet your Lord and He shall ask you of your deeds. I have conveyed [the message]. He who has a trust with him, let him return it to the one who has entrusted him with it.
Hajj reflects the state of the Ummah at any particular time in history. If Hajj is performed in a mechanical way by the vast majority of Muslims, it is because its true meaning and import have been deliberately obfuscated from them. Hajj, like all other aspects of Islam, has been largely shorn of its true meaning.
As Serbia moves against another of Europe’s indigenous Muslim communities, comparisons are inevitably drawn with events in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbs’ attempted genocide of the Muslims of Bosnia had a great impact on Muslims everywhere.
Three weeks after Turkey’s constitutional court announced its decision to ban the Refah Party and Necmettin Erbakan for being too Islamic, publication of the verdict and its reasons in the official gazette are still awaited.
The people of Algeria have had no respite from murder, mayhem and oppression for six years. Ever since the Algerian junta annulled the second round of parliamentary elections in January 1992, the country has been gripped by violence.
I wonder whether to commence my words with a statement of woes and misfortunes that are, or with the joys and delights that should be. Is not a fundamental objective of the Islamic Conference to formulate common remedies for the woes and attainment by the Muslim countries of a stature and position befitting them?
When the first Russian troops landed in Afghanistan 18 years ago, few would have imagined that the rag-tag bands of Afghan mujahideen would last too long.
A wave of xenophobia is sweeping Denmark, but its nice Nordic people reject any charges of racism - arguing, without any trace of irony, that as ‘nationalists and Christians’ they merely object to having ‘Muslims and Arabs’ in their midst.
The currency turmoil in Southeast Asia is spreading. It started in Thailand but quickly engulfed neighbouring countries Indonesia and Malaysia as well.
In the west, king Husain of Jordan is projected as a plucky little monarch battling enormous odds. His kingdom sandwiched between Israel on the one side and Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia on the other, is in a precarious position.
Sources: Elizabeth Donnan, 4 vols. Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Washington D.C. 1930-1935 Carnage Institute of Technology, Pittusburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Abkhazian cause was briefly restored to international headlines when the Abkhaz leader, Vladisiav Ardzinba, and Georgia’s president Eduard Shevardnadze signed a pledge of peace on August 15, raising hopes for a political settlement of the conflict.
There is in Malaysia a truly George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four scenario. There is an ‘Anti-Corruption Act’ to nab those who complain about corruption; an Institute of Islamic Understanding to promote an orientalist version of Islam; non-Muslims advising the Muslims how to reform Islam, else Islam will `die off’ due to its failure to change with the time...
For Muslims while the Qur’an is the revealed Word of God, the Prophet’s Seerah [life story/ prophetic model] is its practical manifestation.
The expression, the ‘terrible Turk’ is clearly racist but a case can be made for applying it to Turkey’s generals. Since Necmettin Erbakan of the Refah Party became prime minister exactly a year ago, his generals have gone berserk.
Democracy has become a popular ploy of dictators to gloss their jaded image. Musclemen around the world are donning civilian plumage in preference to their military uniforms and presenting themselves as less obnoxious creatures. This is particularly true in the Muslim world.
Malaysia’s controversial mega dam project in the Eastern state of Sarawak is showing signs of stress. Reports of construction mishaps and financial problems faced by Ekran, the main contractor of the Bakun Hydroelectric Dam Project are being blacked out from the tighly-controlled Malaysian press.
On some days, ordinary Malaysians find themselves unable to do business in the ordinary way. They are compelled to pay incentives to get people to do a salaried duty.
Every Muslim yearns to perform the Hajj at least once in a lifetime. It is one of the fundamentals of Islam but like all other aspects of Religion, Hajj, too, has been ritualised and, therefore, trivialised.
Archbishop George Carey, the fundamentalist head of the Anglican Church, has called, during a recent visit to Jerusalem, for the establishment of a Palestinian State, and has attacked the Israeli government’s plans to build a new Jewish settlement at Har Homa.
ocial ills among the Malay Muslim youth has now reached to such a serious proportion that the Barisan government has to declare a national emergency to combat the problem.
Daniel Koat Mathews is a veteran of Sudan’s southern rebel politics. It goes back 34 years ago, to 1963, when he helped to found the first Ananya rebel movement. He had since been an active member of the South Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM)...
Well-known for his unreserved support for the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and its chief exponent to the outside world, Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, the late founder-leader of the Muslim Parliament in Britain, believed that the Muslim world needed a series of revolutions.
Conference Papers to be updated.
In a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic country, that India is, secularism has been a far cry. The Muslim community has been the worst victim of this pseudo-secularism.
The enemies of Allah can kill at will but Muslim must not defend themselves. They must not talk about these issues even in the House of Allah! Has not Allah commanded the believers to fight if they are attacked?
Ahmad Mazhar Sa`du interviews Muhammad Ali al-Mahfuz, the secretary-general of the Bahrain Islamic Front, the organisation at the forefront of the uprising against the Bahraini regime.
IT would be a great pity if the American public does not know what US policy-makers know: That there is growing opposition to US presence in Saudi Arabia. The bomb blast in Dhahran was the boldest and bloodiest expression of that opposition.
More than three weeks after a bombmaker with a British passport apparently blew himself up in an East Jerusalem hotel on April 12, mystery continues to thicken as to his true identity and the real purpose of his mission, largely as a result of the news blackout imposed two days later by the Israeli authorities.
Tunisia’s president Zeinal-Abidin Ben Ali is no ‘democrat’ by any stretch of the imagination, while his vicious crackdown on the country’s Islamic movement is well-documented.
Arab rulers, long denied their favourite passtime - rhetoric - as a result of the US-sponsored ‘peace process’ in the Middle East, have discovered a new sport: belching. At least 20 kings, shaikhs, presidents, generals and colonels met in Cairo for two days from June 21 in what was to be a summit of loud belching.
When a former senior bureaucrat in Pakistan was waylaid recently (this being the second time that this misfortune was befalling him and his family) his daughter-in-law who was sitting with him in his BMW asked one of the dacoits who had seized them as to why he had taken to this profession.
HINDUTVA is specifically a post-colonial development which took birth under the impact of British Orientalist scholarship and which imparted a great deal of its own meaning and political content to Hinduism.
The demons of Serbian nationalism unleashed in former Yugoslavia had their greatest feast in Srebrenica. Exactly a year ago, before the very eyes of the so-called United Nations peacekeeping forces...
China has succeeded in securing the full support of its Central Asian and Russian neighbours to contain the growing tide of Islamic revivalism in its north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang...
Well known for his unreserved support for the Islamic Revolution of Iran and its chief exponent to the outside world, Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, the late founder-leader of The Muslim Parliament in Britain, believed that the Muslim world needed a series of revolutions.
The Muslim community in the UK is rallying around Saudi dissident, Professor Muhammad al-Mass’ari, in the face of intensified pressure on the British Home Secretary to deport him following statements made in the aftermath of last month’s bombing of the US military accommodation block in Saudi Arabia...
The face-to-face talks between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbayev (photo) on May 27 in Moscow were a humiliating climb-down for the Kremlin boss. Since October 1991 when the Chechens declared their independence under their late leader Dzhokar Dudayev...
The supporters of the RM15 billion Bakun Dam Hydroelectric Project to be built in Sarawak claim that it will be the answer to all our electricity supply problems.
