


Some ulama in the desert kingdom are beginning to speak out against the crimes of the House of Saud. While the ‘Arab Spring’ has not affected the kingdom as much as others, how long will it escape the storm?
The US and its western allies, especially Britain, France and Germany have not only targeted Muslims accusing them of all kinds of wrongdoing without much evidence, even charities that are involved in helping the victims’ families are being targeted. The witch-hunt is on in earnest.
Anti-Muslim sentiment has infected British society and state so deeply that even where no threat exists, Muslims are sentenced to long prison terms without any evidence but simply for being Muslims.
In order to deny providing citizenship rights to Muslims, the British government has started stripping British Muslims stranded on other countries of their citizenship altogether.
The extradition of Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Khalid al-Fawwaz, Adel Abdul Bary and Abu Hamza to the US to face terrorism charges while refusing to extradite white British citizen Gary McKinnon exposes British hypocrisy and injustice.
The blasphemous US-produced movie, while denounced by US officials, is still defended on the basis of free speech. History, however, shows that publishing racist, anti-religious tracts has been punished. Julius Streicher, publisher of a racist, anti-Jewish tabloid, Sturmer, was hanged after a military trial at Nuremberg accused of aiding and abetting the slaughter of Jews. He was not a member of the Nazi party nor was he in Hitler’s military.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is being targeted not because he is guilty of the rape allegation. His real ‘crime’ is that he exposed America’s dirty tricks.
On July 10, 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights will decide the fate of five Muslim men facing extradition to the US.
The doctrine of the separation of powers, by which governance is divided among three branches — the executive, legislative and the judiciary — is an old concept which was first developed in ancient Greece that continues to form the foundation of governance in most liberal democracies today.
In war, numerous tactics are used to weaken the enemy with a view to its ultimate defeat.
When it comes to the War on Terror, it appears there is always a possibility to find legal justification for just about anything. Despite there being an “absolute” prohibition on torture under international law, John Yoo, then a Deputy Assistant Attorney at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old Palestinian baker detained without charge by Israel since December 2011, ended his 66-day hunger strike on February 21, which had taken him to the verge of death. Adnan ended his strike only after Israel agreed to release him after serving another two months of “administrative detention”, under which a suspect can be held without charge for six-month periods, renewable indefinitely.
As human rights campaigners around the world commemorated the 10th anniversary of the opening of the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, marking a decade of human rights abuses known as the “war on terror”, one would have expected that Western governments would be contemplating scaling back their aggressive rhetoric and draconian laws which have become a feature of the 21st century.
As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks draws near, prepare to be bombarded with propaganda in the form of repeated television footage of the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Centre with the North Tower already in flames.
The witch-hunt of Qaddafi opponents began on 2 October 2005 with the arrest and detention of five Libyan dissidents, who had been granted asylum by the UK, on the grounds that they were a threat to national security.
The centre of Luton, a large town 30 miles north of London, lay empty on February 5. This was unusual for a Saturday afternoon, as one would have expected the usual hustle and bustle of shoppers and families frequenting parks and markets in the town centre. Instead, it was like a ghost town. Shops were closed and people remained indoors. The only presence on the streets was that of 1,000 police officers who were waiting to steward a scheduled demonstration by the far right anti-Muslim fascist organization, the English Defence League (EDL).
“The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State… The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber.
There is no clearer example of this than the deafening silence and paralysis inflicting the Muslims of the world when it comes to defending oppressed Muslims of Africa, and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, or “Black Africa”.
In their latest effort to “liberate” Muslim women from the “oppression” of Islam, and to restore their dignity and honour, secular governments have started passing legislation forcing them to remove their clothes.
The presumption of innocence is the cornerstone of every legal system in the modern world and one which goes to the heart of the principles of due process.
“Pakistan First”, was the slogan coined by former Pakistani military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf in his very first address to the people after grabbing power in October 1999. It was to be the underlying theme by which he would govern for nearly a decade.
One of the common misconceptions about the Taliban is that they were only formed as a movement in 1994...
The recent British elections resulted in the defeat of the Labour Party government after 13 years in power and the emergence of a new Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition, the first of its kind in over 30 years...
For years British Muslims have been pressured by the government, media, think tanks, and even some Muslim community leaders to renounce violence as a means of bringing about change for their communities, both in the UK and abroad...
“We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan.”
Will the concept of an Islamic human rights activist ever be fully acceptable in Western society? During my many years working at the Islamic Human Rights Commission, several valuable minutes were wasted every morning deleting hate mail which often described the organisation as an oxymoron or a contradiction in terms before descending into a volley of Islamophobic and racist abuse...
It was a moment of bravery, an act of defiance following decades of oppression that finally brought the plight of the Uyghurs in China to the attention of the world. A lone Muslim woman was dressed in hijab and jilbaab, hobbling on a crutch, and standing up to the Chinese state paramilitary forces in Urumchi, shaking her fist and demanding that her husband and four brothers be released by the authorities...
The officers involved here stand accused of holding the heads of victims inside a toilet and repeatedly flushing it, as part of their interrogation.
In April, the “Easter Attack” plot became the latest in a series of international terrorist plots, “foiled” by British police days before they were supposedly to be carried out. In line with other terrorist plots allegedly be
This month, the world may witness the final chapter in the 25-year-old conflict between the Sri Lankan army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. The civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands others, was triggered by Tamil demands for an independent homeland in the North and East of the country following decades of complaints about discrimination against them by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese government.
“You’re going to remember this day for the rest of your life” — these words were uttered by anti-terror police officers to intimidate and terrify British Muslim Babar Ahmad during the brutal assault inflicted upon him in a pre-dawn raid on his home on December 2, 2003. They were right; Ahmad never forgot that day and spent the last five years struggling to ensure that it would live in the memories of the British public forever.
The British police service can no longer be described as “institutionally racist”, according to Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). Phillips made his comments in a speech marking 10 years since the Stephen Lawrence murder report, which originally coined the phrase.
On Friday 16 January, while Israel continued its brutal slaughter in Ghazzah, less than a thousand miles away, another foreign army was being forced to withdraw its troops from Muslim land it had also illegally occupied. On that day, to the joy of millions Somalia, Ethiopia was forced to pull its troops from Mogadishu, having invaded and occupied it just over two years earlier. Through a close examination of the conflict, one can draw valuable lessons for Hamas and the Muslim world.
On November 12, the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, Interpal received notification from their bank, the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB), that Lloyds TSB (their clearing bank) had served notice on IBB to cease all dealings with Interpal. Clearing banks are responsible for processing all financial transactions.
In war, various tactics—from bribery to insults, ridicule and mockery, hostile propaganda, threats of force to physical violence and expulsion—are used to weaken and ultimately defeat the enemy. A traditional weapon used even today is that of isolation and dehumanisation through a process of complete social boycott.
There are many unknown victims of the US’s global war on Islamic dissidence. The plight of one of them hit the headlines earlier this summer, after years in which nothing was known of her. FAHAD ANSARI reports on the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Muslimah now in US custody after disappearing in Pakistan in 2003.
This year, the month of September coincides with the holy month of Ramadan. In the Seerah of the Prophet and throughout Muslim history, this has been a month of jihad and activism. Yet in the modernworld., it has become one of passivity and personal piety. FAHAD ANSARI explores this paradox.
As the Olympic Games open in Beijing this month, Western activists will do their best to disrupt them in support of Tibetan independence. Less known is the history and struggle of the Uighur Muslims in Chinese-occupied Central Asia. FAHAD ANSARI discusses their plight.
Deciding who and who not to talk to has always been a strategy used by those in power against those they seek to control. FAHAD ANSARI discusses the attempts of the British government to find or establish an acceptable leadership for the British Muslim community.
In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the true nature of zionism and the Israeli state in the West. FAHAD ANSARI discusses the reasons for this change, and finds them in the determination of Palestinians to resist their oppression and dispossession.
In the contemporary Ummah, Sufism is often associated with apolitical, pacifist Islam of the type that the West would like to promote as “true Islam” all over the Muslim world. FAHAD ANSARI looks back at the great tradition of jihadi Sufis in recent Muslim history.
Last month, five young Muslims in Britain were cleared of terrorism charges on appeal, in the latest of a series of trials of Muslims in Britain. FAHAD ANSARI discusses the implications of the case and the growing criminilizations of Islam in Britain.
Malcolm X, who was assassinated in New York on February 21, 1965, was a unique figure in the history of Islam in America, and a leader who has inspired generations of Muslim everywhere, particularly those living in non-Muslim countries. FAHAD ANSARI considers his legacy.
Ethiopia’s war in Muslim Somalia has been one of the major news stories of the last year. However, less well-known is the fact that Somali Muslims living under Ethiopian rule in the Ogaden have a 700-year history of resistance against Ethiopian rule. FAHAD ANSARI reports.
While Americans celebrate the US Declaration of Independence on July 4, campaigners around the world will mark the 2,000th day since the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention center on January 11, 2002. In this issue, FAHAD ANSARI discusses the differences between the ideals that the US claims to represent and its own behavior in the world today.
Serious questions have been raised about the attempt to bomb India’s parliament in New Delhi in December 2001. Human rights activists in India are campaigning against the death sentence passed against one of those accused. Fahad Ansari reports.
1As Muslims around the world rallied in defence of the Haram in al-Quds, FAHAD ANSARI was concerned by some of the attitudes he found during a protest in London.
Despite its traditional reputation for tolerance and multiculturalism, the British government, like all colonial powers, has a long history of trying to impose meanings and leaders on Islam and Muslims. FAHAD ANSARI discusses the latest strategy being promoted in Britain, as a time when Muslims are under increasing pressure.
Ramadan 1427 provided enough evidence of the truth in Allah’s words for any Muslim to solidify his or her faith. Almost daily for about three weeks, minister after minister, newspaper after newspaper, commentator after commentator voiced opinions about the “Muslim problem” and how to solve it.
This month, the Islamic Human Rights Commission will publish a detailed critique of the British government’s proposed anti-terrorism legislation, written by FAHAD ANSARI. Here we publish an extract focussing on the targeting of “extemism”.