Although little noticed elsewhere in the Ummah, a popular Islamic movement has taken power in Somalia and is under attack from neighbouring Ethiopia, backed by the US. MAHMOUD AHMED SHAIKH reports.
The optimism generated by Eritrea’s acceptance of a three-part accord proposed by the Organization of African Unity to end the costly 17-month Ethio-Eritrean war has given way to a mood of pessimism after Addis Ababa rejected the final part.
Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Revolution has always been seen by Muslim dictators, their media and their western masters as a source of threat - not through force of arms but by example.
Nigeria’s president Abdulsalami Abubakar appears to have convinced doubters that he is indeed prepared to vacate Aso Rock, the presidential palace in the capital Abuja, as soon as a successor is elected on May 29, 1999 - a date the general insists is ‘sacrosanct.’
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is ruthlessly, if somewhat desperately, exploiting the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the American cruise missile attack on Khartoum and Afghanistan to secure international action against ‘terrorism.’
The secular fundamentalists among Algeria’s ruling junta, who were behind president Liamine Zeroual’s decision to step down before the end of his five-year term, have notched up another dubious victory...
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan has sent an information-gathering six-member panel to Algeria on the invitation, and conditions, of the Algerian government in the hope that it would generate ideas on how the world body might help end Algeria’s crisis.
The international conference in Rome, Italy discussing the formation of a global permanent criminal court under the aegis of the United Nations has finally agreed to create it in the face of intense US opposition.
From Bangladesh through Central Asia to Iraq, tens of millions of Muslims have been poisoned, many terminally, as a result of pollution from nuclear dust, pesticides and arsenic in water wells - all at the hands of western governments, international aid agencies and Russia, as the dominant power in the former Soviet Union.
Throughout Europe, political parties campaigning on anti-foreigner platforms are chalking up remarkable gains, with Germany leading the way as poll figures and recently published figures on racist attacks show.
Links between Sudan and Egypt are on the mend, a development Sudanese opposition groups and their western backers are not celebrating. And while US president Bill Clinton’s visit to Uganda, part of a flying tour to five African countries...
Sudan has been dogged in the past eight years by Christian and western inspired propaganda that the Islamically-oriented regime of president Omar Hasan-al-Bashir sponsors not only international terrorism but also slavery...
The joint military exercises held in the Eastern Mediterranean by the US, Israel and Turkey last month are an ominous development, which Muslims must treat, and resist, as grave strategic threat to their security.
Reacting to a calculated snub by the European Union (EU), prime minister Mesut Yilmaz has threatened to withdraw Turkey’s application for full membership if it is not formally accepted as a candidate before June...
The Azerbaijani president, Haydar Aliyev, has called for closer ties between his country and both Israel and the US. The move, which follows the conclusion of a ‘historic’ defence and friendship treaty between Russia and Armenia...
The US government and its western allies - clearly frustrated by Radovan Karadzic’s continued grip on power in the so-called Serb Republic (the part of Bosnia reserved for the Serbs) despite indictment for war crimes, and loss of the presidency more than a year ago...
Iraqis have always suspected that the 1963 military coup that set Saddam Husain on the road to absolute power had been masterminded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Greece not only persecutes its own Muslims but also plays a conspicuous role in the programme of obliteration directed at the presence of Islam in the Balkans.
Mesut Yilmaz’s vote of confidence (281 to 256) in the Turkish parliament on July 12 was marred by brawls and fist-fights. He described his elevation to the premier’s post as a return to ‘traditional Turkish politics.’ Indeed!
Browsing through the index of any Year Book on the Middle East creates the immediate impression that it is either about a region on some other planet, or that the Arab world enjoys more than its share of political, economic and social cohesion as well as cooperation.
