Crescent International was started as a community Muslim news-magazine in March 1972 in Toronto. Since then, it became famous as a monthly global news-magazine of the global Islamic movement analyzing current affairs within an Islamic paradigm.
April 18 marks the twentieth anniversary of Dr Kalim Siddiqui’s passing away. He was one of the leading intellectuals of the last century blending intellectualism with political activism that created a unique personality.
First we had the shock and upheaval of September 11, 2001 (9/11), with all its hype and hyper hoopla, followed by all sorts of “terrorist” tremors in Madrid, London, Egypt, Mumbai, etc. And now we have the Friday-the-13th bloody rampage in Paris; if we are smart enough to learn from past experience there will be terrorist after-shocks wherever the handlers of this phenomenon deem necessary for their national interests.
A writer from prison finds the Crescent International a blessing in his quest for acquiring knowledge and understanding of the global situation.
Deep down inside the recesses of the Islamic movement there is what one may call a dichotomy — two mutually exclusive subclasses of the worldwide Islamic movement. One of them is centered on Islamic Iran and the other around what is today called “Saudi” Arabia.
In an age before the Internet, therefore, the key instrument of this work was the Crescent International newsmagazine, published from Toronto.
In a few months’ time, Crescent International will insha’Allah complete 37 years of publication. During that time, it has inevitably seen many changes. It began as a local community paper in Toronto in the 1970s, before being transformed into a newsmagazine of the global Islamic movement after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, under the influence of Dr Kalim Siddiqui.
1The United States of America, the sole superpower in the world, or the so-called “hyper-power”, the one with the most advanced armed forces, with satellites in the air and spies everywhere, is getting its nose bloodied in Afghanistan and suffering military defeat in Iraq. And who is inflicting these humiliations? Mujahideen armed with little more than iron determination to expel the occupiers from their homelands.
Is the West’s war on Islam -- and the Islamic movement in particular -- now reaching a significant new level? That is certainly one conclusion that might be drawn from the intensification of its political, diplomatic and propaganda war on the Islamic State of Iran in recent months. The West has, of course, been at war with Islamic political activism for most of recent history.
April 18 this year will be the tenth anniversary of the death of Dr Kalim Siddiqui, the founder of the Muslim Institute, London, and the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain. For the last decade and a half of his life, between the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and his death in South Africa in 1996, Dr Kalim dominated Islamic movement activism in Britain and was a major figure in the global Islamic movement.
On April 23, Crescent International and the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) will hold a Kalim Siddiqui Memorial Conference in London to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of one of the Islamic movement’s modern giants. The theme of the conference will be The Islamic movement: between extremism and moderation. As another part of our commemoration of Dr Kalim’s work,Crescent International is reprinting some of his major works, beginning with the introduction he wrote for a book that was never published. This paper outlines his understanding of the Islamic movement and the challenges that it faces.
1America has been so decisively defeated in Iraq that no amount of verbal sophistry by US president George Bush or his neocon allies can hoodwink the American people into believing otherwise. The cabal operating as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which led the chorus for “perpetual war” and “full-spectrum dominance”, appears to have gone into permanent hibernation.
The heavy American assault on Falluja in November ranks among the worst crimes ever committed against Muslims. ZAFAR BANGASH, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, answers two key questions that it raises.
It is tempting to blame the kuffar for the disintegration of the Ummah, but the fact is that the Muslims' own weaknesses enabled others to subjugate them, and then to impose alien systems on them...
TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL ISLAM: RELIGION, IDEOLOGY AND POWER edited by Azza Karam. Pub: Pluto Press, London, December 2003. Pp: 157. Pbk: £15.99.
Later this month, the US and its allies will mark the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11 of last year. IQBAL SIDDIQUI discusses some of the implications of the events of the last year for Muslims and the global Islamic movement
The Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) this month issued a call for papers for another international conference on the Seerah. Here we reprint an abridged extract from DR KALIM SIDDIQUI’s last book, Stages of Islamic Revolution, in which he outlines his vision for the reinterpretation of the Seerah.
ZAFAR BANGASH, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, discusses the example South African Muslims set the rest of the Ummah
This month marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Dr Kalim Siddiqui (r.a). On April 18, 1996, he suffered his last heart attack in Pretoria, South Africa, at the end of another successful Crescent International conference and lecture tour.
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.
