Despite widespread concern about the impact of depleted-uranium weapons used by the West in Iraq and elsewhere, western governments refused to address the issues until their own troops started developing cancer.
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.
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.
The development and perfection of methods of mass-destruction must be counted one of the greatest accomplishments of the Eurocentric western civilization. No other civilization in history has shown such callous disregard for humanity and human life as this one.
The western media tends to focus on one major story at a time. While Kosova dominates the news, other international stories have been largely ignored. For Muslims, however, this is not good enough.
The streets of Baghdad are filled with vendors, taxicabs and a tenacious spirit. As a result of stagnant salaries and enormous inflation, most of Iraq’s work force has taken to the streets to find other ways of earning a living.
From a distance, you wouldn’t think that this is a city under siege. And why should you? Its giant bridges, ancient ruins and ever-flowing rivers are a sign of a well-nurtured civilization. Once you get close to its alleyways, streets and hospitals however, you will be shocked to see a very different reality.
The four-day missile and air strikes against Iraq, launched by the US and Britain on December 16, were a stunning displaying of western arrogance and total disregard for Muslim life. At least 425 cruise missiles were fired at Iraq.
In a desperate bid to save his own skin and displaying total contempt for Muslim lives, US president Bill Clinton, a self-confessed liar and philanderer, unleashed cruise missiles against Iraq on December 16.
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.
Over the past few months, Iran and Saudi Arabia have edged closer toward warmer relations after nearly two decades of acrimony, tension and hostility. Tangible signs of improved ties between Tehran and Riyadh include the numerous visits of Iranian and Saudi officials to each other’s countries...
Nowhere in the Middle East was the anger of the masses at yet another threatened strike against Iraq by US-British forces more apparent than in Jordan.
The US has won an emphatic victory without even firing a single shot. It has established the absurd rule that Washington alone decides who must implement United Nations resolutions as well as who need not...
In the wake of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United States and its allies pushed through the UN Security Council a series of resolutions imposing tough sanctions against Iraq. These sanctions, which remain in place today, six years after the eviction of the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, have inflicted tremendous hardship and suffering on the innocent civilian population of Iraq.
Playing the godess of death and destruction, the US continues to wreak havoc on the people of Iraq. Nearly six months after signing the ‘oil-for-food’ deal with the UN (security council resolution 986 - December 9, 1996), Iraq has received very little food or medicines it was promised.
On September 16, 1994, two conscientious scientists, Dr Garth Nicolson (Chairman of Tumor Biology Department at the M D Anderson Cancer Hospital University of Texas, Houston), and his wife Dr Nancy Nicolson (a Bio-Physicist) revealed a sinister deed of the allied troops during the 1990-91 Gulf War.
On 8 April 1980, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed. His execution aroused no criticism from the West against the Iraqi regime, however, because Sadr had openly supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran and because the West was distracted by the turbulence in Iran that followed the revolution. Governments both in the West and in the region were concerned that the Iranian revolution would be “exported,” and they set about eliminating that threat. When Ayatollah Khomeini called upon Muslims in Iraq to follow the example of the Iranian people and rise up against the corrupt secular Baʿthist socialist regime, they interpreted it as the first step in the spread of Islamic radicalism that would eventually lead to the destabilization of the whole region.
The major theme of the dissertation is to expound on the political thought of the religious activist from Iraq, the late Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. The study is divided into three parts. The first is designed to introduce Sadr to the readers. The emphasis was given to Sadr's political activism from 1958 when he participated in the formation of the first Shia political party, Islamic Da'wa, to his violent death by the Ba'thist regime in Baghdad in 1980. The second part aims at setting the parameters of the definition of the political theory in order to help underpin Sadr's political thought and evaluate its merits. Finally, the main part of the dissertation is the third chapter in which Sadr's political thought is systematically and thoroughly analyzed. Sadr's major political concepts about man, society and the state are introduced, his interpretation of the historical process is scrutinized, and his political program in ending social contradictions is examined.
1The great Islamic revolution of 1920 led by the `Ulama’ in Iraq became known as the `Revolution of 1920' as it took place on the 30th of June 1920, and as most of those who wrote of it dated their articles and the events of the revolution according to the Christian calendar.
