So now it’s official: George W. Bush and his policies are supported by the majority of those Americans who choose to engage in US politics...
Few sceptics doubted that the long-anticipated attack on the Iraqi city of Falluja, some 70 kilometres (about 45 miles) to the west of Baghdad, would be launched with unusual ferocity. Still fewer doubted the US Marines’ ability to retake the city...
It must take a particular kind of gall for someone to stand at a podium in front of a global audience and firmly, confidently make statements and assertions that he knows the vast majority of his audience know are untrue...
Three groups of people have always operated in tandem with the crusading policies of Western governments: Churches, so-called aid-workers, and soldiers of fortune, the last more aptly described as criminals and terrorists doing their governments’ dirty work...
The fact that the Saudi monarchy is among the most corrupt regimes in the Muslim world, and remains in power only because they serve the interests of the US rather than because of any legitimacy among Muslims, has long been generally accepted throughout the Ummah...
President George Bush's aggressive and militaristic policies have not only alienated millions of people abroad, but have also caused deep fissures at home. The American society has never been more divided, nor more vulnerable than under Bush and his extremist ideologues (better known as the neocons)...
At a time when the Western media and establishment are presenting the tragedy in Darfur as the fault of ‘Arab’ militias attacking indigenous African communities, and the US government is seeking to exploit the crisis to score brownie points at home and internationally...
The US’s claim to be bringing freedom and progress to Iraq is often justified by comparisons with its administration of Japan at the end of the second world war...
The Mahdi Army, led by Iraqi Shi’ah leader Muqtada al-Sadr, has marked the end of another chapter in its two-and-half-month-long armed insurrection against the US-led occupation troops: on June 24 it declared a unilateral ceasefire in the Baghdad slum-township of Sadr City...
A useful characteristic of George W. Bush and his cronies is their openness in dealing with America’s enemies, thus making known the US’s probable next course of action...
Even as it acts more and more aggressively against Muslims around the world, the US has launched a massive propaganda campaign in the Muslim world...
With the US presidential elections due to be held in November, and painfully aware of the fact that the terrorist attack on Madrid in March was timed for maximum political impact in Spain's elections, the Bush regime is desperate for something they can present as progress in Iraq as soon as possible...
Images of American troops committing appalling atrocities against Iraqi captives at the Abu Ghraib have causes outrage around the world and sparked a massive damage limitation campaign in Washington. ZAFAR BANGASH discusses the implications of the revelations...
Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources and Strategies by Cheryl Benard. Pub: Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2004. Pp: 118. Pbk: $20. (Also available on-line to download.)
The US attack on Fallujah last month, in which at least 1,000 people have been killed, thousands more injured and an estimated 60,000 – out of a population of some 300,000 – forced to flee their homes, appears to have been carried out in a similar spirit...
Considering the fact that divisions inherent in Iraqi society are supposed to be the greatest problem facing Iraq as it seeks a new future following the American occupation, there seemed to be remarkable consensus among Iraqis of most communities following the signing of the American-dictated interim constitution on March 8, 2004...
There are so many aspects of the West’s war on Islam that it is difficult to credit them all. One little-noticed one is the drive for ‘democracy’ in the Muslim world. The call for democracy has become a staple of self-justifying Western rhetoric. Why do Muslim hate America? Americans ask...
Over the last few weeks, the Western media has watched keenly as Iran went to the polls to elect a new Majlis (parliament), highlighting every perceived shortcoming in the electoral procedure and hoping that the elections would prompt a crisis in Iran’s Islamic system of government...
Both Sudan and Somalia are in urgent need of a peaceful settlement of the civil wars that have been ravaging them for more than a decade. But the peace deals recently reached as a result of negotiations mediated by Kenya, and sponsored (in Sudan’s case) by the US, cannot lead to a just and lasting resolution of the conflicts that also guarantees their territorial integrity...
When a US secretary of state tells an Arab country to follow Libya’s example, and a US president praises colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi for his "wise" and "responsible" decision, the view that the Bush administration’s foreign policy is fundamentally and cynically imperial is reinforced.
