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Ramadan, 14201999-12-16

Crescent International Vol. 28, No. 20

Special Reports

Mindset that inhibits Pakistan's progress

Zia Sarhadi

How things have gone wrong in Pakistan can be gleaned from the following episode at the end of last month. The chief justice of the Baluchistan High Court, Justice Amir-ul Mulk Mengal, was travelling to Nushki/Kharan when his car was stopped at the Chagai checkpost by the Frontier Constabulary (FC) on November 26. On orders of the checkpost in-charge, a captain Butt, the FC personnel requested that the vehicles be searched.

Book Review

Challenging work on the dangers of American-style standardised education

Yusuf Progler

Despite the proclamations of a post-modern era, of an age driven by information, many of the trappings of modernity drive western civilization. Mechanization, reductionism, and rationality are pervasive in most of the supposedly newly-emerging realities in western science, technology, economies and politics.

Editorials

Risks of working through un-Islamic political systems

Editor

One thing that revolutionary Islamic movements have largely been clear about since the Islamic Revolution in Iran is that trying to come to power through democratic processes in the political systems established and run by secularist politicians in Muslim countries is a waste of time.

Features

Application of the Shari’ah in the contemporary world: lessons from some Muslim countries

Ibrahim Zakzaky

The word ‘shari’ah’ literally means waterway that runs one single course leading to a main stream. It is also borrowed from here to refer literally to any way, road or path that leads to a goal, be it a village, city, or building.

Occupied Arab World

Who destroyed Algeria’s economy? - not FIS, surely

Crescent International

In a country blessed with vast oil and gas reserves, nine million Algerians, out of thirty million, live below the poverty line. A million children suffer from malnutrition, with a fifth of them suffering very serious consequences to their health.

Occupied Arab World

Qaddafi talks to the west with help of Libya’s former colonial master

Crescent International

During his recent official visit to Libya, prime minister Massimo D’Alema of Italy, the North African country’s former colonial ruler, had the agreeable experience of seeing Mu’ammar Qaddafi trying to ingratiate himself to the west by pledging to join the west’s war on Islam and using his influence to unlock African doors for Rome.

South-East Asia

Indonesian troops’ shooting of Acehnese Muslims ends illusions about Wahid’s presidency

Jakarta Correspodent

At least 10 people in Aceh were wounded by gunfire, and many more injured in other incidents, on December 4, when Indonesian troops and police fired on people celebrating the territory’s ‘national day’.

South-East Asia

Wahid’s links with Israel should not be a surprise

Crescent International

Indonesian president Abdur Rahman Wahid raised eyebrows on December 4 when he told his new economic affairs commission that Israel had agreed to invest $200 million in Indonesia.

Special Reports

The vote that would not float: women's rights in Kuwait

Aisha Geissinger

It was the sort of drama that makes for good press copy, and of course the international press was there to watch it. As the result was announced, hundreds of men applauded, while a “Muslim fundamentalist” reportedly screamed that Kuwaitis don’t want women’s rights.

Special Reports

Julius Nyerere: the west's ultimate anti-Islamic warrior in post-colonial Africa

Mzee Abdullah

Now that the dust has settled after the death and state burial of Julius Kambarage Nyerere, ex-President of the Republic of Tanzania, it is time for some of the inconsistencies and paradoxes of the most Islamophobic leader in post-colonial Africa to be discussed and put into context.

World

Chechens holding Johar-Gala as Russians threaten destruction

Crescent International

The plight of the Chechens trapped in Johar-Gala (‘Grozny’) was briefly brought to the west’s attention earlier this month when the western media highlighted a leaflet dropped in the city by Russian aircraf

World

Muslimahs in hijab coming under attack in Sri Lanka, as elsewhere...

A Special Correspondent in Colombo

Hijab has also come to symbolise the Islamic identity of Muslim women. All over the world, Muslimahs in hijab have become targets for attack by secularists and others seeking to attack Islam. Even Sri Lanka, where Muslims have lived in harmony with the majority Sinhalese community for over 1,000 years, Muslimahs in hijab are now coming attack.

World

Talk of secession for southern Sudan plays into US and Christian hands

Crescent International

The agreement concluded between Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir and opposition-leader and Ummah Party chief Sadeq al-Mahdi in Jibouti on November 25 sets out the principles on which these men think that any political settlement of the Sudanese conflict should be based.

World

New, informal alliances to challenge US global arrogance and unipolar world

Zafar Bangash

For Muslims, 1999 arrived with mayhem and bloodshed, not very different from the previous year. First, there was the four-day slaughter in Iraq which was euphemistically described as the ‘fireworks display over Baghdad’ by Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s latest darling from the scene.

World

Muslims in America remain under pressure, despite court victory over ‘secret evidence’

Tahir Mahmoud

America’s war on Islam suffered a setback on November 29, when Nasser Ahmed, an Egyptian asylum seeker, walked free after spending three-and-a-half years in a US prison. Nasser Ahmed’s ‘crime’ was that he was the court-appointed interpreter for Shaikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 1996 after a kangaroo trial.

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