With their zeal, courage and discipline, Hizbullah's intrepid fighters stood off Israel's military juggernaut in the hilly, forested landscape of southernLebanon. Ensconced in villages and towns throughout southern Lebanon, Hizbullah's fighters weathered 33 days of intense Israeli air-strikes and a series of tank-led ground incursions, and emerged victorious.
Hizbullah's stunning victory over Israel has boosted many people's morale, especially Muslims who are struggling for peace and justice all over the world. By defeating the most powerful military machine in the Middle East, Hizbullah has not only demolished the myth of Israel's invincibility but also shaken the Arab potentates in their huge palaces to their boots.
The “silly season” is an annual feature of British life: the period every summer when the country’s politicians depart the Westminster village for their holidays and the newspapers have to scrabble around for something else to write about in order to keep readers interested.
Hizbullah has won a stunning victory over the Israelis in southern Lebanon. That is a reality recognised by virtually everyone around the world, despite the efforts of the Israelis and their supporters in the West to pretend otherwise.
While the world's attention has been turned towards Lebanon, Israel has also been continuing its economic and military war on the Palestinians. Some 200 Palestinians have been killed in Ghazzah since Israel launched military operations there in early July, ostensibly in response to the capture of one of its soldiers, shortly before the start of the Lebanese war.
Hizbullah has won a stunning victory over Israel in its first all-out military conflict with the zionist state. Between its formation in the early 1980s and its victory in 2000, when Israel was kicked out of most of occupied Lebanon, Hizbullah was in resistance mode.
One of the most common strategies used against Islamic Iran in the Arab world is to accuse it of Persian nationalist ambitions over the Arab Middle East. This is often linked with direct or indirect sectarianism, and is known as the “Safavid enterprise”. DR MAZIN AL-NAJJAR discusses this myth.
The international arms trade is one of the largest and most profitable in the world, with developing countries spending vast amounts on Western arms. ABDAR RAHMAN KOYA discusses how the West abuses its power in this unequal and exploitative relationship.
The victory of the Hizbullah over the Israelis and their Western supporters has been celebrated by Muslims all over the world. SHAIKH SAYYID HASSAN NASRALLAH made a number of speeches during the war, outlining Hizbullah’s position, that were remarkable for their clarity and frankness. Here we publish the translation of the speech he gave on August 14, at the end of the war.
The unity of the Ummah has been a major theme of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The Majma-e Taqrib Bain al-Madhahib al-Islami (Organization for Convergence between Schools of Thought in Islam) convenes an annual Unity Conference to discuss themes of relevance to all Muslims. This year’s conference took place from August 20-22. ZAFAR BANGASH, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), was there.
Four days after Iran sent a 21-page response to the Security Council about its nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad inaugurated a heavy-water plant at Arak on August 26. The following day, Dr Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted by the Islamic Students News Agency (ISNA) as saying that Iran would not abandon its right to enrich uranium as article 4 of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows it to do so.
The killing on August 26 of Nawab Akbar Bugti (pic, right) by the Pakistan army has sunk the already troublesome Balochistan province into chaos, with violence among Balochis in neighbouring Sind province as well as in the commercial city of Karachi.
President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB boss during the Soviet era, has turned his country into an undisguisedly racist and anti-Islamic fortress since taking power in 2004: there has always been an element of discrimination (albeit disguised) against Muslims in the Soviet Union, but it is getting worse.
As international pressure on Sudan to admit UN peacekeepers in Darfur appeared to flounder by mid-August, the US and Britain – the two main powers behind the scheme intensified their effort to break the resolve of president Omar Hassan al-Bashir to resist their ill-disguised plot to prepare for the eventual separation of the Western region from the rest of Sudan.
It is now official: Ethiopian troops have advanced deep into Somalia's territory, reaching Baidoa, the seat of the official but defunct government headed by president Abdullahi Yusuf. These troops have seized airports near the city, 150 miles from Mogadishu, the capital, which has been under the full control of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) since June.
Kyrgyzstan was an ally of the US during the 15-year rule of president Askar Aliyev, who was toppled in an unexpected uprising last year. By contrast the new president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was elected on July 10 to replace his predecessor (who had fled the country), has turned to Russia and China for support.
