About fifteen years ago Muslims in Britain fought a long battle for the defence of Islam after the publication of Salman Rushdie’s blasphemous novel The Satanic Verses. In the two months since the bomb-blasts in London on July 7, it has become increasingly clear that Muslims in Britain face a similar battle now, as secular and liberal fundamentalists in Britain use the bombings as opportunity and justification for a much wider attack on the Muslim community in this country. Although it is entirely understandable that the British authorities should step up security precautions, and intensify investigations of those tiny and marginal groups among Muslims that espouse the sort of appalling violence that was seen on July 7, British politicians and many media and social commentators have turned the debate about the attacks of July 7 into a debate about Islam and Muslims in Britain and, in many cases, another full-scale offensive on Islam in this country.
When Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, long known as the Butcher of Beirut and famous as the champion of Israeli expansionism, first aired the idea of what he called a unilateral disengagement from Ghazzah, many observers were cynical, expecting that it was a ploy that would come to nothing. But there were always good strategic grounds for the decision, and many Palestinians must have drawn grim satisfaction from the sight last month of Israeli troops trying to force Jewish settlers to vacate their luxurious homes in Ghazzah’s zionist settlements. The first and foremost of these grounds was, of course, that the Palestinians of Ghazzah, led by Hamas, had simply made it impossibly difficult and expensive for the Israelis to remain there. But there are others too, which should not be forgotten.
Last month there was a spate of bombings in various parts of the world, apparently by Muslims associated with local Islamic movements. The attack that got the most attention, because it occurred in a western capital and most victims were westerners, was the co-ordinated bombing of three underground trains and a bus in London on July 7, in which 52 people were killed. Four British Muslim youths are believed to have been responsible for the attacks, and to have died in them. On July 21 there were attempts to bomb three more underground trains and another bus; the bombs failed to explode and the bombers, again British Muslim youths, are being hunted. The London bombings have been widely linked to a campaign that included earlier bombings inBali, Madrid, Istanbul and Casablanca, which have been attributed to the amorphous movement known as al-Qa’ida.
At least as sickening as the sight of the devastation wrought by the bombs in London last month was the sight of British prime minister Tony Blair taking a sanctimoniously moral tone while trying to spin the bombings to serve his own political agenda. It is not only that his outrage is hard to take from a man who has been shown to have lied to his own people to justify supporting the US’s murderous invasion of Iraq; it is also that he should use the suffering inflicted by bombings provoked by his own policies to justify those policies. He insists that the war in Iraq does not “justify” the bombings; but that is not the point. The point is that Iraq largely explains them, however unjustified they may have been. Fortunately many in Britain are sceptical about his claim that the bombings have nothing to do with Iraq, but, remarkably, they continue to support a man they openly distrust.
On August 18 Israeli troops are scheduled to pull out of Ghazzah, taking 8,000 settlers with them. Following the Israeli retreat from southern Lebanon in 2000, it will be only the second time in the history of the Zionist state that it is being forced to give up territory that it has conquered and claimed. Although Ariel Sharon promotes the withdrawal as a unilateral decision on his part, as part of a strategy to end the continuing and costly confrontation with the Palestinian resistance, few doubt that he has been forced into it by the refusal of the Palestinians in Ghazzah to accept Israeli rule, and the cost imposed on Israel by the Palestinian resistance in Ghazzah, led by the Hamas Islamic movement. Despite the attempts of Israel and its allies to disguise the fact, it is undoubtedly a victory for the Palestinians and a defeat for the Zionist state, and no one should be fooled into seeing it as anything else.
The election of Mahmood Ahmadinejad as the new president of Iran in the second round of the presidential polls on June 25 can be interpreted in a number of different ways, virtually all of them positive. For one thing, clear to all those observing the elections from outside the country, it rendered the Western enemies of Islamic Iran virtually speechless.
It is very painful to say it, but the bitter truth is that sectarian tensions in Iraq are getting worse. In the past two months, public recriminations from Sunni and Shi‘a religious figures alike have eclipsed their earlier statements asking people to arrest their country’s slide into sectarian strife. It is not just the bigotry and prejudice that are worrying, but also the inhuman and ruthless cycle of sectarian-motivated violence that has cost the lives of thousands.
Later this month, the heads of state of G8 countries will meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, for the latest round of their talks on re-ordering the world economy. To coincide with the talks, British celebrity members of the anti-globalization movement have organized a series of free pop concerts around the world that are supposed to raise awareness for their global campaign to “Make Poverty History”. Unfortunately, all these celebrity do-gooders are really achieving is to promote the strategies by which the world’s capitalist economic elites are strengthening their control over the world’s resources, at the expense of the poor people whom they claim to be helping.
For those willing to see it, there is an undeniable irony in the fact that, at a time when the US and other Western countries claim to be championing democracy in the Muslim world, the only country in the Middle East with a genuinely open, participatory and vibrant political system is the Islamic State of Iran, the country that the US regards as its main enemy in the world. Equally notable is the fact that even as the West attacks Iran for being undemocratic, and represents itself as friend and ally of oppressed Iranians demanding democratic change in their country, senior figures in Iran respond by proclaiming that the Islamic State represents true democracy, and criticising elections in the US and the UK as proving that there is not real democracy in the Western countries that hypocritically claim to be the founders and leaders of universal democratic values.
Every time critics of the West point to oil as a major determining factor in shaping Western policies towards the rest of the world, Westerners scoff, dismissing such critics as paranoid conspiracy theorists. However, the reality is that oil is indeed a major, if often down-played, element of western strategic thinking, even if it is not necessarily “all about oil”, as critics often say.
The general elections in Britain on May 5 brought about more or less the result that most informed observers were expecting: the re-election of the Labour government led by prime minister Tony Blair, but with a much reduced majority in the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament. For Muslim observers, the main points of interest were the revelations about the legal advice on which Britain went to war in Iraq, which was finally published by the government a week before the elections took place, in response to leaks of the advice published in the anti-war press; the performance of George Galloway, a former Labour Member of Parliament who had been expelled from the party because of his outspoken criticism of the war in Iraq (as well as a long record of dissident stands on other issues); and, a distant third, the fact that the number of Muslim in the Commons increased to four, all representing the Labour Party.
The language people use to discuss political news stories reflects their understandings of the situations under discussion. In recent months, as the political institutions established in Iraq by the US have gradually taken shape, the language used in the world press has also changed. Where American authorities were once described as the effective rulers of Iraq, with Iraqi groups and their leaders described as political factions representing particular sectors of the community, since the elections in January this year they have been treated as national politicians, even though the flaws of the elections are widely recognised.
Accountability is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of democracy. Elections are the most fundamental element of this process: every few years, political leaders have to put themselves forward to the people for re-election, giving the people a chance to vote them out of office if they are not satisfied with their performance. In the parliamentary model of democracy that originates in.
Among the many comments made in the aftermath of the death of Pope John Paul II was that he was the first truly modern Pope. By this it was not meant that he was what Western commentators would regard as liberal and progressive, in line with the model for western-style modernisation generally demanded of Muslim societies: he was in fact regarded as a voice of conservatism and tradition by those who favour the marginalization of moral values and the general secularization of society.
Russia’s continuing war against the Chechen people is one of the many conflicts in which Muslims are involved which tend to be forgotten in the wider Ummah. Every few months, some major events elevates it to public consciousness for a while, as the atrocity of Beslan did last year. On that occasion, Chechens are confirmed to have been responsible for what can only be described at an appalling crime, even though the precise details of the episode and how it came to such a tragic end remain unclear.
A good conjurer or con-artist operates by diverting attention to one place while doing his nefarious work in another. This is exactly what the Israelis are doing in their current attempt to legitimise their occupation of Palestine.
The phrase ‘American Islam’ was originally coined by shaheed Sayyid Qutb (the Ikhwan ideologue who was executed by the Egyptian regime in 1966), and was later also used by shaheed Ali Shariati (who did so much to prepare the groundwork for the Islamic Revolution in Iran before his assassination by the Shah’s secret service in London in 1977) and Imam Khomeini (ra). For them, it signified a minimalist, quietest, personal Islam that could happily co-exist with American political hegemony and the norms and values of a materialist, secular, consumerist society. It has become a term used with contempt by Muslims around the world, as indeed most things ‘American’ are.
Considering the great emphasis that the United States and the administration of president George W. Bush are placing on promoting political reform and democracy in the Middle East, as their panacea for the anti-American feeling throughout the Muslim world, one might have expected more fuss about the holding of historic elections in the Saudi kingdom, the tribal state currently administering the Hijaz, site of the holiest places in Islam. The country’s first elections for more than 40 years, the first stage of a three-phase election process for members of municipal councils, took place in the Riyadh region on February 10.
Every year, Muslims around the world mark the first days of the new year of the Islamic calendar by remembering and commemorating the events that led to the martyrdom of Imam Hussain (ra), the beloved grandson of the Prophet of Islam (saw) at Karbala in the 61st year after the Hijra (680CE). The tragedy is, of course, and understandably, marked most prominently by Shi’i Muslims, but it should be noted that there has traditionally been no difference between the Shi’as and the Sunnis in their understanding of the rights and wrongs of the political issues that resulted in the tragedy -- indeed, crime.
Elections are supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy, a viewpoint that suggests that 2005 may well prove to be the year in which the US’s claims to be promoting democratization in the Middle East are vindicated. The year opened, on January 9, with elections for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, and the rest of the month has been dominated with talk of the elections due to be held in Iraq on January 30 (after Crescent goes to press). Later in the year, polls of various kinds are also due to take place in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Oman and Yemen. In Egypt, the most populous and influential Arab country, presidential and parliamentary polls are scheduled for September and October respectively.
