Americans marked the first anniversary of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon on September 11. While the Americans and their allies were suitably solemn, there was also surprise that in many places, such as Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the anniversary was virtually unnoticed, except for the ceremonies that governments felt obliged to put on and the disruption caused by increased security for Westerners.
There is little to be said for Saddam Hussein, but he has certainly managed to get on Washington’s nerves. For the last decade he has been the bogey-man that the Americans have invoked whenever they wanted to justify such things as their occupation of the Middle East, or to distract attention from unpleasantnesses elsewhere.
British prime minister Tony Blair has long been recognised as the US’s most loyal servant among its allies; he has supported Washington on virtually every international issue, even when other Western countries have been critical of the US’s arrogant and overbearing approach, for example over the Kyoto accord and the International Criminal Court.
Israel’s attack on an apartment building in Ghazzah city on July 22, which killed Sheikh Salah Shehada and 15 other Palestinians, many of them children, was the latest in a long list of zionist atrocities against the Palestinians.
US president George W. Bush has appealed to the Iranian people to reject the Islamic state. In a written statement on July 12 he called for Iran to abandon its "uncompromising, destructive policies", promising that "as Iran’s people move toward a future defined by greater freedom, greater tolerance, they will have no better friend than the United States of America"
Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga, which opened a day later than scheduled, as the US manipulated events to ensure the election of its favoured candidate as the country’s president, ended with similar farcical scenes on June 19.
Considering that the world seemed to be on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, the end of the crisis between India and Pakistan was surprisingly low-key.
As Crescent goes to press, US president George W. Bush is on day 6 of his much-vaunted European tour, designed both to consolidate support for the US’s ‘war against terrorism’ and to demonstrate that the US is not acting unilaterally or alone.
The routine use of the labels ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ to criminalise Muslims and legitimise any action against them has reached new levels in India, with cabinet minister Shanta Kumar claiming on April 28 that the Godhra train incident was an act of "international terrorism" whose objective was to "weaken" Indian defence positions on the border and make it more porous for infiltration by jihadis.
Deir Yassin (1948)... Sabra and Shatilla (1982)... Qana (1996)... Jenin (2002) is only the latest in a long list of Israeli crimes against humanity during the zionist state’s short but bloody history. Whether or not a UN fact-finding mission is sent to the camp is irrelevant; everyone who watched events there unfolding, and has seen the devastation...
For the last 18 months the Palestinian intifada has been a symbol of Muslim defiance against world powers determined to crush the spirit of Islam, and a source of pride for Muslims everywhere.
This month marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Dr Kalim Siddiqui (r.a). On April 18, 1996, he suffered his last heart attack in Pretoria, South Africa, at the end of another successful Crescent International conference and lecture tour.
George W. Bush gave another major speech on March 11, this time marking six months since September 11. He avoided any controversial soundbites, such as his notorious 'axis of evil' comment. More important than the content, however, was the image deliberately generated...
The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11 gave the US a pretext to attack Islamic movements far more directly than would previously have been possible. Tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan may have died (and more are continuing to die) in the US’s military operations...
The annual celebrations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran on February 11 were marked this year by mass defiance of the US after George Bush’s State of the Union address on January 29 promised action against an "axis of evil" comprised of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
An interesting and ironic message appeared on an Islamic e-mail forum early this year. The author, a supporter of the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin, had previously been extremely critical of the Islamic State of Iran, which he saw as a sectarian, Shi’i state.
Despite weeks of claims in the West that the war in Afghanistan is over, that its main objectives have been achieved and the Taliban decisively defeated, that al-Qaeda is destroyed and a ‘civilized’ government installed in Kabul, hundreds of Afghans are still dying in ongoing US air attacks.
The contrast between the words and actions of the West’s leaders, and the remarkable ability of most Westerners to believe their politicians, and to accept uncritically a totally West-centric view of world affairs, despite the mass of contrary evidence before them, is frustrating at any time.
While assorted representatives of Afghan groups were meeting with Western leaders in Bonn to map out a government for Afghanistan “freely determined by its own people,” and American bombs were continuing to fall on towns and villages in some parts of the country, two other conferences on Afghanistan’s future were taking place in Washington and Pakistan.
Almost two months after the US began its bombing of Afghanistan, the Taliban remain defiant in substantial parts of the country. As we go to press, the Northern Alliance and the US are claiming to be about to capture the northern town of Kunduz...
