Addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 10, US president George W. Bush did something that no US president has ever done: he used the word “Palestine” to describe the emasculated Palestinian ‘state’ that the US and Israel would like to set up in the West Bank and Ghazzah as part of a ‘peace settlement.’
Much has been made of George W. Bush’s throwaway characterization of the US’s “war on terrorism” as a ‘crusade’. To be fair, he was probably using the word in the sense of a determined, even zealous, pursuit of a cause, rather than in any specifically anti-Islamic sense...
Three days after the bombing of Afghanistan began, US officials admitted that they were running out of targets. The bombing is likely to continue, however, to satisfy public opinion. Hawks in Washington also want to attack other countries.
More than two weeks after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, the initial shock has worn off and the prevalent mood has changed to nervous anticipation as the world waits to see what the US will do next.
Tens of thousands of people may have died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11.
The US’s position as the dominant power in the world is now widely recognised, as is its freedom to do as it pleases, virtually anywhere in the world, with scant regard even for its Western allies, let alone anyone else. Equally clear is its ability to manipulate international institutions such as the UN to legitimise its actions...
This month, the al-Aqsa Intifada will be one year old. It was on September 28 that Ariel Sharon, then leader of Israel’s opposition, walked into the Haram al-Sharif surrounded by Israeli soldiers, in an calculated insult to the Palestinians and a demonstration of Israel’s effective sovereignty over the Farthest Mosque.
After months of street turmoil and parliamentary drama, Indonesia returned to relative calm with the removal of Abdurrahman Wahid from the presidency last month. His tumultuous 21-month rule was marked by moves to open up political freedom in the world’s fourth most populous Muslim country.
Despite the city effectively being turned into a fortress by an army of policemen equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters and riot-control equipment, thousands of protesters gathered outside the venue of a meeting of senior politicians planning their future strategy for promoting their common interests.
Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic appeared before the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague on July 3, to hear the charges of murder and crimes against humanity being brought against him.
As this issue went to press (June 26), Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was meeting with US president George W. Bush at the White House in Washington. It was the second meeting between the two men since each came to office earlier this year, and a calculated demonstration of the US’s partiality towards Israel.
Two major elections took place earlier this month. On June 7 general elections took place in Britain, the supposed birthplace of Parliamentary democracy. Tony Blair’s Labour party was returned to power for a second term by a ‘landslide’.
In order to understand fully the nature of the Revolution, and in particular if lessons are to be learnt by Islamic movements seeking to achieve similar results, it is the essence of Imam Khomeini’s work and vision that must be grasped.
The issue of Palestine is central to the Islamic movement. Obviously, the occupation of Islam’s third holy city by the greatest enemies of Islam and the greatest powers of kufr that history has ever known is a situation that Muslims can never accept. But the experience of opposing that occupation is proving a severe testing-ground for the Ummah.
Dr Kalim Siddiqui (r.a.) often spoke of the ‘total transformation’ of the Ummah from its present condition to a state of Islamic order as a “historic process”, and pointed out that this process would take time and patience; it could not be rushed.
The global Islamic movement is so clearly a major force in the world today — the only challenge to the crumbling civilization of the West — that it is easy to forget that less than 25 years ago Muslims barely showed on the geo-political map.
The Chechen capital Johar-Gala (‘Grozny’) is today a burnt-out hulk, where survivors are trying to rebuild their lives in the ruins. The Russians are trying to secure the city and build workable governing institutions, while pockets of mujahideen survive in hiding...
The West’s enmity to Islam was brought home to Muslims in Britain earlier this month, when the British government published its list of proscribed “terrorist” organizations, most Islamic or Muslim.
There was a time, not long ago, when Aal-e Saud were at the forefront of the West’s drive to subvert Islam and the Muslim Ummah. During the 1970s, the Saudi monarchs distributed petro-dollars to mosques and Islamic centres all over the world, usually through international front-organizations...
The destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie (Scotland) on December 21, 1988, was an appalling tragedy. All 259 people on board were killed, as were 11 people on the ground when aircraft-fragments fell on houses.
