Articles

After the latest American rampage through three Afghan villages in the Pajway district of Qandahar on March 11, US President Barack Obama issued the following statement: “This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.”

No change occurs in a vacuum. If change appears to occur suddenly this is largely the result of lack of awareness of underlying developments that lead to an explosion in society. In the physical world, this can best be explained by volcanic eruption.

It requires no great imagination to figure out that in order to get out of a hole, one must first stop digging. This should be obvious even to the most simple-minded people but American policy-makers, it seems, refuse to learn.

It was the beginning of the seventh year of the Hijrah. Only a few weeks earlier, the noble Messenger (pbuh) had concluded the Treaty of Hudaybiyah with the chiefs of Makkah.

The key objectives of the Islamic movement is the reassertion of Islamic values in Muslim societies, and the establishment of Islamic states in place of the corrupt, self-serving regimes that currently predominate in the Muslim world.

Let us begin by emphasizing that the best known Islamic Party in the Muslim world, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen (the Muslim Brotherhood), is not an agent of any foreign or imperialist power or government.

With notable exceptions, dictators rule much of the Muslim world. They carry many fancy titles: kings, amirs, presidents, prime ministers and, of course generals and colonels. What is common between them is that they are all subservient to the West even while they terrorize their own people.

As Turkey’s hopes of becoming the leading power to restore Muslim public identity and its own Islamic socio-political distinctiveness gradually fade away from Muslim memory, it is important not to exaggerate the deviations of contemporary Turkey.

When it comes to the War on Terror, it appears there is always a possibility to find legal justification for just about anything. Despite there being an “absolute” prohibition on torture under international law, John Yoo, then a Deputy Assistant Attorney at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

With Rick Santorum’s recent win in the Louisiana primary, Barack Obama’s elegantly simple re-election strategy seems to have succeeded. While Mitt Romney is poised to win the crown of the Republican nomination for president, Santorum stubbornly strong showing is displaying a fragmented Republican base that bodes well for the incumbent president.