Articles

Throughout history, Americans have targeted minorities in their midst — Native and African Americans, Chinese and Japanese, to name a few — and blamed them for all their troubles. Muslims in the US are the latest victims.

Islamic movements, intellectuals and activists long tended to have a love-hate relationship with democracy. On the one hand, democracy has been associated with the aggressive, brutal, exploitative, hegemonic policies of the post-colonial Western powers, the cynicism, manipulation and dishonesty of Western politics and the increasing moral degeneracy of individualistic and hedonistic Western societies.

Emboldened by military, political and diplomatic support from the US and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain’s unrepresentative minority ruling family handed down harsh sentences to pro-democracy activists in the island-state on June 22. Eight were sentenced to life in prison for “plotting to overthrow the government.”

The Muslim East (Middle East) has been in the throes of revolutionary fervor for more than six months. Two dictators have been driven from power; others are teetering on the brink while some are also fighting back with mixed results.

Every June, ceremonies are held to commemorate the passing away of Imam Khomeini in 1989. This year, these ceremonies gain added significance in view of the uprisings underway in the Muslim East. Zafar Bangash, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, compares the Imam’s leadership with the near-leaderless movements in the Muslim East. 

For his May 18 speech on the Muslim East, US President Barack Obama gave his latest performance in the production titled (Steadily Weakening) Empire Strikes Back. His flowery words have long since lost their perfume and his grammatically complex sentences, such a heady delight after the linguistically-challenged Bush, now seem to fall as flat as an out-of-tune piano.

Pakistan’s relations with the US can be compared to a boy befriending a baby python. They played with each other and enjoyed scaring other villagers. Over the years, while still playing with the boy curling all around him, the snake grew bigger and stronger, as pythons do,  with his curls and squeezes becoming tighter.

Cynthia McKinney is a former member of the US Congress from Georgia and was the Green Party presidential candidate in 2008. At the invitation of Crescent International she spoke at the Conference, Peace and Justice in the Age of Imperialism, held in Toronto last February. Cynthia McKinney is currently on a fact-finding mission to Libya from where she dispatched this report.

Returning from the northwestern Black Sea city of Kastamonu, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s convoy was attacked on May 4. As part of his election campaign Erdogan had visited the city to address its residents urging them to vote for his Justice and Development Party (AKP). He then flew by helicopter to a nearby city to continue his campaign, while his election convoy, including his campaign bus from which he usually delivers speeches and greets the people, was returning to the AKP headquarters in Ankara. When Erdogan’s campaign bus was 25 km from the city centre, around the Ilgaz Mountains, a sudden burst of machinegun fire targeted the police car escorting the convoy. After the initial shots, the attackers came closer to the police car and threw a grenade which set the car on fire, injuring one police officer and killing another in the vehicle. After a brief exchange of gunfire with the prime minister’s bodyguards, the attackers fled the scene without suffering any casualties.

The slogan on Facebook and Twitter for rallies accurately captured the mood in Egypt: “I have not felt the change, I am going back to Tahrir,” as protesters called for renewed protests on Friday May 27. Gradually the Egyptian youth and people are finding out that they have been cheated out of the rights they fought so hard for and that their struggle is far from over.