Articles

Muslim scholars, Islamic movement activists and even ordinary Muslims agree that the only natural habitat for Muslims is the Islamic State.Warning about the pitfalls of operating in a secular imposed order, Zafar Bangash, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, argues that the Islamic movement must be clear about its goals as well as methods in bringing about change in Muslim societies.

During the last years of the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev was President (mid- to late nineteen eighties), a group of Soviet journalists was invited to see how a “free press” in the US worked. This was intended to teach the By Tahir Mustafa

For a state and society to function smoothly, some basic services must be provided to its citizens: security, decent education, access to healthcare, prospects of a reasonable job and sound economy. Participation in the political process as well as justice are other important considerations for peace and tranquility.

Iqbal Jassat reviews Jaqueline Rose’s The Last Resistance (UK: Verso, 2007), 256 pages, Hbk: £16.99. A regular contributor to the London Review of Books, Jacqueline Rose has written a compelling new book which Sarah Roy of Harvard University correctly predicts is destined to become a standard in the field of literature on Zionism.

The British go one step further: the police storm houses in highly publicised raids to create the impression they are arresting terrorists, as happened last April

By staging a walk out while President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran was addressing the UN anti-racism conference in Geneva on April 20, the European countries have exposed their own racism without affecting the ultimate outcome of the meeting. Representatives from a tiny minority of European countries that have a chequered history regarding human rights are all former colonialists who have perpetrated horrible crimes during the colonial era.

In the introduction to his 1985 book, Of Emperors and Pirates, the American professor, Noam Chomsky quotes St. Augustine narrating a dialogue between Alexander the Great and a pirate. “How dare you molest the seas?” demands Alexander. “How dare you molest the world?” replies the pirate. “Just because I do it with a little boat, I am called a pirate and you do it with a huge ship and you are called an emperor!”

Since the announcement on April 8 that Egyptian authorities had arrested 49 members of a “Hizbullah cell” in the country, we have been subjected to a variety of explanations for the arrests and several different accounts of exactly what happened, when it happened, and why it happened. Much of this information has been leaked by Egyptian authorities, and little of it has survived critical scrutiny.

The West has a peculiar attitude to global problems. In addition to its favourite bogey—war on terror—there is much talk about human rights, respect for the rule of law, the will of the “international community” and fighting racism yet it remains in denial about its own misdeeds.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, government and people, are gearing up for presidential elections that are scheduled for the first half of June 2009. There appear to be two prime candidates for the presidency: Mr. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Mr. Mir HosseinMoussavi. Both fine men are qualified beyond doubt to lead the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Movement of the world during the coming four-year term, which will probably be the most challenging time in the history of the Islamic Movement and state.