Articles

The self-inflicted wounds on American imperialism and Israeli zionism in Iraq and Afghanistan are easily seen. The public memory is blank to the commander-in-chief who claimed the “end of major combat operations” just a few months after initiating the war against Iraq in March 2003.

As the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) growls like a wounded tiger about its setbacks since the general elections in March, former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim is almost like a vulture, waiting his chance to pound at the best opportunity he has had in more than a decade.

In recent months, Muslims around the world have watched with consternation as Israel has tightened its economic blockade of Ghazzah, subjecting its people to intense hardship, while Western powers have done next to nothing to stop them, despite the fact that the use of starvation and deprivation as a weapon of war is explicitly forbidden by international law.

The 2008 Global Peace Index (GPI), an annual study that ranks countries in terms of how "peaceful" they are, puts Sudan near the bottom of the world list, with only Somalia and Iraqbelow it. The main cause of the disruption in Africa’s largest country has been the civil war between the north and the south of the country, which began on the eve of independence in 1956 and persisted until a peace deal was signed in 2004.

The manner in which Asif Zardari is wriggling out of his promise to reinstate the judges who were illegally dismissed by general Musharraf on November 3 last year has increased people’s cynicism about Pakistani politicians. At long last the people thought that they had found in the judiciary, especially former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, someone who would deliver them badly needed justice, but now they feel betrayed.

When Kosova declared its independence from Serbia on February 12 (becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991), the US and nineteen members of the European Union (EU) backed the declaration.

As Iraq has lurched from one crisis to another since the US invasion in 2003, one figure has become increasingly influential and even dominant in the country’s politics: young Shi’a leader Muqtada al-Sadr. KHALIL FADL profiles the man some regard as a future leader of the country.

Deciding who and who not to talk to has always been a strategy used by those in power against those they seek to control. FAHAD ANSARI discusses the attempts of the British government to find or establish an acceptable leadership for the British Muslim community.

The first volume of ‘The Ascendant Qur’an’, Imam Muhammad al-Asi’s tafseer, was launched by the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in Toronto on May 24. Crescent International took the opportunity to speak with Imam al-Asi about his tafseer, and his understanding of the challenges facing the global Islamic movement.

After months of wishing away young anti-American Shi’a alim Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is trying to marginalize the Sadrist Current (al-Tayyar al-Sadri) by military means. But the Iraqi military offensive against the Sadrists, which was supposed to demonstrate the power of the central government, has actually laid bare its weaknesses and highlighted the political weight of Sadr’s movement. Operation Cavalry Charge (Sawlat al-Fursan), which began on March 25 in Basra and set off clashes with Mahdi Army fighters in several cities throughout southern Iraq and in the Baghdad itself, has also underlined the growing influence of Iran in post-Saddam Iraq.