Articles

Although little noticed elsewhere in the Ummah, a popular Islamic movement has taken power in Somalia and is under attack from neighbouring Ethiopia, backed by the US. MAHMOUD AHMED SHAIKH reports.

Every year there is confusion in the Ummah over the correct days for marking the beginning and end of Ramadan. ZAFAR BANGASH, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, and a community leader in Toronto, Canada, explains how the issue could be resolved.

The guns of Israel’s war of aggression had hardly fallen silent in August when Hizbullah, which emerged victorious after its fighters fought the most powerful military machine in the Middle East to a standstill, found itself in a number of domestic political battles. Some of the bones of contention are related to post-war reconstruction and the future makeup of the Lebanese cabinet; other issues are enmeshed with US-led efforts to disarm Hizbullah and put an end to its role as a resistance movement.

Never has the spectre of disintegration, following full-blown civil war, seemed so imminent in Iraq as in recent weeks. Fears of the break-up of the country into feuding entities are being fuelled not only by the passage of a new federalism law through Iraq’s parliament but also by growing indications of support for the division of Iraq in the US. Despite all the shrill talk from US president George W. Bush’s officials about “staying the course” and never to “cut and run,” the fact remains that Washington has been abuzz with discussions of alternative courses of action, which include breaking Iraq up into three autonomous regions.

This year again, as so often in the past, the Ummah has been divided unnecessarily on the dates of Ramadan, primarily by a blatantly nonsensical announcement of moon-sighting by the Saudi government.

The unity of the Muslim ummah is a reality proclaimed in the Qur’an, in the ayaat above and numerous others like them; it is one of the key strengths of the Ummah at many levels, from the cultural to the political. It is the unity of the ummah, the common understanding that all Muslims are brothers and sisters in faith, that makes Muslims feel at home wherever they may go in the Muslim world.

At the same time that Muslims are elated at Hizbullah's brilliant victory over Israel's war machine, they are deeply troubled by the mayhem in Iraq. Although much of the trouble is Iraq is foreign-instigated, the Iraqis themselves are not above blame. The two countries offer stunning contrasts in acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and important lessons for the global Islamic movement. In Lebanon, Hizbullah has achieved with a few thousand fighters armed with iman triumphs that have eluded hundreds of thousands of heavily armed Arab soldiers fighting under the banner of nationalism. In Iraq, what seemed to be and opportunity for the Islamic movement has become a disastrous mess.

The annual meetings of the UN General Assembly are sometimes surreal experiences. Formally, the General Assembly is the seniormost element of the UN structure, representing the coming together of the heads of the states that constitute the “international community”. In reality, everyone knows that real power in the UN rests with the five permanent members of the Security Council, and that the General Assembly has little real power, as reflected by the utter ineffectiveness of its routine resolutions condemning Israel for its policies against the Palestinians. Every now and then, however, it becomes the occasion for what appear to be significant political developments that transcend the limitations of the Assembly’s position.

Months of negotiations between Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders on forming a coalition government, which they hope will break the political deadlock in the country and facilitate the lifting of the West's economic boycott, appeared to reach a significant breakthrough on September 11. It was announced that agreement had finally been reached after a series of meetings in Ghazzah between PA (Palestinian Authority) president Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader appointed prime minister after Hamas's stunning victory in January's parliamentary elections.

Consider the following: the recent confession by an Israeli general that Israel dropped more than 1.2 million cluster bombs on Lebanon during the recent war; an American columnist saying "Israel is doing the Lord's work"; the head of the American Republican National Committee saying "Today we are all Israelis"; the reinforcement of Euro-American military forces in occupied Afghanistan; the positioning of foreign military forces inside of a ‘sovereign' Lebanon; and the intensifying daily reports of explosions, slaughter, and death squads in American-occupied Iraq. Bearing all this in mind, why do so many in the Islamic movement find it so difficult to understand fundamental truths and realities about our West-dominated situation?