Articles

President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB boss during the Soviet era, has turned his country into an undisguisedly racist and anti-Islamic fortress since taking power in 2004: there has always been an element of discrimination (albeit disguised) against Muslims in the Soviet Union, but it is getting worse.

As international pressure on Sudan to admit UN peacekeepers in Darfur appeared to flounder by mid-August, the US and Britain – the two main powers behind the scheme intensified their effort to break the resolve of president Omar Hassan al-Bashir to resist their ill-disguised plot to prepare for the eventual separation of the Western region from the rest of Sudan.

It is now official: Ethiopian troops have advanced deep into Somalia's territory, reaching Baidoa, the seat of the official but defunct government headed by president Abdullahi Yusuf. These troops have seized airports near the city, 150 miles from Mogadishu, the capital, which has been under the full control of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) since June.

Kyrgyzstan was an ally of the US during the 15-year rule of president Askar Aliyev, who was toppled in an unexpected uprising last year. By contrast the new president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was elected on July 10 to replace his predecessor (who had fled the country), has turned to Russia and China for support.

Since launching its murderous assault on Lebanon on July 12, Israel has destroyed 55 bridges, ripped up almost all the major roads in Lebanon, blasted scores of apartment buildings, and bombed Beirut's brand-new $600-million international airport, a power plant, milk factories, grain warehouses and hundreds of homes of the Lebanese: all ostensibly to "expel" Hizbullah, the Islamic resistance movement, from Southern Lebanon.

Crises bring out the best and worst in people. While Muslims everywhere have rallied in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples facing the Israeli onslaught, the Arab regimes have joined the West's propaganda campaign against the Islamic resistance movement, Hizbullah.

One feature of current events in the Middle East is that the three Islamic movements that perhaps deserve the greatest respect and recognition from the global Ummah are standing together against the onslaught from the West.

The protests that have erupted around the Muslim world in support of the Muslims of Lebanon and in protest at the Israelis’ war on the country have been dominated by placards of Hizbullah’s leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.

Watching events unfolding in Lebanon over the last month, it has been impossible to avoid a sense that we have seen it all before, that what is now happening is merely a replay of what we have seen so many times already. Lebanon’s modern history has been dominated by Israeli attacks and interference, most notably in 1982, when the Israeli military devastated the country with air strikes and occupied Beirut itself.

In previous columns, we have examined the methodology of the Islamic Revolution and movement; now we must move to questions concerning the very survival of the Islamic Revolution and movement. As this column is written, the zionist military machine is launching wave after wave of air-raids and naval bombardments on the northern part of the Holy Land – Lebanon.