Articles

The fighting in Darfur has taken a new turn since the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) split up into two factions that are now locked in battle with each other, ending their unity against the Sudanese army.

The case of the 17 Muslims arrested on terrorism-related charges in Toronto took a bizarre turn on July 13 when the police informant who had infiltrated the group went public with his role. Although it was already known to the Muslim community that he was a police plant, Mubin Shaikh went on CBC television to claim that he did it "to protect Canada".

Here we reprint a paper delivered by DR YUSUF PROGLER at the Kalim Siddiqui Memorial Conference in London in April 1999, on the damage that western hegemony has done to Muslim thought, and how it can be addressed.

The supposedly inferior position and treatment of women in Islam is often used by Westerners to attack Islam. A recent poll of Muslim women reveals very different attitudes towards their own lives, Islam and the West. WASEEM SHEHZAD reports.

The sudden expulsion last month of the warlords who had ruled Mogadishu for 15 years took everyone by surprise – including the US government, which backed and financed them to prevent any Islamic group from assuming power in the failed state.

In May, Lebanon marked the anniversary of the Hizbullah’s successful expulsion of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. For Muslims around the world, the Hizbullah success was a triumph for the courage and steadfastness of its members in the field of battle and in the far more complicated arena of Lebanese politics.

The West's commitment to liberalism and democracy has always been a convenient façade that falls apart at times of crisis. People have freedom so long as they do not need it; the West is tolerant only to the point that people conform to its prevailing values and policies.

Some clear truths are too serious for diplomatic dissemblers to acknowledge. One of these it the clear reality of the nature of theWashington regime's foreign policy. For at least half a century, American foreign policy has matched Israel's in its hostility to the self-determination of Muslims.

Somalia is a country that tends unfortunately to be associated with famine and civil war, rather than anything more positive, for that is how it most often appears in the Western media. It is also a country about which many Muslims know little; many may not even realize that it is a Muslim country.

A month of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Ghazzah and the West Bank, killing over 40 Palestinians, mostly civilians, culminated with Israeli troops moving into southern Ghazzah on June 28, as Crescent was going to press.