Articles

At a time when the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has emerged as the bedrock of the US-led ‘war on terrorism' and of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington has tabled a proposal for the creation of a ‘global partnership' that will make it even more effective in implementing the US government's imperial and anti-Islamic programmes.

Our Decline: Its Causes and Remedies by Amir Shakib Arslan (new, revised edition). Pub: Islamic Book Trust, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2004 (www.ibtbooks.com). Pp: 175. US$10.00.

There are many lessons to be learnt from the success in May 2000 of the Lebanese resistance, led by Lebanon’s Hizbullah, in evicting Israeli occupation troops from most of southernLebanon. In its pursuit of liberation for occupied Lebanese territory, Hizbullah demonstrated a remarkable ability to base a military strategy on principled and targeted military activities against occupation troops and their Lebanese surrogates in the Southern Lebanon Army (SLA).

It has been three years since America’s military juggernaut rumbled its way across the desert landscape of southern Iraq towards Baghdad. Three years ago the invasion was justified as a necessary move to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s presumed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and the invaders promised to transform Iraq into a prosperous, oil-rich democracy that would serve as a model to spark emulative transformation in the rest of the Middle East.

Last month marked the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussain. Few now doubt that the invasion was the culmination of a long-held plan on the Americans’ part, and that the intense international politicking of the months leading up to the war, with the talk of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussainand al-Qa’ida, UN resolutions and weapons inspectors, was no more than a process designed to justify the invasion.

As this issue of Crescent goes to press, and barely two months after the Palestinians elected Hamas to power in the parts of occupied Palestine in which they have a degree of political autonomy, the people of Israel are going to the polls to elect a new parliament and government.

The images are still fresh in our minds, the characters are still around, and the memories will not go away. In Islamic centers and masajid, Islamic annual conferences and halaqat, even at hajj and the ‘umrah, books, tracts, essays, and pamphlets, and sometimes cassettes and CDs, were liberally distributed, free of charge.

An essential pre-requisite for the proper cure of a disease is its correct diagnosis. This is true of social ills as well as individual illnesses. Although modern science provides many tools to determine an individual’s ailment, it is much more difficult to diagnose the problems of society.

The diversity of the human condition and experience is one of the most wonderful elements of the world that Allah subhahanu wa ta‘ala has created for us. The evolution of human societies over time, and the need for people to learn from the experiences of earlier generations, is one of the major themes of the Qur’an.

Egyptian politicians and intellectuals often claim that other Arabs borrow their ideas or attitudes from Egypt. It would not, therefore, be surprising if they claim that the Saudi rulers are copying president Husni Mubarak in their recent overtures to France, in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from the US, which has become very unpopular in the Muslim world.