Articles

Since his release last year after spending six-years in a Malaysian prison, Anwar Ibrahim has become a darling of the West for his promotion of an understanding of Islam that is regarded as ‘moderate’ and West-friendly. ABDAR RAHMAN KOYA in Kuala Lumpur reports.

The United States, which last September accused Sudan of committing genocide in the Western region of Darfur, is now charging it with “crimes against humanity” and has even dropped its usual assertion that the Sudanese government has the ability to control the so-called Arab Janjaweed militia, who had been accused of arming to kill Africans in Darfur.

With the US Congress and the White House almost completely controlled by them, the zionist brigade has launched a strong assault on what is left of academic freedom in the US: the purpose is to force intellectuals to teach zionist myths at American universities.

The timing could hardly have been better: within days of Tony Blair’s confirming that Britain’s general elections will be held on May 5, an illegal immigrant from Algeria was convicted at the high court of what government officials, police and the media described as an international conspiracy, planned by al-Qai’da, to manufacture ricin poison and use it for a mass terrorist attack in London.

With the increasing American colonial presence in the Muslim world, beginning with the 1991 war against Iraq and gaining momentum on the heels of 9/11 with recent invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been numerous efforts aimed at reforming school curricula and revising textbooks. From Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, American officials have been pressuring local governments to eliminate anything that the Americans say promotes “violence and terrorism.”

The Shi'ite Movement in Iraq by Faleh A. Jabar. Publisher: Saqi Books, London, 2003. Pp.: 391. Pbk: ｣15.99/$24.95. By Nasr Salem Long treated as an underclass, the Shi'a community has moved to occupy a dominant role in the political arena of post-Saddam Iraq. Undoubtedly this change raises many questions about the course of Shi'a political activism in Iraq and the troubled relationship between the Shi'a community and the Iraqi state

Russia’s continuing war against the Chechen people is one of the many conflicts in which Muslims are involved which tend to be forgotten in the wider Ummah. Every few months, some major events elevates it to public consciousness for a while, as the atrocity of Beslan did last year. On that occasion, Chechens are confirmed to have been responsible for what can only be described at an appalling crime, even though the precise details of the episode and how it came to such a tragic end remain unclear.

A good conjurer or con-artist operates by diverting attention to one place while doing his nefarious work in another. This is exactly what the Israelis are doing in their current attempt to legitimise their occupation of Palestine.

The phrase ‘American Islam’ was originally coined by shaheed Sayyid Qutb (the Ikhwan ideologue who was executed by the Egyptian regime in 1966), and was later also used by shaheed Ali Shariati (who did so much to prepare the groundwork for the Islamic Revolution in Iran before his assassination by the Shah’s secret service in London in 1977) and Imam Khomeini (ra). For them, it signified a minimalist, quietest, personal Islam that could happily co-exist with American political hegemony and the norms and values of a materialist, secular, consumerist society. It has become a term used with contempt by Muslims around the world, as indeed most things ‘American’ are.

The problem of the Eurocentric nature of most modern education is now widely accepted, and there are numerous efforts to try to address it by developing indigenous forms of knowledge. But this is only one of many problems in contemporary Western academic discourse. YUSUF AL-KHABBAZ discusses.