Articles

After nearly a year’s delay, Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will finally begin peace talks this April. This agreement, mediated by Malaysia, was reached on February 19 in Kuala Lumpur...

​Over the last few weeks, the Western media has watched keenly as Iran went to the polls to elect a new Majlis (parliament), highlighting every perceived shortcoming in the electoral procedure and hoping that the elections would prompt a crisis in Iran’s Islamic system of government...

President Vladimir Putin is engaged in a systematic and murderous campaign of suppression of Chechnya’s struggle for independence. In this campaign anyone sympathetic to Chechnya’s desire and aspiration to leave the Russian Federation is classified as terrorist...

The dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a legacy bequeathed by the British before their departure from the subcontinent, has bedevilled relations between India and Pakistan since August 1947...

Both Sudan and Somalia are in urgent need of a peaceful settlement of the civil wars that have been ravaging them for more than a decade. But the peace deals recently reached as a result of negotiations mediated by Kenya, and sponsored (in Sudan’s case) by the US, cannot lead to a just and lasting resolution of the conflicts that also guarantees their territorial integrity...

Whatever one’s view of Osama bin Ladin, his understanding of issues and his methods, one thing is indisputable: he has carved a niche for himself in world politics, thanks to US president Bush’s obsession with him...

The public humiliation of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, had a far deeper purpose than was apparent at first sight: it was meant not only to deflect attention from the military’s role in nuclear proliferation...

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$8.00.

After the pre-Christmas respite afforded by the conveniently-timed capture of Saddam, the US occupation of Iraq became more troubled again last month. Paul O’Neill, former US treasury secretary, gave the highest-level confirmation to date that Bush and his clique had been planning an invasion of Iraq from their first days in office...

The huge Muslim anger that greeted French proposals to ban hijab in schools and other public institutions has shocked the French establishment. Whether the depth of anger demonstrated when French Muslims took to the streets on January 17 will be sufficient to force the government to rethink its plans remains to be seen...