Articles

Israel’s continuing economic crisis was brought to attention on February 4, when some 50 Israeli business leaders in Tel Aviv called for a broad governing coalition, despite the landslide victory on January 28 of the right-wing Likud Party, led by prime minister Ariel Sharon.

​George Bush senior, father of the US president, attacked Iraq in 1991 because Saddam Husain had dared to disrupt the order imposed on the Middle East (by the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916) by invading and occupying Kuwait.

After claiming for months that everything in Afghanistan is under their control, the Americans got a rude shock at the end of January; it has forced them to concede that several of their soldiers have been killed. But even this admission came with a fantastic amount of ‘spin’...

US president George Bush’s obsession with Saddam Husain of Iraq has eclipsed other trouble spots in the world, such as Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine. True, Saddam is a brutal dictator who waged a vicious war against Iran for eight years, and who has tortured his own people, but is the Iraqi ruler the only tyrant in power to be guilty of such crimes?

Interpreting Islam edited by Hastings Donnan. Pub: Sage Publications, London, 2002. Pp: 196. Pbk: £18.95.

Contending Liberalism in World Politics: Ideology and Power by James L. Richardson. Pub: Lynne Rienner, Boulder CO, USA, 2001. Pp: 237. Hbk: $49.50 / Pbk: $19.50.

Although millions of people from Manila to Montreal joined peace rallies on January 18, these may not prevent the US war-machine, fuelled by raw imperial ambition and lust for oil, from attacking Iraq. Americans are now playing a leading role in the peace movement...

Despite continuing politicking, now predominantly between the US and allies worried about its increasingly aggressive and destructive behaviour, America’s eventual occupation of Iraq seems inevitable...

In 1989, shortly after the death of Imam Khomeini, and ten years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Dr Kalim Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute, London, wrote a series of articles for Crescent International reflecting on the situation of the global Islamic movement at the time, and in particular on the progress and experience of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Egypt’s eagerness to play a prominent role in ending the Palestinian intifada contrasts sharply with its reluctance to take a lead in diplomatic efforts relating to the Iraqi war issue–an extraordinary position for a country that prides itself on being the undisputed leader of the Arab League states.