Articles

America’s treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan has embarrassed even its closest allies. France and Germany have officially urged Washington to ensure that the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are treated lawfully, and the European Union has called for their rights to be protected.

The former Soviet republics of Central Asia are not teeming with US servicemen, but more than 1,000 troops are based in Uzbekistan, and US forces have been allowed to use air-bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

With Qazi Husain Ahmed, its amir (leader), in detention since October, the Jama’at-e Islami, an Islamic political party in Pakistan, is feeling somewhat adrift, although acting amir Syed Munawwar Hasan is trying gamely to lead.

A call for a nevitalized role for Muslim ulama in overcoming the Zionist menace sounded in Beirut in late December, when about 130 senior ulama from around the world descended on the Lebanese capital to attend a two-day conference on “Saving Jerusalem and Supporting the Palestinian People.”

US diplomats in Yemen, have been travelling through the country in recent weeks conferring with tribal leaders, particularly in areas allegedly serving as safe-havens for al-Qaeda activists, and inspecting religious schools suspected of receiving funding from Bin Ladin.

Arab nationalism is a political creed that has played a crucial role in Arab affairs throughout the last hundred years, without ever achieving anything of note. It has been associated at different times with three major political objectives, and failed to achieve its stated objectives in any of them.

A THEMATIC COMMENTARY ON THE QUR’AN by Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali. Pub: International Institute of Islamic Thought, USA; Islamic Book Trust Malaysia, 2000. Pp: 800; Price: RM60.00.

Despite weeks of claims in the West that the war in Afghanistan is over, that its main objectives have been achieved and the Taliban decisively defeated, that al-Qaeda is destroyed and a ‘civilized’ government installed in Kabul, hundreds of Afghans are still dying in ongoing US air attacks.

On a recent lecture tour of the Arab Muslim world, a celebrity from the American Muslim lecture circuit claimed that "civilization" was like a "caravan" and that different peoples have led the caravan.

One prominent feature of the West’s current war in Afghanistan, and its wider ‘war against terrorism,’ is the deliberate distortion of key facts in order to create a totally false impression of the situation for casual observers.