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US plans for attacking ‘terrorist bases’ in Somalia as the next stage of the ‘war on terrorism’ are well advanced, according to media reports that quote US intelligence and military officials.

Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s must have winced earlier this month when he heard that George W Bush, his American counterpart, has decided to extend by another year unilateral US sanctions against Sudan.

Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Turkey offered its airspace and military bases for use by the US and its allies in their ‘war’ on Afghanistan, reaping ample praise for its “loyalty to the West”.

Looking at the meaning of the greater occultation, the purpose that an occulted Imam [AS] may be said to fulfil. And certain peripheral modes of communication with the Imam [AS] even during the period of the greater occultation. With respect to the purpose of the Imam [AS], what purpose does he fulfil during the greater occultation? Two common metaphors are commonly adduced in explanation and justification of the greater occultation.

Not surprisingly the greater occultation just like the lesser occultation precipitated a new crisis within the Shi’ah community, for an obvious reason that now very basic questions such as the utility - the very purpose of an Imam [AS] who is not simply inaccessible to the majority of his followers but no longer present on the physical plain, such basic questions came forward occasioning considerable doubt and hesitation both within and beyond the Shi’i community.

When running through some of the different groups that existed among the Shi’ah after the death of the 11th Imam [AS] in the apparent absence of any physical offspring there were also the Qat’iyyah who stand at opposite extremes to the la adriyyah those people who contented themselves in saying we do not know what happened. The Qat’iyyah are those by contrast who are certain, Qat’iyyah meaning ‘those who profess certainty’.

MODERN ISLAMIC POLITICAL THOUGHT, by Hamid Enayat (revised edition, with foreword by Hamid Algar). Pub: Islamic Book Trust, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2001. Pp. 307; pbk. RM36.00 / $12.00 (excld. postage)

Much has been made of George W. Bush’s throwaway characterization of the US’s “war on terrorism” as a ‘crusade’. To be fair, he was probably using the word in the sense of a determined, even zealous, pursuit of a cause, rather than in any specifically anti-Islamic sense...

The contemporary world is in the process of a political reconfiguration. The traditional concepts and frameworks of understanding, capitalism vs. communism, right vs. left, and conservative vs. progressive, are outdated and have been left behind.

One feature of the crisis that began on September 11 has been the extent to which the US’s subsequent policy has been questioned and opposed by so many people even in the West. Even in America, where war-fever has been most intense, opposition to the attacks on Afghanistan has been evident, in demonstrations on university campuses, in New York and other cities...