Articles

As international attention remains focused on the US-British attacks on Afghanistan and the escalating humanitarian crisis inflicted on the Afghani people, Israel has gone on the rampage in Palestine.

President Husni Mubarak of Egypt has been fighting Islamic movements since coming to power in 1981. Exploiting Egypt’s influence in the Muslim world, he has been instrumental in the adoption of anti-terrorism conventions and resolutions by the Arab League, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and the General Assembly of the UN.

Whether the US-led war on Afghanistan will overthrow the Taliban is a moot point, but it has already caused tremors in Saudi Arabia. Not because the House of Saud is concerned about what happens to the Taliban or the Afghans...

On October 12 the Nobel prize committee in Oslo announced that it was awarding the United Nations Organization and Kofi Annan, its secretary-general, a peace prize in recognition of their work in pursuit of “a better organized and a more peaceful world.” This is the first time that the UN as a whole and its acting head have received the award.

Propaganda is an important tool of war but, like everything else the Americans do, it is one which they wield crudely. On October 22 the Taliban reported that a hospital in Herat had been bombed, killing more than 100 people, including many children.

The US-British assault on the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin in Afghanistan does not appear to be going well, despite the use of ground troops on October 20 after two weeks of aerial attacks.

China, now a member of the World Trade Organisation, has made substantial political and economic gains at the APEC summit it recently hosted at Shanghai.

Russia and the US have established reasonably friendly ties in order to avoid conflict between their interests, and occasionally to cooperate for those interests.

The 11th Imam [AS] had an offspring who after a relatively short period disappeared from the physical plain in what is called the occultation. Before considering the life and circumstances of the 11th Imam [AS] a few additional remarks can be made concerning the immediate background, the circumstances of the Shi’ah in general, the institution of the Imamate in particular in this period, the period of the 9th, 10th and 11th Imams [AS], the period leading up to the occultation.

The cult for respect for the twelve Imams [AS] of Shi’ism is seen to be compatible with a polemical hostility to Shi’ism itself on certain occasions and with certain personalities. As late as the 19th century, there is a sufi when he arrived in Mashhad on his way to Kurdistan from India he composed two poems one in honour of Imam Ali al-Rida [AS], and one in condemnation of the Shi’i ‘Ulema of Mashhad without seeing any contradiction between these two, a complex and interesting topic.