Articles

Iran’s presidential elections, due to be held on June 8, were all but decided on May 4, when president Muhammad Khatami confirmed that he would stand for re-election.

Muslims in the Sri Lankan town of Mawanella suffered damage to their businesses and property estimated at R2.100 million ($1.2 million) earlier this month, when mobs attacked Muslim-owned businesses and shops, destroying 18 vehicles, 20 houses, 140 shops, two garment-factories and a rubber factory on May 2.

Britain’s long-expected general election will take place on June 7. British Muslim community groups, meanwhile, have already started campaigns against Islamophobic and pro-zionist MPs. At least three MPs representing the ruling Labour Party in London are in danger of losing their seats.

Americans are furious after the US was expelled from the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) earlier this month.

Eqbal Ahmed: Confronting Empire edited by David Barsamian. Pub: Pluto Press, London, UK, 2000. Pp: 326. Pbk: £11.99.

Dr Kalim Siddiqui (r.a.) often spoke of the ‘total transformation’ of the Ummah from its present condition to a state of Islamic order as a “historic process”, and pointed out that this process would take time and patience; it could not be rushed.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Dr Kalim Siddiqui, we published an abridged extract from a paper by him in our last issue. In this issue, we reprint an article by Dr Siddiqui first published in Crescent International exactly 15 years ago (May 1-15, 1986).

Over the past eighteen months, several Muslim states in northern Nigeria have introduced shari’ah, to Muslim jubilation and non-Muslim consternation. Last month, IQBAL SIDDIQUI attended a conference in London to discuss the ‘Restoration of Shari’ah in Nigeria: Challenges and Benefits’.

Just weeks after the Arab governments humiliated themselves with their utter failure to support the Palestinian intifada at their Arab League meeting in Amman on March 28, Islamic Iran showed the way forward with the unqualified support offered to the Palestinians at the opening of its International Conference on the intifada and the zionist problem in Tehran on April 24.

Carrying out his promise earlier last month that he would “defy international norms” to ensure the nation’s “security”, Malaysia’s besieged prime minister Mahathir Mohamed continued his crackdown on political dissent with the arrest of individuals under the feared Internal Security Act (ISA).