Articles

Palestinian ‘president’ Yasser Arafat launched his expected crackdown on popular movements sustaining the Al-Aqsa Intifada last month. Dr Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, the Hamas spokesman in Ghazzah, was arrested on April 28, reportedly for making ‘inflammatory’ statements.

The Sudanese government, which has been wooing Washington for months to escape US sanctions and diplomatic isolation, is now furious with the Bush administration because it has revealed its position on the civil war, siding completely and unequivocally with the spectacularly misnamed the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

When Moscow celebrated the 56th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany in the second world war on May 9, there was no mention of its latest military challenge, the fighting in Chechnya, stepped up by the Chechen mujahideen on the arrival of spring...

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).