Articles

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).

The Bush administration’s close interest in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia (at a time when it is distancing itself from other regional disputes mediated by the US in the recent past), and its readiness to accept Russia as well as France as co-mediators, has led to speculation that a settlement is a distinct possibility.

The arrest last month in Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic on corruption charges has aroused hopes that he might one day be brought to the Hague to face war crimes charges. He has already been indicted as a war criminal.

Aware that its finances are in shambles and need a large handout just to survive, the government of Pakistan has decided to tap the one resource — overseas Pakistanis — which it feels can be mobilised to see it through the present crisis. While the assumption is correct, the plan may not work as planned.

One of three Indian-government ministers, who face charges over the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in 1992, has finally given in to judicial pressure to appear before an enquiry into an outrage that refuses to go away, thanks to the courage and steadfastness of Indian Muslims.

The indomitable Chechen fighters and their supporters have done it again, catching Vladimir Putin on the hop. On April 14, Adam Deniyev, the second most senior leader of the pro-Kremlin administration in Chechnya, was assassinated by a bomb as he left a television studio.

Dan Quayle, who served as vice president under George Bush senior, could not spell potato correctly; George Bush junior, now president of the United States, does not know where Prince Edward Island, the Canadian province where potatoes are grown, is.

The global Islamic movement is so clearly a major force in the world today — the only challenge to the crumbling civilization of the West — that it is easy to forget that less than 25 years ago Muslims barely showed on the geo-political map.