Articles

US foreign policy has been reduced to a three-point agenda in the post-cold war era: unquestioning support of Israel, daily bombings of Iraq, and chasing Osama bin Laden

After seven years of vicious fighting and the failure of several mediation attempts, the warring factions in the west African state of Sierra Leone have finally agreed to a ceasefire - but only because of strong pressure exerted by the US, Britain, the United Nations and Nigeria. Washington’s role in the deal is said to have been the ‘clinching influence’.

On May 19, Dr Mazen el-Najjar, a Palestinian professor from Tampa, Florida, completed two years in an American jail for reasons he has never been told. He is the father of three American-born children.

One of the most enduring myths of the contemporary era is the image of the Zionist State of Israel as a beleaguered entity. The presence of ‘Arab hordes’ surrounding ‘tiny Israel’ is constantly peddled and easily accepted by guilt-ridden governments in the west

The western media tends to focus on one major story at a time. While Kosova dominates the news, other international stories have been largely ignored. For Muslims, however, this is not good enough.

In 1972, a ‘paper grave’ was found by labourers doing restoration work in the Great Mosque in Sana’a, Yemen. Between the mosque’s inner and outer roofs was a collection of old parchment and paper documents, damaged books and individual pages.

Ismail Omar Guelleh was sworn in as Djibouti’s new president on May 8, becoming its second leader since independence in 1977. But, having frequently stood in unofficially for his ailing and elderly uncle

The Egyptian government’s decision to release 1,200 al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya prisoners is a significant development in the long struggle between the militant Islamic groups and the state. Most of the freed Islamists had been jailed without trial or had already served their sentences, and thousands more remain in jail.

Shaikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, the amir of Kuwait, dissolved the country’s Parliament on May 4, shortly before the 50-member body was to vote on a no-confidence motion against Ahmad al-Kulaib, the Minister of Justice, Endowments and Islamic Affairs.

The US suffered what should have been a major international humiliation on May 3, when it was obliged to unfreeze the assets of Salah Idris, the Sudanese owner of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum which the US bombed in August