Articles

As the fan club of the western economic system grows, so do the bailouts. In reality these are nothing short of economic takeovers as the concerned country surrenders its monetary policy to the donors or the international monetary fund (IMF).

One of Malaysia’s prominent alims (Islamic scholars), Datuk Ishak Baharom, is to lose his job as the State Mufti of Selangor - Malaysia’s richest state - effective from October 31, 1997.

Can a country which is too proud to apologize to ‘natives’ for the massacre committed by its own troops (in Amritsar, India) as long ago as 1919 bring itself to admit that the ‘mad cow disease’ and the related Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) it hosts, and exports, have put world health at risk - when such admission is certain to lead to political and economic consequences?

By including Harkatul Ansar, a Muslim group battling the Indian occupation army in Kashmir, on the list of ‘terrorist’ organisations, the US has served noticed that it has joined the Hindus’ crusade against Kashmiri Muslims.

The schizophrenic existence of the Pakistani ruling elite was on display during the six-day visit of Queen Elizabeth, the British monarch, to the ‘land of the pure’ from October 6 to 12.

Heralded as Europe’s first collective response to Islamophobia, the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain’s European conference, aptly entitled ‘Islamophobia - the oldest hatred’, brought together an impressive line up of speakers, activists and scholars from across Europe.

The rebel attack on the presidential guard’s barracks in Dushanbe on October 16 served notice that peace is not round the corner in Tajikistan. At least 14 soldiers and four rebels were killed in what was a major embarrassment for the regime of president Imomali Rakhmanov.

Two senior Islamic activists in Turkey were given long jail sentences by an Ankara state security court on October 15, on trumped up charges. Nuruddin Sirin, editor of the Islamic daily Selam, was jailed for 17-and-a-half years, and Bekir Yildiz, a former mayor of Ankara’s Sincan district...

In a bizarre twist even by Nigerian military regime’s standards, four visitors of imprisoned Muslim leader, Mu’allim Ibrahim Zakzaky, were arrested and imprisoned after going on a routine visit to the alim and his three co-defendants known as the Zaria Four.

At least 300 people were massacred on the night of 28-29 August 1997 at Rais, in the Sidi Moussa area, near the capital city of Algiers. The night before, over 50 people were decapitated in Blida, in the vicinity of Algiers.