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It is clear now, within days of the joyous installation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre with dances and record sales of sweets in its bastions, that it is going to be an extremely short-lived wonder, unlikely to survive beyond 31 May...

The face-to-face talks between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbayev (photo) on May 27 in Moscow were a humiliating climb-down for the Kremlin boss. Since October 1991 when the Chechens declared their independence under their late leader Dzhokar Dudayev...

The supporters of the RM15 billion Bakun Dam Hydroelectric Project to be built in Sarawak claim that it will be the answer to all our electricity supply problems.

Let me acknowledge at once that there now exists a state of war between the 'progressives', whose representation of 'European values' Rushdie finds 'attractive', and those 'in revolt against history'. The latter Rushdie rightly and accurately names as 'Siddiquis and Hizbollahs and blind sheikhs and ayatollahs'.

On 8 April 1980, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed. His execution aroused no criticism from the West against the Iraqi regime, however, because Sadr had openly supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran and because the West was distracted by the turbulence in Iran that followed the revolution. Governments both in the West and in the region were concerned that the Iranian revolution would be “exported,” and they set about eliminating that threat. When Ayatollah Khomeini called upon Muslims in Iraq to follow the example of the Iranian people and rise up against the corrupt secular Baʿthist socialist regime, they interpreted it as the first step in the spread of Islamic radicalism that would eventually lead to the destabilization of the whole region.

Not since Ibn-Khaldun's al-Muqaddima in the fourteen century did any Muslim scholar make a significant contribution to the understanding of the historical process. The late Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr from Iraq made a serious effort in giving his vision on the development of the history. His interpretations of history can be considered as part of his effort to prove that Islam, through the ulama (jurists) of the traditional religious schools, is still capable of contributing to the advancement of knowledge and resolution of problems facing man in this temporal world.

[Leader’s Address at the Inaugural Session of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, Kensington Town Hall, London, 4 January, 1992.]

[This paper was originally written in 1992 as the introduction for an earlier book called In Pursuit of the Power of Islam which Dr Kalim Siddiqui adapted from previously published writings in 1991-92. The book had reached proof stage before Dr Siddiqui concluded it was not satisfactory and decided to write a new book from scratch in its place. This new book was Stages of Islamic Revolution (London: The Open Press, 1996). This paper was first published in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996.]

The economy of the Islamic State, according to Sadr, is divided between that of the individual as the vicar of God (khalifah), and the ruler as the witness (shahid) who presides over the application of the laws of God. The economic structure of the Islamic State thus consist of private property and public property. However, one should not think that the economic structure of the Islamic State is some sort of combination of capitalism and socialism. Sadr strongly rejects this misconception.

[Paper presented at the Muslim Institute conference on ‘The Future of Muslims in Britain’, London, 14 July, 1990.]