How things have gone wrong in Pakistan can be gleaned from the following episode at the end of last month. The chief justice of the Baluchistan High Court, Justice Amir-ul Mulk Mengal, was travelling to Nushki/Kharan when his car was stopped at the Chagai checkpost by the Frontier Constabulary (FC) on November 26. On orders of the checkpost in-charge, a captain Butt, the FC personnel requested that the vehicles be searched.

Despite the proclamations of a post-modern era, of an age driven by information, many of the trappings of modernity drive western civilization. Mechanization, reductionism, and rationality are pervasive in most of the supposedly newly-emerging realities in western science, technology, economies and politics.

One thing that revolutionary Islamic movements have largely been clear about since the Islamic Revolution in Iran is that trying to come to power through democratic processes in the political systems established and run by secularist politicians in Muslim countries is a waste of time.

The word ‘shari’ah’ literally means waterway that runs one single course leading to a main stream. It is also borrowed from here to refer literally to any way, road or path that leads to a goal, be it a village, city, or building.

In a country blessed with vast oil and gas reserves, nine million Algerians, out of thirty million, live below the poverty line. A million children suffer from malnutrition, with a fifth of them suffering very serious consequences to their health.

During his recent official visit to Libya, prime minister Massimo D’Alema of Italy, the North African country’s former colonial ruler, had the agreeable experience of seeing Mu’ammar Qaddafi trying to ingratiate himself to the west by pledging to join the west’s war on Islam and using his influence to unlock African doors for Rome.

At least 10 people in Aceh were wounded by gunfire, and many more injured in other incidents, on December 4, when Indonesian troops and police fired on people celebrating the territory’s ‘national day’.

Indonesian president Abdur Rahman Wahid raised eyebrows on December 4 when he told his new economic affairs commission that Israel had agreed to invest $200 million in Indonesia.

It was the sort of drama that makes for good press copy, and of course the international press was there to watch it. As the result was announced, hundreds of men applauded, while a “Muslim fundamentalist” reportedly screamed that Kuwaitis don’t want women’s rights.

Now that the dust has settled after the death and state burial of Julius Kambarage Nyerere, ex-President of the Republic of Tanzania, it is time for some of the inconsistencies and paradoxes of the most Islamophobic leader in post-colonial Africa to be discussed and put into context.

The plight of the Chechens trapped in Johar-Gala (‘Grozny’) was briefly brought to the west’s attention earlier this month when the western media highlighted a leaflet dropped in the city by Russian aircraf

Hijab has also come to symbolise the Islamic identity of Muslim women. All over the world, Muslimahs in hijab have become targets for attack by secularists and others seeking to attack Islam. Even Sri Lanka, where Muslims have lived in harmony with the majority Sinhalese community for over 1,000 years, Muslimahs in hijab are now coming attack.

The agreement concluded between Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir and opposition-leader and Ummah Party chief Sadeq al-Mahdi in Jibouti on November 25 sets out the principles on which these men think that any political settlement of the Sudanese conflict should be based.

For Muslims, 1999 arrived with mayhem and bloodshed, not very different from the previous year. First, there was the four-day slaughter in Iraq which was euphemistically described as the ‘fireworks display over Baghdad’ by Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s latest darling from the scene.

America’s war on Islam suffered a setback on November 29, when Nasser Ahmed, an Egyptian asylum seeker, walked free after spending three-and-a-half years in a US prison. Nasser Ahmed’s ‘crime’ was that he was the court-appointed interpreter for Shaikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 1996 after a kangaroo trial.