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

The people of Indonesia will go to the polls on June 7, with the world’s eyes on east Timor which has been promised autonomy or even total independence.

The streets of Baghdad are filled with vendors, taxicabs and a tenacious spirit. As a result of stagnant salaries and enormous inflation, most of Iraq’s work force has taken to the streets to find other ways of earning a living.

India is an artificial State. This may surprise many in the Indian-doting west brought up to regard India as being the ‘largest democracy’ in the world, but this is gradually becoming apparent

After a meeting in Bonn on May 6, the foreign ministers of the G8 group of countries (the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia) announced a set of ‘general principles’ which they had agreed as the basis for a political solution to the Kosova crisis.

The peace deal signed in Doha, Qatar, by Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir and his Eritrean counterpart Issaias Afwerki on May 2 has left Sudanese opposition groups in disarray, with some, like former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, simultaneously holding secret and separate talks with other Sudanese officials.

Merve Kavakci, elected to Turkish parliament from Istanbul as a Fazilat (Virtue) Party candidate in the April 18 election, appears at first sight quite unassuming, even a little shy. But beneath that gentle exterior is a young Muslimah of steely nerves.

Chinese authorities executed two Uighur mujahideen early this month for their part in the Muslim uprising in Chinese-occupied East Turkestan (which the Chinese call Xinjiang Province) in Ramadhan 1417 (February 1997).