Mention of the Tablighi Jama’at often conjures up images of ascetic Muslims with long beards and loose dresses. Such steoreotyping is not always inaccurate.

The issue of Palestine is central to the Islamic movement. Obviously, the occupation of Islam’s third holy city by the greatest enemies of Islam and the greatest powers of kufr that history has ever known is a situation that Muslims can never accept. But the experience of opposing that occupation is proving a severe testing-ground for the Ummah.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists held its Press Freedom Day on May 3, issuing its list of countries and rulers where journalists are either being killed or incarcerated. Iran was blamed, as were China, Cuba, Malaysia and Tunisia.

Khalid Misha’al is Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamic movement. He represented Hamas at the International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in Tehran last month as Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin was unable to travel to Iran from Occupied Ghazzah. Here we present an excerpt of his address to the conference.

The International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada hosted by the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran from April 24-25 was opened by the Rahber of Islamic Iran, Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Khamenei. Here we present an abridged translation of his speech.

Algeria does not need a fresh eruption of Berber nationalism after a debilitating decade-long ‘civil’ war waged by the secular establishment, dominated by the military, against the country’s Islamic movements.

Palestinian ‘president’ Yasser Arafat launched his expected crackdown on popular movements sustaining the Al-Aqsa Intifada last month. Dr Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, the Hamas spokesman in Ghazzah, was arrested on April 28, reportedly for making ‘inflammatory’ statements.

The Sudanese government, which has been wooing Washington for months to escape US sanctions and diplomatic isolation, is now furious with the Bush administration because it has revealed its position on the civil war, siding completely and unequivocally with the spectacularly misnamed the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

When Moscow celebrated the 56th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany in the second world war on May 9, there was no mention of its latest military challenge, the fighting in Chechnya, stepped up by the Chechen mujahideen on the arrival of spring...

Iran’s presidential elections, due to be held on June 8, were all but decided on May 4, when president Muhammad Khatami confirmed that he would stand for re-election.

Muslims in the Sri Lankan town of Mawanella suffered damage to their businesses and property estimated at R2.100 million ($1.2 million) earlier this month, when mobs attacked Muslim-owned businesses and shops, destroying 18 vehicles, 20 houses, 140 shops, two garment-factories and a rubber factory on May 2.

Britain’s long-expected general election will take place on June 7. British Muslim community groups, meanwhile, have already started campaigns against Islamophobic and pro-zionist MPs. At least three MPs representing the ruling Labour Party in London are in danger of losing their seats.

Americans are furious after the US was expelled from the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) earlier this month.