In order to properly understand the achievement of the late Imam Khomeini (r.a.) and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, we need to understand them as being simultaneously located within four concentric circles: the oppressed peoples, the Islamic peoples, the Shi’i peoples, and the Iranian peoples...

Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources and Strategies by Cheryl Benard. Pub: Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2004. Pp: 118. Pbk: $20. (Also available on-line to download.)

Television has now become the primary mode of entertainment and information for millions of people worldwide...

The US attack on Fallujah last month, in which at least 1,000 people have been killed, thousands more injured and an estimated 60,000 – out of a population of some 300,000 – forced to flee their homes, appears to have been carried out in a similar spirit...

Although the outcome is still unresolved, the ongoing stand-off between the US-led occupation forces and supporters of young Shi’i alim Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr can hardly be anything but ominous for the neo-conservative hawks in Washington...

Dr Abdul Aziz Rantisi, who was appointed head of Hamas in Ghazzah following the martyrdom of Shaikh Ahmed Yassin in March, was himself assassinated by the Israelis on April 17. His car was hit by seven missiles fired from Israeli helicopters near his home in Ghazzah...

As US and Israeli officials prepared for the meeting between George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon on April 14, the Arab world was full of rumours that the Bush administration had agreed to give Sharon "assurances" and "guarantees" in return for Israel’s purported agreement to withdraw from Ghazzah...

US president George Bush had hoped that by April 2004 American casualties in Iraq would be so low that he could present this success as his personal triumph in transforming Iraq from a tyranny into a democracy...

The results of the Iranian Majlis elections in February silenced many who had expected them to produce a massive popular rejection of the Islamic system. But in Islamic Iran people are looking ahead, not back. ZAFAR BANGASH looks forward...

Until his defeat in Spain’s elections in March, José María Aznar was a key member of the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’. His defeat, coming after the Madrid bombing, caused fury in Washington. FRANCISCO J. ROMERO SALVADÓ discusses its causes and repercussions...

US president George W. Bush’s endorsement of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plans for redesigning and legitimising the political infrastructure of its occupation of Palestine has been widely decried...

Most cliches are cliches because they contain at least an element of truth. The phrase ‘divide and rule’ is a case in point; the phenomenon has been recognised as a strategy of political power, particularly imperial power, since at least Roman times, and was raised to an art-form by the British during their colonial heyday...

Muslims in the Russian Federation and in China – who are pursuing their ‘universal right’ to self-determination in the face of horrendous opposition – were probably not surprised by the abrupt way in which moves in the UN to condemn violations of human rights in China and by Russia were blocked...

Cricket is over; now let’s get back to the real world. The first phase of general elections in the "world’s largest democracy" began on 20 April 2004...

The UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva debated a new code, the Human Rights Norms for Business, on April 8, in the face of strong opposition from companies and governments in the West and developing countries...

In the decade since the genocide in Rwanda, which resulted in the murders of more than 800,000 people in 100 days, the Muslim population of the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic West African country has more than doubled...

The Sudanese government has over the years been under strong pressure from western countries and international organisations, led by the US, to concede to rebel groups (which are predominantly Christian) the right to secede from the mainly Muslim north...