The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was a watershed in contemporary history. Those of us who are old enough to remember the time before the Revolution remember a period in which Muslims everywhere were subject to repression whenever they tried to establish Islam in its entirety...

Is There An Islamic Problem? Essays on Islamicate Societies, the US and Israel By M. Shahid Alam. Pub: The Other Press, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 2004. Pbk:$15; pages: 240.

It must take a particular kind of gall for someone to stand at a podium in front of a global audience and firmly, confidently make statements and assertions that he knows the vast majority of his audience know are untrue...

The term “terrorism” has become devalued by its abuse in Western discourse to delegitimise the struggle of opponents of the West, without its ever being applied to the actions of the West, or of its friends and allies...

The occasion of Isra’ and Mi’raj was marked in Toronto last month by an international Seerah conference jointly convened by the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and the Islamic Centre of York region...

September 2004 was described as “a month of death in Iraq” by one Arab commentator after a series of major clashes in which at least a thousand Iraqis, many of them civilians, were killed...

Relations between the Jordanian government and the Ikhwan al-Muslimin came close to breaking down early last month, after nine senior Ikhwan ulama were arrested in a series of raids on September 8...

A number of important landmarks in Islamic history are associated with the month of Ramadan. In the second year of the Hijra, the nascent Muslim community was tested by the Battle of Badr during this month..

It is a worrying sign when western leaders and their sidekicks — media, NGOs and thinktanks — welcome a new government in any Muslim country...

One feature of Malaysia is its ability to make everything a make-believe. Its racially-divided society is seemingly in harmony, its economy is seemingly in the hands of the majority Malay Muslims, its rich-poor gap is seemingly small, and its judiciary is seemingly fair...

China’s growing status as a new superpower and its role in the US-led “war against terrorism” have left Chinese Muslims to the dubious mercies of Beijing...

Three British Muslimahs made headlines last month when they were arrested by the Israeli authorities in Jerusalem and accused of involvement in terrorism, before being cleared...

Three British Muslimahs made headlines last month when they were arrested by the Israeli authorities in Jerusalem and accused of involvement in terrorism, before being cleared...

Three groups of people have always operated in tandem with the crusading policies of Western governments: Churches, so-called aid-workers, and soldiers of fortune, the last more aptly described as criminals and terrorists doing their governments’ dirty work...

The US’s long-running campaign to pressure Iran over its nuclear programme was ratcheted up to a new level last month, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a resolution effectively threatening to report Iran to the UN Security Council if it is not satisfied that Iran’s nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes by its next meeting, which is on November 25...

In addition to the three official candidates– George Bush, John Kerry and Ralph Nader– two others are likely to influence the outcome of the US presidential elections on November 2: Osama bin Laden and Pakistani president general Pervez Musharraf...

Russian president Vladimir Putin, in a vain attempt to exploit the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia on September 3, in which more than 340 people died, has sharply increased the scale and intensity of executions, tortures and kidnaps in Chechnya that are already a part of the Chechens’ lives...

Sudan is the largest country in Africa, its western region of Darfur alone being larger than France; the “Islamic and Arab” government of president Omar Hassan al-Bashir is financing and arming the Janjaweed– the “Arab” militia which is allegedly ethnically cleansing the “African” tribes in that region...