Kashkul

Urdu Bayaand Raiwind 2/12/2010

2010-12-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

Urdu Bayans from Raiwind Tableeghi Ijtemaa will be broadcast LIVE on the following sites:
http://alittehaad.org/
http://www.thebestislam.com/
http://www.islahunnisa.com/Dates/Times are as follows:
Thursday the 2nd of December 2010 after Maghrib (17:00 PST): Click Here to convert o your local Time
Friday the 3rd of December & Saturday the 04th of December 2010:
After Fajar (05:45 PST)Click Here to convert o your local Time
After Dhohar (13:30 PST)Click Here to convert o your local Time
After Maghrib (17:00 PST)Click Here to convert o your local Time
Sunday the 05th of December 2010:
After Fajar (05:45 PST)Click Here to convert o your local Time
Hidayaat (roughly 09:00 PST) Click Here to convert o your local Time
Dua after the Ijtema (roughly 10:00 PST) Click Here to convert o your local Time

Dont Break My Heart O Haji

2010-11-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Dont break my heart Oh Haji

Don’t break my heart O Hajī!
I drink from your zam I eat from your dates, I ask you for your prayers but
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
O Hājī, tell me not of the day you donned your iḥrām or of the time when you first saw the holy kaʿbah.
Of when you made the tawāf, or when you ran from safa to marwā.
Of when you first sipped from zam zam and when you prayed at the Maqām of Ibrahim alaihis salām.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! O Don’t break my heart O Hajī!
O Ḥājī tell me not of the day you walked to Mina or of when you cried at Arafāt.
Of when you stayed at Muzdalifah or when you pelted the Jamarāt
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
O Hajī tell me not of when you slaughtered your animal or when you shaved your head.
Of when you made the tawaf with millions or when you gave thanks to your Rabb.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
O Hājī tell me not of when with heavy heart you make your tawāf al-wida and when you prayed to your hearts fill.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
O Ḥājī, most of all, tell me not of the moment when you glimpsed at the green domed sanctuary, or when you entered the Prophet ṣallallāhu ʿalahi wasallam’s city.
Of when you entered the haram al-Nabawī or of when you first prayed there.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
O Ḥājī tell me not of when you cried besides yourself as you presented yourself at the blessed Rawdah or of what you whispered to your Nabī ʿalaihi ṣalām.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
O Ḥāji, tell me not of promises made of resolutions kept and of pledges or of a life changed forever nor of an indelible mark on the soul.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.
So as I sip of your zam and eat from your dates, I ask you for your prayers that I be called too O Ḥājī, that I be called soon O Ḥājī, for what’s the use of a broken heart O Ḥājī.
Don’t break my heart O Hajī! Don’t break my heart.

AD Pretoria. 18/11/10 /10 Dhul Hijjah 1431

DR FA Ganchi

2009-01-29T21:47:00.000-08:00

DR F A GANCHI

Dr. F. A. Ganchi (my client) was detained by Egyptian Authorities on Friday 23rd January 2009 until Monday 26th January 2009 and was returned back to South Africa on Tuesday 27th January 2009.

My client had obtained the necessary authority to travel with the Gift of the Givers Mission to Gaza, and endorsed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, South Africa. My client was previously arrested in Pakistan and released without charge and this fact was known to all who were part of the mission and who had endorsed same also. My client successfully applied for the necessary visa permitting him to enter Egypt and a valid copy of the visa remains in his passport.

My client wishes to apologize to the remaining members of the mission, who travelled to Gaza for the purposes of rendering humanitarian assistance, to the extent that they were in any way compromised, prejudiced or delayed in their effort. My client appreciates the fact that the Mission and all its members stood by him during this time. My client also regrets that he was not an active participant in the planned humanitarian work intended to be performed in Gaza, but remains hopeful that there will be other opportunities for same. Despite my client’s efforts and those of the South African Government, my client still does not know the reason/s for his detention and his return to South Africa.

On departure from O. R. Tambo International Airport my client was briefly held back but was subsequently cleared to travel. My client was similarly held back for a short while at the Cairo Airport but was subsequently cleared to proceed to Rafah without any questioning. My client subsequently passed numerous checkpoints between Cairo and Rafah without difficulty. Whilst offloading the vehicle at Rafah my client was summoned by 2 (two) intelligence agents who advised him that they were conducting a routine check on him and subsequently changed this to a problem with my client’s passport. My client requested these individuals to clarify any complications with the South African Embassy. My client was thereafter summoned to collect his luggage and was driven to an unknown venue where he was handcuffed to a bench for approximately 5 (five) hours. My client repeatedly made demands to ascertain why he was being detained and was provided with no answers whatsoever. My client was forced to spend the entire night handcuffed to a bench. My client was advised by a junior officer that he was to be returned to Cairo shortly. On Saturday 24th January 2009 my client was transported in the back of a police truck to Cairo. The journey was approximately 12 (twelve) hours in length with no provisions provided to client. Client was blindfolded and handcuffed and the blindfold and handcuffs were only removed upon his departure at 23h30 on the 26th January 2009. My client accepts that he was taken to Cairo, yet has no actual knowledge that this was infact the case. On arrival at Cairo my client was stripped and searched and interrogated about his travels to Pakistan previously till the early part of Sunday morning. No provision was made for client to sleep and he was forced to sleep in the corridor of what he believes to have been an intelligence holding/interrogation facility. The facility in which client was detained was not clean, crowded and smelt like a mortuary. Client repeatedly heard the sounds of the administration of electric shocks and painful human screams immediately thereafter. The facility was so crowded that whilst being moved around in the corridors, client would inevitably trample on other people who were being held at the same facility. On Sunday 25th January 2009 client was moved internally to an isolation facility, still handcuffed and blindfolded. Client was then interrogated again during the course of Monday afternoon, with no real purpose in the questioning. Late on Monday evening client was transported to the airport in Cairo and his blindfold and handcuffs was removed approximately 5 (five) minutes prior to arrival at the airport. My client arrived at O. R. Tambo International Airport on Tuesday 27th January 2009.

My client, as you can well imagine is hugely disappointed by not having been able to actively participate in the humanitarian work, for which the mission was planned by Gift of the Givers, a reputable aid organization with a proven track record but remains hopeful that he will be able to assist in other areas where such aid is needed in the future.

My client is further hugely disappointed by the actions of the Egyptian Authorities but remains hopeful that they will see the error in their ways. My client is grateful to the South African Department of Foreign Affairs, both locally and in Egypt, who assisted tremendously in this time of need. My client is grateful to all of those people who prayed and showed support for him and his family during this time.

Finally, my client read with disappointment, the various newspaper articles that appeared in the written press after his return to South Africa, the reference to his previous detention in Pakistan during 2004. The fact of that matter is simply that my client was released without being charged despite having being interrogated for a period of 5 (five) months by South African, Pakistani and American Intelligence.

Y. TAYOB ATTORNEY

Humourous Anti-Wahhabi Site

2009-01-21T10:21:00.000-08:00

http://najd2.wordpress.com/

Id Bayaan 1 October 2008: Ashraf Dockrat

2008-10-14T05:43:00.000-07:00

Id Bayaan [1 October 2008/1 Shawwaal 1429]

As we gather here on this blessed day, greeted on our way here by the malaaikah, the angels of Allah who welcome us here and greet us again as we part from this Id ghah, we realize that we are united here in purpose. On this occasion where we give thanks we do so in a gathering of Muslims that shows strength and unity. This concept of unity is the topic of our talk this morning.

In a hadith Rasulallah sallallahu alaihi wasallam is reported to have said: This Din (religion) of Islam began in strangeness and will once again be strange. Glad tidings to those who are the strangers.

What constitutes the strangeness of Islam today?
Muslims find themselves in different parts of the world with nothing to unite them.
Muslims find themselves divided by ethnicity, race and tribal affiliations.
All of this despite the hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam which states: All of you are from Adam and Adam was from clay. And that there is no preference for the Arab over the non-Arab accept in taqwa (God conciousness).
Strangeness is nowhere stronger when one group of Muslims are actively involved in battle with another without religious justification. When in Palestine Hamas and Fatah are at loggerheads while the Israeli occupation of the blessed lands continues with all its barbarity.
What can be a greater expression of strangeness when a Muslim leader asks for help from the enemies of Allah to fight fellow Muslims. When Pakistan allows its airspace to be used to attack Afghanistan and when Muslim countries in the middle-east allow the military bases of the enemies of Allah on Muslim lands. Muslims forget the command of Allah: You will not find a people who believe in Allah and the last day befriending those who oppose Allah and his Rasul even if it is against their fathers, brothers or family.

Disunity and weakness has been predicted by Rasul sallallahu alaihi wasallam when he said that people would gather around you as people gather to eat a meal, or that you will be like the flotsam and jetsum of a flood in your weakness. When the Prophet was asked about this disastrous condition of the Muslims, he explained that this was not because of their small numbers, rather they will be many. This weakness will be because they love the world and dislike death.

Disunity has weakened our affair to the extent that non-Muslims ask that if Islam was a true religion they will not be disunited and so far from the means of strength even.

What strangeness is worse than the situation where the voices of those that call to unity and strength seem strange and foreign? There can be no greater strangeness than this.

Are we not on account of the Din and Shariah we possess the most deserving of respect, honour, knowledge, virtue and progress? We are the direct inheritors of the Propeht sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the Sahabah. Has the time not come when Muslims have to regain their lost status and hold onto their mission and awaken from their slumber?

Let us for a moment reflect on Europe. Each of the countries are strong, nevertheless they have put their differences aside to form the European Union. United by a common currency these disparate countries have united. The Euro and the common economic system they have is for all to see. This is cause to reflect. We are divided and Muslim countries as at each other’s throats. We deprive one another of food and support and we yet claim to be under the shade of one Din. We have become the prey of wolves? Where are our leaders? And what are their concerns?

It is essential for Muslims to introspect. We have to in the face of this injustice hold onto the rope of Allah and unite our voices. We have to unite ourselves under the banner of Lailaha illallah Muhammadur rasul lullah. There is nothing greater to remove the disunity and friction than this. Achieving unity should be the concern of every individual of the ummah. Every journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. What is this first step? It is to know the rights and responsibilities of your fellow Muslim. It is to acknowledge the huquq al-ibād and to assert our brotherhood. “Certainly the Muslims are brothers, so join (fa aslihu) between your brothers”.

If we ponder over this concept of ukhuwwah al-Islamiyyah (Muslim Brotherhood) we will see that it is the most difficult call to Muslims today. If we realize what Din is and we Understand Din and practice on it (amal) we will love for our brothers what we love for ourselves. We will dislike for them what we dislike for ourselves, resist those actions that cause him/her harm, care for the sick and weak and help and give service to those as best we can. There can be no place for zulm at all.

Din al-Islam has two essentials that are fundamental and foundational:
tawhid 2, Equality between people.

If this is achieved we will achieve success. We have to realize that this is where the solution lies and try our best to achieve this.

Unity is not a concept about which we have a choice about. It is a fard of Din. Allah says: “And do not be like those who became disunited and broke into groups after clear signs came to them and for them is a great punishment” and Allah Ta’ala says: “And this ummah of yours is one ummah and I am your Lord so worship me.”

All scholars (here we are not referring to pseudo-scholars who hope that a Mahdi will appear and solve all the problems we face) are concerned with how this unity of the ummah can be achieved. The slipping of the Khilafah from the hands of the Musims meant disunity between Muslims. The matter has gone so far that Muslims lifted sword against Muslim. How many khutbahs and how many books have not been written analyzing this phenonomenon and providing solutions for achieving a united ummah.

We are not here talking about differences of fiqh and law. These differences existed from the time of the sahabah and are a blessing. Those that call for the abandonment of taqlid and see Muslims unity in a common jurisprudence have a very shallow understanding of the problem or the solution.

It is the wisdom of Allah that people have not been united into what the Quran calls a single people. Instead Allah tells us that who He blesses he unites on truth. “If Allah so desired he would have created mankind into one nation and you will continue differences accept who your Lord has blessed and for this reason Allah created you and fulfilled the word of your Lord that He will fill Jahnnam with people and Jinn” (Hud: 118-119). Ibn Abbas (RA) in his tafsir of this verse says that Allah created them for mercy not for differences. Muslims have to hold fast onto obedience to Nabi sallallahu alaihi wasallam. What is disliked is fanacticism and intolerance especially in matters where difference of opinion and positions are perfectly allowed and accommodated in the shariah.

As for matters of aqidah then all the sahabah where like a single solid wall firm of tawhid and the oneness of Allah. This made the ummah strong and they gained ascendency. Decline set in after this period. A decline that no Muslim can be happy with. When the capital of the Muslim world was Baghdad already a weakness started creeping in. There is weakness in consultation with other Muslims in other parts of the Muslim lands i.e. a weakness in administration and there was weakness in the concept of tawhid and belief amongst Muslims. The fatal blow was when in 656 AH the Tartars invaded the Muslim lands. Muslims were united again when the Uthmaniyyah Khilafah/ Dawlah united many disparate Islamic peoples and lands. However once again the failure to establish tawhid in the lands led to their fall. The European Colonialist found their way to the Muslim lands, assaulted these lands and occupied the land and the thought of its inhabitants. They became worst than what they were. Yet many sincere Muslims continued to be concerned with the situation of the Muslim ummah.

What we have to do is study carefully what unites us and remove the cause of division.

We have seen that the aqidah of tawhid and the fact that we are united on one aqidah and on one concern that emanates from it. We share a common vision and world view which unites us wherever we are on the globe and whatever the social, economic or ecological challenges humankind may be facing.

The first step then is to identify those obstacles which come in the way of achieving unity:

The first of these obstacles is the stagnation of many of the Muslim communities. Movement and activity is a solution to many problems.

There is also a strong relationship between freedom and unity. Sometimes these two concepts find themselves in opposition to one another. The lack of freedom and the resultant discontent because of the oppressive regimes who restrict these freedoms is the reason for much disunity. Good Muslims languish for years under horrendous conditions in prisons in Muslim countries. The disunity, the call for Jihad and the opposition to the corrupt leadership is a reason for disunity.

The inability to recognize that what is relatively insignificant and temporary needs to be sacrificed for what is permanent, important and fundamental. At times this requires sacrifices from some groups that is no less than the sacrifice of a shahid of his life for the cause of islam. The requirement for this is a strong Imaan and a good understanding of Islam.

Another no less significant cause for disunity is the economic disparity in the Muslim world which makes unity a pipe dream for most. In this regard it is significant to note that only 4% of the economic activity of the Muslim countries is between Muslim countries themselves while 96% of the economic activity of Muslim countries is with non-Muslims. A Muslim cannot find and source all his needs from Muslim countries and is forced to go to the West.

Disunity is also caused by the export of foreign culture and values to the Muslim countries.

The rise of nationalistic sentiments and false notions of nationhood and patriotism has been the cause of disunity after the decline of the Uthmanli Dawlah. Personal interests and narrow parochial thinking took preference over what was important and relevant to the ummah at large.

These are some of the challenges we have to face. Some are inheritied some are intractable yet it remains a fard and a requirement of shariah to achieve unity at all costs. As people concerned with the welfare of the ummah we all have to work together to put bricks into the wall of the unity of Islam.

Now that we have seen the obstacles let us move to the imperatives which have to drive us in order to realize the blessed unity. A unity based on a common worldview.

Firstly our aqidah is one. The risalah of Nabi Muhammad Sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the accompanying worry and concern that he had for the salvation of the ummah and of all of mankind is one. The Shariah is one. What then can be the reasons for our disunity?

Secondly we should be united by a common language which is Arabic. It is Arabic that carries our common ideas, our united culture, the thoughts of the Quran and sunnah and the legacy of Islam. Similarly the Arab nations need to learn the languages of millions of Muslims such as Urdu in order to better relate to their brothers.

Thirdly, we need to unite in professional associations and guilds. Tradesmen, doctors, lawyers, economists and academics need to pool their resources locally, nationally and internationally.

Fourthly it is necessary for us to have a common sense of daʿwah and a common support for duʿāt. In fact we all need to feel the responsibility to invite non-Muslims to Allah. Our daʿwah needs to include the concern for the socio-economic concerns of humanity. In our country where people go to bed hungry regularly and where there are child-headed households as a common occurrence, we need to be more concerned with daʿwah. We will be united through our common concern.

Fifthly we need to create centres of concern. Centres devoted to the concern of uniting the ummah and humanity. Every masjid needs to be transformed into a markaz to fulfill this task.

The sixth point we need to make is that of economics. We need to realize that very often in our modern world the political system serves as a slave and an adjunct to the capitalist economic system. Muslims need to provide leadership by providing just and fair economic systems and encourage trade and economic support for Muslims throughout the globe.

Lastly we need to think about how the Muslim world and the Muslim lands can achieve unity. For this we need the political will which has always been the hallmark of Muslims and their administrations.

In conclusion let us remember that there is no magic wand of unity. There is no Sultan with great power that can achieve this unity. Unity between Muslims in every part of the world can be achieved through unity in method and through justice. We all have a part to play in achieving this unity. Islam is ours. We have to share a common worldview. A worldview that insists that every person on the face of the earth should enter jannah. We have to take possession of that common worldview based on a love for humanity.

Yes this is a difficult task. It requires ikhlaas and sincerity. But remember: Every journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Id Mubarak!

The Madrasa Curriculum and System and Modern Demands

2008-10-14T05:25:00.001-07:00

The Madrasa Curriculum and System and Modern Demands
By Maulana Rizwan ul-Qasmi (Administrator, Dar ul-Ulum Sabil us-Salam, Hyderabad, India)
(Translated by Yoginder Sikand)

The Quran is the last Divine revelation, and has been sent by God for all humanity. It will remain without any change or modification whatsoever till the Day of Judgment, for the Prophet Muhammad is the last of the prophets. The religion as represented in the Quran is eternal, and so are the Quran’s laws, its shariah, its knowledge and the need and the value of this knowledge.
But this does not at all mean that time has stopped forever and that conditions will never change. Rather, change is permanent. The demands of the age were subject to change in the past, and this applies even today. And just as in the past considerations were made to suit the then prevailing conditions, so, too, today in our interpretation of what God has entrusted to us those aspects that are subject to change must be kept in mind. Hence, madrasas must be mindful of contemporary conditions, needs and demands and keep the torch of the knowledge of the Faith burning in the light of all these factors. This, in fact, was the aim behind the founding of one of the first and, in many senses, unique madrasas in India following the collapse of Muslim rule in the country—the Dar ul Ulum at Deoband. This madrasa was not established simply to teach a few subjects. If its historical context is carefully studied, it appears that it aimed at addressing contemporary challenges as well, and that it had taken upon itself the task of the interpretation and expression of the Faith in the context of the changed conditions of the times in order to keep alive the torch of Islam in the face of fierce storm of Western atheism and materialism. Several other madrasas also soon emerged at this time that carried on with this mission.

There can be no doubt that these madrasas managed, with considerable success, to fulfill their duty of testifying to the Truth and communicating the teachings of the Faith. Many of the vestiges of religion that remain among the Muslims of the country today are a result of the dedicated work of these institutions. It is these signs of religious commitment that have become an eye-sore to Westernised, anti-religious forces. Madrasas need to carry on in this wise path of our elders and continue with the task, mandated by God and the Prophet, of demonstrating and witnessing to the Truth. For this, they must keep themselves in harmony with the changing needs and conditions of the times. They must seek to answer the new problems that the new times produce and to effectively face new challenges. When madrasa students step out of their institutions, which are sealed off from the outside world, they should not feel out of place and be led to think that they had spent much of their lives closed in a fortress that has nothing to do with the rest of the world. Rather, they should be in a position to guide society on the lines of the Faith, for today materialism and atheism are rife, and knowledge is framed and used in such a way as to take people away, rather than towards, God. Madrasas must provide their students with knowledge of contemporary developments so as to enable them to understand the objections against and criticisms of Islam and to effectively respond to them. Further, they must also train and inspire their students to effectively communicate the truths of Islam to others.

In advocating that madrasas be able to respond to modern challenges and suitably relate to contemporary demands I am certainly not arguing, as do some self-styled ‘progressives’, that Islam should be moulded according to the times, rather than the other way round, and that it be interpreted in the way the West wants it to be. It is absolutely erroneous to imagine that since the times and conditions have changed and so have many social and economic aspects of life, the Islam based on the 1400 year-old tradition of the Quran and Sunnah needs to be revised. It certainly does not mean that when we call for an Islamic Renaissance, for a new religious interpretation and for reforming madrasa education by taking into account the demands of the present age we are suggesting that Islam should be modified according to our own whims. Islam is the religion of nature and in its laws and commandments it has taken into account human nature. This, indeed, is the actual soul of Islamic law and the basis of Islam’s teachings. All the revolutions that the world has witnessed have had to do simply with external means and causes, while human nature and its basic demands and human feelings and emotions have remained the same and will always do so.

The Madrasa System of Education: Aspects in Need of Change and the Limits of Change

There is no doubt that the basic aims and objectives of madrasas have always been the same in the past, and shall remain so in the future, too. If Islam is an eternal religion and a guide for humanity till the Day of Judgment—as it indeed is—then the basic aim of the madrasas—that the path that God and the Prophet have prescribed for humanity, and which is the way to success, be taught and made known—cannot be altered. However, this certainly does not mean that the entire system and structure of madrasa education is beyond change, as if these are meant simply to serve as relics from the past, an archaeological curiosity for an age that has vastly changed. Study the history of the ulema, the renewers of the faith, the guides to the path, the history of people like Imam Malik and Ibn Shihab Zahri and down to Shah Waliullah, Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanotawi, Maulana Muhammad Ali Mungeri etc.. You will discover that the real spirit running through their work and their writings was the same—the protection of the Faith and its propagation and revival in the light of contemporary thought. But yet, for this same purpose the methods that these leaders used differed from each other, each suited to their own age and context.

In this regard, then, we must examine our madrasa education system and allow for necessary changes. In addition, we must also recognise that the general level of the graduates that the madrasas are today churning out is, unfortunately, not very satisfactory, and that their contribution and benefit to society is limited, and, indeed, quite disheartening. Certain aspects of the present system of madrasa education are in need of reform in order to make it more effective and more in accordance with contemporary demands. In this respect one can point to such troubling issues as stagnation in the syllabus, excessive attention being paid to certain subjects and the corresponding lack of adequate attention to certain modern subjects, the focus on mastery of certain specified books rather than certain disciplines, shortcomings in teaching methods, the absence of teaching important languages and the lack of co-ordination and co-operation between various madrasas.

Stagnation in the Madrasas Curriculum:

When I say that the madrasa curriculum has stagnated, I certainly do not mean to argue that all the books that are presently taught in madrasas should be discarded or that they are unable to provide proper religious and intellectual guidance and understanding or that teaching them is wholly useless. Not at all. But, yet, it is an undeniable fact that from the point of view of what the aims and objectives of a proper madrasa syllabus should be, the majority of texts currently used in the madrasas deserve to be re-looked at. Many of them can be removed from the list of prescribed books that are part of the syllabus and, instead, be made for the students to read on their own.

In order to counter the powerful waves of materialism and atheism flooding in from the West and the accompanying criticisms of Islam’s system and way of life, madrasas ought to have included the causes or the basic purposes of Islamic rules or what are called the ‘secrets of the shariah’ (asrar-e shariah) as a separate subject in their curriculum. For this purpose, madrasas could have used Shah Waliullah’s well-known book Hujjat Ullah al-Balagha, and sections of some books by Imam Ibn Qayyim and Imam Ghazali and so on. However, because the dars-i nizami syllabus as formulated by Mulla Nizamuddin Sihalawi, which is still used by most Indian madrasas, did not give any importance to this subject, it was neglected in most Indian madrasas. Recently, some madrasas have included this subject in their syllabus but even in these institutions it does not get the importance that it deserves.

Today, as a result of new inventions as well as a product of the present global socio-political system, new legal issues have emerged. It is necessary for Islamic law to address these issues. For this purpose, Islamic scholars require a deep understanding of the sources, principles and methods of reasoning of Islamic jurisprudence. Madrasas must give greater stress to these than at present. Unfortunately, only two or three books on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence are included in the present madrasa syllabus. And even these have their limitations, being, for the most part, limited just to the Quran as a source of jurisprudence, and not dealing with other sources of Islamic jurisprudence, such as the Sunnah or practice of the Prophet, ijma or the consensus of the scholars and qiyas or analogy. Several suitable books for these are available and they should be included in the curriculum. Furthermore, madrasa students should also be familiarized with texts on the principles of jurisprudence written by scholars belonging to schools of Islamic jurisprudence other than their own.

Likewise, the present madrasa curriculum does not do justice to such subjects as the principles of Hadith and the principles of Quranic commentary. In some madrasas, no books on these subjects are taught at all or else some small booklets are used, and that too in a very cursory manner. Further, it would not be wrong to say that madrasas have not given the Quran its due. Generally, in our madrasas only two Quranic commentaries are taught: the Tafsir-e Baidhawi and Jalalayn. The former is clearly insufficient for expressing the actual spirit of the Quran, and it only entangles the reader in verbal puzzles. Further, it does not deal with the entire Quran, being restricted just till the Surah al-Baqarah. As for the Jalalayn, it is like a rendering of the Quran in a different form of Arabic. So, this is all that is taught in the madrasas about the Quran, although there are numerous books dealing with the meaning of and commentaries on the Quran that can be incorporated in the curriculum.

Madrasas give no importance at all to the teaching of history and to the books abut the life of the Prophet, although this was once a major area of specialization of the ulema. It is a subject that can never lose its relevance and importance. One of the reasons why much of the fiercely anti-Islamic propaganda coming out of the West has gone uncontested is because the ulema have ignored and are ignorant of the history of Islam, and so cannot counter the wrong allegations being made about it. Leave alone the history of non-Muslims or of recent global developments, about which they know almost nothing, madrasa students have an extremely superficial knowledge of even the early history of Islam and the Muslims. It is absolutely necessary that books on the history of Islam, of India and of the world be included in the madrasa curriculum.

Today, subjects need to be studied in depth and from their original sources. Critics of Islam have established specialized Islamic research centres, and they have a deep knowledge of our history, our beliefs, our theology and our laws, which they use to seek to distort the image of Islam. Islamic scholars should also study other religions, and for this, certain books can be included in the madrasa curriculum that provide an introduction to the various religions, their basic beliefs, their social and economic principles and the lives of their leaders, drawing upon their original and reliable texts and sources. Further, madrasa students must also be made aware of modern social and economic systems and philosophies and theories. They must have at least a basic idea of the thought of such key modern thinkers as Karl Marx, Lenin, Freud, Darwin and so on. While studying Islamic jurisprudence, they must be familiarised with the position of modern international law on key issues in a comparative perspective. Without this, modern challenges cannot be effectively answered and met.

Finally, it should be remembered that all these suggested measures of reform in the madrasas can be successful only if what are regarded as the ‘mothers of the madrasas’ (umm ul-madaris)—the larger ones that have spawned many others that follow their system—take the initiative first.
=======================================================

*This is an abridged translation of an article by the author titled Dini Madaris Ka Nisab-o-Nizam Aur Jadid Taqaze, which appeared in the January 2003 issue of the New Delhi-based Urdu monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Ulum (vol. 10, no.8, p.23-32)

Democracy In the Middle East

2007-09-13T05:59:00.001-07:00

Dear Ibrahim,

Hi, I am Wazhma Frogh, working in Afghanistan. I am studying social sciences/anthropology at the American University of Afghanistan... i read your article and really support most of your ideas in terms of democracy... but at the end of the day democracy too is a political discourse that has been created for a certain purpose of a certain group maybe... the main thing is how humanity is saved midst of all chaos and me being and living in a namely democractic country while nothing is actually democratic and sometimes i think it cant be this way.....

Wazhma

Ibrahim Uyar wrote:

Democracy in Middle East
Ibrahim Uyar
Political Science Student

Today, there are 22 Arab countries in the world, and yet the number of those countries with substantially and democratically elected governments is sadly zero. All of these countries are governed with various systems with democratic elements, but not one of them could be classified as a democracy. Some of these systems have formed authoritarian structures under the strict rule of a cult-like party leader, a monarchal leader, or an emir.
Historically, one of the main obstacles in democratization lies in lingering sentiments toward colonialism in the Arab world by Britain, France and Italy. During the time of colonialism, the majority of Arabs were seeking social justice, social unity, and ways to repel Western oppression. Most of Arab-Muslim intellectuals opted to completely refuse the West, and they looked to alternative institutions that are regrettably authoritarian in character. Another historically-rooted obstacle in the democratization process is the impact on the Arab world of the Iranian Revolution, which was to many an inspiring reference of success for Islamic movements.
The most powerful obstacle impeding peace efforts and democratization in the Middle East, however, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its repercussions in the rest of the world, Arab and non-Arab alike. Without solving this problem, peace and democracy are nearly impossible. In this conflict, there are many problems that need to be addressed:
• The occupied territories and the many ramifications that accompany them.
• Jerusalem and its future as a capital for either or both sides.
• Refugees’ rights and the right to return.
• Borders that must be fair and respectful to both sides.
• The future statehood – binational or two-state.

In addition to the inherent problems in the conflict, tensions are fueled by America’s unfair foreign policy and treatment of the Middle East. If peace and democracy are truly desired in the Middle East and the rest of the world, America ought to dedicate itself modifying its approach to provide a more balanced position. It is almost impossible to think of a peaceful and democratic Middle East without first solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and America has the potential to help immensely to that end. With current Middle East policy, America’s hegemonic and potentially-imperial ambitions are alienating a great deal of credibility among Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in the world. This conflict simply allows authoritarian regimes to maintain their security and restrict freedom in the name of national security. Regrettably, secular parties then lose their legitimacy or become gatekeepers of authoritarian regimes in part due to American support of corrupted and despotic Arab regimes.
America should start reforming its policies toward the Saudi Arabian monarchy, and from there work toward Egypt ending its military dictatorship before it is too late. Authoritarian regimes are huge obstructions to attempts at democracy. The first step is removing the dictator in order to permit a more lawful and inherently more democratic society. America must use nonmilitary approaches, such as diplomatic pressure, foreign aid, expansion of international radio and television supply, and immediate assistance to indigenous pro-democracy elements. Additionally, it would be a mistake to prohibit Islamist parties on the assumption that they are fundamentally undemocratic or subject to violence. The best way to marginalize violent radicals is to create room for as extensive a range of nonviolent viewpoint as possible. At the same time, emphasis should be placed on strengthening representation of minorities’ rights.
Western democracies should be kind and fair in sharing their knowledge of such areas as improving education, fighting corruption and promoting investment. Democracy will definitely come to the Arab world and replace old fashion political system, but the above-mentioned actions must be taken immediately. It is also worth mentioning since the Arab and Muslim world is so intertwined that Islam is a religion that contains moral principles, which cannot be changed; democracy on the other hand is a political ideology that can be adapted and applied into a Muslim government without arguing and criticizing Islam’s moral principles. If other democracies are to be borne in the Middle East, America must first take steps toward solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in a way that incorporates rather than alienates all elements of society, even those who espouse Islamic beliefs and support an Islamic-based government.
Democracies like any form of government have both pros and cons that come along with it. The form of democracy that is trying to be installed in the West Bank and Gaza strip is particularly problematic. The dilemma facing democracy for the Palestinian people is legitimacy. The main opposition to democracy, an Islamic State, gains legitimacy much easier. An Islamic State gains its legitimacy from the Islamic faith; promising equality, justice, social welfare, and order. A democracy gains legitimacy from both the people it governs and from other nations. Palestinian democracy is failing in both these categories.
The Palestinian people do not have faith in their governing body to lead effectively and, this can best be seen in the recent elections, in which the fundamentalist group Hamas won 74 of 132 parliamentary seats. According to President Jimmy Carter, who was present for the elections, exit polling showed that only 1% of the people supported instituting Islamic Law, and 73% supported a two-state solution with Israel (Carter pg. 185). The vote for Hamas contradicts Hamas’s goals as an organization; a fundamentalist group like Hamas cannot accept the existence of Israel, and wishes for Islamic Law. But because the Palestinian people did not have faith in the Fatah lead Palestinian Authority they have moved to the polar opposite.
Democracies are only liable to their people, not foreign powers. In this sense Western and Israeli actions undermine Palestinian democracy greatly. Israeli control over the economy and Palestinian budget display foreign influence on what should be controlled by a complete democracy. In 2005 $849 million of the Palestinian $2.15 billion budget came from Israel; this is the payment of taxes collected by the Israelis on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas’s election the Israelis have withheld this money as a form of collective punishment (Brown pg. 6). Here lies another problem with this democracy, in any true democracy the people’s options can not be limited. The election of a group that would like to abolish the system that gives them power, like Hamas, is a threat to the democratic system. But, a democracy cannot act in an authoritarian manner, and dissolve a parliament, or change election days due to the election of an unwanted party.
Israeli control over Palestinian movement, resources, and security all take legitimacy away from the Palestinian Authority. Israel also controls the Palestinian market place, as President Abbas explained to President Carter.
“Israel had taken more control of the consumer and production sectors of the area’s [West Bank] economy, making it an exclusive market for many Israeli products even among the local Palestinian citizen, who could not sell their own products in Israel, Jordan, or other Places (Carter pg. 183).”

Governing bodies must have complete sovereignty, the ability to control an economy, borders, and taxation cannot be controlled by external forces; the democracy that is being installed in Palestine is setup for failure, because it is undermined by external forces.
The ability for democracy and the Islamic religion to coexist is an issue for many; fundamentalists believe it is impossible for democracy and Islam to coexist. Fundamentalists view Islam as all encompassing, and because Islam is derived from God it is perfect, unlike the easy corruptible and imperfect laws of man. Muqtedar Khan, Director of international studies at Adrian College in Michigan, believes that Islam and democracy are not totally incompatible. He looks to the Quran for his evidence and says,
“While sovereignty belongs to God, it has been delegated in the form of human agency (Quran 2:30). The political task is to reflect on how this God-given agency can be best employed in creating a society that will bring welfare and goodness to the population ... God is sovereign in all affairs, but God has exercised sovereignty by delegating some of it in the form of human agency. God cannot become an excuse for installing and legitimizing governments that are not accountable to their citizens and responsive to their needs (USIP, pg. 5).”

Khan’s does not believe that Islam and democracy are one in the same, but does not want people to believe that the two are as incompatible as fundamentalists would have people believe. Another example of unity between democracy and Islam can be found in the compact of Medina, referred to by some scholars as Dustur al-Madina (the Constitution of Medina). When the Profit Muhammad created his Islamic state he ruled as the political head, because of a compact that was signed by Muslims from Mecca and Medina; and Jews of Medina. Khan points out that this compact is not a modern constitution but can be viewed as a “guiding principle (USIP, pg. 5).” A true democracy would give power to the Palestinian people; but the form exported to the region is inefficient, lacks of legitimacy, and is viewed as an opposition to the Islamic faith.
As it is in the best interests of the world community, more powerful nations have played very significant roles in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the subsequent peace efforts. Since 1973, America has given about $1.6 trillion dollars to Israel in terms of economic and military support meanwhile economic support for Palestine has averaged around $55 million dollars a year. Despite accusations of human rights violations, America currently gives Israel $3 billion dollars a year in military aid, a sharp contrast with the $0 dollars given to the Palestinian Authority for military aid (Miller, pg. 132). Current President George W. Bush has not detoured from the road that past Presidents have followed in the support of Israel. The current government has advocated democracy in the Middle East, particularly in this region. In January 2005, upon President Abbas election as President of the Palestinian National Authority, President Bush lauded the democratic efforts of Palestine (he previously denounced Yasser Arafat). In 2002, President Bush announced a plan for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian called “The Road Map” which, as of this date, has yet to bear any results.
The European Union as a whole seems to differ with the United States in terms of supporting a peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The European Union tends to view Israel as an occupying state in the West Bank and Gaza strip, therefore making it responsible for the political and social human rights violations (Bassam Al-Salhi, pg. 15). The European Union is seen as the leader of financial aid to Palestine giving over $400 million to rebuild Palestine internally (Asmus, pg. 52). The EU supports peace and democracy in the region, but calls on more of an effort from Israel to ensure peace and democracy in the region in addition to President Bush’s “Road Map.”
The United Nations has been criticized by many of the Zionist movement for focusing too much on Human rights. In 2007, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their property and land in Israel and to ensure that the bodies responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population (Dershowitz, pg. 71). The UN Security Council has made many attempts to halt Israeli military operations in certain areas (such as Gaza). One resolution halting such actions condemned “the military operations being carried out by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Gaza Strip, in particular the attack that took place in Beit Hanoun on 8 November 2006, which have caused loss of civilian life and extensive destruction of Palestinian property and vital infrastructure (Dershowitz, pg. 72).” The United States, a powerful member of the Security Council, vetoed this resolution.
There are three key issues of the major powers that are delaying the peace process in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One of the key problems is the United States role in the peace process between Israel and Palestine and its inability to display diplomatic strength (Kurtzer, pg. 41). Similarly to the peace efforts made at Camp David by President Bill Clinton, President Bush’s “Road Map” came to an abrupt dead end when Hamas was elected into the Palestinian government. Instead of discontinuing the effort, The United States must pursue the process of peace by holding both Palestine and Israel equally accountable for any breaches of peaceful efforts. The United States seems too quick to denounce the actions of Palestine, while never quite fully holding Israel accountable for its actions.
The second key issue is the lack of uniformity. The European Union along with the United Nations differ from the United States in their ideologies to the handling of the situation between Israel and Palestine. One criticism from the EU towards the US is that the US has been too biased in regards to peace between Israel and Palestine (Bassam Al-Salhi, pg. 15). The idea of a possible induction of Israel into the EU to curb its policies and help persuade the United States to take more action seems to be becoming more of a viable option. Greater disparity between the major powers positions on the issue will not aid the progress of peace talks between Israel and Palestine. In order for there to be peace between Palestine and Israel, these major powers must come to a consensus on handling of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Finally, the third issue is the ongoing violence between Israel and Palestine which has stalled peace and democratic efforts. Democracy can be effective in Palestine, but in order for it to be effective there must be an attempt to create peace between these two territories. It is not the flaws of democracy that lead to the problems in Palestine, but the inability of the government to be effective. Democracies represent the needs of the people, but in the case of Palestine, the people’s frustration with the government’s lack of action in dealing with the Israeli occupation has fostered violent behavior. The major necessity of the Palestinian people, which is to have a solution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, can only be attained through a resolution of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.
Even with help from the West, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contains many important aspects that must be addressed in order to attain the most democratic and peaceful results. Perhaps the most pressing of these problems – as without this, none of the other problems can be fully addressed – is the question of whether a unified binational state should emerge in Palestine, or if Israel should remain a Jewish state and a state of Palestine should emerge separately.
If democracy is to endure in the land of Palestine, all aspects of the peace process must be addressed in a democratic manner. Thus, it is important to strive for the solution that most Palestinians and Israelis support. In a March 2007 poll of roughly 1,200 Palestinians (in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), 46.7 percent preferred the idea of a two-state solution to that of a binational one. Only 26.5 preferred a binational state on all of historic Palestine, and the rest preferred other solutions by smaller margins. The idea of a binational state is in some ways more democratic than a two-state solution, primarily in that it would encourage unity and bargaining between Israelis and Palestinians since they would have to work together to maintain a government. However, it has always been the less popular of the two main options. The strongest opposition to the idea of a binational state comes from Israelis who realize in a single-state solution, they would no longer live in a “Jewish state.” They would be living in a combined Arab-Jewish state, and if population trends continue at current rates, Palestinians will already outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories by roughly 2020, even if a solution is not attained. In that scenario, the Israeli government would be forced to decide if it would maintain its status as a Jewish state – and in so doing, basically become an apartheid state – or if it would accept a future as a non-Jewish state – and in so doing, become a fully democratic state. Thus, the idea of a two-state solution is more appealing to Israelis just as much as it is to Palestinians.
Since the two-state solution is popular with quite a mandate among both sides, and is in the best interests of all parties involved, the other details of peace are able to be negotiated later. Additionally, they can be negotiated in a democratic fashion by America acting as a third party negotiator and affording equal and fair treatment to both sides. If representatives from both sides of the conflict can be brought together and can agree on the idea of a two-state solution, the rest of the issues (refugees, borders, Jerusalem, etc.) can be discussed and solved in a mutually agreeable fashion.
Regardless of the long-term solution to the conflict, whether one-state or two-state, democracy will serve as an integral part of its success. In a one-state solution, democracy would be evident in the equal cooperation and incorporation of both Israelis and Palestinians into the governmental process. In a two-state solution, the State of Israel and the State of Palestine would become interdependent on one another in pursuing a lasting and prosperous peace. For much of history, democracies have demonstrated that there are peaceful and diplomatic ways to reconcile difference without resorting to violence and warfare. The overwhelming support on both sides for an amicable two-state solution to the conflict demonstrates that there is a willingness in the land of Palestine to strive toward a just and peaceful democracy. Furthermore, the successful solving of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would serve as a model for the rest of the Middle East and is the best possible chance of achieving peace and democracy in the rest of the area and even the rest of the world. The attainment of peace is part of the necessary groundwork for functioning democracies, and the democratic elements in both Israeli and Palestinian societies will in turn help foster stability and civil society.

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Islamo-Fascism

2007-09-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

Actually, it appears that Martin Kramer is "senior Middle East advisor to the Giuliani campaign."JonOn Wed, Sep 12, 2007 04:05 PM, Mohammad Fadel wrote:
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Gabriele,

Your post is excellent. I am coming to believe, unfortunately, that this is an extremely dangerous movement. Rudy Giulani, who may very well be the next President of the United States, has Horowitz as his national security adviser, and uses the term frequently. My suspicion is that his entire campaign will be about “Islamofascism.” Of course, Rudy himself displays many of the characteristics of the fascism you described in your post. We can only watch and pray.

Mohammad Fadel
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
78 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5
Canada

(416) 946-0589 (office)
(416) 978-7899 (fax)
From: Section for the study of Islam, American Academy of Religion [mailto:ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU] On Behalf Of Dr. G. MarranciSent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 2:58 PMTo: ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDUSubject: Re: [ISLAMAAR] David Horowitz "Declares" Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on Campus

Dear all,I have tried to engage with a comment on my personal blog http://marranci.wordpress.com/ with Horowitz&Co. after three days they have not answered, commented or even tried to reply my questions. Coming from a family who lived Fascism from both the side (as oppressed and oppressors, see the post for more) I think that I needed to explain in a clear way my total opposition to the term Islamo-Fascism itself Ramadan Mubarak to all Gabriele
On 10/09/2007, James S. Pasto <jpasto@bu.edu > wrote:
This defination makes it worse in my view: it is too abstract, too broad, too personified. It sounds like "the Jews" or "Islam" or "the Orient" in other contexts, and, like these, it has shades of collective guilt and demonization. On top of it, you apply it selectively; but in the terms of the your descriptions we could also say that "the West" exploited European immigrant wage workers and busted miners unions in 1920s Virgina; "the West" put Italians and Italian Americans (yes, and some Germans) in concentration camps during WWII; "the West" colonized the Irish, shipped them to the United States, conscripted them into civil war, put them in eastern slumes, and then burned down their churches. Dosen't this sound ridiculous; it does to me. Where does "the West" end and the other demons start? Mind you: I don't defend any of the negative events you pointed out. I just don't think "the West" did them. Same goes for the positive things.
Let's try to think of another way of thinking and talking about these things.
I'm not part of any West; I'm from Southern Italy (smile).
Pace,
James
Quoting Tugrul Keskin <tugrulk@VT.EDU>:> The argument about about Horowitz in reverse is an interesting one. However,> I should have been more clear regarding exactly what I meant by "the West."> My thoughts on the West are as follows:>> 'The West' to me is the broad entity that is responsible for occupying> Vietnam. In this context, the West killed 2 million Vietnamese and> permanently wounded more than 300,000 others with 30 per cent disability. At> the same time, there were half a million defective births as a result of> Agent Orange gas and another 3 million innocent people victims of Agent> Orange. 58,000 Americans died and 75,000 were severely disabled.>> The West is responsible for occupying Iraq a century ago in order to protect> Western interests, thus, creating this mess we have today in the Middle> East. The West supported the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein against> Iran, resulting in 500.000 deaths. The West also has produced 80% of the> world's total land mines (Austria, China, France, Germany, Italy, the former> Soviet Union, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) and many> millions of people have been killed or disabled, from Afghanistan to Africa.>> The West occupied Iraq in 2002 in order to install a so-called> democracy, like British did at the beginning of 20th century. But the real> meaning behind the occupation was not democracy, it was exploitation and> Colonialization. As a result of the occupation, according to Britain's most> respected medical journal, The Lancet in October 2006, 654,965 Iraqi> citizens had been killed (at least 392,979 and as many as 942,636). In June> 2007, these numbers totaled 785,957 Iraqi civilian deaths and 1,414,723> serious injuries.>> The West is responsible for failing to help the poor of New Orleans in the> aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many poor people of New Orleans have sine> moved to Texas and have been staying in shelters following the disaster.>> The West is responsible for not helping the Rwandan people and the result> was more than half a million deaths. This is because the Rwandans did not> have oil and also because they are blacks. The West also supported the> South African apartheid regime for 30 years, and has supported Light Islam -> Ilimli Islam (a Green belt project by the CIA) against the Soviets in order> to create an Islamic resistance against atheist and anti-capitalist regimes.> The result has been the creation of its own enemy such as Dr. Jekyll and> Frankenstein; also similar to Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden. This was an> unintended consequences of Western imperialism.>> The West is responsible for killing 6 million Jews and 600.000 gypsies under> the Third Reich. The West put Japanese-Americans into reservation camps> during WWII; on the other hand why they did not put German-Americans into> camps, perhaps because of race?>> The West is also responsible for having killed the democratically elected> Chilean President, Salvador Allende, in addition to overthrowing the> Mussadiq Regime in Iran and installing a puppet, the Shah; as is the case in> Iraq and Afghanistan today.>> The definition of the West can go on longer than you can imagine. The West> as I have tried to define it here is not a geographical location, but it is> rather an ideology or mentality of racism, imperialism and colonialism. This> can be in the East or in the West. To me, there is no difference between> people who are suffering under the occupation of Iraq and people in New> Orleans who have suffered from poverty and exclusion.>> I think the West is the empire as Negri defines it, or what Neil Smith> refers to as the American Empire or it may be Saddam Regime in the east or> Pol Pot in Cambodia.>> On the other hand, there is another West that is known to promote equality,> modernity, human rights and to do so without Orientalist and Imperialistic> interests. The West in this case is an entity to be admired, whom I enjoy> learning from; such as the Frankfurt school, the American Civil Liberty> Union, or such figureheads as Amy Goodman from www.democracynow.org or> Amnesty International, or Howard Zinn, Norman Finkelstein or Ward Churchill> or Marx or Hannah Arendt or Weber. The list goes on.>> Is this Horowitz in reverse? I don't think so. The mirror reflects the image> itself. I also consider myself as a Western-oriented person, but oriented> towards the ideal of the West not the West as it is in practice, as I have> tried to explain above.>> With peace, but not the Western-imposed peace on the Japanese at the end of> WW II.>> Which West do you consider yourselves to be a part of?>>> Best to all,>> tugrul>>>>>>> On 9/9/07 8:54 AM, "James Pasto" <jpasto@BU.EDU> wrote:>>> Dear Vernon,>>>> My post was general with respect to the post from Tugral Keshkin. Two quotes>> caught my attention:>>>> "Imperialism, Colonialism, Orientalism and the exclusion of others has been>> hidden within the culture of racism in the West.">>>> And (especially)>>>> "The new enemy is Islam and the next one might be China unless, racism as>> an ideology created in the West diminishes from people's minds and tolerance>> starts to flourish in its absence">>>> There was also the list of selective, exclusive Others - "niggers...dirty>> Mexicans...uncivilized Africans...and greedy Chinese," which are claimed to>> be equivalent to calling someone an "Islamofacist.">>>> I referred to this as essentializing and labeling. It recreates the colonial>> boundaries it claims to refute. It doesn't' change the subject with>> Horowitz; the subject was, for me, Horowitz in reverse.>>>> Peace,>>>> James>>>>>>>> -----Original Message----->> From: Section for the study of Islam, American Academy of Religion>> [mailto:ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU] On Behalf Of Vernon Schubel>> Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2007 5:10 PM>> To: ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU>> Subject: Re: [ISLAMAAR] David Horowitz "Declares" Islamo-Fascism Awareness>> Week on Campus>>>> Dear Prof. Pasto:>>>> To whom is your post directed. I didn't hear anyone in this thread>> deny that only the West could be hegemonic. Intolerance is unfortunately>> everywhere. It is interesting to note that only "the West" came up with>> plantation slavery based on skin color. But intolerance has been>> everywhere at some point and to some degree. I don't see how that>> changes the subject from Horowitz.>>>> Selamlar,>>>> Vernon>>>>>>>> James Pasto wrote:>>> I have to be honest, here; it irks me when in rejecting (rightly)>>> Islamofacist and other essentializing practices, you fall right into more>>> essentializing and labeling.>>>>>> So, it is only in "the West," that labeling occurs or occurred? So is it>>> only these selected "Others" who are labeled? What about "Dagos" and>>> "Micks?" The Spanish Empire included southern Italy. The British Empire>>> included Ireland (and still does according to some people). The slave>> trade>>> went both ways. Did Hindus and Muslims never labeled conquered-others?>> Were>>> Ancient Egyptians and Assyrians "westerners" then?>>>>>> Are you really putting forth the idea that racism and intolerance are>>> products of "the West?">>>>>> This sounds like David Horowitz in reverse? And I thought he was "the>>> reverser.">>>>>> How on earth do we get out of this thinking the thinking is just like>> this?>>>>>> Peace,>>>>>> Jim Pasto>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -----Original Message----->>> From: Section for the study of Islam, American Academy of Religion>>> [mailto:ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU] On Behalf Of Vernon Schubel>>> Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 11:00 PM>>> To: ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU>>> Subject: Re: [ISLAMAAR] David Horowitz "Declares" Islamo-Fascism Awareness>>> Week on Campus>>>>>> Friends,>>>>>> Mea Culpa. I thought I was sending this to the Sociology of Islam list>>> because>>> I saw Prof. Keskin's name. Sorry to have repeated some of my earlier>>> statements>>> on the AAR list.>>>>>> Selamlar again,>>>>>> Vernon>>>>>>>>>>>> Quoting Tugrul Keskin <tugrulk@VT.EDU>:>>>>>>>>>> First of all, the idea of 'Islamofascism' or the labeling of others is>> not>>>>>>> a>>>>>>> New phenomenon to the West. Imperialism, Colonialism, Orientalism and the>>>> exclusion of others has been hidden within the culture of racism in the>>>> West.>>>>>>>> For example, 'nigger' is a term that is not a different than calling>>>> others 'Islamofascist.' The definition of this word may be equated>>>> with nigger, or the 'macaca nation' (remember George Allen's comment>>>> regarding>>>> the Macaca nation), also similar to 'dirty Mexican,' or 'uncivilized>>>> Africans,'>>>> 'greedy Chinese' and a long list of others as a product of imperialist>> and>>>> racist thought.>>>>>>>> Secondly, lately in the US, some scholars are using the terms Liberal and>>>> Fundamentalist Islam to differentiate between 'good Islam' and 'bad>> Islam'>>>> -in order to define the interest of imperialism.>>>>>>>> Actually, to me it is more accurate to remove the first two words from>>>>>>> this>>>>>>> orientalistic (re-)definition and use only the word Islam. The text of>> the>>>> religion is the same in all cases, it is not different from in the>> Sahaba,>>>> Andulus or Ottoman period.>>>>>>>> Therefore, I do not think it is good idea to identify Islam as liberal or>>>> fundamentalist, these terms apply only to people, not to the religion>>>> itself.>>>> We may use progressive Muslims, not progressive Islam. Islam is what it>>>>>>> is.>>>>>>> Whether Islam is fundamentalist (bad Islam) or liberal (good Islam),>> Islam>>>> is>>>> a threat to Imperialism, because imperialism is based on the idea>>>> of the creating enemy in order to survive and exploit the people (like in>>>> Iraq today).>>>> The new enemy is Islam and the next one might be China unless, racism as>>>>>>> an>>>>>>> ideology>>>> created in the West diminishes from people's minds and tolerance starts>> to>>>> flourish>>>> in its absence. However, after listening to presidential candidate>>>>>>> Tancredo,>>>>>>> I am a>>>> little pessimistic about this artificial flourishing.>>>>>>>> I think we should all begin to celebrate the Islamofascism Awareness Week>>>>>>> at>>>>>>> the DePaul University where the tenure of Norman Finkelstein was denied.>>>>>>>> tugrul>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -->>>> Tugrul Keskin>>>>>>>> Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University>>>> Department of Sociology>>>> 560 McBryde Hall>>>> Blacksburg, VA 24061 - USA>>>> Cell:202-378-8606>>>> http://www.vt.edu>>>>>>>> " You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality.>>>> Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.">>>>>>>> Malcolm X>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On 9/6/07 10:56 AM, "Daniel Martin Varisco">> <Daniel.M.Varisco@HOFSTRA.EDU>>>>> wrote:>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mohammed,>>>>> Thank you for this eloquent rejoinder. The problem we face as>>>>>>>>> scholars>>>>>>>>> and or practitioners who know something about the historical and>>>>>>>>> contemporary>>>>>>>>> diversity of a religion-made-into-a-culture called "Islam" is that our>>>>>>>>> efforts>>>>>>>>> at showing nuance are anathema to those with an ideological agenda that>>>>>>>>> blinds>>>>>>>>> them to the dangers of their own fear-mongering. In my quite>>>>>>>> intentionally>>>>>>>> sarcastic Tabsir ( http://tabsir.net/?p=305) retort to the ludicrous>>>>>>>>> Horowitz>>>>>>>>> campus blitz to discredit Islam by reducing it to a form of fascism, I>>>>>>>>> became>>>>>>>>> the recipient of a flurry (at least for the blog) of negative comments>>>>>>>> from>>>>>>>> Spencer and Horowitz supporters who automatically equated criticism of a>>>>> loaded term like "Islamofascism" with either a defense of terrorist acts>>>>>>>> or>>>>>>> a>>>>>>>>> naivete that encourages a supposed global enemy. It is interesting>>>>>>>> (not>>>>>>> in a>>>>>>>>> very positive sense) to look at some of the comments to the post for>>>>>>>> their>>>>>>>> failure to distinguish between actions done by a few politically>>>>>>>> motivated>>>>>>>> individuals in the name of a religion (9/11 for example) and what the>>>>>>>> vast>>>>>>>> majority of Muslims believe and do, not to mention the widespread>>>>>>>>> condemnation>>>>>>>>> of such acts by Muslims. Fascism is fascism. There is nothing inherent>>>>>>>> in>>>>>>>> Islam that breeds terrorism any more than there has been in the>>>>>>>> progressive>>>>>>>> evolution of Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism or secularism. The St.>>>>> Bartholomew's Day massacre is hardly the essence of Catholic>>>>>>>> Christianity,>>>>>>> nor>>>>>>>>> for that matter the political motivations in the Crusades. And>>>>>>>> certainly>>>>>>>> oppression of women, a fundamental concern of every Women's Studies>>>>>>>> Program>>>>>>> I>>>>>>>>> know, is not confined to any specific culture or religion. Ideologues>>>>>>>> who>>>>>>>> live in societies with glass ceilings should not throw stones... Abuse>>>>>>>> is>>>>>>>> abuse, no matter how it is justified. Violence is violence, no matter>>>>>>>> how>>>>>>> it>>>>>>>>> is spun in anger and frustration and revenge. I categorically condemn>>>>>>>> it,>>>>>>> as>>>>>>>>> I suspect does just about everyone else on this list. This is an>>>>>>>> important>>>>>>>> issue, since Horowitz, Pipes and their allies seek to discredit scholars>>>>>>>>> who>>>>>>>>> do not share their agenda of hate and misinformation. So I invite>>>>>>>>> colleagues>>>>>>>>> to post their thoughts on all this somewhere (the blog Tabsir is open to>>>>>>>>> all>>>>>>>>> who have something informative to say).>>>>>>>>>> Dan>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Martin Varisco>>>>> Chair and Professor Anthropology>>>>> Hofstra University>>>>> Hempstead, NY 11549>>>>> Daniel.M.Varisco@hofstra.edu>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Sep 6, 2007, at 1:11 PM, Mohammad Fadel wrote:>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Thank you for forwarding this. The statement, however, does not seem>>>>>>>>> to>>>>>>> get>>>>>>>>>> us very far. How is one to distinguish between a ³believing² Muslim>>>>>>>>> and a>>>>>>>>> ³fundamentalist² Muslim when many accuse observant Muslims because of>>>>>>>>>> their>>>>>>>>>> observance of historically orthodox Islamic norms of being>>>>>> ³fundamentalists.² It is my general impression (although I am happy to>>>>>>>>> be>>>>>>>>> corrected) that Women Living under Muslim Laws falls into the same>>>>>>>>>> category>>>>>>>>>> of those who claim to distinguish between ³believing² Muslims and>>>>>> ³fundamentalists,² but in fact end up making no such distinction in>>>>>>>>>> practice>>>>>>>>>> other than to imply that outward manifestations of Islam, e.g. wearing>>>>>>>>> a>>>>>>>>> head-scarf in the case of woman, growing a beard in the case of a man,>>>>>>>>> or>>>>>>>>> observing daily prayers, especially in a mosque, are prima facie>>>>>>>>> evidence>>>>>>> of>>>>>>>>>> fundamentalism, and therefore can be legitimately repressed. Moreover,>>>>>> accepting the political rights of religiously-based groups within a>>>>>> constitutional framework does not constitute ³support² or ³endorsement²>>>>>>>>> of>>>>>>>>> that group¹s political agenda, merely recognition of their political>>>>>> membership in that society. That is surely what WIB meant when it>>>>>> recognized Hamas as the legitimate victor in Palestinian elections.>>>>>> Presumably, in any society in which ordinary ³believing² Muslims>>>>>>>>> exist,>>>>>>> one>>>>>>>>>> would expect that the expectations of such citizens would influence>>>>>>>>>> political>>>>>>>>>> outcomes. Yet, this statement seems to posit the existence of good>>>>>> ³believing² Muslims whose convictions are politically irrelevant and>>>>>>>>> evil>>>>>>>>> fundamentalists who conspire to seek political power. This very>>>>>>>>> dichotomy>>>>>>> is>>>>>>>>>> precisely that which supports the Islamo-fascist movement, hence her>>>>>> reticence in opposing it. In western democracies, no such dichotomy is>>>>>> assumed to exist in believers. Instead, what is at issue is the>>>>>>>>>> particular>>>>>>>>>> claims made by individual citizens, and whether those claims can be>>>>>> constitutionally accommodated. In other words, we do not attempt to>>>>>>>>>> condemn>>>>>>>>>> the religious right as ³Christo-fascists² and on that basis exclude>>>>>>>>> them>>>>>>> from>>>>>>>>>> the political process. Instead, we have a political and judicial>>>>>>>>> system>>>>>>> that>>>>>>>>>> operates to ensure (or tries to, sometimes more or less successfully)>>>>>>>>> to>>>>>>>>> limit political claims of religious groups to areas that are>>>>>>>>>> constitutionally>>>>>>>>>> permissible. There is no reason why precisely the same approach cannot>>>>>>>>> be>>>>>>>>> used with Muslim groups in the west. That, however, means recognizing>>>>>>>>>> their>>>>>>>>>> full rights to religious freedom on an equal basis as other groups,>>>>>>>>>> something>>>>>>>>>> that Horowitz (and perhaps Muslims Living under Muslim Laws) are>>>>>>>>> unwilling>>>>>>> to>>>>>>>>>> tolerate, albeit for different reasons. Both agree on the need to>>>>>>>>>> suppress>>>>>>>>>> public manifestations of Islam, and in that, they share many of the>>>>>>>>> same>>>>>>>>> views of Islam and Muslims. It is not surprising that they use the>>>>>>>>> same>>>>>>>>> rhetoric, as exhibited by the debate inCanada regarding use of Islamic>>>>>>>>> law>>>>>>> in>>>>>>>>>> the arbitration of family law disputes. Indeed, Daniel Pipes rejoiced>>>>>>>>> in>>>>>>> the>>>>>>>>>> outcome of that debate. So, forgive me if I am a little skeptical of>>>>>>>>>> their>>>>>>>>>> attempt to distance themselves from Horowitz et al.>>>>>>>>>>>> Best regards,>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mohammad Fadel>>>>>> Assistant Professor of Law>>>>>> University of Toronto Faculty of Law>>>>>> 78 Queen's Park>>>>>> Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5>>>>>> Canada>>>>>>>>>>>> (416) 946-0589 (office)>>>>>> (416) 978-7899 (fax)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From: Section for the study of Islam, American Academy of Religion>>>>>> [mailto:ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU] On Behalf Of Danielle Widmann Abraham>>>>>> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 11:41 AM>>>>>> To: ISLAMAAR@LISTS.PSU.EDU>>>>>> Subject: Re: [ISLAMAAR] David Horowitz "Declares" Islamo-Fascism>>>>>>>>> Awareness>>>>>>>>> Week on Campus>>>>>>>>>>>> Concerning the "islamo-fascist awareness week" - below are some>>>>>>>>> thoughts>>>>>>>>> from Marieme Hélie-Lucas, long time>>>>>> coordinator of the European Bureau of Women Living Under Muslim Laws,>>>>>>>>> for>>>>>>>>> those of you who are interested in following this issu.>>>>>>>>>>>> [originally sent to Women In Black international list, and forwarded>>>>>>>>> with>>>>>>>>> Marieme's permission.]>>>>>>>>>>>> Danielle>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> _________________________________________________________________________>>>>>>>>> Dear friends in WIB,>>>>>>>>>>>> In response to the mail alerting us about this event against 'islamo>>>>>> fascism' led by conservative forces, I think there is a need for>>>>>> clarification from us, who lived under 'islamo fascism' :>>>>>>>>>>>> First of all, let me say that the term 'islamo fascism' has been>>>>>>>>> initially>>>>>>>>> coined by Algerian people struggling for democracy, against armed>>>>>> fundamentalist forces decimating people in our country, then later>>>>>>>>>> operating>>>>>>>>>> in Europe, where a number of us had taken refuge.>>>>>> For us, it has never been equated to Islam, but it points at>>>>>>>>>> fundamentalists>>>>>>>>>> only : i.e. at political forces working under the cover of religion in>>>>>>>>>> order>>>>>>>>>> to gain political power and to impose a theocracy ( The Law - singular>>>>>>>>> ->>>>>>> of>>>>>>>>>> God, unchangeable, a-historical, interpreted by self appointed old men)>>>>>> over democracy ( i.e. the laws - plural - voted by the people and>>>>>>>>>> changeable>>>>>>>>>> by the will of the people).>>>>>>>>>>>> For fundamentalists indeed are ideologically close to fascism/nazism.>>>>>>>>> Of>>>>>>>>> course one cannot equate Muslim fundamentalism to fascism because those>>>>>> phenomena happened in different times and history. However, there are>>>>>> similarities that should ring a bell to our ears : just like fascists,>>>>>> Muslim fundamentalists believe not in a superior race but in a superior>>>>>> creed, like nazis they believe that non believers or 'kofr' are>>>>>> 'untermensch' ( some of them even used this very term !) that should be>>>>>> physically eliminated ( and please please please remember that it is'>>>>>> Muslims' who do not adhere with their version of Islam that are first>>>>>> targeted by Muslim fundamentalists and are their first victims); like>>>>>> fascists they believe in a mythical past ( whether the Ancient Rome of>>>>>>>>> the>>>>>>>>> Golden Age of Islam) that justifies their superiority ; like fascists>>>>>>>>> they>>>>>>>>> are pro-capitalists; like fascists they put women in their place (>>>>>>>>> church,>>>>>>>>> kitchen and cradle); etc...>>>>>> This is why we called them 'islamo fascists'.>>>>>>>>>>>> The fact that this term has now been recuperated by the Right and even>>>>>>>>> the>>>>>>>>> Far Right, in order to express plain racism against supposedly>>>>>>>>> 'Muslim'>>>>>>>>> people is terrible and should of course be combatted.>>>>>> However we have seen over and over again in Europe well meaning people>>>>>> siding - de facto - with fundamentalists, in the name of defence of>>>>>> 'Muslims' or of 'Islam', and walking hand in hand with them in>>>>>> demonstrations.>>>>>> I therefore urge you to carefully plan how you are going to oppose the>>>>>> 'awareness week on islamo fascism,' in ways that will support the>>>>>>>>>> democratic>>>>>>>>>> forces and women within Muslim countries, and NOT reinforce the>>>>>> fundamentalist fascist forces.>>>>>> Please remember that fundamentalist forces are those who slaughter>>>>>>>>> women>>>>>>>>> everywhere in Muslim countries and communities, those who promote war>>>>>>>>> not>>>>>>>>> peace. You cannot support them in the name of anti racism and human>>>>>>>>> rights>>>>>>>>> without signing our own death penalty at the same time.>>>>>>>>>>>> If you demonstrate, as i hope you will, please>>>>>> - SUPPORT democratic anti fundamentalist forces in our countries, do>>>>>>>>> not>>>>>>> let>>>>>>>>>> fundamentalist forces manipulate you in the name of human rights.>>>>>> - Make a clear cut difference between 1. migrants from Muslim>>>>>>>>> countries,>>>>>>>>> 2.Muslim believers ( who are the only ones who should be called>>>>>>>>>> 'Muslims'),>>>>>>>>>> 3. Islam, and 4. fundamentalists: these are different categories that>>>>>> cannot be intermingled without playing into fundamentalists' game, and>>>>>> against women.>>>>>>>>>>>> I take this opportunity to let all of you know how hurt and angry i was>>>>>>>>>> when>>>>>>>>>> a statement was discussed at the end of the WIB meeting in Valencia,>>>>>>>>> that,>>>>>>>>> in its first paragraph, supported Hamas as the legitimate winner of the>>>>>> 'democratic' elections of 2006.>>>>>> It is one thing to say that western governments used a supposedly>>>>>> antifundamentalist stance to play their own game in the Middle Eats. It>>>>>>>>> is>>>>>>>>> one thing to say that Palestinian people have a right to self>>>>>>>>>> determination.>>>>>>>>>> But, as a women's organization, it is another thing to support Hamas.>>>>>>>>> As>>>>>>>>> women against war, it is another thing to equate a democratic process>>>>>>>>> with>>>>>>>>> democracy and ignore the consequences on women...>>>>>> Let me explain my point : 'democracy' has to meanings; 1. it describes>>>>>>>>> a>>>>>>>>> process of political representation through the vote of all citizens,>>>>>>>>> and>>>>>>> 2.>>>>>>>>>> it also represents an ideal of justice, equity and equality . So far>>>>>> parliamentary democracy ( i.e. the vote of all the people) is better,>>>>>>>>>> more>>>>>>>>>> just, more representative of the people, than monarchy ( the rule of>>>>>>>>> one>>>>>>>>> leader), or oligarchy ( the rule of a selected group), etc... But we>>>>>>>>>> should>>>>>>>>>> not confuse the means - elections - with the aim - a just society. Yes,>>>>>> elections are generally the imperfect but best way to come closer to a>>>>>>>>>> more>>>>>>>>>> just society - however sometimes the people make a very wrong choice>>>>>>>>> that>>>>>>>>> denies justice to a part of the people : one should remember that>>>>>>>>> Hitler>>>>>>> was>>>>>>>>>> legally elected . Despite the fact that the rule of electoral process>>>>>>>>> had>>>>>>>>> been respected, his reign in Germany cannot be counted as a phase of>>>>>> democracy i.e. more just society - definitely not for Jews, Gypsies,>>>>>>>>> gays,>>>>>>>>> disabled people, communists and political opponents in general.>>>>>> One of us in Valencia was a Palestinian lesbian citizen of Israel : you>>>>>> cannot pretend to igniore the fact that, had she lived under Hamas'>>>>>>>>> rule,>>>>>>>>> she would not have been with us, nor would have she been alive. To me,>>>>>>>>>> very>>>>>>>>>> clearly, signing a statement in favor of Hamas was signing her death>>>>>>>>>> penalty>>>>>>>>>> in the name of the rights of the Palestinian people, which we all stand>>>>>>>>>> for.>>>>>>>>>> How could WIB do that ? How could WIB agree to a hierarchy of rights>>>>>>>>> in>>>>>>>>> which people's rights, minority rights, religious rights, cultural>>>>>>>>> rights,>>>>>>>>> etc... supercede women's rights? in which women's rights are subsumed>>>>>>>>> to>>>>>>> all>>>>>>>>>> these other rights?>>>>>>>>>>>> We, women, have to invent ways to defend basic human rights and>>>>>>>>> democracy,>>>>>>>>> to combat racism and discrimination, without trading the rights and>>>>>>>>> often>>>>>>>>> the lives of our sisters in doing so.>>>>>> It is a complex task, no doubt. But i do hope that WIB will face the>>>>>> challenge.>>>>>> The opposition to this event in the USA that confuses a whole>>>>>>>>> population>>>>>>> of>>>>>>>>>> migrant descent with Muslim fundamentalists would be a good opportunity>>>>>>>>> to>>>>>>>>> design ways to face the challenge. Thanks in advance to all of those>>>>>>>>> who>>>>>>>>> will at least make the attempt !>>>>>>>>>>>> All the best to all of you>>>>>>>>>>>> marieme helie lucas>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On 8/29/07, Daniel Martin Varisco <Daniel.M.Varisco@hofstra.edu>>>>>> Daniel.M.Varisco@hofstra.edu> > wrote:>>>>>>>>>>>> Colleagues,>>>>>>>>>>>> I take it as a good sign that Mr. Horowitz feels the need to>>>>>>>>> create>>>>>>> an>>>>>>>>>> Islamo-fascist awareness week and target Women's Studies Centers. I>>>>>>>>> had>>>>>>>>> naively assumed that the Islamophobic bias out there was so entrenched>>>>>>>>>> that>>>>>>>>>> such a week would be a waste of time. Maybe what we are doing is>>>>>>>>> having>>>>>>> an>>>>>>>>>> effect on campuses... At any rate, for those interested in a retort>>>>>>>>>> (which>>>>>>>>>> may be an exercise in equal inanity), I have posted about this slam>>>>>>>>> drunk>>>>>>>>> crusade on Tabsir today ( http://tabsir.net <http://tabsir.net> /).>>>>>>>>>> Comments>>>>>>>>>> invited on the blog.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dan>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Martin Varisco>>>>>>>>>>>> Chair and Professor Anthropology>>>>>>>>>>>> Hofstra University>>>>>>>>>>>> Hempstead, NY 11549>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel.M.Varisco@hofstra.edu Daniel.M.Varisco@hofstra.edu>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Aug 29, 2007, at 6:54 AM, David Fideler wrote:>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dear Friends,>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Whether this makes you laugh or weep, or a combination of>>>>>>>>>>>> both, this is a must-read:>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=59>>>>>>>>>> < http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=59>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> As is a click through to the original web page.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> If only Michael Moore would make a film about this event.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> David Fideler>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -->>>> Tugrul Keskin>>>>>>>> Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University>>>> Department of Sociology>>>> 560 McBryde Hall>>>> Blacksburg, VA 24061 - USA>>>> Cell:202-378-8606>>>> http://www.vt.edu>>>>>>>> " You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality.>>>> Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.">>>>>>>> Malcolm X>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> --> Tugrul Keskin>> Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University> Department of Sociology> 560 McBryde Hall> Blacksburg, VA 24061 - USA> Cell:202-378-8606> http://www.vt.edu>> " You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality.> Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.">> Malcolm X>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr. Gabriele Marranci Lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion College of Arts and Social Sciences School of Divinity, History and Philosophy University of Aberdeen, King's College Aberdeen, AB24 3UB. Office: +44 (0)1224-273112 Fax: +44 (0) 1224-273750 http://www.abdn.ac.uk/divinity/staff/details.php?id=g.marranci Founding Editor of Contemporary Islam: www.springer.com/journal/11562 Blog: http://www.tabsir.net/ *****************************Jonathan E. BrockoppDepartment of History and Religious StudiesPennsylvania State University406 Weaver BuildingUniversity Park, PA 16802 Phone: 814-863-1338 Fax: 814-863-7840http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/e/jeb38/

Darul Ulum Deoband on a Hard Drive?

2007-08-27T02:52:00.001-07:00

From: Nazim Mangera
To: the_ulama@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 25 August 2007 10:51 PM
Subject: [the_ulama] Darul Uloom Deoband on a Hard Drive?

Assalamu Alaikum,

In a previous email on the Ulama group, Maulana Omar Hussaini of Chicago sent out a very important email to our group which included many beneficial
suggestions. I wanted to expound on one of them. I think it's extremely
important that we digitally safeguard the knowledge of our illustrious scholars
and savants. Ever so quickly, the great scholars of the past century are
passing away. We need to save their knowledge and their method of teaching the
Darse Nizami books. The best way to do it IMHO nowadays is to record the class
lectures on a hard drive.

1 Lecture hour can be stored in 10 MB
1 GB = 100 lecture hours
100 GB = 10000 Lecture Hours
10000 Lecture Hours divided (/) by 15 Books in the whole year = 667 Hours per book.
667 hour per book / 2 hours per book = 333 Lecture Days

In other words in one year you can easily store class lectures of 15 books on a
100 GB Hard drive. Nowadays, you can even get 750GB~1TB (terabyte) hard disk
drives. In other words, you can store a whole Darul Uloom's classes on one
Hard Drive in audio files. Isn't that wonderful? Darul Uloom Deoband or
Darul Uloom Karachi or Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama or Darul Uloom Bowmanville (I
kid…) or any other Darul Uloom can easily be stored on one Hard Drive.

I estimate that it would only cost about $1000 (US) (including a good computer and a few mp3 players with voice recorders) to store a Darul Uloom on one hard
drive. That's peanuts compared to the amount of benefit we all can derive
from it. Not only the scholars of this group, but even Darul Ulooms across the
world and their teachers can use these lectures. If we wanted an explanation
on a certain Hadith or a Gunjalak (complicated) Ebarat, these audio files could play a huge role in making it easy for us to understand that Hadith or that
Ebarat.

The implementation is quite easy as well. Choose a few students from the various classes to record the class lectures and tell them to upload the
lectures from the mp3 player to a computer hard drive. I'm sure if we band
together and work collectively on this project, we can finalize the major and minor details of this initiative.

The other aspect of this idea is that we should ask the respected Ulama if they have recorded lessons of various classes. Ok respected Ulama. How many of you have stored lectures of your teachers on cassettes or cds? For example on the following site, they have uploaded Bukhari Lessons Jild One of Darul Uloom Deoband which I have downloaded onto cds and I listen to them especially whilst driving. Here's the site: http://www.duroos.net/Sahih%20Bukhari%20Deoband.htm

So Ulama, do you know of any Ulama who have recorded lessons? I know that Maulana Ismail Mayat of Batley, a teacher at Dewsbury, recorded Maulana Izharul Hasan's Dawrah Hadith lectures on many cassettes. Sheikhul Hadith Maulana Zakariyya (R.A.) had two beloved students and one of them was Maulana Izhar
(R.A.) who was a teacher at Nizamuddin Markaz. He was even requested by Darul
Uloom Deoband to come and teach at Darul Uloom Deoband but he had politely refused and continued teaching at Nizamuddin Markaz till the final day of his life.

Insha Allah I hope this initiative will one day see the light of day and we will be able to benefit from scholars from all across the world. The Darul Ulooms themselves should take up this task and record the lectures of their staff which would make it easy for us to collect them under one website.

Jazakumullah,
Nazim Mangera
Toronto, Canada

Awesome Architecture Brunei Moque

2007-08-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

FW: Awesome Architecture - Brunei Mosque
Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque
Built:
1958
Cost:
USD $5,000,000.00
Type:
Holy place
Observation deck:
Yes
Location:
Kampong Ayer, Bandar Seri Begawan (formerly Brunei Town)
· A mazing in appearance, but too beautiful to be true, The Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque is Brunei's proudest architectural achievement. It sits on an artificial lagoon near the Brunei River in Kampong Ayer, which is appropriately enough, known as a "water village." A structure in the water that resembles a ship was at one time used for official state ceremonies. The mosque is the largest in the Far East, and considered among the most beautiful in the world. It reaches a height of 52 meters and is topped with a gold dome supported by walls of Italian marble, which also forms the mosque's columns, arches, and towers. The stained glass was hand made in England and the carpets are Saudi Arabian.

2007-04-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence, 1, Ambler Street, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, BD8 8AW, Tel: (01274) 22 22 21, e-mail: askmuftisahib@itc-bradford.org
1

I am resident in the UK and will determine Eid al-Adhaa according to the announcement by the Saudi
authorities. I have arranged for my sacrifice to be performed through my relatives in Pakistan. My relatives
normally perform their own sacrifices on the first day of Eid and perform mine on the second day. As a
result of the announcement by the Saudi authorities, this year I will be celebrating Eid on Saturday, 30th
December 2006, which is two days before my relatives will be celebrating Eid in Pakistan. Their first day of
Eid is Monday, 1st January 2007. My questions are now as follows:
1. If my relatives continue to perform my sacrifice on their second day of Eid, i.e., on Tuesday, as this
will be the day following my third day of Eid, will my sacrifice be valid? I have been told that in this
case the location of the animal is the important factor. Is this true?
2. If my sacrifice will not be valid, what is the alternative for me?
3. If my relatives perform my sacrifice on Saturday or Sunday, even though their first day of Eid is on
Monday, will my sacrifice be valid?
4. If my relatives in Pakistan wish to perform their sacrifice in the UK on Saturday, even though their
first day of Eid is on Monday, will their sacrifice be valid if performed on Saturday?
5. If my relatives in Pakistan wish to perform their sacrifice in the UK on Tuesday or Wednesday, even
though my third day of Eid is on Monday, will their sacrifice be valid if performed on Tuesday or
Wednesday?
2nd Dhul Hijjah 1427
22nd December 2006
الجواب حامدا و مصليا و منه الصدق و الصواب
Firstly, it is important to mention a few preliminary points:
1. Sacrifice becomes wajib – obligatory upon the mukallaf – mature competent Muslim in possession of
his faculty of reason [who has also satisfied all the remaining requisite conditions of obligation]
upon the arrival of the true dawn of the 10th of Dhul Hijjah, irrespective of whether the mukallaf is
resident in a city, town or village.
2. Sacrifice does not become obligatory before the arrival of the true dawn of the 10th of Dhul Hijjah,
irrespective of whether the mukallaf is resident in a city, town or village. Any sacrifice performed
before this time is not valid.
3. The period of sacrifice extends until just before the sunset of the 12th of Dhul Hijjah, irrespective of
whether the mukallaf is resident in a city, town or village. Any sacrifice performed after this time is
not valid.
4. The night preceding the true dawn of the 10th of Dhul Hijjah and the night following the sunset of
the 12th of Dhul Hijjah are not valid times to perform the sacrifice.
5. It is an added condition for a mukallaf resident in a city or town performing the sacrifice there that
the sacrifice must be performed after the Eid salaah. Any sacrifice performed before the Eid salaah
is not valid due to the absence of this condition. This is not a condition for a mukallaf who is resident
in a village and is performing the sacrifice there. He may perform the sacrifice from the true dawn
of the 10th of Dhul Hijjah. [For the purposes of this discussion a city or town is a settlement that
satisfies the condition of settlement for the validity of the Jumu‘ah salaah, while a village is a
settlement that does not do so].
ففى المبسوط للسرخسى: ثم أول وقت الأضحية عند طلوع الفجر الثانى من يوم النحر إلا أن فى حق أهل الأمصار يشترط تقديم الصلاة
على الأضحية. فمن ضحى قبل الصلاة فى المصر لا تجزئه لعدم الشرط لا لعدم الوقت. ولهذا جازت التضحية فى القرى بعد انشقاق الفجر. ودخول
الوقت لا يختلف فى حق أهل الأمصار والقرى، إنما يختلف فى وجوب الصلاة. فليس على أهل القرى صلاة العيد و إنما عرفنا هذا فى حق أهل الأمصار
Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence, 1, Ambler Street, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, BD8 8AW, Tel: (01274) 22 22 21, e-mail: askmuftisahib@itc-bradford.org
2
قال: إنى عجلت نسيكتى لأطعم أهلى وجيرانى.  قال فى خطبته: من ضحى قبل الصلاة فليعد. فقام خالى أبو بردة بن بشارة  أن النبى  بحديث البراء بن عازب
فقال عليه الصلاة والسلام: تلك شاة لحم فأعد نسيكتك. فقال: عندى عتود خير من شاتين. فقال صلوات الله وسلامه عليه: تجزئك ولا تجزئ أحدا
بعدك. و قال عليه الصلاة والسلام: إن أول نسكنا فى هذا اليوم أن نصلى ثم نذبح. ومن ذبح من أهل الأمصار أضحيته قبل أن يصلى الإمام لم تجزه
عندنا. (كتاب الذبائح، باب الأضحية، 13:12 ) وكذا فى شرح النقاية (كتاب الأضحية، 269:2 ) ورد المحتار (كتاب الأضحية، 460:9 ) وتبيين الحقائق
( (كتاب الأضحية، 477:6 ) وفتح القدير (كتاب الأضحية، 431:8 ) وتكملة البحر الرائق ( كتاب الأضحية، 175:8
وفى المبسوط: (قال) (ولا بأس لأهل القرى أن يذبحوا الأضاحى بعد انشقاق الفجر) لما بينا أن دخول الوقت بانشقاق الفجر من يوم النحر إلا أن أهل
الأمصار عليهم الصلاة فيلزمهم مراعاة الترتيب ولا صلاة على أهل القرى لقوله عليه الصلاة والسلام: لا جمعة ولا تشريق إلا فى مصر جامع. (كتاب
( الذبائح، باب الأضحية، 24:12
وفى بدائع الصنائع: وأما وقت الوجوب فأيام النحر، فلاتجب قبل دخول الوقت لأن الواجبات المؤقتة لا تجب قبل أوقااكالصلاةوالصومونحوهما.
وأيام النحر ثلاثة: يوم الأضحى وهو اليوم العاشر من ذى الحجة والحادى عشر والثانى عشر. وذلك بعد طلوع الفجر من اليوم الأول إلى غروب الشمس
( من الثانى عشر. (كتاب التضحية، فصل فى وقت الوجوب، 285:6
وفى المحيط البرهانى: ولاتجوز التضحية فى الليلة الأولى من أيام النحر ويجوز فى الليلة الثانية والثالثة. فلم تجعل الليلة الأولى ههنا تبعا للنهار الآتى. إنما فعل
( كذلك رفقا بالناس حتى لايفومالحجلووقفوافىالليلةالأولىمنيومالنحر. (كتاب الأضحية، الفصل الثالث فى وقت الأضحية، 463:8
( وفى رد المحتار: والدليل على سببية الوقت امتناع التقديم عليه كامتناع تقديم الصلاة. (كتاب الأضحية، 453:9
وفى بدائع الصنائع: وأما الذى يرجع إلى وقت التضحية: فهو أالاتجوزقبلدخولالوقتلأنالوقتكماهوشرطالوجوبفهوشرطجوازإقامةالواجبكوقتالصلاة. فلا يجوز لأحد أن يضحى قبل طلوع الفجر الثانى من اليوم الأول من أيام النحر، و يجوز بعد طلوعه، سواء كان من أهل المصر
أو من أهل القرى، غير أن للجواز فى حق أهل المصر شرطا زائدا، وهو أن يكون بعد صلاة العيد، لايجوز تقديمها عليه عندنا. (كتاب التضحية، فصل فى
شروط جواز إقامة الواجب، 308:6 ) راجع أيضا الإختيار لتعليل المختار (كتاب الأضحية، 22:5 ) و اللباب فى شرح الكتاب (كتاب الأضحية،
.( 233:3 ) ومجمع البحرين (كتاب الأضحية، ص 716 ) وفتاوى النوازل للسمرقندى (كتاب الأضحية، ص 237
Secondly, if the mukallaf is resident in a city or town and has instructed a representative to perform the
sacrifice on his behalf in a village, then according to Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad the sacrifice
may be performed from the arrival of the true dawn of the 10th of Dhul Hijjah, even before the mukallaf has
offered the Eid salaah. Conversely, if the mukallaf is resident in a village and has instructed a representative
to perform the sacrifice on his behalf in a city or town, then according to Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam
Muhammad the sacrifice may not be performed from the arrival of the true dawn of the 10th of Dhul Hijjah,
but must be performed after the Eid salaah has been offered at that city or town. Imam Muhammad states:
“I look at the location of slaughter and I do not look at the location of whom it is slaughtered for.” The same
has been reported from Imam Abu Yusuf by Hasan b. Ziyad that the location of the slaughter is considered
but the location of whom it is slaughtered for is not considered. Imam al-Kasani explains that this is
because it is the act of slaughter that is the act of worship and so the location of the act is considered not the
location for whom this act is performed.
ففى المبسوط للسرخسى: ثم المعتبر المكان الذى فيه الأضحية حتى إذا كان الرجل بالمصر وأضحيته بالسواد يجوز أن يضحى ابعدانشقاقالفجر. فأما
إذا كان هو بالسواد وأضحيته بالمصر لايجوز أن يضحى اإلابعدفراغالإماممنالصلاة. (كتاب الذبائح، باب الأضحية، 24:12 ) وكذا فى رد المحتار
(كتاب الأضحية، 460:9 ) والفتاوى الولوالجية (كتاب الصيد والذبائح والأضحية، الفصل الرابع، 79:3 ) والمحيط البرهانى (كتاب الأضحية، الفصل
الرابع فيما يتعلق بالمكان والزمان، 464:8 ) وتبيين الحقائق (كتاب الأضحية، 477:6 ) والفتاوى العلم َ كيرية (الباب الرابع فى ما يتعلق بالمكان و الزمان،
296:5 ) والهداية مع فتح القدير (كتاب الأضحية، 431:8 ) والبناية شرح الهداية (كتاب الأضحية، 24:12 ) وحاشية الطحطاوى على الدر المختار
(كتاب الأضحية، 163:4 ) والجوهرة النيرة (كتاب الأضحية، ص 283 ) والفتاوى قاضيخان على هامش العالم َ كيرية (كتاب الأضحية، فصل فى صفة
الأضحية، 345:3 ) والفتاوى البزازية على هامش العالم َ كيرية (كتاب الأضحية، الفصل الثالث فى وقتها، 289:6 ) وشرح النقاية (كتاب الأضحية،
269:2 ) وخلاصة الفتاوى (كتاب الأضحية، الفصل الثالث فى وقت الأضحية، 313:4 ) والفتاوى السراجية على هامش فتاوى قاضيخان (كتاب
( الأضاحى، باب وقت التضحية، 114:3 ) وتكملة البحر الرائق (كتاب الأضحية، 175:8 ) وشرح الوقاية (كتاب الأضحية، 39:4
وفى عمدة الرعاية حاشية شرح الوقاية: (قوله مكان الفعل) معناه إذا كان رجل من أهل البادية وأراد أن يذبح فى المصر يجب عليه أن ينتظر الصلاة.
وإن كان من أهل المصر وأراد الذبح فى البادية ليس عليه الانتظار لأن البادية لا صلاة فيها. والمراد بالمصر مكان تجب صلاة الجمعة والعيدين فيه. (كتاب
( الأضحية، 39:4
وفى بدائع الصنائع: فإن كان هو فى المصر والشاة فى الرستاق أو فى موضع لايصلى فيه وقد كان أمر أن يضحوا عنه فضحوا ابعدطلوعالفجرقبلصلاةالعيدفإنهتجزيه. وعلى عكسه لو كان هو فى الرستاق والشاة فى المصر وقد أمر من يضحى عنه فضحوا اقبلصلاةالعيدفإالاتجزيه. وإنما يعتبر
فى هذا مكان الشاة لا مكان من عليه. هكذا ذكر محمد (عليه الرحمة) فى "النوادر" وقال: إنما أنظر إلى محل الذبح ولاأنظر إلى موضع المذبوح عنه.
وهكذا روى الحسن عن أبى يوسف (رحمه الله) يعتبر المكان الذى يكون فيه الذبح ولا يعتبر المكان الذى يكون فيه المذبوح عنه. وإنما كان كذلك لأن
( الذبح هو القربة فيعتبر مكان فعلها، لا مكان المفعول عنه. (كتاب التضحية، فصل فى شروط جواز إقامة الواجب، 311:6
Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence, 1, Ambler Street, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, BD8 8AW, Tel: (01274) 22 22 21, e-mail: askmuftisahib@itc-bradford.org
3
Thirdly, if the mukallaf is resident in a city or town and has instructed his relatives to perform the sacrifice
on his behalf in another city or town, then according to Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad the
sacrifice may be performed after the Eid salaah at the location of the slaughter animal, even though the
mukallaf may not have offered Eid salaah at his own location. According to Imam Hasan b. Ziyad, in
consideration of both locations, that of the mukallaf and that of the slaughter animal, the Eid salaah must be
offered at both locations before the slaughter may be performed. If they are unsure as to whether the other
has offered the Eid salaah, the slaughter will be delayed until zawaal. The rationale of the ruling by Imam
Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad is that the act of worship is in the slaughter, and in time specific acts of
worship the time of the active subject is considered, not the one on whose behalf it is performed.
ففى بدائع الصنائع: وإن كان الرجل فى مصر وأهله فى مصر آخر فكتب إليهم أن يضحوا عنه، روى عن أبى يوسف أنه اعتبر مكان الذبيحة فقال:
ينبغى لهم أن لايضحوا عنه حتى يصلى الإمام الذى فيه أهله. وإن ضحوا عنه قبل أن يصلى لم يجزه. وهو قول محمد عليه الرحمة. وقال الحسن بن زياد:
انتظرت الصلاتين جميعا. وإن شكوا فى وقت صلاة المصر الآخر انتظرت به الزوال. فعنده لايذبحون عنه حتى يصلوا فى المصرين جميعا. وإن وقع لهم
الشك فى وقت صلاة المصر الآخر لم يذبحوا حتى تزول الشمس. فإذا زالت ذبحوا عنه. وجه قول الحسن أن فيما قلنا اعتبار الحالين، حال الذبح وحال
المذبوح عنه، فكان أولى. ولأبى يوسف ومحمد (رحمهما الله) أن القربة فى الذبح والقربات المؤقتة يعتبر وقتها فى حق فاعلها لا فى حق المفعول عنه.
( (كتاب التضحية، فصل فى شروط جواز إقامة الواجب، 310:6
وفى البناية شرح الهداية: وقال الحسن: إذا

Statistics of Madaris

2006-02-16T03:25:00.000-08:00

Daily Times - Site Edition

Meria-Latest Journal

2005-11-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

Published by the GLORIA Center,
Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya
MERIA News - Issue 7 - November 2005
Total Circulation 22,000

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All material copyright MERIA. You must credit if quoting and ask permission to reprint.

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CONTENTS

NEWS FROM THE GLORIA CENTER

1. PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST

2. WEBSITES/GROUPS ONLINE

3. FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO E-MAIL PUBLICATIONS

4. FUNDING/SCHOLARSHIPS/FELLOWSHIPS/WRITING OPPORTUNITIES

5. RESEARCH QUERIES-PLEASE HELP

6. SCHOLARS AND AUTHOR'S ALERTS (writers report on their books, articles, and activities)

7. ANNOUNCEMENTS OF MEETINGS, CONFERENCES, LECTURES

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NEWS FROM THE GLORIA CENTER

Important Correction:
In the September issue of MERIA Journal, the articles by Joshua Teitelbaum, Eyal Zisser, Abbas William Samii, and Michael Rubin were meant to have included the following after their abstracts:
This article was originally written for a project and conference on "After the Iraq War: Strategic and Political Changes in Europe and the Middle East," co-sponsored by the GLORIA Center and The Military Centre for Strategic Studies (CeMiSS) of Italy.

Table of Contents for MERIA Journal Volume 9, Number 4 (December 2005):
The December 2005 issue of MERIA Journal will be out shortly and sent to all subscribers. The following articles will appear: Anar Valiyev, "Azerbaijan: Islam in the Post-Soviet Republic;" Sean L. Yom, "Civil Society and Democratization: Critical Views from the Arab World;" Jonathan Spyer, "The Impact of the Iraq War on Israel's National Security Conception;" Emil Souleimanov, "Chechnya, Wahhabism, and the Invasion of Dagestan;" Barry Rubin, "What's Wrong: The Arab Liberal Critique of Arab Society;" Meir Litvak & Joshua Teitelbaum, "Edward Said and Orientalism: Some Methodological Remarks;" Etienne Sakr (Abu Arz), "The Politics and Liberation of Lebanon;" Ali Salman Saleh and Charles Harvie, "An Analysis of Public Sector Deficits and Debt in Lebanon: 1970-2000."

Barry Rubin, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley, November 2005). 304 pages. HB: $25.95. ISBN 0-471-73901-4. The struggle for democracy within the Arab world is one on which the fate of America, and perhaps the whole world, now rests. Still, how accurate is our understanding of Arab society, and how reasonable are our expectations? Experience has taught us to assume repressive regimes will fall and glorious freedom will rise up in a way that closely mirrors the former Soviet bloc countries, despite a cavalcade of culture differences. For information and to order: http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471739014.html.

November 28. Washington, DC, USA. The Politics and Prose Bookstore invites participants to the upcoming lecture of Prof. Barry Rubin, Author of the new book, "The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East." The lecture will take place at 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC (At Nebraska Avenue). For information, visit: http://www.politics-prose.com/calendar.htm#n28, or contact: books@politics-prose.com.

The GLORIA Center announces the publication of the two first books in The Middle East in Focus series, published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by Barry Rubin. Taking new perspectives on the area which has undergone the most dramatic changes, the Middle East in Focus series seeks to bring the best, most accurate expertise to bear for understanding the area's countries, issues, and problems.

Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin, Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, November 2005). 224 pages. PB: $24.95. ISBN 1-4039-6276-6. HB: $75.00. ISBN 1-4039-6275-8. Exploring both continuity and change, Clawson and Rubin provide the historical backdrop crucial to understanding how Iranian pride and sense of victimization combine to influence its contentious and potentially dangerous politics. To order the book from outside the United States, visit the UK website, at: http://www.palgrave.com. For further information, visit: http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Search/QuickSearchResults.aspx?searchby=t&searchfor=eternal%20iran.

Ersin Kalaycioglu, Turkish Dynamics: Bridge across Troubled Lands (Palgrave Macmillan, November 2005). 256 pages. PB: $24.95. ISBN 1-4039-6280-4. HB $75.00. Turkey is a pivotal state whose domestic political, economic, and social developments have important implications across the globe. Here a leading Turkish political scientist enhances understanding of the interactions of liberal democracy with longstanding cultural cleavages along secular-religious lines, ethnicity, and social class. For further information and to order, visit: http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403962804.

Donations to MERIA Journal
The response to our September appeal was very heartwarming. In particular, the number of professors and even students on shoe-string budgets who donated to MERIA was well above expectation. We received donations from Colombia, Turkey, Israel, Canada, the UK, and the United States.
Patrons ($200-500):
The Okanagon Jewish Community Centre, Canada. Dr. Harris, Occidental College.
Sponsors ($100):
Prof. William Hale. Prof. Sanford Lakoff, Professor Emeritus, UCSD. Prof. Carole A. O'Leary, American University, in memory of John H. and Frances L. O'Leary. Prof. Marcos Peckel, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia. Dr. David Ilan, Hebrew Union College, Israel. John D. Sullivan, Center for International Private Enterprise, www.cipe.org. Stanley Winer. Dr. Mark D. Mandeles. Judith and Robert Klein. Anonymous donor in New York. Anonymous professor in Turkey.
Other donors ($50):
Ms. Carole Franco. Bill Rautenberg in honor of Papa Louis. Prof. Ami Ayalon, Tel Aviv University. Dr. David Eaton.
Students, seniors ($30):
Avi Shahrur. Prof. Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Professor Emeritus of Middle East History, Penn State University. Ian Hawkins, in memory of Nurse Helen Smith, of Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Anne and Roy Freed of Boston, Mass. Prof. Nachum Gross, Prof. Emeritus of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Amnon Cohen. Mr. Sandy Brown, in honor of the 74th birthday of Richard A. Brown. Joel Boucree, Auburn, CA, USA, in honor of my dear and best friend Justin Maier. Rabbi Charles Sheer. Samuel Z. Klausner and Roberta G. Sands Isaac Ginsburg, Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Shimshon Kinory, in honor of his former teacher Don Patinkin, Prof. of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Gavin Gross. Beverly Gidron for Avner A. Gidron. Two anonymous donors in the United States.

MERIA Journal is creating a French-language edition scheduled to come out in April 2006. We are looking for good articles in French that deal with the politics, society, history, economics, and other areas of the modern Middle East (twentieth and twenty-first centuries). We encourage authors to submit proposals or queries. Please contact us (gloria@idc.ac.il) if you have ideas for articles or know of people who might be good authors, or if you would like to receive a free subscription to MERIA Journal in French. To see our guidelines for authors, visit http://meria.idc.ac.il/article-submissions.html. The deadline for submissions is January 2006.

MERIA Journal (Le Journal de Revue des Affaires Internationales du Moyen-Orient) lance une ?dition fran?aise dont la premi?re ?dition est pr?vue pour Avril 2006. Nous cherchons des articles en fran?ais qui ?tudient la politique, la soci?t?, l'Histoire, l'?conomie et d'autres aspects du Moyen Orient moderne (le XXe et XXIe si?cles). Nous encourageons les auteurs ? soumettre leurs propositions et leurs questions. Merci de nous contacter (gloria@idc.ac.il) si vous avez des id?es d'articles, si vous connaissez des auteurs qui pourraient nous convenir, ou si vous souhaitez vous abonner gratuitement ? MERIA en fran?ais. Pour consulter nos directives concernant les auteurs, visitez http://meria.idc.ac.il/article-submissions.html. La date limite de propositions est janvier 2006.

1. PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST

A. Books

Salwa Alghanim, The Reign of Mubarak al-Sabah, Shaikh of Kuwait, 1896-1915 (I.B.TAURIS, 2005). Price: Special offer: £45.00 + shipping & handling. For further information, visit: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=181905659227370.

Yildiz Atasoy, Turkey, Islamists and Democracy: Transition and Globalization in a Muslim State (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 240 pages. HB: £30. ISBN 1 85043 758 0. The book tells the story of Islam's engagement with the reorganization of the global economy. For further information and to order: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=510000000117686&sf_01=CAUTHOR&st02=TURKEY%2C+ISLAMISTS&sf_02=CTITLE&sf_03=KEYWORD&m=11&dc=20.

Sally N. Cummings, Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 224 pages. HB: £45.00 + shipping & handling. ISBN 1860648541. The book places the elite in the country's broader institutional and historical context, analyzing their identity, behavior and how they gained and secured power in the early years of independence. For information and to order : http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=183494487262599&sf_01=CAUTHOR&st_02=kazakhstan&sf_02=CTITLE&sf_03=KEYWORD&m=1&dc=1.

Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine, Hot Spots in Global Politics Series (Polity Press, 2005). 242 pages. HB: $59.95/PB: $22.95. ISBN 0-7456-3203-3. What explains the peculiar intensity and evident intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? This book demystifies the conflict by putting it in broad historical perspective, identifying its roots, and tracing its evolution up to the current impasse. For further information and to order: http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=0745632025.

Paul Dresch and James Piscatori, Monarchies and Nations: Globalization and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf (I.B.TAURIS, 2005). HB: Special offer: £45.00 + shipping & handling. For further information, visit: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=510000000374072.

Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research, Iraq: Reconstruction and Future Role (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 198 pages. PB: £16.99. ISBN 9948006380. For further information and to order: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=510000000213692&sf_01=CAUTHOR&st_02=iraq&sf_02=CTITLE&sf_03=KEYWORD&m=1&dc=13.

Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research, The Gulf: Challenges of the Future (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 220 pages. HB: £24.50. ISBN 9948006585. For further information and to order: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=510000000741476&M=9&WHERE=%28%28CTITLE+PH+WORDS+%27gulf%27%29%29&SS=%28%28CTITLE+PH.

Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research, Islamic Movements: Impact on Political Stability in the Arab World (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 261 pages. PB: £18.99. ISBN 9948005457.For further information and to order: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=700000000184958&M=1&WHERE=%28%28CTITLE+PH+WORDS+%27islamic+movements%27%29%29&SS=%28%28CTITLE+PH+WORDS+%27islamic+movements%27%29%29&DC=2&MW=2.

Tami Amanda Jacoby, Women in Zones of Conflict: Power and Resistance in Israel (McGill-Queen's University Press, October 2005). 184 pages. HB: CA $60.00 | US $60.00 | UK £45.00. ISBN 0773529535. PB: CA $24.95 | US $19.95 | UK £12.95. ISBN 0773529934. A consideration of the ways in which women have actively resisted constraints on gender equality in the nationalist struggle in Israel. For further information, visit: http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1890.

Deniz Kandiyoti & Ayse Saktanber (eds.), Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 360 pages. PB: Now available for £15.95 + shipping & handling. Writing from within the cultural landscape of modern Turkey, the book presents exciting new writing on the everyday, providing a corrective to the often skewed perceptions of Turkish culture engendered by conventional western critiques. For further information and to order: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=182725403498856&sf_01.

Michael Kerr, Imposing Power Sharing: Conflict and Coexistence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon (Forthcoming, Irish Academic Press, November 2005). 272 pages. HB: $69.50, ISBN 0 7165 3384 7. PB: $35.00, ISBN 0 7165 3383 9. The book is a comparative analysis of power sharing agreements and peace processes in Northern Ireland and Lebanon. It examines parallel journeys both societies took through power sharing to civil war, returning to power sharing again. For further information, visit: http://www.iap.ie.

Rory Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question: 1948-2004 (Irish Academic Press, March 2005). 280 pages. HB: 45.00 EURO/£35.00, ISBN 0 7165 2814 2. PB: 25.00 EURO/£19.50, ISBN 0 7165 3349 9. Based primarily on Irish archival sources, parliamentary debates, EU, UN, and Israeli documents as well as the Irish media, this work is the first attempt to examine Ireland's evolving policy towards the Palestine question since the birth of Israel in 1948. For further information and to order, visit: http://www.irishacademic.com/acatalog/New_Titles.html.

Houchang Nahavandi, The Last Shah of Iran: Fatal Countdown of A Great Patriot betrayed by the Free World. A Great Country whose fault was Success (Aquilion Ltd, 2005). 540 pages. PB: US$28.95 / GB£14.95. ISBN 1904997031. For further information and to order: http://shopping.ketab.com/addprod.asp?id=14755&cat=1&aut=nahavandi%2C+houchang&pgs=1 .

Angelo Rasanayagam, Afghanistan: A Modern History (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 336 pages. Now available for PB: £12.99 + shipping & handling. ISBN 1850438579. This book is the first major history of modern Afghanistan.. For further information and to order: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=510000000198968&sf_01=CAUTHOR&st_02=AFGHANISTAN&sf_02=CTITLE&sf_03=KEYWORD&m=4&dc=5.

Scott Ritter (Foreword by Seymour Hersh), Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 256 pages. HB: Special price £12.60. ISBN 1845110889. For further information, visit: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?ISB=1845110889&TAG=&CID=.

Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, The Idea of Iran: Vol. 1: Birth of the Persian Empire (I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2005). 192 pages. HB: £39.50 + shipping & handling. ISBN 1845110625. Offer ends November 5, 2005. This book explores the formation of the first Persian Empire under the Achaemenid Persians. For further information, visit: http://www.ibtauris.com/ibtauris/display.asp?K=510000000742636&sf_01=CAUTHOR&st
02=birth+of+the+persian+empire&sf_02=CTITLE&sf_03=KEYWORD&m=1&dc=1.

B. Journals, Newsletter, Papers

Democracy Digest, Vol. 2, No. 11, (November 2005), a bulletin of the Transatlantic Democracy Network, is currently available. To read, visit: http://www.demdigest.net.

Democratiya, No. 2 (November-December 2005) is currently available. It is a free bi-monthly online review of books dealing with such topics as war, peace, human rights, international law, democratization, and social and labor movements. To read, visit: http://www.democratiya.com.

Insight Turkey's October-December 2005 issue entitled, "Turkey and the Black Sea/Caucasus" is now available. The journal covers a broad range of topics related to Turkish domestic and foreign policy affairs and aims to provide a forum for informed discussion on Turkey's relationship to its adjacent regions, such as the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and Europe. For further information, visit: http://www.insightturkey.com/.

Nonproliferation issues (NPI), is a weekly digest of nonproliferation, arms control, and international security literature compiled by FirstWatch International's expert research team. For the latest issues, visit: http://www.firstwatchint.org/NI.html.

The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America, Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) News Release, No. 4-05, October 26, 2005. To read, visit: http://www.odni.gov/release_letter_102505.html http://www.odni.gov.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, "Islamic Utopian Romanticism and the Foreign Policy Culture of Iran," Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 14, No.3 (Fall 2005), pp. 265-92, ISSN 1066-9922. For further information, visit: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/online/1066-9922.asp.

Katinka Barysch, Steven Everts, and Heather Grabbe, "Why Europe Should Embrace Turkey." The latest pamphlet of the Center for European Reform (CER). Available at: http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/p_637_europe_emb_turkey.pdf.

Soner Cagaptay, "Turkey at a Crossroads: Preserving Ankara's Western Orientation," Policy Focus, No. 48 (October 2005. To download a pdf version, go to: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/html/pdf/CagaptayBookWeb.pdf

Farid Guliyev, "Post-Soviet Azerbaijan: Transition to Sultanistic Semiauthoritarianism? An Attempt at Conceptualization," Demokratizatsiya, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer 2005), pp. 393-435. The full text of the article is now available online: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3996/is_200507/ai_n15704837. For a copy in pdf format, contact: fareedaz@yahoo.com.

Seth G. Jones, Jeremy Wilson, Andrew Rathmell, and K. Jack Riley, "Establishing Law and Order After Conflict." This is a RAND Corporation study which contains the results of research on reconstructing internal security institutions during nation-building missions. For the full report, visit: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG374.pdf.

Andrzej Kapiszewski, "Non-Indigenous Citizens and 'Stateless' Residents in the Gulf Monarchies. The Kuwaiti Bidun." Available at: http://www.abydos.com/~andrzejk/.

Suna Kili, "August 30 and the Turkish Army I," Cumhuriyet, August 30, 2005. For further information, contact: levent.cinemre@iskulturyayinlari.com.tr.

Suna Kili, "August 30 and the Turkish Army II," Cumhuriyet, 31 August 2005. For further information, contact: levent.cinemre@iskulturyayinlari.com.tr.

Suna Kili, "Turkish Constitutional Developments: An Evaluation," Essays in Honor of Georgios I. Kassimatis. (Athens, Berlin, Bruxelles: 2004), pp. 121-140. For further information, contact: levent.cinemre@iskulturyayinlari.com.tr.

Suna Kili, "An Evaluation of the Atat?rk Period from the Perspective of Elements of National Power," Dedication to the 80th Anniversary of the Turkish Republic. For further information, contact: levent.cinemre@iskulturyayinlari.com.tr.

Ahmet T. Kuru, "Globalization and Diversification of Islamic Movements: Three Turkish Cases," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 120, No. 2 (Summer 2005). To read, visit: http://students.washington.edu/ahmet/.

Michael McFaul, "Chinese Dreams, Persian Realities," The Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 4 (October 2005). Basic demographic and socioeconomic factors in Iran are favorable to democratization. The mullahs may hope to stave off democratic change by emulating the Chinese model, but this strategy is doomed to fail. For further information, visit: http://www.journalofdemocracy.org.

Jonathan Rynhold, "Behind the Rhetoric: President Bush and U.S. Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," American Diplomacy. The full text of the article is now available online: http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/.

Lorenzo Vidino, "Iran's Link to Al-Qaeda: The 9-11 Commission's Evidence," Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Fall 2004). For information: http://www.meforum.org/article/670.

Reidar Visser, "Shi'i Separatism in Iraq: Internet Reverie or Real Constitutional Challenge?" NUPI Paper no. 686 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, August 2005), 18 pages. Full text available at: http://historiae.org/shiseparatism.asp.

Scott Wallsten and Katrina Kosec, "The Economic Costs of the War in Iraq." Working paper (September 2005). AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Available at: http://aei-brookings.org/admin/authorpdfs/page.php?id=1188.

Eyal Zisser, "Embattled Neighbors--Syria, Israel and Lebanon," (Book Review)
Shofar, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 202(2), March 22, 2005. For information, contact: Robert G. Rabil at: rgrabil@yahoo.com.

"Islamists at the Ballot Box." Special Report 144 (July 2005), The United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Available online at the USIP website: http://www.usip.org/ or request hard copy by mail (free of charge) from: usip_requests@usip.org.

To see information from the Center for European Reform (CER) on the topic "Why Europe Should Embrace Turkey," visit: http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/pr_637_eu_turkey.pdf.

To see the results of a RAND Corporation workshop on "Exploring Religious Conflict," visit: http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/2005/RAND_CF211.pdf. For the summary, visit: http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/2005/RAND_CF211.sum.pdf, or: http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF211/index.html.

For a report by the Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists) on "Islamist Extremism in Europe," visit: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RS22211.pdf.

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2. WEBSITES/GROUPS ONLINE

A. General:

The Middle East Quarterly has just made available several hundred reviews of books about Middle Eastern studies and Islam, linked alphabetically by book author,
at: http://www.meforum.org/meq/reviews.php.

The Mehlis Report on the Hariri Assassination originally released on October 21, 2005, is available at: http://www.un.org/News/dh/docs/mehlisreport/ or http://www.mideastweb.org/mehlis_report.htm.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has launched a website, including news releases, speeches, and information on national intelligence strategy and about the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Visit: http://www.odni.gov.

To read the latest statements, briefings, and hearings on regional security issues, from United States Embassy in Tel Aviv and The American Center in Jerusalem, visit: http://israel.usembassy.gov.

To see Martin Kramer's Virtual Lecture Series on issues related to policy and politics in the Middle East, and on the predicament of Middle Eastern studies in America, visit: http://www.graphicmail.com/sendlink.asp?HitID=1123169472000&SiteID=1215&EmailID
=579358&Link=http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2005_08_04.htm.

The Television News Archive collection at Vanderbilt University is one of the most extensive and complete archive of television news, holding more than 30,000 individual network evening news broadcasts from the major U.S. national broadcast networks and more than 9,000 hours of special news-related programming. This resource serves as a unique reference tool for studying historical and political events. For further information, visit: http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu.

To see a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi regarding a strategic vision for al-Qa'ida's direction for Iraq and beyond, and al Qa'ida's senior leadership's isolation and dependence, visit 'The office of the Director of National Intelligence' (ODNI) site at: http://www.dni.gov/release_letter_101105.html.

B. Egypt:

For an analysis of Egypt's presidential election, visit: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2367.

C. Iraq:
To see a translation of Iraq's draft constitution, visit: www.iraqigovernment.org.

To see the U.S. Department of Defense report to the Congress on "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq," visit: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2005/d20050721secstab.pdf.

To see the National Security Archive Update, "Saddam's Iron Grip," Intelligence Reports on Saddam Hussein's Reign, October 18, 2005, visit: http://www.nsarchive.org.

D. Iran:
"In the Name of the God of Mercy, Compassion, Peace, Freedom and Justice," speech by Dr. Mahmood Ahmadinejad's, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at the Sixtieth Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, September 17, 2005. Available at: http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/60/statements/iran050917eng.pdf.

To see an ABC news report of U.S. Energy Department Briefing on "Iran's Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facilities: A Pattern of Peaceful Intent?," visit: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/International/story?id=1127021, or for the briefing itself, visit: http://abcnews.go.com/images/International/iran_nuclear_report.pd.

To see the latest U.S. Department of State report on arms control compliance on Iranian nuclear program, visit: http://www.state.gov/t/vc/rls/rpt/51977.htm.

E. Saudi Arabia
To see Middle East Report, No. 45 on "The Shiite Question in Saudi Arabia," visit: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3678.

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3. FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO E-MAIL PUBLICATIONS

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is the educational and documentary center of the national memorial site of the Israeli intelligence community. It releases regularly, exclusive information on its Internet site. The information, a large percentage of which is based on original Palestinian documents captured by Israeli forces, is available in both in Hebrew and English. In addition, the Center now sends out information in an electronic newsletter. To subscribe, visit: http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/default.htm.

To subscribe to Mideast Wire's Middle East daily news summary service, visit: http://www.mideastwire.com.

To receive The American Iranian Council (AIC) electronic newsletter, contact: update@american- iranian.org, or visit: www.american-iranian.org.

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4. FUNDING/GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS/WRITING AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Funding/Grants/ Fellowships and Employment

The Center for the Study of Islam at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is granting scholarships to Hebrew University graduate students (both M.A. in course of research & Ph.D.) studying Islamic religion and culture. Deadline: 15/12/2005. For further information, contact: islamic@mscc.huji.ac.il, or visit: http://islam-center.huji.ac.il.

The Eurasia Program of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is offering teaching fellowships at both the pre-doctoral and postdoctoral levels for the 2006-2007 academic year to support research, writing, training, and curriculum development on or related to the New States of Eurasia, the Soviet Union, and/or the Russian Empire. Applicants in all disciplines of the social sciences or humanities are welcome. The fellowships are funded by the U.S. Department of State under the Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (Title VIII). To apply & for additional information, visit: www.ssrc.org/fellowships/eurasia. Deadline: January 24, 2006 at 9:00 p.m.

The American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan is granting fellowships for 2006-2007. Deadline for applications: February 1, 2006. For further info, contact: acor@bu.edu), or visit: http://www.bu.edu/acor.

The American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan is seeking an assistant director for a residential administrative position. A one-year renewable appointment would begin in late 2005. Salary and benefits commensurate with experience. Applications should include CV, and names and contact information for three referees. Send to: acor@bu.edu. For further details, e-mail: acor@bu.edu or visit: www.bu.edu/acor.

The Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies is seeking an assistant or associate professor for The Contemporary Islam Program. A good understanding of Islamic history, culture, and practice in the Middle East and/or Southeast Asia, as well as knowledge of Islamic law and jurisprudence and theological issues are required. Knowledge of Arabic and/or Malay/Bahasa Indonesia is an advantage. A relevant Ph.D. and a good publication record are essential. To apply email full CV, two letters of reference, and writing sample to: iskabdullah@ntu.edu.sg.

Writing Opportunities

Insight Turkey journal is calling for papers on the following topics: Georgia after the Revolution: Where to Now?; The Azerbaijani Election of November 6; Turkey and Armenia; Turkey, Russia and the Caucasus; A Nuclear Iran: Implications for the Caucasus; Frozen Conflicts in the Black Sea/Caucasus; The Domestic Dimension of Turkey's Caucasus Policy; An American view of developments in the Caucasus; A European View on Developments in the Caucasus; European Neighborhood Policy and the Black Sea/Caucasus; A Russian Perspective of the Caucasus; A Larger NATO Role in the Black Sea?; The Role of Multinational Organizations in the Caucasus; The Politics of Development Work in the Caucasus. Articles on sub-regions: Abkhazia, Karabagh, Ossetia, Adjaria, Ahiska. Any other paper ideas, including book reviews, will be considered. Deadline for submissions: December 10, 2005. For further information or for format and referencing questions, contact: editor@insightturkey.com, or visit: www.insightturkey.com.

January 20-21, 2006. Philadelphia, PA, USA. The University of Pennsylvania and The University of Oxford are co-sponsoring a conference entitled, "Commemorating the Constitution, 1906-2006. State Building & Global Responses to Iranian Constitutionalism." Panelists are invited to submit abstracts of approximately 250 words assessing the process of nation formation, the development of a civic culture, or the international ramifications of this broad-based constitutional movement in the Middle East. For further information, contact: conference-1906@history.upenn.edu.

May 28-30, 2006. Banff, Alberta, Canada. The Association for Israel Studies (AIS) invites participants to its 22nd Annual Conference, sponsored by the University of Calgary. AIS is calling for proposals for organized panels and/or individual papers in any field of Israel studies for its upcoming annual meeting. Panels may consist of three or four papers, or may be organized as round-table discussions or "meet the author" sessions; panel organizers should provide a title as well as names, affiliations, and e-mail addresses of all participants, brief abstracts of their papers, and any requests for audio-visual equipment. Proposals for individual papers should include the same information. Proposals should be submitted electronically to the most appropriate member of the Program Committee. Deadline: February 15, 2006. For more information, visit: www.aisisraelstudies.com.On all other matters pertaining to arrangements for the annual meeting, contact: skeren@ucalgary.ca.

Columbia University Prof. Judy Kuriansky calls for papers for book, Psychotherapy in a Turmoil Region: Reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis from a Psychological Perspective. Content: papers/manuscripts from both Palestinian and Israeli professionals in the field of psychology, social work, and social sciences, describing their work dealing with the psychological issues in their culture, therapeutic approaches they use, or collaborations they have been involved with-- bringing Palestinians and Israelis together with the aim of mutual psychological understanding. Deadline: as soon as possible. For any questions or clarifications, contact: DrJudyKuri@aol.com.

April 28-29, 2006. Washington, DC, USA. The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy calls for papers to its 7th Annual Conference, "The Challenge of Democracy in the Muslim World." The possible paper topics include (but are not restricted to): The state of democracy in the Muslim societies/countries; critical evaluation of the theoretical discourse on democratization; domestic and external challenges to democracy in the Muslim world; prospects for democracy in the Muslim world; The challenge of anti-democratic Islamist discourses; gender equality, the rights of minorities, and democratization in the Muslim world; developing new and just interpretations of Islamic principles in the 21st century. Proposals must demonstrate the relevance of their topic in general to the challenges of democracy in Muslim societies. E-mail proposals (between 200- 400 words) by January 1, 2006: conference@islam-democracy.org. For updates on the conference, visit: http://csidonline.org/.

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5. RESEARCH QUERIES-PLEASE HELP

Seeking information on the culture and politics of the Arabs in Iran, both in Khuzistan/Arabistan and in the Gulf provinces. In particular, seeking information regarding their relationship with pan-Arabism and their attitudes toward the Islamic Republic. Please contact Ariel I. Ahram, at: aia4@georgetown.edu.

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6. SCHOLAR'S AND AUTHOR'S ALERTS

Andrew G. Bostom (ed.), foreword by Ibn Warraq, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (Prometheus Books, October 2005). 600 pages. HB: $18.48. ISBN 1591023076. The Legacy of Jihad is a comprehensive, meticulously documented compilation which includes Muslim theological and juridical texts, eyewitness historical accounts by both Muslim and non-Muslim chroniclers, and essays by preeminent scholars analyzing jihad war and the ruling conditions imposed upon the non-Muslim peoples conquered by jihad campaigns. For further information, visit: http://www.andrewbostom.org/.

Frederic Tellier, L'heure de l'Iran (Ellipses, 2005). For further info, contact: Ftellier1@aol.com.

Ilan Berman, Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, September 2005). 224 pages. Price: $24.95. ISBN 0-7425-4904-6. For further info, contact: berman@afpc.org.

James Ker-Lindsay, EU Accession and UN Peacemaking in Cyprus (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2005). 224 pages. HB: £45.00. ISBN 1-4039-9690-3. This work traces the attempts by the United Nations to bring about the reunification of Cyprus prior to the island's accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004. For more information, visit: http://www.palgrave.com/products/Catalogue.aspx?is=1403996903.

Reidar Visser, Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (Berlin: LIT Verlag, October 2005). 256 pages, Price: 29.90 EURO. ISBN 3-8258-8799-5. The first case-study ever published on an actual occurrence of southern Iraqi separatism. For information and to order, visit: http://historiae.org/basra.asp.

Robert G. Rabil, Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East
(Praeger Publication, forthcoming in 2006). For information, contact: rgrabil@yahoo.com.

Suna Kili, History of the Turkish Revolution (September, 2005). 445 pages. PB: $17 + postage. ISBN 975-458-259-9. For further information, contact: levent.cinemre@iskulturyayinlari.com.tr.

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7. ANNOUNCEMENTS OF MEETINGS, CONFERENCES, LECTURES

November 18, 2005. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for Defense and Security Studies invites participants to its upcoming Conference, "Alliance and Sacrifice: Counter-Terror and Radicalism in Pakistan." For booking information contact Ms. Mamoona Shah at: mamoonas@rusi.org. For information: http://www.rusi.org/events.

November 19-22, 2005. Washington, DC, USA. The Association for Israel Studies (AIS) and The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) invite participants to the upcoming "Israeli Foreign Policy after Arafat" conference, to be held at the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel Washington, DC. For further information on the MESA program, contact Bob Freedman at: rofreedman@comcast.net.

Tuesdays. London, England. The London Middle East Institute invites participants to its upcoming Tuesday lectures program 2005-6, entitled "The Contemporary Middle East." For further information contact: lmei@soas.ac.uk, or visit: www.lmei.soas.ac.uk.

December 7, 2005. London, England. The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), a college of the University of London, invites participants to a lecture by Suseela C Yesudian-Storfjell, on "The Representation of Jews, Israel, and Zionism in Indian Muslim and Pakistani Discourse." The lecture is open to the public and will take place from 1-2 p.m. in Room B102 in the Brunei Gallery building at SOAS. For information, visit: http://www.soas.ac.uk/centres/centreinfo.cfm?navid=995.

February 2006. Tehran, Iran. The Institute for Research and Development in Humanities, Center for Research on Russia, Central Asia, and Caucasus (IRAS), and the Central Eurasia Program of the Center for Graduate International Studies of the University of Tehran invite participants to the symposium on "Central Asia, Past, Present and Future." For further information, visit: http://www.iras.ir/_Eng/Banner/Hamayesh.htm.

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MERIA Journal Staff
Publisher and Editor: Barry Rubin; Assistant Editors: Cameron Brown , Keren Ribo,
Yeru Aharoni. Turkish representative: Ozgul Erdemli

MERIA is indexed in the SOAS Library in London's Index Islamicus and CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.

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MERIA NEWS Volume 9, Issue 7 (November 2005)
*Serving Readers throughout the Middle East and in 100 Countries*
Publisher and Editor: Prof. Barry Rubin
Assistant Editors: Cameron Brown , Keren Ribo, Yeru Aharoni

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MERIA is a project of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. Site: http://meria.idc.ac.il/. Email: gloria@idc.ac.il .

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Tariq Ramadan on crises in France

2005-11-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

Tariq Ramadan on the crisis in France
Europe's leading Muslim intellectual on the futility of violence, the need
for Islamic feminism, and the social apartheid behind the uprising.

By Erich Follath and Romain Leick

Nov. 16, 2005 | Tariq Ramadan is considered by many to be a leading
philosopher and scholar of Islam. In 2000, Time magazine selected him as
one of the most important personalities of the new century. But he's also a
figure of controversy, especially in the post-9/11 era. "The reformer to
his admirers, Tariq Ramadan is Europe's leading advocate of liberal Islam,"
the Boston Globe wrote of the 43- year-old intellectual, who was born in
Geneva and holds Swiss citizenship. "To his detractors, he's a dangerous
theocrat in disguise."

The Department of Homeland Security considers Ramadan to be a radical, and
when Notre Dame University in Indiana offered to hire him as a professor of
religion and conflict studies, the Bush administration refused to provide
Ramadan with a visa to enter the country.

In contrast, Britain's government recently asked Ramadan to join a panel of
experts to advise the government on how to deal with radical Islamists.
Currently, he is a guest lecturer at St. Anthony's College in Oxford.

Ramadan comes from a family well familiar with political philosophy,
activism and conflict: His grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, became a
co-founder of Egypt's Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928, and was
assassinated in 1949 for his religious agitation. In a recent interview,
Ramadan talked about the rioting that has rocked the French suburbs, the
deep-rooted problems with the integration of Muslims in Europe, and the
need for modernization of Islam.

You are one of the most influential and one of the most controversial
Muslim intellectuals in Europe. Where were you when the French riots broke
out?

My Paris office is in one of those banlieues, Saint-Denis, one of the focal
points of the unrest. But I must admit that I had no inclination whatsoever
to expose myself to rocks and burning projectiles on the street at night.

That sounds a bit indifferent. Many Muslims pay attention to what you say
-- they listen to your taped lectures and read your writings. Don't you
feel compelled to make an attempt to convince these youths to turn away
from violence?

Listen, my position is perfectly clear. There is no doubt that violence is
not a solution and that the destruction of buses and cars must end. These
crimes must be punished. There is also no doubt that a certain number of
youths are descending into pure vandalism and uncontrolled anarchy.
Naturally, reestablishing order is of critical importance, especially for
the residents of the suburbs, who are bearing the brunt of the violence.

So you truly have no sympathy for the rioters?

Of course I do. But feeling sympathy and searching for explanations isn't
the same as believing that the violence is justified. I am firmly convinced
that the government's efforts to suppress the riots are inadequate, and
that they will remain ineffective until we understand the message behind
this outbreak.

And how do you interpret this message?

This revolt has nothing to do with Islam. Islam, as a religion, has been
established in France for a long time, and the religious question has been
resolved in this country. Islam does not threaten France's future in any
way. But it is the social question that poses a true danger to the unity of
the republic. Politicians across the political spectrum have underestimated
this reality. They stick their heads in the sand and mislead their
constituents by attempting to denounce Islam as the source of the problem.

No one disputes the magnitude of social rifts in French society. But it
just so happens that these divides run along ethnic and religious lines.
Hasn't Islam promoted or even encouraged the formation of social ghettos,
the isolation of ethnic communities?

The concepts of unity and equality, which are idealized to the point of
excess in France's political rhetoric, are nothing but myths and blatant
lies at the social level. The main purpose of the public debates over
Islam, integration and immigration is to stir up fear. In a sense,
politicians use these debates as ideological strategies, as a way to avoid
confronting reality.

What are they attempting to distract from?

The truth is that certain French citizens are treated as second-class
citizens, if not the leprous members of the national community. Their
children are sent to ghetto schools and taught by inexperienced teachers,
they are crammed into inhumane public housing developments, and they are
confronted with an essentially closed job market. In short, they live in a
bleak, devastated universe. France is disintegrating before our eyes into
socioeconomic communities, into territorial and social apartheid. The rich
live in their own ghettos. Institutionalized racism is a daily reality.

Isn't Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy aware of this when he calls for
targeted assistance for the poor, for dialogue with the Muslims and for
relaxing France's rigorous secularism?

Sarkozy is acutely aware of the potential for votes in the suburbs. In
crises such as the current one, he shows his true face: contempt and
rudeness. If he views entire sections of the population as "riffraff," he
shouldn't be surprised if that's the way they end up behaving. He is giving
the police free rein in a climate characterized by lack of respect. He is
fixated on the 2007 presidential election instead of developing a workable
political structure for 2020. Changes will only take place in this country
when the residents of the suburbs are treated as fully entitled Frenchmen,
as part of the solution, not an expression of the problem.

That's all very well and good -- but doesn't self-criticism have a place
alongside criticism? Are Muslim immigrants truly interested in integration,
or do they prefer segregation?

The attempt to Islamicize social issues perverts and falsifies political
discourse. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe value the fact
that they live in democratic, constitutional states, states that guarantee
them freedom of conscience and religion. But mutual trust is often
shattered, and the result is that fear and racism are deeply affecting
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. By the time they have
reached the second, third or fourth generation, the descendants of
immigrants should no longer be stigmatized as ghetto children, as "scum"
who are "out of control."

Nevertheless, what makes the integration of Muslims so difficult, compared
with earlier immigrants from Poland, Italy, Spain and Portugal?

Two things, I believe. First, this immigration no longer occurs in
individual waves; instead, it is a large-scale and continuous immigration.
That's the problem of quantity. And then there is the issue of quality. For
Muslim immigrants, religion is inseparable from their roots and identity.
They feel that transforming themselves from Moroccans or Algerians into
Frenchmen makes them bad Muslims. This makes integration more difficult
because it apparently forces Muslims to choose between two alternatives:
self-abandonment or self-isolation.

But hasn't Islam remained a foreign religion in the Western world, a
religion that has yet to enter the modern age?

There are traditionalists, adherents to a literal exegesis of the Koran. I
have spent the last 15 years campaigning for a genuinely European Islam,
one that requires evolution with respect to time and the environment, as
well as a separation of dogmatism and rationality. Islam cannot place
itself outside of history.

And where is the boundary between dogma and reason, between being faithful
to tradition and being receptive to the modern age?

The dogmatic and, therefore, invulnerable core in Islam is understandably
simple: acknowledgement of faith, prayer, charity and fasting. Almost
everything else is open to interpretation and modification in space and
time.

It does indeed sound clear and simple. Why don't we put it to the test with
an example: Is a Muslim permitted to break with his faith?

Not according to the majority opinion among Koran scholars. But the
prohibition on apostasy arose at a time when the first Muslim followers of
the prophet Mohammed were at war with neighboring tribes. At the time,
changing one's faith was tantamount to high treason or desertion. Nowadays
this context has changed completely.

In other words, the fight against "infidels" is completely outmoded?

Even the concept of the infidel is misleading, because the infidel is
normally someone with a different faith, someone who refuses to recognize
the truth of the words of the Koran, as revealed by God. He has every right
to do so, as long as he does not question my right to believe in my truth.

So each individual must become blessed in his own way? What about atheists?

The logic of freedom of religion implies freedom to be an atheist, even
though, from a historical perspective, this has not been accepted in the
Muslim world...

...and often leads to brutal punishment. How do you feel about equal rights
for men and women?

We need an Islamic feminism. Traditional Islam views the women merely as
mother, wife, daughter or sister. She has obligations and rights in this
capacity. But we must come to a point at which we treat the women as an
independent individual with a right to self-determination, as someone who
can run her own life without coercion.

Should she be permitted to decide for herself whether to stop wearing the
head scarf?

Of course, just as she is permitted to decide whether to wear the head
scarf.

But that's an illusion, at least in the real world. Women and girls are not
emancipated within their families.

You're right. This is often the case, but emancipation can only come from
within; it cannot be dictated by someone else. A law banning the wearing of
head scarves changes nothing, except perhaps external appearance.
Naturally, Islamic feminism must also include the right to education, to
work and the freedom to select one's own husband.

That's all fine and good, but can you explain, then, why you have publicly
called for a moratorium on the stoning of women accused of committing
adultery -- rather than condemning the practice outright? Some would argue
that's hypocritical.

Once again, Islam can only be modernized from within. If I stand there and
state that I condemn the practice of stoning, that this punishment is
despicable, it changes nothing. My fellow Muslims will say: Brother Tariq,
you became a European, a Swiss citizen, so you are no longer one of us. I
want to trigger a process of contemplation and thought within the Islamic
community. Critiques and attacks from the outside can produce tension.
Incidentally, a number of U.S. states have imposed a moratorium on the
death penalty, in an effort to buy time to think about the meaning and
legitimacy of this penalty.

Is a tendency toward violence inherent to Islam? Isn't it true that many
Muslims view jihad as an elementary part of Islamic identity?

Are the Crusades an elementary part of Christianity? No. Every community
has the right to self-defense. The Palestinians have the right to fight for
their independence from Israel. But this goal does not justify all means.
Nothing legitimizes the killing of innocent civilians. The suicide bomber
who blows up Israeli children cannot transform himself into a martyr. The
Palestinian problem is not an Islamic problem.

Where do you see the process of reform and modernization of Islam, of which
you have been a proponent? Has it made any progress anywhere?

In Europe. The impetus must come from European Islam and then influence the
Arab world. There is some overlap between the universal values of Western
democracy and those of Islam -- the constitutional state operating under
the rule of law, the equality of citizens, universal suffrage, the
changeover of power, separation of the private and public spheres. These
are basic principles, and although they are not spelled out in the Koran, I
do not believe that they contradict Islamic tradition.

That is an opinion that many Muslim legal scholars do not share.

An excessively literal interpretation of the Koran ever since the 13th
century has led Islam into intellectual calcification and political
tension. Remaining faithful to the texts must be distinguished from
interpretation of historical and social context. If we begin applying this
exegesis and hermeneutics, we will begin to see progress in Islam thought.

Your words are like those of a rationalist, an enlightened theologian with
purely intellectual ambitions. But in political reality, in France, Great
Britain and the United States, you are suspected of secretly promoting the
expansion of Islam and sympathizing with violence.

Oh yes, I am one of the most maligned Muslim intellectuals. Tariq Ramadan,
the slippery trickster. They talk about people like me the way they used to
talk about the Jews: He is Swiss and European, but his loyalties also lie
elsewhere. He says one thing and thinks something else. He is a member of
an international organization -- in the past, it was world Jewry, today
it's world Islam. I am disparaged as if I were a Muslim Jew.

Could that have something to do with your family history? Your grandfather,
Hassan al-Banna, was the founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in
1928, an organization that envisioned an Islamic fundamentalist
transformation.

Thoughts are not genetically inherited traits. I admire my grandfather for
his anti-colonial fight against the British. He was very involved in
education for girls and women. His five daughters -- my aunts and my mother
-- all attended university. And the organization he founded was very
progressive for its time. However, I am highly critical of the Brotherhood,
with its affected, conspiratorial behavior, its hierarchical structures and
its oversimplified slogans.

Were you ever a member of the Brotherhood?

I can assure you that I am no Muslim Brother, despite the fact that my
critics have repeatedly launched this rumor in an effort to slander and
harm me.

Do you ever think about forming your own party, organization or movement?

No. I am not a politician. I have often been approached in this regard in
the past 15 years, but I have always declined these sorts of offers. I view
myself as an independent, critical intellectual, as someone who tries to
stimulate thought on the left and the right, to encourage intellectual
evolution. The Islamic world is obsessed with the notion of strong leaders.
This is a mistake. We don't need powerful leaders, but rather
unconventional, progressive thinkers with the courage to open our minds.

Translated from German by Christopher Sultan.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement
ariq Ramadan on the crisis in France
Europe's leading Muslim intellectual on the futility of violence, the need
for Islamic feminism, and the social apartheid behind the uprising.

By Erich Follath and Romain Leick

Nov. 16, 2005 | Tariq Ramadan is considered by many to be a leading
philosopher and scholar of Islam. In 2000, Time magazine selected him as
one of the most important personalities of the new century. But he's also a
figure of controversy, especially in the post-9/11 era. "The reformer to
his admirers, Tariq Ramadan is Europe's leading advocate of liberal Islam,"
the Boston Globe wrote of the 43- year-old intellectual, who was born in
Geneva and holds Swiss citizenship. "To his detractors, he's a dangerous
theocrat in disguise."

The Department of Homeland Security considers Ramadan to be a radical, and
when Notre Dame University in Indiana offered to hire him as a professor of
religion and conflict studies, the Bush administration refused to provide
Ramadan with a visa to enter the country.

In contrast, Britain's government recently asked Ramadan to join a panel of
experts to advise the government on how to deal with radical Islamists.
Currently, he is a guest lecturer at St. Anthony's College in Oxford.

Ramadan comes from a family well familiar with political philosophy,
activism and conflict: His grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, became a
co-founder of Egypt's Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928, and was
assassinated in 1949 for his religious agitation. In a recent interview,
Ramadan talked about the rioting that has rocked the French suburbs, the
deep-rooted problems with the integration of Muslims in Europe, and the
need for modernization of Islam.

You are one of the most influential and one of the most controversial
Muslim intellectuals in Europe. Where were you when the French riots broke
out?

My Paris office is in one of those banlieues, Saint-Denis, one of the focal
points of the unrest. But I must admit that I had no inclination whatsoever
to expose myself to rocks and burning projectiles on the street at night.

That sounds a bit indifferent. Many Muslims pay attention to what you say
-- they listen to your taped lectures and read your writings. Don't you
feel compelled to make an attempt to convince these youths to turn away
from violence?

Listen, my position is perfectly clear. There is no doubt that violence is
not a solution and that the destruction of buses and cars must end. These
crimes must be punished. There is also no doubt that a certain number of
youths are descending into pure vandalism and uncontrolled anarchy.
Naturally, reestablishing order is of critical importance, especially for
the residents of the suburbs, who are bearing the brunt of the violence.

So you truly have no sympathy for the rioters?

Of course I do. But feeling sympathy and searching for explanations isn't
the same as believing that the violence is justified. I am firmly convinced
that the government's efforts to suppress the riots are inadequate, and
that they will remain ineffective until we understand the message behind
this outbreak.

And how do you interpret this message?

This revolt has nothing to do with Islam. Islam, as a religion, has been
established in France for a long time, and the religious question has been
resolved in this country. Islam does not threaten France's future in any
way. But it is the social question that poses a true danger to the unity of
the republic. Politicians across the political spectrum have underestimated
this reality. They stick their heads in the sand and mislead their
constituents by attempting to denounce Islam as the source of the problem.

No one disputes the magnitude of social rifts in French society. But it
just so happens that these divides run along ethnic and religious lines.
Hasn't Islam promoted or even encouraged the formation of social ghettos,
the isolation of ethnic communities?

The concepts of unity and equality, which are idealized to the point of
excess in France's political rhetoric, are nothing but myths and blatant
lies at the social level. The main purpose of the public debates over
Islam, integration and immigration is to stir up fear. In a sense,
politicians use these debates as ideological strategies, as a way to avoid
confronting reality.

What are they attempting to distract from?

The truth is that certain French citizens are treated as second-class
citizens, if not the leprous members of the national community. Their
children are sent to ghetto schools and taught by inexperienced teachers,
they are crammed into inhumane public housing developments, and they are
confronted with an essentially closed job market. In short, they live in a
bleak, devastated universe. France is disintegrating before our eyes into
socioeconomic communities, into territorial and social apartheid. The rich
live in their own ghettos. Institutionalized racism is a daily reality.

Isn't Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy aware of this when he calls for
targeted assistance for the poor, for dialogue with the Muslims and for
relaxing France's rigorous secularism?

Sarkozy is acutely aware of the potential for votes in the suburbs. In
crises such as the current one, he shows his true face: contempt and
rudeness. If he views entire sections of the population as "riffraff," he
shouldn't be surprised if that's the way they end up behaving. He is giving
the police free rein in a climate characterized by lack of respect. He is
fixated on the 2007 presidential election instead of developing a workable
political structure for 2020. Changes will only take place in this country
when the residents of the suburbs are treated as fully entitled Frenchmen,
as part of the solution, not an expression of the problem.

That's all very well and good -- but doesn't self-criticism have a place
alongside criticism? Are Muslim immigrants truly interested in integration,
or do they prefer segregation?

The attempt to Islamicize social issues perverts and falsifies political
discourse. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe value the fact
that they live in democratic, constitutional states, states that guarantee
them freedom of conscience and religion. But mutual trust is often
shattered, and the result is that fear and racism are deeply affecting
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. By the time they have
reached the second, third or fourth generation, the descendants of
immigrants should no longer be stigmatized as ghetto children, as "scum"
who are "out of control."

Nevertheless, what makes the integration of Muslims so difficult, compared
with earlier immigrants from Poland, Italy, Spain and Portugal?

Two things, I believe. First, this immigration no longer occurs in
individual waves; instead, it is a large-scale and continuous immigration.
That's the problem of quantity. And then there is the issue of quality. For
Muslim immigrants, religion is inseparable from their roots and identity.
They feel that transforming themselves from Moroccans or Algerians into
Frenchmen makes them bad Muslims. This makes integration more difficult
because it apparently forces Muslims to choose between two alternatives:
self-abandonment or self-isolation.

But hasn't Islam remained a foreign religion in the Western world, a
religion that has yet to enter the modern age?

There are traditionalists, adherents to a literal exegesis of the Koran. I
have spent the last 15 years campaigning for a genuinely European Islam,
one that requires evolution with respect to time and the environment, as
well as a separation of dogmatism and rationality. Islam cannot place
itself outside of history.

And where is the boundary between dogma and reason, between being faithful
to tradition and being receptive to the modern age?

The dogmatic and, therefore, invulnerable core in Islam is understandably
simple: acknowledgement of faith, prayer, charity and fasting. Almost
everything else is open to interpretation and modification in space and
time.

It does indeed sound clear and simple. Why don't we put it to the test with
an example: Is a Muslim permitted to break with his faith?

Not according to the majority opinion among Koran scholars. But the
prohibition on apostasy arose at a time when the first Muslim followers of
the prophet Mohammed were at war with neighboring tribes. At the time,
changing one's faith was tantamount to high treason or desertion. Nowadays
this context has changed completely.

In other words, the fight against "infidels" is completely outmoded?

Even the concept of the infidel is misleading, because the infidel is
normally someone with a different faith, someone who refuses to recognize
the truth of the words of the Koran, as revealed by God. He has every right
to do so, as long as he does not question my right to believe in my truth.

So each individual must become blessed in his own way? What about atheists?

The logic of freedom of religion implies freedom to be an atheist, even
though, from a historical perspective, this has not been accepted in the
Muslim world...

...and often leads to brutal punishment. How do you feel about equal rights
for men and women?

We need an Islamic feminism. Traditional Islam views the women merely as
mother, wife, daughter or sister. She has obligations and rights in this
capacity. But we must come to a point at which we treat the women as an
independent individual with a right to self-determination, as someone who
can run her own life without coercion.

Should she be permitted to decide for herself whether to stop wearing the
head scarf?

Of course, just as she is permitted to decide whether to wear the head
scarf.

But that's an illusion, at least in the real world. Women and girls are not
emancipated within their families.

You're right. This is often the case, but emancipation can only come from
within; it cannot be dictated by someone else. A law banning the wearing of
head scarves changes nothing, except perhaps external appearance.
Naturally, Islamic feminism must also include the right to education, to
work and the freedom to select one's own husband.

That's all fine and good, but can you explain, then, why you have publicly
called for a moratorium on the stoning of women accused of committing
adultery -- rather than condemning the practice outright? Some would argue
that's hypocritical.

Once again, Islam can only be modernized from within. If I stand there and
state that I condemn the practice of stoning, that this punishment is
despicable, it changes nothing. My fellow Muslims will say: Brother Tariq,
you became a European, a Swiss citizen, so you are no longer one of us. I
want to trigger a process of contemplation and thought within the Islamic
community. Critiques and attacks from the outside can produce tension.
Incidentally, a number of U.S. states have imposed a moratorium on the
death penalty, in an effort to buy time to think about the meaning and
legitimacy of this penalty.

Is a tendency toward violence inherent to Islam? Isn't it true that many
Muslims view jihad as an elementary part of Islamic identity?

Are the Crusades an elementary part of Christianity? No. Every community
has the right to self-defense. The Palestinians have the right to fight for
their independence from Israel. But this goal does not justify all means.
Nothing legitimizes the killing of innocent civilians. The suicide bomber
who blows up Israeli children cannot transform himself into a martyr. The
Palestinian problem is not an Islamic problem.

Where do you see the process of reform and modernization of Islam, of which
you have been a proponent? Has it made any progress anywhere?

In Europe. The impetus must come from European Islam and then influence the
Arab world. There is some overlap between the universal values of Western
democracy and those of Islam -- the constitutional state operating under
the rule of law, the equality of citizens, universal suffrage, the
changeover of power, separation of the private and public spheres. These
are basic principles, and although they are not spelled out in the Koran, I
do not believe that they contradict Islamic tradition.

That is an opinion that many Muslim legal scholars do not share.

An excessively literal interpretation of the Koran ever since the 13th
century has led Islam into intellectual calcification and political
tension. Remaining faithful to the texts must be distinguished from
interpretation of historical and social context. If we begin applying this
exegesis and hermeneutics, we will begin to see progress in Islam thought.

Your words are like those of a rationalist, an enlightened theologian with
purely intellectual ambitions. But in political reality, in France, Great
Britain and the United States, you are suspected of secretly promoting the
expansion of Islam and sympathizing with violence.

Oh yes, I am one of the most maligned Muslim intellectuals. Tariq Ramadan,
the slippery trickster. They talk about people like me the way they used to
talk about the Jews: He is Swiss and European, but his loyalties also lie
elsewhere. He says one thing and thinks something else. He is a member of
an international organization -- in the past, it was world Jewry, today
it's world Islam. I am disparaged as if I were a Muslim Jew.

Could that have something to do with your family history? Your grandfather,
Hassan al-Banna, was the founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in
1928, an organization that envisioned an Islamic fundamentalist
transformation.

Thoughts are not genetically inherited traits. I admire my grandfather for
his anti-colonial fight against the British. He was very involved in
education for girls and women. His five daughters -- my aunts and my mother
-- all attended university. And the organization he founded was very
progressive for its time. However, I am highly critical of the Brotherhood,
with its affected, conspiratorial behavior, its hierarchical structures and
its oversimplified slogans.

Were you ever a member of the Brotherhood?

I can assure you that I am no Muslim Brother, despite the fact that my
critics have repeatedly launched this rumor in an effort to slander and
harm me.

Do you ever think about forming your own party, organization or movement?

No. I am not a politician. I have often been approached in this regard in
the past 15 years, but I have always declined these sorts of offers. I view
myself as an independent, critical intellectual, as someone who tries to
stimulate thought on the left and the right, to encourage intellectual
evolution. The Islamic world is obsessed with the notion of strong leaders.
This is a mistake. We don't need powerful leaders, but rather
unconventional, progressive thinkers with the courage to open our minds.

Translated from German by Christopher Sultan.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement

Amazon.com: A Peaceful Jihad : Negotiating Identity and Modernity in Muslim Java (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion): Books

2005-11-16T05:44:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com: A Peaceful Jihad : Negotiating Identity and Modernity in Muslim Java (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion): Books

Tabsir

2005-11-16T05:43:00.000-08:00

Rapture and the American Psyche-Peter Michaelson

2005-11-16T05:30:00.000-08:00

QuestForSelf.com: Alternative Health, Personal Growth, Psychology Books, Spirituality, Relationships: "PeterMichaelson.com
The Knowledge We Need
to Save Our Democracy
PeterMichaelson.com

The Knowledge We Need

to Save Our Democracy

Rapture and the American Psyche (copyright 2005)

Millions of Americans, believers in the Rapture, are wishing fervently for the world to end. They would end the world to escape it, such is the pain of their psychological misery.

Their vision is deeply negative and basically neurotic. It stems from experiencing ourselves through our passive side, whereby we doubt our essential value or worth, feel overwhelmed by life’s complexity and uncertainty, and are entangled in negative beliefs and impressions about ourselves.

People tend to take this negative inner state for granted, and are not aware that it is a measure of emotional illness and that it can be overcome.

Prophecy itself, when we are emotionally invested in it, takes power from us. That’s because it leaves us feeling that a future is approaching which we are helpless to influence.

It is tempting to feel this helplessness because doing so is easy and effortless. Like children, we can remain in a state of passive trust and hope. This is why some of us are so literal in reading, say, the Book of Revelations. When we carry the emotional baggage of childhood, especially unresolved negative attachments, we are prone to relate emotionally, in an infantile manner, to what we read and study or to the facts of life.

Our inner refusal to grow emotionally carries a price in fearfulness, self-doubt, depression, and passivity—the pain of psychological misery and the neglect of our democracy.

When we believe in ourselves and have cleared away enough inner negativity, we realize we are the creators of an evolving, improving life. We understand that we can each be a hero in the drama of our own life and the star of our own important destiny.

I remember back in the 1970s, reading Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth, and being emotionally captivated by its powerful prophetic vision. I wondered intensely, Can this all be true? I easily could have plunged deeper into the subject, but some instinct or intelligence helped me to reject the significance of the material. So I know from experience its emotional appeal.

The emotional seduction of the Rapture is unconscious and it goes like this:

Since Jesus will descend to save me, I don’t have to be concerned that I am not amounting to much and that I have forfeited a belief in myself. The inner voice that criticizes me can no longer assail me for my lack of direction and motivation. Now I can say, “What does it matter anyway? All my efforts are puny through no fault of mine.” True, I can’t believe in my self, but I can believe in Jesus. He loves me, and that is how I know my value. And, hey, I’m not interested in indulging the feeling that I am a worthless non-entity. I want Jesus here, on my doorstep, right now, with my personal pass to His Kingdom. And I am not wishing ill toward all those liberals, secularists, and whatnot who scorn me and my belief. It is Jesus who knows who and what is good or bad, and He is the one who will destroy those who have rejected Him.

The apocalyptic conviction that the world is filled with evil creates the impression that political negotiation or diplomacy is futile. The more “evil” we “see” in the world, the deeper the state of passivity we can induce. The black-and-white feeling is:

Even Jesus can’t talk to those lost souls. Better to withdraw and shun or reject the world, or else we’ll have to destroy that evil through force, meaning we must build up our military and keep open the nuclear option.

This is a projection on to others of one’s own intransigence, meaning one’s own unwillingness to see and clear away inner negativity: They’re the ones who refuse to change, not me.

George W. Bush must be under the spell of the Rapture because he has concocted a foreign policy that mimics it. He believes in combative intervention (in the Middle East), a model based on Jesus coming to save some of us and allowing the rest of us to be destroyed (as in the Great Tribulation). Believing in salvation, Bush “saves” the people of Iraq, delivering them from evil, while allowing many to be destroyed.

The secular option is less passive than the fundamentalist one. The secular choice is an expression of our belief in ourself. It says, “We can be stewards in our own domain. This earth is our domain, and we are grateful for the opportunity to discover and to express our very best. Let’s see what we’re made of!”

We secularists are inwardly braver than those escapists, so we want the chance, as in Star Trek’s non-intervention philosophy, to do our thing without interference from on high. Otherwise, it’s like a parent always telling us how to do something, when the greater satisfaction is often in learning or discovering for ourselves.

The Rapture ought to be called the Rupture. It is like taking a butcher knife to our destiny and hacking at it like a fiend. Who would do that other than someone too afraid to face himself?

Rapture and the American Psyche (copyright 2005)
Millions of Americans, believers in the Rapture, are wishing fervently for the world to end. They would end the world to escape it, such is the pain of their psychological misery.
Their vision is deeply negative and basically neurotic. It stems from experiencing ourselves through our passive side, whereby we doubt our essential value or worth, feel overwhelmed by life�s complexity and uncertainty, and are entangled in negative beliefs and impressions about ourselves.
People tend to take this negative inner state for granted, and are not aware that it is a measure of emotional illness and that it can be overcome.
Prophecy itself, when we are emotionally invested in it, takes power from us. That�s because it leaves us feeling that a future is approaching which we are helpless to influence.
It is tempting to feel this helplessness because doing so is easy and effortless. Like children, we can remain in a state of passive trust and hope. This is why some of us are so literal in reading, say, the Book of Revelations. When we carry the emotional baggage of childhood, especially unresolved negative attachments, we are prone to relate emotionally, in an infantile manner, to what we read and study or to the facts of life.
Our inner refusal to grow emotionally carries a price in fearfulness, self-doubt, depression, and passivity�the pain of psychological misery and the neglect of our democracy.
When we believe in ourselves and have cleared away enough inner negativity, we realize we are the creators of an evolving, improving life. We understand that we can each be a hero in "

Informed Comment

2005-11-16T05:08:00.000-08:00

Human rights in Afghanistan `of great concern`: UN 44

2005-11-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

Afghan Women's Mission would like to share the following article with
you:

From PakTribune http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=123902

Human rights in Afghanistan `of great concern`: UN 44

KABUL: Escalating violence, torture and force child marriages are some
of the rights abuses still blighting Afghanistan four years after the
removal of the fundamentalist Taliban government, the United Nations
says.

While the country has made great strides since the Taliban were forced
from power, the human rights situation "remains of great concern," a
report released this month by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Louise Arbour says.

"Factional commanders and former warlords remain major power brokers,
and the activities of anti-government entities and of the government and
international forces combating ! them continue to take a toll on
civilians," it says.

The Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan in 1996 when the
country was torn apart by fighting between rival ethnic factions that killed
tens of thousands of people.

The ultra-conservative Taliban imposed a brutal and intolerant version
of Islam until they were removed in a US-led attack in late 2001. They
have since vowed to topple the new government, playing a major role in
an insurgency that has claimed about 1,400 lives this year.

The report praises moves to ensure there is no amnesty for past abuses
but says there is nonetheless a state of impunity.

"Little progress has been made to date towards bringing to account
those most responsible for serious human rights violations during the
decades of conflict, some of whom remain in positions of influence if not
authority.

"In addition, violations continue to be perpetrated with apparent
impunit! y by armed strongmen in many parts of the country," it says.

Afghan and international security forces hunting down the insurgents
are also implicated in abuses.

"Arbitrary and prolonged pre-trial detention remains frequent
throughout Afghanistan. Torture appears to be a common practice in order to
secure confessions," the document says.

Detainees of the international coalition forces had reported having
their property stolen, forced nudity and "a particularly harsh and
arbitrary detention regime."

The formal justice system is meanwhile undermined by corruption and
"the ominous influence of warlords and local commanders," according to the
report.

Detention facilities do not conform to international standards and some
local authorities operate private prisons, including for women who are
forced to work for their jailors.

The situation of women, denied basic education and health care under
the Taliban! , had improved only in certain respects, with more of them in
the paid workforce and education system.

"However, the stark reality is that women in Afghanistan, especially
outside of Kabul and urban areas, and particularly among the poor, are
generally still viewed as the property of men," the report says.

Another major concern is child marriage, which some estimates say makes
up more than 40 percent of all marriages in Afghanistan. "Girls as
young as seven years of age are made to marry much older men, sometimes
30-40 years older," often to settle debts or disputes.

The practice is in part to blame for regular reports of cases of
self-immolation, with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
saying there had already been 85 cases this year.

Women are also killed in the name of honour, forced into prostitution,
raped and subjected to sexual and domestic violence, the report says.

However their recou! rse to justice is limited and offenders rarely
prosecuted.

Children also suffer: some as young as six have to work and boys are
reportedly still being recruited by the Taliban.

More than 4,750 child soldiers had however been demobilised since the
beginning of 2004 in a project run y the UN children`s programme,
UNICEF.

The enrolment of boys in schools has risen to 67 percent but that of
girls is among the lowest in the world: 40 percent overall and just 10
percent in secondary school, the report says.

Maternal mortality rates are also exceptionally high: about 1,600 out
of every 100,000 Afghan mothers die while giving birth or because of
related complications.

And about 20 percent of Afghan children are dead before their fifth
birthday, with most children dying from preventable diseases.

The report contains other dismal statistics: the life expectancy of
Afghans is 44.5 years; one in five suffer from! mental health problems;
only 23 percent have access to safe water and only 12 percent to adequate
sanitation.

It outlines steps the authorities could take to improve the situation,
stressing elections such as last month`s parliamentary vote, the first
more than three decades, are not enough.

"No matter how many elections are held in Afghanistan, the people will
not be able to enjoy their human rights until the rule of law is a
fact, impunity is a feature of the past, state institutions are credible
and effective, and women are treated equally with men," it says.

"Enjoyment of human rights is a key indicator of the transition of a
nation from a state of armed conflict to one of peace and stability."

Bush Declares: 'We Do Not Torture' - Yahoo! News

2005-11-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

CIA uses secret prisons abroad: report - Yahoo! News

2005-11-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

CIA uses secret prisons abroad: report - Yahoo! News

What goes round... The popularity in the US of Rumi, a 13th-century Turkish poet, is a tragic irony, as the order of Sufi dervishes he founded is ban

2005-11-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Lives and letters

What goes round...

The popularity in the US of Rumi, a 13th-century Turkish poet, is a tragic irony, as the order of Sufi dervishes he founded is banned at home, writes William Dalrymple

Saturday November 5, 2005
The Guardian

It seems almost unbelievable in the world of 9/11, Bin Laden and the Clash of Civilisations, but the bestselling poet in the US in the 1990s was not any of the giants of American letters - Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens or Sylvia Plath; nor was it Shakespeare or Homer or Dante or any European poet. Instead, remarkably, it was a classically trained Muslim cleric who taught sharia law in a madrasa in what is now Turkey.

Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi lived in Central Anatolia in the early 13th century, and he died around the time of Dante's eighth birthday. How Rumi came to outsell any other poet in America in the late 1990s, at least according to the LA Times, is an unlikely story - but not quite as unlikely as the way Rumi has been mysteriously morphed from a medieval scholar of Islamic law, or fiqh, into an American New Age guru.

A selection from the "arousing" Rumi translations by the poet Coleman Barks has been set to music with his verses mouthed by such spiritual luminaries as Madonna, Goldie Hawn and Demi Moore (the cover blurb of this CD describes it as all about "Passion. Music. Romance. Transcending the boundaries of ecstasy it creates a musical tribute to the Act of Love.") Sarah Jessica Parker is reported to do her aerobics to rock'n'roll settings of Rumi, and he is also available in a self-help audiobook version aimed at stressed New York commuters. Rumi has even been hailed as one of the torchbearers (according to one book on the subject) "of homoeroticism and spirituality".

Very little of this, of course, seems to have much connection to the original, historical Rumi, or the voluminous pages of profoundly mystical Persian religious verse he wrote. According to his most authoritative modern biographer, the Persian scholar Franklin D Lewis, "while Rumi seems slightly out of place in the company of Ginsberg, and seriously misunderstood as a poet of sexual love, it simply defies credulity to find Rumi in the realm of haute couture. But models draped in Donna Karan's new black, charcoal and platinum fall fashions actually flounced down the runway to health guru Deepak Chopra's recent musical versions of Rumi."

There is an additional layer of paradox and absurdity here: although Rumi lived and wrote in central Turkey, he is almost unread in his homeland and there is no accessible modern edition of his work in contemporary Turkish. According to Talat Halman, the leading Turkish Rumi scholar, whom I went to see in Istanbul, "Rumi is certainly not the bestselling poet in Turkey - far from it. For one thing, his poems have not been translated as extensively as they should have been, and the translations that exist are not poetic enough. People here simply don't have the patience to read a huge book like [Rumi's masterpiece] The Masnavi."

But it is not just that Rumi's poetry is unread. The order of Sufi dervishes that Rumi was father to, the Mevlevis, have been officially banned since the time of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and their beautiful lodges or tekkes lie locked and left to decay or seized by the state, in order - a tragic irony - to westernise Turkey, and bring it closer to Europe and the US. Although discreet expressions of Sufism are now openly tolerated, and pictures of Whirling Dervishes are prominently used in Turkish government tourist brochures, the open practice of the Sufi mysticism that Rumi represented can still technically result in a seven-month prison sentence. While in Turkey making a Channel 4 documentary on Sufi music this summer we found it almost impossible to get any genuine Turkish Sufi group to allow us to film them, so nervous were they of the reaction of the authorities.

It all adds up to an archetypal - if unusually poignant - case of east-west misunderstanding: a west earnestly looking eastwards for an ancient spiritual wisdom, which it receives through the filter of sexed-up translations that most Persian scholars regard as seriously flawed, and which recreate a Rumi wholly divorced from his Islamic context; while in the east, a Republican Turkish government anxious to integrate Turkey with Europe bans Rumi's Sufi brotherhood as part of its attempt to embrace a west it perceives as rational, industrial, intolerant of superstition and somehow post-mystical.

In the middle of this confusion of civilisations, Sufism or Islamic mysticism, the most accessible, tolerant and pluralistic incarnation of Islam, and a uniquely valuable bridge between east and west at this moment of crisis, finds itself suppressed by the Islamic world's two most pro-western governments: the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabis, who see it as a heretical threat to their own harsh, literal and intolerant interpretation of the Qur'an; and secular Turkey, which regards it as a token of their embarrassing, corrupt and superstitious Ottoman past.

It is, as Halman says, a major missed opportunity. He believes that Rumi's brand of Sufism represents "the free spirit of Islam ... the liberal spirit that I think needs to be recognised at a time when Islam has come to be considered almost synonymous with terrorism. The Sufi spirit softens the message of the Qur'an by emphasising the sense of love, and the passionate relationship between the believer and the beloved, God of course being the ultimate beloved. So in the eyes of Rumi and the Sufis, God becomes not the angry god of punishment, nor the god of revenge, but the god of love."

At this moment, more than ever, that message desperately needs to be heard.

Like most medieval saints in both the east and west, the life of the historical Rumi lies clouded in a fog of later hagiography. Some facts do however stand out. He was born in Balkh, capital of Khorasan, in what is now Afghanistan, on September 30 1207, and migrated with his family to Anatolia shortly before his home city was destroyed by the Mongols in 1221. After training as a Muslim preacher and jurist, he taught sharia law, of the Hanafi school, in a madrasa in Konya where he died on December 17 1273, and where his shrine, the Yesil Turbe, or Green Tomb, still stands.

At 37, Rumi's life was transformed when he met an enigmatic wandering dervish called Shams Tabrizi, who brought about a major spiritual epiphany in the respectable and bookish jurist. The two quickly became inseparable (though judging by Rumi's writings, it is most unlikely there was any sexual relationship as some have claimed). When Tabrizi mysteriously disappeared, Rumi's grief was expressed in one of the greatest outpourings of longing and separation ever produced in any language: a great waterfall of Persian verse - some 3,500 odes, 2,000 quatrains, and a massive mystical epic, The Masnavi, 26,000 couplets long, a rambling collection of tales, teaching stories and spiritual anecdotes built around the theme of "the Nightingale who was separated from the Rose". It is, in the eyes of many, the deepest, most complex and most mellifluous collection of mystical poetry ever written in any language, and from any religious tradition. It certainly stands as the supreme expression!
of mystical Islam.

Rumi advocated an individual and interior spirituality, and it is the love, rather than the fear, of God that lies at the heart of his message. He attempts to merge the spirit of the human with the ideal of a god of love, whom Rumi locates within the human heart. Rumi's first biographer, Aflaki, tells of a man who came to Rumi asking how he could reach the other world, as only there would he be at peace. "What do you know about where He is?" asked Rumi. "Everything in this or that world is within you."

Because God can best be reached through the gateway of the heart, Rumi believed you did not necessarily need ritual to get to him, and that the Divine is as accessible to Christians and Jews as to Muslims: "Love's creed is separate from all religions," he wrote. "The creed and denomination of lovers is God." All traditions are tolerated, because in the opinion of Rumi anyone is capable of expressing their love for God, and that transcends both religious associations and your place in the social order: "My religion," he wrote, "is to live through love."

Yet for all this, Rumi himself always remained an orthodox and practising Sunni Muslim. As Lewis rightly notes, "Rumi did not come to his theology of tolerance and inclusive spirituality by turning away from traditional Islam, but through immersion in it." He was not a "guru calmly dispensing words of wisdom capable of resolving, panacea-like, all our ontological ailments", as he is presented in the translations of Coleman Barks, so much as "a poet of overpowering longing, trying to grope through his shattering sense of loss". Likewise the poet and fellow of All Souls Andrew Harvey, who has produced some fine recreations of Rumi's verse, emphasises Rumi's "rigorous, even ferocious austerity". It is a far cry, he believes, from the New Age construct, "Rosebud Rumi, a Californian hippy-like figure of vague ecstatic sweetness and diffused warm-hearted brotherhood, a kind of medieval Jerry Garcia of the Sacred Heart".

One way Rumi did, however, most certainly diverge from some of the more austere ulema of his time was in that he believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God, as a way of, as he put it, opening the gates of paradise. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine, and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the whirling of Rumi's Mevlevi Sufi brotherhood - known in the west as the Whirling Dervishes - developed into a ritual form. The intention was to help devotees focus on the God within: as one Mevlevi Whirler we interviewed put it, there is a "palpable stillness you discover at the centre of the whirling ... everyone disappears and you feel as if you're in the eye of a hurricane".

Beautiful as it is, this use of poetry and music in ritual is one of the many aspects of Sufi practice that has attracted the wrath of modern Islamists. For although there is nothing in the Qur'an that specifically bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with courts, dancing girls and immorality, and there is a long tradition of clerical opposition to music. Today, Islamic puritans, like those of 17th-century England, firmly regard all music as unacceptable, and work to ban it wherever they come to power.

While filming in Pakistan we interviewed Maulana Mohammad Abdul Malik, a senior cleric with the Islamist political party, Jamaat-i-Islami, which has just banned the public playing of music within the Frontier province. For him the matter was quite simple. "Music is against Islam," he said. "These musical instruments - the tabla, sarangi, dhol - lead men astray and are sinful. They are forbidden, and these musicians are wrongdoers." This attitude is on the ascendant across the Islamic world and the pacifist Sufis have frequently faced violence from their Islamist opponents: several Sufi shrines and brotherhoods, for example, have recently been bombed in Iraq.

In Turkey, however, the Sufis have suffered far more from the secular Republicans than from the country's relatively quiescent Islamists. Before the first world war there were almost 100,000 disciples of the Mevlevi order throughout the Ottoman empire. But in 1925, as part of his desire to create a modern, western-orientated, secular state, Atatürk banned all the different Sufi orders and closed their tekkes. Pious foundations were suspended and their endowments expropriated; Sufi hospices were closed and their contents seized; all religious titles were abolished and dervish clothes outlawed. Turkish intellectuals were encouraged to study the western classics, while Rumi's writings, along with those of all his Sufi peers, were treated as an intellectual irrelevance. In 1937, Atatürk went even further, prohibiting by law any form of traditional music, especially the playing of the ney, the Sufis' reed flute.

While filming in Istanbul, we visited one beautiful old Ottoman tekke, by the Mevlana gate of the old walls: since 1925 it had been used as an orphanage and warehouse, before its priceless library was finally destroyed in a fire in the 1980s. It has now fallen into ruins and lies locked and abandoned. All one can do is peer through the barbed wire at the domes and semi-domes and the overgrown panels of Ottoman calligraphy half covered with vines and creepers. Other Mevlevi centres, like the magnificent Galata tekke in the centre of Istanbul, have become museums.

As far as the Turkish state is con-cerned, the Mevlevis are little more than a museum culture to be exploited as a tourist attraction. This process began in the mid-60s when the wife of a senior US army officer came to Konya and asked her government escorts about the dervishes. The officials were thrown into a panic. The local mayor eventually found an old dervish and forced him to teach the local basketball team how to turn; soon a "folkloric" festival began to be mounted in the Konya sports hall every year to attract foreign tourists. For a while there was even a brief attempt made to replace the Sufi musicians who accompanied the dancers with the town's brass band, which was judged to be more modern and republican.

One man whose life has been shaped by this official Turkish hostility to Sufism is the great Turkish ney player, Kudsi Erguner. Erguner, who has for years lived in Paris working with Peter Brook, Didier Lockwood and Peter Gabriel, was born into a family of hereditary ney players of the Istanbul Mevlevi brotherhood. His recent autobiography, Journeys of a Sufi Musician, gives a wonderful picture of the trials of being a Sufi devotee in the early years of the Turkish Republic after the Sufi orders were banned. He describes the strict secrecy in which his father and the other Mevlevis were forced to organise their spiritual life: "Though I must have been hardly five years old, I remember those old men with luminous faces whose eyes always appeared moist as if they had just wiped away a tear at the sound of the ney, or the recitation of a Rumi poem."

Every time the brotherhood had a musical gathering (sama), members of the brotherhood would be posted at each end of the street as lookouts to give warnings of a police raid. It was not dissimilar to the US during Prohibition - except that in the case of the Sufis, bottles of raki were kept in a fridge as a cover: "This alcohol was practically considered a symbol of the republic, so it was unthinkable for the authorities to believe that it could be drunk by 'religious fanatics'. If the police came in, the sheikh could always bring out the bottle and say they were only having a little party among friends."

All his professional life, Erguner found both his music and its Sufi inspiration blocked by Turkish officialdom, so that even his sell-out tours in Paris and London were disapproved of by the respective Turkish embassies, which accused him of "projecting a retrogressive image of Turkey abroad". More shocking still is the description Erguner gives of the government's refusal to conserve Turkey's Sufi heritage. On one occasion he found a priceless stash of Ottoman Sufi music and instruments in the cellar of the Istanbul mosque of Yeni Cami, where they had been dumped in the 1920s after being confiscated from various tekkes. Despite all his efforts, Erguner could not get permission to conserve any of the material: "In this damp underground vault these venerable relics, including flags, books, clothes and musical instruments were left to rot. My begging was of no avail, and none of it could be saved."

We filmed Erguner playing his ney after hours in one of Sinan's great mosques in Istanbul. It is one of the most elegiac sounds in all world music, and for Rumi the supreme symbol for man's separation from God. As the opening lines of The Masnavi puts it: "Listen to the song of the ney, how it laments its separation from the reed bed." Afterwards I accompanied Erguner to the south-east of the country to visit the marshy reed beds where he, and his father before him, have always found the reeds which they turn into neys. As we walked through the reeds, looking down at the Mediterranean sparkling far below us, he talked sadly of all that had been lost.

"In Turkish culture," he said, "Sufism has always provided the religious justification for the fine arts. It is like the sea and a boat: one cannot exist without the other. All our fine arts found themselves in Sufism. In Istanbul alone there were 700 tekkes. This is where the arts of poetry, music and calligraphy were all developed and passed down."

Erguner selected a fine reed of the right length and width and got out his knife: "When you look at the history of classical music in the Ottoman empire," he said, "there is not a single composer who was not a follower of Rumi. That is why in Turkey you cannot distinguish classical music from religious music. So what happened [under Atatürk] in the 1920s was like a cultural revolution: it turned everything upside down."

We walked on through the reeds, Erguner expertly fingering them in search of the perfect ney: "The buildings and the foundations disappeared," he said, "and the poets and musicians found themselves out on the streets. Successive generations of children were taught to look west, were told that civilisation lay elsewhere. So the deep continuity, the exchange between human beings, the continuity of teaching, all that was utterly lost."

He shook his head: "Once such a tradition is broken," he said, "it can never really be recovered. Today people in Turkey are beginning to understand that western civilisation is not the only answer, that our own civilisation had great worth. But in so many ways it is too late now: too much has already been lost, and can never be recovered."

• William Dalrymple's film Sufi Soul: The Mystic Music of Islam will be broadcast on Channel 4 at 11.30pm tomorrow. There will be a special screening at the Barbican earlier in the day at 4.15pm, followed by a Q&A with Dalrymple and the director Simon Broughton. This will coincide with a Barbican festival of Sufi music featuring many of the musicians in the film. www.barbican.org.uk/contemporary and www.williamdalrymple.com

for the 2005-2006 Academic Year:
Resit Galip cad. Hereke Sok. No 10
GOP, Cankaya, Ankara, TURKEY

Department of Religious Studies
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street P.O. Box 78A
Worcester, MA 01610
508-793-3948

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/religiousstudies/ikalin/
>>> anna_bigelow@NCSU.EDU 11/06/05 5:23 PM >>>

Dear Everyone,
If anyone is looking for a way to get a firsthand crash course in the
Middle East conflict, this is a good way to do it. Many of you may have
seen delegations of speakers, students and faculty, from Israel and the
occupied territories who tour campuses all over the US and Europe (past
delegations have included Rema Hammami and Oren Yiftachel). They also
run a trip to Israel and Palestine, based mostly in Jerusalem but with
some nights in Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Tel Aviv. You mostly meet the
peace camp people, but you meet lots and lots of them. I went this
summer and we met politicians like Saeb Erekat, Hanan Ashrawi, Yasser
Abed Rabbo, etc., but even more interesting was meeting activists like
Ghassan Andoni of the Int'l Solidarity Movement, Muhammad Khatib who is
organizing non-violent actions in a village called Bil'in currently
being divided by the wall, and Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli
soldiers speaking out about the kind of things they did serving in the
territories, and lots of other groups.
If anyone is curious about the group see www.ffipp.org or feel free to
email me.
Anna

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Faculty For Israeli-Palestinian Peace, FFIPP Bulletin -
November 2005
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:54:12 -0400
From: yoav elinevsky
To: FFIPP List A

*Faculty For Israeli-Palestinian Peace, FFIPP
Bulletin - November 2005

**Winter Delegation More Affordable!
*
Dear Friend of FFIPP,

To make the winter delegation to Palestine/Israel more affordable we are
offering a number of options for accommodations on the trip and we have
also reduced the general fee to FFIPP to $400 for faculty and $300 for
students (to cover the cost of transportation and guides).

Members of the delegation, faculty and students, can choose from the
following options for accommodations:

Hostel Option
Staying in hostels, sharing a room. This option will reduce the overall
cost to about $700-$800 excluding airfare. This estimate includes $400
or $300 FFIPP fee, $200 for hostels, and $200 for food.

Private homes/ Hostel Option
Whenever possible, members of the delegation will stay in private homes
of students in Palestine and in Israel.
This option will reduce the overall cost to about $650-$750 excluding
airfare.
This estimate includes $400 or $300 FFIPP fee, $150 for hostels/private
homes, and $200 for food.

Standard Faculty Option
Staying in 3-4 star hotels in a single room. The overall cost under
this option will be about $1250 excluding airfare.
This estimate includes $400 FFIPP fee, $600 for hotels, and $250 for food.

*Each member of the delegation needs to pay the FFIPP fee before the
trip. Please visit our website to pay online or send a check** **payable
to Vanguard Public Foundation/FFIPP, mail to: FFIPP PO Box 2091, Amherst
MA 01004.
*
*Each member of the delegation will pay for hotel and food on their own.
FFIPP will make all the reservations.
*
*We hope to raise funds and give students additional discounts.
*
*Highlights of the next delegation:
*
*Seminars* at Al Najah University, Nablus and at the Islamic University
in Gaza. Mini-conferences in Bethlehem and Tel-Aviv University.

*Meetings* with Dr. Eyad Sarraj, Chairman Gaza Community Mental Health
Program, President FFIPPI *** Prof. Salim Tamari, Birzeit University,
Director Institute Jerusalem Studies, FFIPPI Board *** Prof. Ilan Pappe,
Haifa University *** Prof. Anat Biletzki, Tel Aviv University, B'Tzelem
Board Chair, FFIPPI Board *** Prof. Yehuda Elkana, President Central
European University Budapest, Co-chair FFIPPI Advisory Board *** Luisa
Morgantini, Member EU Parliament *** Shulamit Aloni, former minister and
Knesset member, former head of Meretz, human rights activist *** Dr.
Danny Rabinovitz, Tel Aviv University *** Akiva Eldar, Diplomatic
Affairs analysis and political commentator, Ha'Aretz newspaper ***
Reserve Major General Danny Rothschild ** *Faculty and students of Abu
Dis Campus and a Vigil at Abu Dis Wall *** Prof. David Shulman, Hebrew
University, Jerusalem *** Knesset Member Dr. Azmi B'shara, Chair
National Democratic Assembly Party *** Meron Benvenisti, author and
political scientist, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem.

An application to join the delegation is attached.

We hope you will join the next delegation and urge your colleagues to
join too.

Carnivorous lizard in toilet shocks Norwegian toddler - Yahoo! News

2005-11-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

Carnivorous lizard in toilet shocks Norwegian toddler - Yahoo! News

God Is in the Rules By GEOFF D. PORTER

2005-11-07T07:33:00.000-08:00

October 16, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor

God Is in the Rules

By GEOFF D. PORTER

Fatwas, the legal opinions proclaimed by Islamic scholars, have
proliferated in the Muslim world since the 1980's, driven by rising
literacy rates and the Internet. The growth in fatwas - some of them
contradictory - has led to a debate over who can legitimately issue
them and has alarmed governments in the Middle East, since the
decrees sometimes challenge state-sanctioned interpretations of Islam.

Yet criticizing fatwas about divisive issues like the propriety of
killing civilians and Shiites can be dangerous for officials. So the
Saudi government is trying a different tactic, zeroing in on what it
considers frivolous fatwas in order to rally support for tougher
measures on who can and who cannot issue opinions. Recently, Al
Watan, a semiofficial Saudi daily newspaper, reported that a young
athlete had joined the jihad in Iraq under the influence of a fatwa
forbidding playing soccer by regular rules. The newspaper also
republished the fatwa, said to have originally appeared on an Islamic
Web site. Portions of the fatwa, which I translated from the Arabic,
follow.

- GEOFF D. PORTER

IN the name of God the merciful and benevolent:
1. Play soccer without four lines because this is a fabrication of
the heretics' international rules that stipulate using them and
delineating them before playing.
2. International terminology that heretics and polytheists use, like
"foul," "penalty," "corner," "goal," "out" and others, should be
abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished,
reprimanded and ejected from the game. He should be publicly told,
"You have imitated the heretics and polytheists and this is
forbidden."
3. Do not call "foul" and stop the game if someone falls and sprains
a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow
or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle.
Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings
concerning broken bones and injuries. The injured player should
exercise his Sharia rights according to the Koran and you must bear
witness with him that so-and-so hurt him on purpose.
4. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and
especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play
with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.
5. Play in your regular clothes or your pajamas or something like
that, but not colored shorts and numbered T-shirts, because shorts
and T-shirts are not Muslim clothing. Rather they are heretical and
Western clothing, so beware of imitating their fashion.
6. If you have fulfilled these conditions and intend to play soccer,
play to strengthen the body in order to better struggle in the way of
God on high and to prepare the body for when it is called to jihad.
Soccer is not for passing time or the thrill of so-called victory.
7. Do not set the time of play at 45 minutes, which is the official
time of the Jews, Christians and all the heretical and atheist
countries. This is the time used by teams that have strayed from the
righteous path. You are obliged to distinguish yourself from the
heretics and the corrupted and must not resemble them in anything.
6. Do not play in two halves. Rather play in one half or three halves
in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics,
the polytheists, the corrupted and the disobedient.
9. If neither of you beats the other, or "wins" as it is called, and
neither puts the leather between the posts, do not add extra time or
penalties until someone wins. No, instead leave the field, because
winning with overtime and penalty kicks is the pinnacle of imitating
heretics and international rules.
10. If you play soccer, do not appoint someone to follow you called a
"referee," since there is no need for him after doing away with
international rules like "foul," "penalty," "corner" and others. His
presence would be in imitation of the heretics, Jews and Christians
and would follow international rules.
11. Young crowds should not gather to watch when you play because if
you are there for the sake of sports and strengthening your bodies as
you claimed, why would people watch you? You should make them join
your physical fitness and jihad preparation, or you should say: "Go
proselytize and seek out morally reprehensible acts in the markets
and the press and leave us to our physical fitness."
12. If you finish playing soccer, do not talk about your game and
say, "We were better than the opponent," or "So-and-so plays well"
and so on. Instead be concerned with your bodies and their strength
and muscles, and say, "We played only to drill in running, attacking
and retreating, and to prepare for jihad in the name of God on high."
13. You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the
posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow
him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should
punish and reprimand him, for what is the relationship between
celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are
practicing?
14. You should use two posts instead of three pieces of wood or steel
that you erect in order to put the ball between them, meaning that
you should remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics
and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system's
despotic international rules.
15. Do not do what is called "substitution," that is, taking the
place of someone who has fallen, because this is a practice of the
heretics in America and elsewhere.
These are some conditions and precepts so that morally aware youth do
not inadvertently imitate heretics and polytheists when playing
soccer ... Hell awaits those who die playing soccer according to
rules established by heretical countries, at the head of which is
America.
Geoff D. Porter directs Middle East and North Africa analysis at a
political risk consulting firm.

Bush Declares: 'We Do Not Torture' - Yahoo! News

2005-11-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Africa | Algerians jailed for eating lunch

2005-11-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

Islam needs Radicals, Not Moderates (and So Do We): Mark A LeVine

2005-10-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

Mark A. LeVine

Islam Needs Radicals, Not Moderates (and So Do We)
George W. Bush. Tony Blair. Sylvio Berlusconi. Jacques Chirac. Along with most every other Western leader and innumerable pundits and policy-makers, they are frantically searching for the "moderate Muslims" who can save Islam from itself and improve relations between Muslims and the West.

The problem is that there's no such thing as a moderate Muslim, at least the way most Americans define the term. Look at whom we call moderate: President Bush, joined by many leading commentators, consistently cites Jordan's King Abdullah and Morocco's King Muhammad as the epitome of modern, moderate Muslim leaders. But a glance at the Amnesty International reports on their countries, or those of Egypt, Pakistan and other so-called moderate regimes, reveals them to be anything but moderate in the way they treat their citizens. In fact, the level of repression and censorship of most "moderate" regimes is as great as at any time since 9/11.

What we really mean by "moderate" are leaders who play by our rules, don't challenge US/Western power and policies, and suppress any militant tendencies against us among their own peoples. Not surprisingly, the peoples of the region have a different view of these leaders: they are oppressive handmaidens of American empire.

Looking for something called moderate Islam is an equally problematic enterprise. President Bush famously argued that "Islam means peace" after 9/11 as a way of signaling support for moderate Islam. That's a nice sentiment, except that Islam doesn't mean peace; it means submission to the will of God, which as anyone familiar with the history of the last two millennia knows, has historically involved quite the opposite of peace. Similarly, commentators often celebrate the possibility of a moderate Islam by pointing to a hadith, or saying of the Prophet, that argues that the "greater jihad" of self-introspection and improvement is more fundamental for Muslims than the "lesser jihad" of war and violence. But as anyone familiar with Islamic law knows, most Muslim scholars consider it a "weak" hadith and not the Prophet's actual words. In fact, its use by reformers in during the last century has been met with scorn by conservatives, who see it as evidence that "moderates" have a poor grasp of their own theology and law.

In the last two decades a "moderate" school of Islamist jurisprudence has in fact emerged (known as the wasatiya movement in Arabic) that has tried to balance the body of Islamic law with the needs and norms of modern societies. But its leaders have been variously coopted or censored by their governments, or are quite immoderate when it comes to Jews, homosexuality or full equality for women. The ones that are truly moderate strongly oppose almost every facet of US foreign policy and our hyper consumerist culture, for which they are labeled "radicals" by their governments and ours.

What is interesting is that most so-called "radical" Islamic movement, such as al-Qa'eda, are in reality not that radical. Instead, they bear striking resemblances to utopian movements from the Jacobins of post-Revolutionary France to the fascists and Maoists of the last century. The tools used to wage their war--from the internet to the suicide vest--are new; but their desire violently to purify their societies is all too familiar.

What would a truly radical Muslim look like? Perhaps like a young Shi'i Sheikh named Anwar I met in Baghdad. He is known as the "Elastic Sheikh" because of his religious and secular university degrees and willingness to use "whatever works, wherever it comes from" to help the residents of his Sadr City neighborhood solve the myriad problems they face. Sadly, I have not heard from him in months, and fear he is among the victims of the increasing violence against the city's Shi'i population.

Or he might look like a friend of mine from Casablanca named Reda. One of the leaders of the Moroccan heavy metal scene, he's also a soon-to-be Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the Sorbonne. But he and his musical comrades were labeled as Satanists by moderate Islamists and arrested by the moderate Moroccan Government because they dared to write powerful--and really loud--songs that challenge the country's patriarchal politics and culture.

Or they might look like Nadia Yassine, the leader of Morocco's biggest political force, the religiously oriented Justice and Development movement. In our first meeting she explained that Islam was "hijacked by men" after the Prophet Muhammad's death and has suffered for it ever since. The next time I saw her she suggested that Morocco might be better off as a republic rather than a monarchy, a view that landed her in jail courtesy of the moderate government of Morocco.

It is she who first suggested to me that what Islam needs are radicals, not moderate--"but radicals in a good sense." Sitting next to her and nodding in agreement was the Swiss Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan. One of the leading progressive voices in Europe, his visa to teach at Notre Dame was revoked by the US government on trumped charges of being "tied to terrorists." This only months after senior CIA and State Department analysts asked me how they could find more Muslims "who are the real deal like him."

My radical friends are routinely oppressed by their governments, attacked by conservatives, obstructed by the US, and ignored by the media and peace groups who should be highlighting their activities and struggles. This suggests they're doing something right, and that we should be doing more to help them. Of course, that would be pretty radical; but how else to achieve the radical transformation that is necessary to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East, not to mention to America?

Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 at 8:58 AM

History News Network

2005-10-27T04:41:00.000-07:00

History News Network

Mark LeVine: A Critical Voice of the New Generation

2005-10-27T04:40:00.000-07:00

Mark LeVine: A Critical Voice of the New Generation

American Muslims and a Meaningful Human Rights Discourse in the Aftermath of Septemtber 11 by by Imam Zaid Shakir

2005-10-27T03:57:00.000-07:00

American Muslims and a Meaningful Human Rights Discourse in the Aftermath of Septemtber 11 by by Imam Zaid Shakir

Tabsir

2005-10-27T02:08:00.000-07:00

Pakistan's Dispensability Indispensable for War on Terror, Dispensable for Relief Aid by Junaid Ahmed

2005-10-12T02:03:00.000-07:00

ZNet South Asia
Pakistan's DispensabilityIndispensable for War on Terror, Dispensable for Relief Aid
by Junaid Ahmad; October 10, 2005
Pakistan has just suffered its most horrific earthquake in nearly a century. At the time of writing the estimated number of dead and injured is 20,000 & 42,000, respectively. There is a high likelihood that these numbers will increase as more and more villages, towns, and buildings are discovered to have been razed to the ground. Stories of several schools with young children being wiped out by the sheer power of the earthquake make all of us following the situation tremble at the unthinkable thought.
President Musharraf of Pakistan has declared his country’s need for support at this hour. It was rather unusual hearing these pleas from a man who tends to mask himself as a knight-in-shinning-armor in no need of anyone’s help and more than willing to tell those who question or advise him to shove it. Of course, this is only a veneer that cloaks the reality of his hyper-machismoism against some – like women’s rights groups – and his meekness against others – Uncle Sam.
And so there are some initial pledges of aid to Pakistan: The European Union has pledged $3.6 million, Australia $380,000, and the UK $177,000 and a 60-strong team to help with on-the-ground work. What about the country for which Pakistan took a complete “U-turn” in its whole framework of foreign policy after 9/11, for which Pakistan was an indispensable ally in the “war on terror,” for which Musharraf had himself experienced at least two assassination attempts, and for which all types of ideologies – such as “enlightened moderation” – have been cooked up to serve the needs of the neo-liberal Empire? What about the United States and its generosity to its dear friend Pakistan? A paltry $100,000 is our answer.
This buying on the cheap of certain allies whose services are required by the Empire is nothing new. So-called allies that are more aptly described as client states or puppets needn’t be concerned about whether or not they’ll be compensated; rather, they should simply do as they’re told or look at the Vietnams or Cubas of the world to figure out what the penalty for disobedience will be. The US consistently pressures the Pakistani regime, like it has done and continues to do to other regimes, to take positions and actions contrary to the wishes of the overwhelming majority of its population. Musharraf’s attempt to help his friend Bush out in Iraq by sending troops was so scandalous and contemptible that he simple wasn’t able to pull it off. However, something as deeply unpopular – the “normalization” of ties with Israel – he does think that he just might be able to pull off if rendered support from well-placed power centers in Washington and at home.
It will also be interesting to see how some of the gulf Arab states respond to this enormous crisis of a fellow Muslim “brotherly” country. The outrage is still held in the hearts of many who noticed how the governments of Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar quickly pledged one hundred million dollars each (and Kuwait an additional $400 million in free oil) to the US in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but did not show the same alacrity or generosity in their response to the far greater Asian tsunami, and only forked the cash from their purses when their “honor” was put in question by many, including the majority of Muslims, who found their stingy reaction repugnant.
Whatever one may think of the politics of such cozy relationships between the US and unaccountable governments in the Third World, the story seems to be a simple but sad one. The regimes of these countries offered the friendship of the US outlived their real life expectancy in power by many years, thanks to US support. Washington’s assurance of adhering to the principle that stability and its geo-strategic interests requires keeping the Musharrafs and the “petrol station” monarchies of the Middle East in power, and the heavy weaponry and arming-to-the-teeth this necessitates, has allowed these illegitimate governments to fare quite well. But as this devastating earthquake in Pakistan has shown, even if their governments are close allies of the US, the peoples of these countries should be under no illusion of getting anything positive out of this “friendly” arrangement. In the majority of the cases, with neo-liberalism and militaristic Empire-building on the march, the results are in fact quite the opposite.

Perhaps embarrassing Washington and the Gulf Arab states is unfortunately what is once more required to get more crumbs from their massive treasuries and limitless personal bank accounts. Let us hope and pray, for those affected by this disaster and future ones.
Junaid S. Ahmad is a law student at the College of William and Mary. He can be reached at junaid.ahmad@cox.net

Global Warming "Past the Point of No Return" by Steve Connor, Science Editor

2005-10-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

SANE Views

Vol 5, no 21, 10 October 2005

GLOBAL WARMING 'PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN'

BY STEVE CONNOR, SCIENCE EDITOR
PUBLISHED 16 SEPTEMBER 2005

A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.

The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.
Satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August has reached its lowest monthly point on record, dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average.

Experts believe that such a loss of Arctic sea ice in summer has not occurred in hundreds and possibly thousands of years. It is the fourth year in a row that the sea ice in August has fallen below the monthly downward trend - a clear sign that melting has accelerated.
Scientists are now preparing to report a record loss of Arctic sea ice for September, when the surface area covered by the ice traditionally reaches its minimum extent at the end of the summer melting period.
Sea ice naturally melts in summer and reforms in winter but for the first time on record this annual rebound did not occur last winter when the ice of the Arctic failed to recover significantly. Arctic specialists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University, who have documented the gradual loss of polar sea ice since 1978, believe that a more dramatic melt began about four years ago.

In September 2002 the sea ice coverage of the Arctic reached its lowest level in recorded history. Such lows have normally been followed the next year by a rebound to more normal levels, but this did not occur in the summers of either 2003 or 2004. This summer has been even worse. Thesurface area covered by sea ice was at a record monthly minimum for each of the summer months - June, July and now August. Scientists analysing the latest satellite data for September - the traditional minimum extent for each summer - are preparing to announce a significant shift in the stability of the Arctic sea ice, the northern hemisphere's major "heat sink" that moderates climatic extremes.

"The changes we've seen in the Arctic over the past few decades are nothing short of remarkable," said Mark Serreze, one of the scientists at the Snow and Ice Data Centre who monitor Arctic sea ice. Scientists at the data centre are bracing themselves for the 2005 annual minimum, which is expected to be reached in mid-September, when anotherrecord loss is forecast. A major announcement is scheduled for 20 September. "It looks like we're going to exceed it or be real close one way or the other. It is probably going to be at least as comparable to September 2002," Dr Serreze said. "This will be four Septembers in a row that we've seen a downward trend. The feeling is we are reaching a tipping point or threshold beyond which sea ice will not recover."
The extent of the sea ice in September is the most valuable indicator of its health. This year's record melt means that more of the long-term ice formed over many winters - so called multi-year ice - has disappeared than at any time in recorded history. Sea ice floats on the surface of the Arctic Ocean and its neighbouring seas and normally covers an area of some 7 million square kilometres (2.4 million square miles) during September - about the size of Australia.

However, in September 2002, this dwindled to about 2 million square miles - 16 per cent below average. Sea ice data for August closely mirrors that for September and last month's record low - 18.2 per cent below the monthly average - strongly suggests that this September will see the smallest coverage of Arctic sea ice ever recorded.
As more and more sea ice is lost during the summer, greater expanses of open ocean are exposed to the sun which increases the rate at which heat is absorbed in the Arctic region, Dr Serreze said. Sea ice reflects up to 80 per cent of sunlight hitting it but this "albedo effect" is mostly lost when the sea is uncovered.

"We've exposed all this dark ocean to the sun's heat so that the overall heat content increases," he explained.
Current computer models suggest that the Arctic will be entirely ice-free during summer by the year 2070 but some scientists now believe that even this dire prediction may be over-optimistic, said Professor Peter Wadhams, an Arctic ice specialist at Cambridge University. "When the ice becomes so thin it breaks up mechanically rather than thermodynamically. So these predictions may well be on the over-optimistic side," he said.

As the sea ice melts, and more of the sun's energy is absorbed by the exposed ocean, a positive feedback is created leading to the loss of yet more ice, Professor Wadhams said. "If anything we may be underestimating the dangers. The computer models may not take into account collaborative positive feedback," he said.
Sea ice keeps a cap on frigid water, keeping it cold and protecting it from heating up. Losing the sea ice of the Arctic is likely to have major repercussions for the climate, he said. "There could be dramatic changes to the climate of the northern region due to the creation of a vast expanse of open water where there was once effectively land," Professor Wadhams said. "You're essentially changing land into ocean andthe creation of a huge area of open ocean where there was once land will have a very big impact on other climate parameters," he said.

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THE CHANGING DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE IN AFRICA

2005-10-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

THE CHANGING DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE IN AFRICA
Professor Issa G. Shivji

Issa Shivji tackles the history of the development discourse in Africa, discussing its changing meanings from the colonial period to post-independence rule and the onset of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s – Africa’s lost decade. The new development discourse of neo-liberalism (otherwise known as globalization) continues historical forms of dispossession, Shivji notes, but there is also hope in the fact that Africa’s history is not only of slavery,
exploitation and colonialism. It is also a story of struggle, as Julius Nyerere wrote, against these evils, and of battles won after many setbacks and much suffering.

Introduction

‘From development to poverty reduction,’ sums up the trajectory of the development discourse in Africa over the last four decades since independence. This development marks significant shifts, not only in economic approaches and policies, but also in academic theories and political ideologies underpinning the discourse. In this article, my aim is to reflect on broad trends in the changing discourse unencumbered by details and empirical data.

I will organise my reflections around four aspects of the discourse: first the institutional and social agency of development; second, its ideological rationalization or justification; third, the theories underlying the discourse and, fourth, its politics.
The contextual theme running through the discourse is Africa’s place and role in the global political economy and its relationship with the developed North, or, more correctly, the imperial factor.

Although my subject is not really the history of the development discourse, some periodisation is necessary to highlight the breaks and continuities in the ideas on development. The first two decades after independence, roughly the 1960s and 1970s, may be called the ‘age of
developmentalism’. The next decade, that is the 1980s, has been characterised as Africa’s lost decade. This is the period which spawned various structural adjustment programmes or SAPs under the tutelage of the IMF and the World Bank. SAPs prepared the ground for and dovetailed into the next, or the current period, which may be characterised as the ‘age of globalisation’?

The Age of Developmentalism

The struggle for independence in Africa was first and foremost an assertion of the humanness of the African people after five centuries of domination and humiliation of the slave trade and colonialism. In the words of Tom Mboya, the struggle for independence was the ‘rediscovery of Africa by Africans’ while Amilcar Cabral described it as the ‘re-Africanisation of minds’ or ‘re-becoming Africans’. National development became the passion of politicians and the ‘great expectation’ of the people. In the vision of the more articulate nationalist leaders like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, the independent state had a double task, that of building the nation and developing the economy. The state in Africa, Nyerere argued, preceded the nation, rather than the other way round. Thus the national project was from the start, top-down, and statist.
The colonial economy and society were anything but national. In the scramble for Africa, the colonial powers had divided the continent into mini-countries where boundaries cut through cultural, ethnic and economic affinities. This was made worse by the policy of divide and rule, leaving behind uneven development in an extreme form. Some regions were more developed than others. Some ethnic groups were labelled martial, providing a recruiting ground for soldiers; others were turned into labour reservoirs; some were characterised as “intelligent” and moderately entrepreneurial as opposed to the rest who were inherently indolent and lazy. All were of course uncivilized, uncultured, undisciplined pagans whose souls needed to be saved and whose skins needed to be thrashed.

The colonial economy was typically disarticulated, almost tailor-made, for exploitation by colonial capital, linked to the metropolitan trade and capital circuits. Extractive industries like mining predominated. Plantation agriculture existed side by side with subsistence peasant cultivation, all concentrating on one or a couple of crops for export according to the needs of the metropolitan economy.

Different colonial powers left behind different forms and traditions of public administration, culture, cuisine, dance and education, elementary as it was, all concentrated in towns. The urban and the rural were literally two countries within one; one alien, modern, a metropolitan transplant barred to the native – while the other stagnating and frozen in the so-called tradition or custom. But neither the modern nor the traditional were organically so. Both were colonial constructs.

No other continent suffered as much destruction of its social fabric through foreign imperial domination as did Africa.

I have traced these initial conditions on the eve of independence for two reasons. Firstly, to underline the fact that the nationalist project faced a formidable task at independence. Secondly, to highlight an even more formidable reality; that the state that was supposed to carry out the twin tasks of nation-building and economic development was itself a colonial heritage. The colonial state was a despotic state, a metropolitan
police and military outpost, in which powers were concentrated and centralized and where law was an unmediated instrument of force and where administrative fiat was more a rule, than the rule of law.

The nationalist vision thus called for a revolutionary transformation not only of the economy and society but also the state. A few nationalist visionaries attempted, but none succeeded. The post-independence international context was no more propitious than the colonial. Independence found Africa in the midst of Cold War and the rising imperial power, the United States, for whom any assertion of national self-determination was “communism”, to be hounded and destroyed, by force if necessary, by manipulation and deception, if possible. The early story of the gruesome assassination of Patrice
Lumumba and the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, and the continuing story of military coups, assassinations, and resistance to national liberation wars and civil strife in Africa, in most of which imperialism had a hand, bear testimony to what the former colonial powers and the rising imperial power could do to retain their collective global hegemony.

These were then the initial conditions, so to speak, within which African nationalists had to realise their dream of nation-building and economic development and to answer their people’s ‘great expectations’. Invariably, the agency of change was the state since there was virtually no social class which could shoulder the task of national development.
Nor was foreign capital obliging in spite of various protective laws and incentive schemes put in place by the African governments.

Invariably, nationalist politicians turned to the state. African governments of all ideological hues – from capitalist Kenyans through socialist Tanzanians to Marxists of various inclinations– all resorted to the state for their economic programmes. The post-independence economic programmes, contrary to the current propaganda from the West, were designed by the erstwhile World Bank. In effect it involved intensification of the monoculture agriculture for export; some enclaves of import-substitution industrialization and throwing open of the extractive and resource based industries to trans-national corporations.

The state had to be manned. The colonial bureaucracy was almost exclusively White at the top and immigrant in the middle. The education and health infrastructure had to be expanded, both for pragmatic as well as political reasons. Africanisation of the civil service could not be resisted nor could the basic welfare demands of the population. Provision of basic services by the state as a matter of fact also served to legitimise the otherwise authoritarian rule of the political elite. The state bureaucracy grew by leaps and bounds.

Nationalism thus resolved itself into various ideologies of developmentalism. ‘We should run while others walk’, politicians declared. The academia was dominated from the North. Post-independence economies were typically dual economies. There was the traditional sector, rural, unproductive, backward, lacking entrepreneurial spirit and governed by ascription or the ‘economy of affection’.

Development consisted in modernizing the traditional society.

The dominance of modernization paradigm was challenged by young academics coming out of post-independence universities. Where there was relatively a freer space, as in Tanzania of the 60s and 70s, intense debates raged between modernizers and radical nationalists calling themselves African socialists or Ujamaaists or Marxists.

African progressives placed history of the development of underdevelopment and the role of imperialism as the process of worldwide accumulation, at the centre of their analysis and understanding. The traditional, they argued, was not quite traditional, nor the modern quite modern; rather both belonged to the system of international capitalism which reproduced development in the metropoles and underdevelopment in the peripheries.

Development therefore was not a process of changing ‘pattern variables’ or looking for modernizing elites but rather a process of class struggle.

Meanwhile, the state became both the site of power struggles as well as accumulation. Radical nationalists, who showed any vision of transforming their societies, were routed through military coups or assassinations. A few who survived compromised themselves and became compradors or tolerated imperial arrogance for pragmatic reasons.

Everywhere, politics became authoritarian, whether in the form of one-party states or outright military dictatorships. Liberal constitutional orders imposed by the departing colonial states did not survive as the underlying logic of the colonial despotic state reasserted itself.

State positions opened up opportunities for seeking rents. Conspicuous consumption at home, a little investment in unproductive activities to make quick profits and a lot of stashing of funds in foreign bank accounts was, and perhaps still is, the typical characteristic of this class. Thus very little serious domestic private accumulation took place. Whatever investment that did take place was public, by the state.

During the first one-and-half decades of independence the African economies showed modest growth rates; modest in comparison to other continents but impressive given the initial conditions at the time of independence.

Investment and savings ranged between 15 to 20 per cent of the GDP. Primary and secondary school enrolment was expanded. Tertiary education, which in many countries literally did not exist during colonial times, was introduced. Medical and health statistics also showed improvement. But this growth and development was unsustainable. It was predicated on the reinforcement of colonial foundations.

Growth in agriculture production was based on extensive cultivation rather than a rise in productivity through chemicalization, mechanization and irrigation. It depended heavily on exports of a few primary commodities traded on a hostile and adverse international market. The growth in the manufacturing industry was heavily of the import-substitution type with little internal linkages and dependent on import of intermediary inputs.

Investment was largely public while domestic private capital was stashed away in foreign countries. One estimate has it that by 1990, 37 per cent of Africa’s wealth had flown outside the continent. (Mkandawire & Soludo 1999:11) To top it all, foreign capital concentrated in extractive industries which simply haemorrhaged the economy rather than contribute to its development.

During this period, the developmental state also borrowed heavily whether for productive or prestigious projects. Petro-dollars accumulated by international banks during the 1973 oil crisis were off-loaded in the form of cheap loans to developing countries. By the end of 1970s, cheap loans turned into heavy debt burdens. By this time, the limits of the early growth were also reached and the economic shocks of the late seventies plunged African economies into deep crisis. Numbers fell, growth rates became negative, debt repayments became unsustainable, fiscal imbalances went out of control, and so did inflation. Social services declined, infrastructure deteriorated and one after another African governments found themselves at the door of IMF and the Paris Club pleading for mercy.

1980s, described by economists as Africa’s ‘lost decade’, was also the transition decade which marked the beginning of the decline of developmentalism and the rise of neo-liberalism, euphemistically called, globalisation.

The crisis, the lost decade and the spectre of marginalisation

In 1981 the World Bank published its notorious report, ‘Accelerated development for Africa: an Agenda for Africa’. It was certainly an agenda for Africa set by the erstwhile Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) with the backing of Western countries but it had little to do with development, accelerated or otherwise. The report and the subsequent structural adjustment programmes concentrated on stabilization measures: getting rid of budget deficits, bringing down rates of inflation, getting prices right, unleashing the market and liberalising trade. According to the World Bank, the villain of the declining economic performance in Africa was the state, it was corrupt and dictatorial, it had no capacity to manage the economy and allocate resources rationally, it was bloated with bureaucracy, and nepotism was its mode of operation. The BWIs would not bail out the crisis ridden economies unless the governments adopted structural adjustment programmes to get stabilization fundamentals right.

Balancing budgets involved cutting out subsidies to agriculture and spending on social programmes, including education and health. Unleashing the market meant doing away with protection of infant industries and rolling back the state from economic activity. The results of SAPs were devastating as many studies by researchers have shown. Social indicators like education, medical care, health, nutrition, rates of literacy and life expectancy all declined. Deindustrialization set in. Redundancies followed. In short, even some of the modest achievements of the nationalist or developmentalist period were lost or undermined.

As the international situation changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western imperialist powers regained their ideological initiative. The neo-liberal package of marketisation, privatisation and liberalisation now became the policy for, but not of the African states. Good performers would be praised and rewarded with more aid while the insubordinate and recalcitrant would be parodied and left to its own wit. While aid had always come with strings, now there was no attempt to disguise it. Political conditionalities were added to economic conditionalities. Policy making slipped out of the hands of the African state as Western financed policy consultants in their thousands jetted all over the continent with blue prints of policy on Poverty Reduction Strategies and manuals on good governance on their computers, gobbling up some 4 billion dollars annually.

In 1985, to give just one example, foreign experts resident in Equatorial Guinea were paid an amount three times the total government wage bill of the public sector.[Mkandawire & Soludo ibid.:137]

National liberation ideologies have been rubbished and national self-determination itself has been declared passé. Africa is told, it has only one choice: either to get integrated fully into the globalised world or be marginalised.

African leaders are left with little options: ‘you are either with globalisation or doomed!’ They have fallen in line one after another even if it means disowning their own past. Blair’s Commission for Africa report, which consisted of prominent Africans including one president and one prime minister, castigates the whole of the last three decades, which virtually means the whole of post-independence period, as “lost decades”. The primary responsibility is placed on the African state for bad governance and lack of accountability, totally ignoring the role of imperialism in both the exploitation of African resources and supporting of non-democratic states when it suited their interests. Africans are told they have no capacity to think and African states are told they have no capacity to make correct policies.

The age of globalisation and the Pan-Africanist resistance

Globalisation expresses itself in Africa as neo-liberalism. These are a set of policies around stabilization of monetary and fiscal fundamentals on the one hand, and marketisation, liberalisation and privatisation of the economy, on the other. The failures of earlier SAPs and their unrelenting critique by African intellectuals saw some modification of the programmes in the 1990s.

In short, the underlying thrust of the neo-liberal and globalised development “discourse”, which centres on policy-making, is deeper integration of African economies into the global capital and market circuits without fundamental transformation. It is predicated on private capital, which in Africa translates into foreign private capital, as the ‘engine of growth’. It centres on economic growth without asking whether growth necessarily translates into development.

It banishes the issues of equality and equity to the realm of rights, not development. ‘Human-centered and people-driven’ development which were the kingpin of African alternatives, such as the Lagos Plan of
Action, are pooh-poohed into non-existence as the African people are reduced to ‘the chronically poor’ who are the subject matter of papers on strategies for poverty reduction rather than the authors and drivers of development. It villainises African states and demonizes African bureaucracies as corrupt, incapable and unable to learn. They need globalised foreign advisors and consultants, who are now termed development practitioners, to monitor and oversee them.

In this “discourse” the developmental role of the state is declared dead and buried. Instead, it is assigned the role of a “chief” to supervise the globalisation project under the tutelage of imperialism, now called, development partners. The irony of the recent Commission
for Africa was that it was convened, constituted and chaired by a British Prime Minister, while an African president and a prime minister sat on it as members. This symbolizes the nature of the so-called “new partnership”. The message is clear: African “co-partners” in African development are neither equal nor in the driver’s seat.

But the neo-liberal project in Africa has not been without resistance.

As Nyerere observed in his Preface to a book by African scholars significantly sub-titled, ‘Beyond Dispossession and dependence”: Africa’s history is not only one of slavery, exploitation and colonialism’ it is also a story of struggle against these evils, and of battles won after many setbacks and much suffering. (Adedeji ed. 1993:xv)

There have been struggles against SAPs and globalisation in the streets and in lecture halls of Africa. I will only confine myself to intellectual resistance. African scholars have severely critiqued structural adjustment programmes and indicated alternatives. Even African states and bureaucracies have not surrendered without some fight. There have been attempts to provide alternative frameworks and plans and programmes such as the Lagos Plan of Action, (1980); The African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programme for Socio-economic Recovery and Transformation (1989) and the African Charter for Popular Participation and Development (1990).

These alternative frameworks have underlined the need for a holistic approach to Africa’s development; called for a continental programme of regional integration and collective self-reliance; cajoled African states not to surrender their developmental role, and sovereignty in policy-making; and have attempted to develop a vision of a human-centered and people-driven development for the future of the continent. These African initiatives have been invariably dismissed by the erstwhile Bretton Woods institutions and the so-called “development partners”.

Wielding the threat of marginalisation and dangling the carrot of aid, the so-called development partners have, persistently and dogmatically, pushed through their own agendas, which invariably prioritize the geo-political and strategic needs of the global hegemony and the voracious appetites of corporate capital for resources and profits.

The African ‘state of art’ on development

I will quickly summarize the new development perspectives that are emerging in the debates of African scholars and intellectuals.

Firstly, African scholars are agreed that there is a clear need to go beyond stabilization fundamentals to developmental fundamentals. While stabilization policies and measures may be necessary, they are not sufficient. They have to be conceived within the larger context of building a self-sustaining economy rather than as short-term shock therapies.

Secondly, approaches and concerns of political economy on state and society have to be brought back in the discourse on development. A critical assessment and appreciation of the developmental discourses of the nationalist period is essential.

Thirdly, the state must reassert its developmental role, not so much as an executive or a regulatory agency, but as an organised force with a vision and an operational programme. It must protect nascent sources of domestic capital, as well as take account of, and provide for, the basic needs of the population as a whole. The role of the South-East Asian states in this regard, particularly in the development of human capital, is often cited in support.

In sum, the state must play a lead role in the long-term planning so as to place the economy on the developmental path towards an integrated economy.

But, fourthly, the state itself has to be reformed and restructured. The despotic colonial and the authoritarian post-colonial state cannot play a popular developmental role. Its limits have been reached. The reformed state must have its roots in the people and must seek legitimacy from the people. It must seek a new social consensus and build its legitimacy not only on the economic terrain – development – but also on the political and legal terrain of popular participation, freedoms, rights and stable constitutional orders.

Some African intellectuals, not without evidence, have questioned the suitability and viability of the liberal democratic model for Africa. They have forcefully argued that Africa has to go beyond liberal to social democracy which would address not only the question of formal equality but that of social justice and equity as well.

Formal democracy with multiparty and five-year elections too has come under scrutiny. The experience of the liberalisation of the state over the last couple of decades does not inspire confidence or hope. Popular democracy, grassroots democracy, local democracy, new democracy, etc. are the new concepts being discussed and debated.

Fifthly, African scholars are revisiting the nationalist period and the aborted national project. There is renewed interest in the Pan-Africanist vision. There is no way, it is argued, that Africa can truly develop in the face of the threat of marginalisation by the new imperialist assault called globalisation, unless it unites. This time around, Africa has to go beyond regional integration and free trade agreements and work towards political unity, a Federation of African States. The nationalism and national liberation of the globalisation age is Pan-Africanism, it is asserted.

In this respect African intellectuals have severely criticized and exposed the limits of the apparent “African” initiative, the New Economic Partnership for African Development or NEPAD. NEPAD is another form of donor-dependent program seeking more aid and assistance and predicated on further integration in the unequal global structures.

Calling it a ‘feudo-imperial partnership’ Adebayo Adedeji says, the objective of NEPAD is ‘for the African canoe to be firmly tied to the North’s neo-liberal ship on the waters of globalisation’ (Nyong’o et. al. eds, 2002:36).

Sixthly, the debate on the vexed question of agency continues unabated. Is there an African national bourgeoisie capable of leading a genuine capitalist development or do we just have comprador bourgeoisies serving the needs of foreign capital? Is state-centred socialist development, based on popular forces, the only alternative? In any case, is a socialist alternative feasible in the light of the unipolar hegemony of imperialism? Or is it even desirable in the light of the experience of the former Soviet-bloc countries? Or, shall we develop a transitional ‘model’, called ‘new democracy’, based on what Samir Amin calls ‘national popular forces’?

Whatever be the case, progressive and concerned African intellectuals seem to agree that a ‘national or a new democratic revolution’ on a Pan-African scale is on the agenda, both as a form of resistance and as an alternative framework for ‘reconstruction’.

All in all, the development discourse in Africa among African intellectuals is alive, kicking, mentally refreshing and intellectually formidable, notwithstanding declarations of World Bank technicians, called consultants, proclaiming ‘the end of development’. Africans are reclaiming their right to think for themselves.

Issa G. Shivji is Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (issashivji@cats-net.com)* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Selected references

Adedeji, A., ed. 1993, Africa within the World: Beyond Dispossession and Dependence, London: Zed books.

Amin, S. 1994, ‘The Issue of Democracy in the contemporary Third World, in Himmelstrand, U. et. al. eds. Op. cit.

Bond, P., ed. 2002, Fanon’s Warning: a Civil Society Reader on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, New Jersey: Africa World Press.

Cabral, A., 1980, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings, London: Heinemann.

Chole, E. & Jibrin Ibrahim, eds. 1995, Democratisation Processes in Africa: Problems and Prospects, Dakar: CODESRIA.

Fanon, F., 1963, The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin.

Furedi, F., 1994, The New Ideology of Imperialism, London: Pluto.

Campbell, H., & H. Stein, eds., 1991, The IMF and Tanzania, Harare: SAPES.

Himmelstrand, U. et. al. eds., 1994, African Perspectives on Development, London: James Currey.

Hyden, G., 1980, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry, Berkely & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Landsberg, C. & F. Kornegey, 1998, ‘The African Renaissance: a quest for Pax Africana and Pan-Africanism’, in Foundation for Global Dialogue, South Africa and Africa: Reflections on the African Renaissance, FGD Occasional paper No. 17.

Legum, L., 1965, Pan-Africanism: A short political guide, (Revised edition) London: Pall Mall Press.

Luthuli, A. et. al, 1964, Africa’s Freedom, London: Unwin Books.

Mafeje, A., 2002, ‘Democratic governance and new democracy in Africa: Agenda for the Future, in Nyong’o, Ghirmazion & Lamba, eds.

Mahjoub, A. (ed.) 1990, Adjustment or De-linking? (London: Zed/UNU).

Mahmood, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Pinceton: Princeton.

Mboya, T., Freedom and After, 1963, London: Andre Deutsch.

Mkandawire, T. & C. C. Soludo, eds., 1999, Our Continent, Our Future”: African perspectives on structural adjustment, Dakar: CODESRIA.

Nkrumah, K. 1965, Neo-colonialism: the last stage of Imperialism, London: Heinemann.

Nyerere, J. K. 1963b, ‘The Second Scramble’, reprinted in Nyerere op. cit. 1967.

Nyerere, J. K. 1968, Freedom and Socialism, London: OUP.

Nyerere, J. K., 1967, Freedom and Unity: a selection from writings and speeches, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.

Nyerere, J. K, 1963a, ‘A United States of Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies, January 1963, Cambridge reprinted in Nyerere op. cit. 1967..

Nyerere, J.K. 1966, ‘’The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist,’ in J. K. Nyerere, op. cit. 1968.

Nyerere, J.K. 1997, ‘Africa Must Unite’, edited excerpts from a public lecture delivered in Accra to mark Ghana’s fortieth Independence Day anniversary celebrations, United New Africa Global Network website: http://www.unitednewafrica.com/Africa%20Unite .htm
Nyongo, P.A. ed., 1989, La Politica Africana Y La Crisis del Desarrallo, Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico.

Nyong’o, Ghirmazion & Lamba, eds. 2002, New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD: A New Path? Nairobi: Heinrich Boll Foundation.

Rodney, W. 1972, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publsihing House.

Semboja, J., Juma, Mwapachu & Eduard Jansen eds., 2002. Local Perspectives on Globalisation: The African Case, Dar es Salaam: REPOA &Mkuki na Nyota.

Shivji, I. G., ed. 1991 State and Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Democracy, Harare: SAPES.

Shivji, I. G. 2000, Critical Elements of a New Democratic Consensus in Africa" in Haroub Othman (ed.) Reflections on Leadership in Africa: Essays in Honour of Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, (Belgium: VUB University Press).

Shivji, I. G. 2005, ‘The Rise, the Fall and the insurrection of Nationalism in Africa’, in Felicia Arudo Yieke ed. op.cit.

South Commission, the, 1990, The Challenge to the South: The Report of the South Commission, London: Oxford University Press.

Tandon, Y., 1982, University of Dar es Salaam: debate on class, state & imperialism, Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.

Toussaint, E. 1999, Your Money or Your Life!, the tyranny of global finance, London: Pluto Press.

Yieke, F. A. ed. 2005, East Africa: In Search of National and Regional Renewal, Dakar: CODESRIA

Reading Al QaedaThe jihadists export their rage to book pages and Web pages.

2005-10-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

Reading Al QaedaThe jihadists export their rage to book pages and Web pages.
By Peter Bergen Schwartz Fellow
The Washington Post September 11, 2005
Al Qaeda, which means "the base" in Arabic, lost its physical base in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, so now its ideological base can be found not in the training camps of the Hindu Kush but on the Internet and in the books that leaders of the movement serialize in Arabic newspapers. These Web sites and publications are aimed at reaching a wide audience in the Muslim world. For instance, the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat is arguably the most influential newspaper in the Arabic-speaking world, while Abu Musab al Suri's 1,600-page history of jihad, The International Islamic Resistance Call, was posted to a jihadist Web site in Dec. 2004. Once it was posted, the book could then be copied to thousands of other such sites. It turns out that the first truly virtual books are being published not only by Silicon Valley whiz kids but also by jihadists.
All of the publications under discussion here deserve a wide audience in the West--simply because if we are interested in understanding our enemies, the best intelligence about what they are thinking can often be found in what they're saying publicly. That was true when Osama bin Laden first publicly declared war on the United States in an interview with al Quds al Arabi newspaper in 1996, and it's true today.
Perhaps because we constantly hear that Islamist terrorists are bound together by their common dislike of the United States, we tend to assume that they must also be united by common tactics, strategies and ideology. In fact, those militants often resent one another as much as they do the Bush administration; the global jihadist movement is riven by squabbles over personnel and grand strategy that make the disputes on The Jerry Springer Show seem tame.
Nothing better illustrates this than the career of al Qaeda's No. 2, the Egyptian terrorist Ayman Zawahiri. A self-serving version of Zawahiri's story can be found in his own book, Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, extracts of which were published in Dec. 2001 by Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper. A good deal of Zawahiri's apologia pro vita sua is an attack on those in Egypt's militant movement who have laid down their weapons and made an accommodation with the hated Egyptian government. Zawahiri's fury is particularly directed at one Egyptian lawyer, Montasser al-Zayyat, a recovering revolutionary who has made a career of defending jihadists on trial in Egypt. Zawahiri writes derisively, "Al-Zayyat has for a long time promoted the idea of halting jihad action against the government and its U.S. and Jewish allies inside and outside Egypt." In 2002, like rival rappers dissing each other on dueling mix tapes, Zayyat released his own riposte to Zawahiri's book in his novella-length The Road to Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden's Right-Hand Man (Pluto; paperback, $19), published last year in an excellent English translation by Ahmed Fekry.
One key theme that emerges from all of these publications is how fissured and split the jihadist movement has been historically--and how those fissures became more pronounced after Sept. 11. (Unfortunately, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has papered over many of those rifts). Emblematic of those fractures are the paths taken by the feuding Egyptian Islamists, Zawahiri and Zayyat. On one side are the former militants like Zayyat, who in 1997 entered into a ceasefire agreement with the Egyptian government after years of jihadist violence that killed more than a thousand Egyptians; on the other side are hardliners like Zawahiri, who has firmly rejected any thought of truce with the infidel Mubarak regime.
All of this would be a purely local Egyptian concern had Zawahiri not increasingly embedded the terrorist group he founded, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, within al Qaeda over the past decade. Indeed, to a large degree, al Qaeda is an Egyptian construct. Its ideology derives from the writings of the radical Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb, who laid out the key religio-political justifications for offensive wars against the "enemies of Islam" from his cell in an Egyptian prison in the 1960s--particularly in Milestones (Bilal; paperback, $7.95), the ur-text of the jihadist movement. The successive military commanders of al Qaeda--Abu Ubaidah al Banshiri, Muhammad Atef and Saif al-Adel--are former Egyptian police and army officers. Al Qaeda also adopted Egyptian Islamic Jihad's emphasis on attacking high-value targets and its secretive cell structure. But Zayyat points out--correctly--that the relationship between Zawahiri and al Qaeda has been a two-way street. "Osama bin Lade! n also had an appreciable impact on Zawahiri, although the conventional wisdom holds the opposite to be the case," Zayyat writes. "For example, bin Laden advised Zawahiri to stop armed operations in Egypt and to ally with him against their common enemies: the United States and Israel. His advice to Zawahiri came upon their return to Afghanistan [in 1996], when bin Laden ensured the safety of Zawahiri and the [Egyptian] Islamic Jihad members under the banner of the Taliban."
The most serious quarrel between Zawahiri and Zayyat revolves not around Zayyat's support for the 1997 ceasefire with the Egyptian government but around what is, to date, the crowning glory of al Qaeda's jihad, Sept. 11. Zayyat argues that the attacks had a disastrous boomerang effect on Islamists that will ultimately weaken the movement. "The point of disagreement...between Zawahiri and me, is how best to deal with the world's superpower," he writes. "Bin Laden's desire to take revenge [with the Sept. 11 attacks]...has given the Americans and other governments the power to destroy the Islamists before our eyes."
Of course, Zawahiri disagrees, counseling that the war with the United States is only in its early stages. Indeed, he thinks that time is on his side; the lessons of history, as Zawahiri sees them, suggest that a prolonged jihad holds the key to ending American influence and power in the Middle East. "The Crusaders in Palestine and Syria [in the Middle Ages] left after two centuries of continued jihad," he notes.
But Zayyat is not the only Islamist who is critical of al Qaeda's leaders. Abu Walid al Misri is an Egyptian who used to edit an Arabic magazine for the Taliban. After Sept. 11, he wrote The Story of the Arab Afghans from the Time of Arrival in Afghanistan Until Their Departure with the Taliban, a book serialized in the pages of Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Dec. 2004. The book mounts a blistering attack on bin Laden for destroying the Taliban. "Bin Laden's extremism reached the point where he believed that the United States was much weaker than some of those around him thought," Misri writes. "[A]s evidence he referred to what happened to the United States in Beirut when the bombing of the Marines headquarters led them to flee from Lebanon [in 1983]. Some young Saudi followers confirmed to bin Laden his delusions from the gist of the experiences they had gained from their visits to the United States, namely, that the country was falling and could bear only few strik! es...The last months in the life of al Qaeda were a tragic example of an Islamic movement managed in a significantly terrible way."
Implicit support for Misri's view also comes from an unlikely source, Abu Musab al Suri, a longtime associate of bin Laden's. In his massive The International Islamic Resistance Call, al Suri writes: "[After] September 11th, America destroyed the [Taliban] Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, which became the refuge for the mujahideen...The Jihad movement rose to glory in the '60s and continued through the '70s and '80s...but was destroyed after 9/11."
As we have learned to our cost in recent years, much "secret" information is simply wrong, while information that is public--for instance, bin Laden's repeated calls for attacks against the United States in the years before 2001--is too often discounted. One of the lessons of Sept. 11 is that we should pay careful attention to what the jihadists are actually saying. And what they are saying about Sept. 11, as we mark its fourth anniversary, is that the attacks may have been a tactical victory, but they were a strategic disaster because of the loss of Afghanistan as a base and the U.S.-led campaign to detain members of jihadist movements around the world. That's why so many jihadists are so happy that the Bush administration invaded Iraq. Without the Iraq war, their movement--under assault from without and riven from within--would have imploded a year or so after Sept. 11.Copyright: 2005 The Washing! ton Post Azam Nizamuddin, Esq.The Law Offices of Azam Nizamuddin, P.C.15 N. Lincoln St.Hinsdale, IL 60521630-230-0373630-230-0374 (fax)

Yahoo! Groups : ICOP-crescent Observation

2005-10-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Groups : ICOP

Quran.org.uk : Holy Quran Resource Group

2005-10-06T00:25:00.000-07:00

Quran.org.uk : Holy Quran Resource Group

ICOP: Visibility of Ramadan Crescent 1426 AH.

2005-10-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

ICOP: Visibility of Ramadan Crescent 1426 AH.: "Prediction of the Start of the Holy Month of Ramadhan 1426 H
The Calculations are done for the Longitude and Latitude of Makkah AlMukarramah Area and the times are for Local Time of Saudi Arabia
Makkah Al-Mukarramah: Latitude = 21:39� N , Longitude = 39:46� E
Calculations show that the birth of the new moon occurs about 4.75 hours before the sunset on 3 October 2005 in Makkah AlMukkaramah area and the moon sets about three minutes after the Sunset. Therefore and according to calculations, the last day of month of Shaaban 1426 H will be on Monday 3 October 2005 where the moon sets after the sun as indicated in the table. Then, astronomically (solely based on calculations), the first day of Ramadhan 1426 H will be on Tuesday 4 October 2005. For crescent sighting, the Moon will be about 0.4 degree above the horizon and, horizontally, about one degree to the left (south) of the sun on Monday at the sunset moment and its luminosity is about five ten thousands (0.05 %) of the full moon which is much below the ability and sensitivity of normal human eyes detection, therefore it is not possible to sight that extremely faint crescent by a human. But it is possible to sight the crescent on the Tuesday evening since the age of the Moon will be about 29 hours and it will be about 7.4 degrees above the horizon and, horizontally, about ten degree to the left (south) of the sun at the sunset moment and its luminosity is about 1.5 % of the full moon which is in the range of the ability and sensitivity of normal human eyes. The shape of the crescent moon should look as shown in the figure. Taking all the previous points into account, the possibility is that according to calculation Tuesday 4th will be the first day of Ramadhan and according to actual sighting of the crescent Wednesday 5 October 2005 will be the fir"

ICOP: Visibility of Ramadan Crescent 1426 AH.

2005-10-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

Lessons Learned From The PMU Experiment - altmuslim.com

2005-10-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

Lessons Learned From The PMU Experiment - altmuslim.com

ANC-LETTER 30 September 2005

2005-10-01T02:07:00.000-07:00

ANC Today
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Volume 5, No. 39 . 30 September - 6 October 2005
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THIS WEEK:
* Letter from the President: African Peer Review for progressive change
* Human Settlement: Housing the poor requires innovative thinking, design and planning
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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
African Peer Review for progressive change
On Wednesday 28 September, meeting at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, Gauteng, representatives of the people of South Africa began a two-day National Consultative Conference that is of the greatest importance to the future of our country.
Present were delegates from government, business, trade unions, academia and the entire spectrum of civil society, the latter represented by the South African chapter of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) of the African Union.
The conference marked the beginning of the African Peer Review process in our country, to which we acceded as soon as the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) resolved formally to launch the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).
The decision to establish the APRM was taken at the founding conference of the African Union (AU) held in Durban in 2002. The fundamental guidelines governing the peer review process are contained in the Base Document of the APRM.
Among other things, this Base Document says:
"The mandate of the African Peer Review Mechanism is to ensure that the policies and practices of participating states conform to the agreed political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards contained in the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance. The APRM is the mutually agreed instrument for self-monitoring by the participating member governments.
"The primary purpose of the APRM is to foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated sub-regional and continental economic integration through sharing of experiences and reinforcement of successful and best practice, including identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building.
"Every review exercise carried out under the authority of the Mechanism must be technically competent, credible and free of political manipulation. These stipulations together constitute the core guiding principles of the Mechanism."
In the context of the foregoing, we must understand that the APRM is itself firmly based on the Constitutive Act of the AU, which was formally legislated into force by the African parliaments, including our own.
Among others, the Objectives Section of the Constitutive Act prescribes that the AU and its Member States are legally obliged to:
* promote peace, security, and stability on the continent;
* promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance;
* promote and protect human and peoples' rights in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other relevant human rights instruments;
* promote sustainable development at the economic, social and cultural levels as well as the integration of African economies;
* promote cooperation in all fields of human activity to raise the living standards of African peoples;
* advance the development of the continent by promoting research in all fields, in particular in science and technology; and,
* work with relevant international partners in the eradication of preventable diseases and the promotion of good health on the continent.
The "codes and standards contained in the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance" to which the Base Document refers, relate to four areas which each country review must assess. These
are:
* democracy and political governance;
* economic governance and management;
* corporate governance; and,
* socio-economic development.
The details spelling out what the African Peer Review process should investigate and assess in each of these areas is contained in another document adopted by the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Committee, entitled "Objectives, Standards, Criteria and Indicators for the African Peer Review Mechanism".
Yet another document that is central to the Peer Review process is the detailed Questionnaire that the APRM distributes to all countries that submit themselves to the review process. But as Dr Chris Stals, member of the Panel of Eminent Persons of the APRM, said at the Consultative Conference, countries are allowed to adapt the Questionnaire to take into account their national situation.
In this context, and with regard to the detailed benchmarks and guidelines it has provided for all participating countries, the APRM says, "this framework is enabling rather than prescriptive, specifying objectives and standards, providing indicative definitions of criteria and examples of indicators to ensure broad coherence in the country level work and uniformity at continental level."
When she spoke to the opening of the consultative conference, the representative of the South African ECOSOCC chapter, Laura Kganyago, said that all documents relating to the Peer Review process had to be made accessible to the people. She said these documents had to be simplified, as well as translated into all the official languages and Braille.
All these are correct demands, given that it is critically important that the Peer Review process should include as many of our people as possible.
This also means that we will have to take all necessary measures to popularise and explain the Peer Review process as much as possible, so that the masses of our people and their authentic organisations engage this process enthusiastically and in a meaningful manner.
The objectives we have set ourselves as a country are very much in keeping with those our continent has adopted, as represented by the AU Constitutive Act, NEPAD and the APRM. Among other things, and consistent with the fundamental outlook of our movement, this emphasises our commitment to the vision that the peoples of Africa share a common destiny and must therefore continue to act in partnership and solidarity.
The Peer Review process enables each of our countries to assess the progress it is making towards the achievement of the shared goals we have already mentioned. This is a country review rather than merely a review of government performance. This is simply because national development in any country is driven by a variety of social forces, and not just the government.
Consistent with our movement's commitment to a people-driven process of progressive change, we fully support the approach of the APRM to involve the masses of the people in the peer review process.
This is especially important given that the peer review should conclude with a Programme of Action to address whatever shortfalls would have been identified by the review. It is essential that the people themselves should own this Programme of Action as their own and work to implement it, so that they do indeed continue to act as their own liberators, determined to decide their future.
The APRM also gives the countries and peoples of Africa an opportunity further to strengthen the relations of solidarity among themselves. First of all, they open themselves to mutual critical assessment, departing from the previous African practice according to which everything was categorised as "internal affairs", in which no other country was allowed to "interfere".
This departure from past practice makes it possible for our countries to learn from one another, enabling each one of us to adopt the best successful practice that might have emerged in any one of our countries. This will help to speed up development in our countries, responding to the expectations of the African masses for a faster process of progressive change.
In addition to this, the peer review process will create the possibility for us to help one another in practical ways. Once the APRM has identified any shortfalls in the participating countries, it will be possible, through the APR Forum of Heads of State and Government, for each one of these countries to appeal to its peers, the other African countries, for the necessary assistance to address those shortfalls. NEPAD would also intervene to give the necessary support to enable each one of our countries to meet the benchmarks set by the APRM.
There are still some people in our country who think that the African Peer Review system will be ineffective because it is voluntary and does not include sanctions. Clearly, these sceptics have not understood the commitment of the masses of the African people to overcome the problems that have afflicted our continent for a number of decades. They believe that these masses and their leaders should be threatened with punishment to persuade them seriously to engage the challenge of the renaissance of Africa.
We know that the masses of our people need no compulsion to persist in the struggle for the achievement of the goal of a better life for all and the fundamental social transformation of our country. Neither do the masses of the people anywhere else in Africa.
As has already been demonstrated in two of the countries that have been reviewed, Ghana and Rwanda, the people of Africa have responded to the APRM with great enthusiasm, understanding the potentially powerful impact the African Peer Review system can make in helping to change their lives for the better.
In a paper published in January 2003, Fabrizio Pagani, Legal Adviser of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said:
"Best practice is a fashionable term in policymaking these days. Governments and agencies will say they do all they can to ensure their policies are not only in the best interests of their electorates, but that they follow the best tried and tested experience available. But how can we be sure that governments really make such best choices?
"One tried and tested instrument is the peer review. It is the assessment of the policies and performances of a country by other countries. The goal is to help participants to improve their policies and comply with established standards and principles. It is often through this process that best practices are identified.
"Peer reviews show that international organisations can indeed be creative, for it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the OECD "invented" the modern peer review process. Since it began in the 1960s, it has been adopted by other organisations such as the EU [European Union], IMF [International Monetary Fund] and WTO [World Trade Organisation]. Now it is in the process of being adapted to the needs of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
"Compared with some arguably harder edged private-sector country studies, there is a distinct prospect that (peer review) conclusions, however negotiated, will be acted upon. From an international perspective, this 'soft law' quality of peer review can prove more effective in encouraging compliance with recommendations than any traditional enforcement mechanism like a court or other judicial body.
"But a peer review can function properly only if there is a commitment to act by the participating countries - and that means not only supplying enough money to carry it out, but also being fully engaged at every stage in the process.
"Far from being excessively procedural and impotent, as some critics have argued, peer review can create a catalyst for policy enhancement and far-reaching change."
We too must ensure that the people and all the organisations, institutions and sectors that were represented at the consultative conference that launched our APR process on 28-29 September, remain fully engaged at every stage of the peer review process.
Through this engagement, in which our movement structures must involve themselves, we must ensure that our peer review process serves as a catalyst for policy enhancement and progressive change.
Thabo Mbeki
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HUMAN SETTLEMENT
Housing the poor requires innovative thinking, design and planning
Three critical areas of housing policy currently form part of a national dialogue in South Africa. These concern the ways and means in which to address a housing backlog that is being impacted upon by the process of urbanisation and population growth; how to increase access to finance; and how to roll out an effective consumer education strategy. Being a middle income country with high levels of income inequality that are affected by high rates of unemployment these are matters that naturally are in the public domain for debate and the formulation of solutions. In other words, these are matters that are at the centre of the immense housing challenge presently confronting the country.
Having devised policies in these areas since 1994, which policies were enhanced through the adoption of a new strategy in September 2005 - namely, the Comprehensive Plan for Sustainable Human Settlements - government is now seeking partnerships domestically, continentally and internationally to help us address the challenges.
Last week, for example, we concluded a social contract with 46 of our country's large and influential institutions and companies, including trade unions and community organisations and civil society, to help us achieve the vision of eradicating all informal settlements by 2014. The contract provides for all of us a vehicle through which to collectively determine the challenges and solutions.
Apart from the 46 institutions that have signed the document we expect more institutions to indicate their readiness to sign. At national, provincial and local level, government has, as part of the contract, committed itself to removing obstacles that stand in the way of the rapid delivery of housing for the poor.
This moment in the history of our country is particularly exciting. For perhaps for the first time since we began the transition very clear signs are being given by all South Africans, black and white, rich and poor, that the burden to sustain and increase the political stability we have achieved collectively in the last ten years fully rests on all of us.
As South Africa, this is undoubtedly the best practice we would like to share with the world. It has given confidence that we all share equally the solutions to our housing challenge. At the same time, we hope to benefit more from international experiences.
When we, as African Ministers dealing with housing and urban development, met in February to form the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development we had been pinning our hopes on increased international and continental interactions and partnerships to help confront the prevailing housing challenge in Africa as a whole. A few weeks after the formation of this structure, the Commission for Africa (established by British Prime Minister Tony Blair) favourably looked at some of the proposals that we had given as African Ministers to solve the housing challenge within the continent. These related to increased financial resources and aid, including matters related to debt cancellation within the context of partnerships.
South Africa, as chair of the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development, was given the opportunity to advance these positions to various international forums, including the 20th Session of the Governing Council of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the 13th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. The recently concluded workshop in New York that was convened by India, Brazil and ourselves on mobilising resources for human settlements in middle-income countries had these same intentions of mobilising partnerships and creating possibilities for effective cooperation within the international community in helping us better the lives of all our people.
The achievement of the creation of sustainable human settlements through innovative designs that make for rapid implementation is our priority.
These, however, must not sacrifice quality, for indeed it is this aspect that is key in the factors responsible for failures to achieve decent and secure human settlements.
The seriousness of this problem is indicated in research conducted in May
2003 on the reactions, attitudes, concerns and preferences of beneficiaries of subsidy housing. This revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of housing as we began the process of developing a new housing strategy for the next ten years.
According to the research report: "Numerous anecdotes signify shoddy and weak construction. This was raised as a major issue in 25 out of the 28 focus group discussions. Many respondents feel their structures will not last into the future. Key complaints pertain to flimsy roofs, cracks in walls, weak doors, as well as the generally 'unfinished' nature of the house - such as unplastered walls and no floors. The issue of weak and leaking roofs was highlighted in almost every settlement. People mentioned roofs being blown off by wind, leaking roofs, roofs being fastened inadequately, holes in roofs and poor quality sheeting. 'Thin walls' or walls through which damp and water seeps present problems of cold and weakening walls in many areas. In addition, foundations that do not withstand water seepage are frequent complaints. The anecdotes surrounding cracks in walls suggest that there are often extremely large cracks, causing wind to blow into houses."
"Doors coming off their frames or frames separating from the walls are mentioned in several settlements as are perceived poor quality doors that expand in wet weather. In some cases identical door locks are used throughout a settlement with the result that beneficiaries have identical sets of keys and can access each other's houses."
The report concludes: "There are a number of issues that can be grouped under the broad heading of 'dignity'. Firstly there is clear indignation where people have the perception that they have been fobbed off with poor quality products just because they are poor."
As government we are committed to enhancing the standard of living of our people by providing them with decent and secure living spaces. Thus, through our national regulator of norms and standards we have worked to improve on the specifications and the quality of housing we need. We believe this would also help us achieve one of the cornerstones of our policy of creating real assets in the hands of the people.
A further priority for us is to achieve integrated communities. One of the ways in which we would want to achieve integrated communities is to optimally utilise available resources and infrastructure and, where these do not exist, establish new ones. As the three key pilot projects we have implemented this year for the new strategy - the N2 Gateway, Cosmo City and Brickfields Housing Development - demonstrate we aim to achieve this through innovative planning and design that will densify our residential areas to ensure we are catering for the diverse housing needs that exist. We are contemplating higher density development interventions in partnership with the private sector and communities. Social or rental housing has been prioritised as well as programmes that will create opportunities for individual households to own higher density units that will enhance income-generating opportunities.
We recognise housing as a basic human right. Hence, against the background of redressing past practices we need innovative thinking, innovative design and planning, taking into account the diversity of needs. Also important are the needs of the disabled members of our communities and pensioners.
We continue to look to international experiences and achievements to enhance the current policy direction. Of critical importance in this regard would be policy proposals emerging from the experiences of countries, some of whom are found in East Asia and Europe, that fundamentally underwent reconstruction and needed to provide solutions for rapid housing delivery as a result. We would like to see how in these experiences massive resources were mobilised, and how technology was put to effective use to stem a housing backlog and prevent new slum formations by governments in collaboration with the private sector and the rest of society and how best practices were developed in the areas of planning and designing, including architecture and financing.
** Lindiwe Sisulu is an ANC National Executive Committee member and Minister of Housing. This is an edited version of a speech prepared for the opening of the IAHS World Congress on Housing, 27 September 2005.

The End of Cheap Oil: It's Time We Talked By Peter Willis

2005-05-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

SANE Views
Vol.5, No.11, 19 May 2005

The End of Cheap Oil: It's Time We Talked

By Peter Willis

I recently had the pleasure of accompanying the US author Richard Heinberg on a lecture tour of South Africa, focusing on his contention that the global peak in oil extraction is very close and very significant. Although he himself is a genial man with a good sense of humour, his message is sobering. He readily acknowledges that his thesis is controversial (meaning there are people who disagree with his analysis, which is no surprise) but the logic of his central argument is compelling and was not effectively challenged in any of his fifteen public engagements while here.

He and others point out that oil – the most potent form of easily accessible energy we have ever found - is a finite resource that we have been extracting for 150 years. Not surprisingly, we have found it convenient and profitable to extract the easiest first and in the last few years we have witnessed a marked failure to find major new oil fields, while existing ones are heading into decline. Indeed, it seems highly improbable that we will ever again stumble on bonanzas of the kind we were used to in the mid-20th century. What is perhaps surprising is how the world has preferred not to think about all this until it is – arguably – too late to take sufficient avoiding action. We all knew oil was finite but – let's be honest – we didn't stop to enquire when exactly it might start running out, and with what consequences?

Meanwhile global demand continues to rise for the black gold upon which we have resolutely built our entire modern way of life, with China and India now stepping on the gas in imitation of so many other countries. Demand is strong here in South Africa, too. Short of a couple of mega-field discoveries in the extremely near future (preferably yesterday, in view of the typical 5-7 year project development time lag), the world faces a classic supply/demand crunch. By Heinberg's reckoning, the crunch is due within the next two to three years.

How do we respond to such information? We would of course be right to remain alert to alternative data and analyses, in case Heinberg and those who think like him have got it wrong. At the same time we would be wrong to assume this means the end of life as we know it, abandon hope and barricade ourselves onto remote organic farms. We would equally be wrong, however, to imagine that the free-market pricing mechanism will effortlessly match supply to demand and that technological innovation, driven by the resulting higher oil price, will effect a smooth transition to the next generation of personal transport and air travel. Yet, to judge by the reactions of many to Heinberg's lectures, this is a popular response. Our generation's faith in classical economics and modern technology runs deep. We have been brought up to believe there is virtually no problem that these two in combination cannot solve, from international conflict to public health, hunger and crime, a belief we cling to despite the problems' stubborn persistence.

To be sure, prices will play a role in moderating demand as supply diminishes. No less surely, new technologies will emerge to replace at least some of our dependence on oil. But reliance on these twin 'fixes' alone would be a seriously flawed strategy.

We may assume that higher oil prices will slow demand. Then what? Those of us with decent salaries may be able to absorb the additional costs of travel in our (or our employers') budgets and the more forward-looking amongst us will hunt down a more fuel efficient car for our next purchase, thereby sending a message to the car manufacturers to speed up their efforts in this department. But what of those for whom travel costs already represent too high a percentage of their weekly budget? What advice does classical economics have for them? This could become politically complex.

Meanwhile, our touching faith in the omnipotence of technology, coupled with our preference for not looking at awkward truths like the inevitable end of cheap oil, has meant that we as nations and corporations have failed to invest heavily enough and early enough in possible alternatives to petrol and diesel (and there are very few), leaving a yawning gap today between the roughly 800 million cars running on oil-based fuel and the state of readiness of biodiesel, electricity stored in batteries or hydrogen-based fuel cells. While these alternatives all have potential, none of them is in a position to replace oil at the time when we need them to.

Meanwhile, there is every likelihood that the geopolitical landscape will change to reflect the desperation of consumer nations to secure supplies from oil-producing nations, at whatever the cost. We can therefore expect high and volatile fuel prices, coupled with periodic shortages of supply. These will probably lead to a slow-down in economic activity and the loss of many jobs. This in turn will mean there is less money available to invest in making the technological and infrastructural changes necessary to shift us away from our oil dependency. It's a catch-22 – when the economy is buoyant, there seems no great urgency about investing in alternatives to what is working well. When the underpinnings of our growth-focused economy start to wobble, the urgency is there but not the economic confidence. Here the role of government becomes critical, providing leadership and investment signals that business can work from.

Let us assume that there is at least a slender chance that the above scenario is accurate. What would happen? The actual consequences of such a situation would be vastly more complex than any one of us, or even any single group of experts, could hope to grasp and portray. So how do we think about them? Do we leave it to the energy and transport experts, or to government? Perhaps an issue of such importance and with such complex implications for the whole of our society and economy requires a wider, more determined dialogue. We know from the early 1990's what South Africans can achieve when they sit down to talk in earnest about matters of critical importance to everyone, and there are some similarities here with the approach of 'peak oil'. A world we have become deeply dependent upon is about to change irrevocably and we perhaps have the opportunity to decide whether we ride this wave of change consciously and with our eyes wide open, or get tumbled along by forces that seem beyond our control.

Ultimately, as Richard Heinberg said to a group of eager executives who were coming up with ingenious solutions to the challenges that 'peak oil' might present to their company, “Remember the end of cheap oil is not the sort of problem you can solve. It's like growing old. You can't solve that. However, you can choose to respond respectfully, wisely and imaginatively to it, so that even aging can become a source of unexpected riches.”

The peak in global oil production, whether it comes very soon or just soon, is not the end of the world. It is an opportunity for us to think, plan and act together in unprecedented ways. Let's not find out what happens if we ignore the warning signs.

Peter Willis is Southern African Director of the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry, based in Cape Town, and a Board member of the South African New Economics Network. (SANE), which invited Heinberg to South Africa.

Richard Heinberg is author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003), and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (2004)

This issue, and all previous issues of SANE Views, is available from the SANE web site at http://www.sane.org.za/docs/views/index.htm
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The South African New Economics Network (SANE) is an autonomous Network for the creation of a more humane, just, sustainable and culturally appropriate economic system in South Africa. It challenges the way prevailing economic thinking (old economics) has tended to reduce people to economic agents, the environment to property, social institutions to markets, and progress to growth in production. SANE advocates alternative economic theories (new economics) which are more purposefully designed to promote social equity and justice, community self-reliance and ecological sustainability.

Patrons: Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, James Robertson (UK), Sheena Duncan, Gordon Oliver

South African New Economics Foundation (SANE)
Tel: +27 (0)21 689 6892Fax: +27 (0)21 686 6892Email: sane@sane.org.za
Web site: http://www.sane.org.za

The New York Times > Week in Review > A World of Ways to Say 'Islamic Law'

2005-03-17T03:33:00.000-08:00

The New York Times > Week in Review > A World of Ways to Say 'Islamic Law'

2005-03-17T03:32:00.000-08:00

The New York Times > Week in Review > A World of Ways to Say 'Islamic Law'

Muslims' Experience of Globalization April 1-2 2005

2005-03-14T02:42:00.000-08:00

Conferences

Harvard Divinity - Focus on HDS

2005-03-07T04:37:00.000-08:00

Harvard Divinity - Focus on HDS

Europe's rising class of believers: Muslims | csmonitor.com

2005-03-03T00:53:00.000-08:00

Europe's rising class of believers: Muslims | csmonitor.com

VOA News - Pakistan's Religious Parties Oppose Madrassah Reforms

2005-03-01T08:46:00.000-08:00

VOA News - Pakistan's Religious Parties Oppose Madrassah Reforms

Mightier than the Sword: Calligraphy of the 16th C. Imperial Courts

2005-03-01T08:07:00.000-08:00

2. Mightier than the Sword: Calligraphy of the 16th C. Imperial Courts
The Jerusalem Fund Gallery is proud to present
A new cultural resource and web-based curriculum unit
Mightier than the Sword: Calligraphy of the 16th C. Imperial Courts
About the Unit:
"Mightier than the Sword: Calligraphy of the 16th Century Imperial Courts"
is a web-based curriculum unit developed to provide a creative and
interactive approach to studying many of the major empires that dominated
the world stage in the 15th and 16th centuries. Using Islamic calligraphy as
an entry point, students learn about seven empires: the Songhay, Saadian,
Mughal, Safavid, Ottoman, Ming, Tokugawa Shogunate, and the Hapsburg, from
historical, literary and artistic angles. This project was inspired by an
exhibition of Islamic Calligraphy at the Gallery of the Jerusalem Fund for
which we have created resources for teachers and students to discover not
just the art of calligraphy, but also the time period in which calligraphy
really flourished. This free on-line tool is designed for high school
students of World History, Literature, Art and Mathematics. It addresses
national standards for 9th and 10th grade subject areas.
The lesson is organized in a series of interdisciplinary stages that move
students from research to presentation. If students have access to the
Internet outside of the classroom, they can complete the entire project
without taking any class time, until their day of presentation. The project
will take each group approximately 3 weeks. There are eight supplemental
projects that can also be assigned (in addition to/instead of) the main
task.
One of the strengths of this unit is that it is tied closely to the
curriculum and gives teachers the opportunity to teach to the standards
without interruption or deviation. It is a means of studying Arab and
Islamic contributions to the arts and cultures of the world through a
neutral lens that encourages research, dialogue and creative presentation.
It also includes an extensive listing of resources for teachers and students
to help in their exploration of Arab and Islamic culture.
View the Unit - http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/gallery/callig/intro.html
About the Jerusalem Fund Gallery - The Jerusalem Fund's cultural program
promotes the work of artists from Palestine as well as from the Arab and
Islamic worlds through art exhibits, book signings, film screenings and
musical performances. The cultural activities at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery,
located in Washington, D.C., are being made available to a wider audience
through our website and through lesson plans for educators and students of
all ages. For more information, contact Jessica Wright, Cultural
Coordinator, at (202) 338-1958. Gallery hours: 9am - 5pm, Monday through
Friday.
The Jerusalem Fund is located at 2425 Virginia Avenue NW, Washington, DC
20037. www.thejerusalemfund.org

The drama of my life:When an overjoyed Yasmin Alibhai-Brown won a prize for playing Juliet, she had no idea it would blow her family apart.

2005-03-01T07:44:00.000-08:00

The drama of my life
When an overjoyed Yasmin Alibhai-Brown won a prize for playing Juliet, she
had no idea it would blow her family apart. Now she's back on stage to tell
the story
Published : 18 February 2005
It all started two years ago when I met Dominic Cooke, the erstwhile
associate director of the Royal Court Theatre. He invited me in to talk to
new playwrights about multiple identities, the sensibility of an immigrant,
the nation in flux and how I felt the creative arts were responding.
The playwrights were flushed with ideas and enthusiasms, cool, fresh,
challenging. I put to them my critique of multi-culturalism as espoused by
this state. It had led to wilful, woeful ignorance and volitional
estrangements between the peoples of this nation, leaving black and Asian
Britons playing marbles in the ghetto (in separate clans) and many white
Britons feeling disengaged and indignant. Meanwhile, British institutions
carry on blissfully, white and inward-looking. Our culture is officially
Balkanised, a trend I abhor partly because of my experiences growing up in
Uganda, my homeland.
Out there, my brilliant teachers had led me to the best of playwrights.
Makerere University in the capital, where I studied literature, was an
intellectual powerhouse of world repute. (I could almost hear them think:
"Seriously? In Africa?") We were stimulated to feel awe as we entered the
house of living words. Every time I make for my seat in a theatre, my blood
quickens and I relive that kick.
My old drama books are yellowing now, untouched for more than 35 years.
There, among about 150 paperbacks, are texts by Tagore and Wole Soyinka,
Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, Beckett's Waiting for Godot, The Insect Play
by the Czech writers Josef and Karel Capek (Josef died in Belsen),
Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Gorky's The Lower Depths, Three Plays for
Puritans by Shaw and most of Shakespeare. All have been annotated
furiously, in pencil, in squiggles I can no longer read.
I got to act, too, in some of the great classics. At 14, I was Nora in
Ibsen's A Doll's House, at 15 the impish Cleopatra in Shaw's Caesar and
Cleopatra and a manic Abigail in The Crucible. I was pitiless to Shylock as
Portia, and a not very convincing Viola in Twelfth Night. There was an
empty room beneath our flat, full of beasties. There, I tied ribbons under
the bust and round my head and acted parts - Miranda, Desdemona, Cleopatra
- alone, a melodrama-fest sometimes producing real tears, the nascent
actress with her extravagant, profligate yearnings.
I have photographs of a superb production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by
semi-professional players at Kampala's National Theatre, the hub of
cultural life in the capital. With friends (two Muslims, one Parsee, one
Hindu), I was a fairy in a cropped top and skirt made of green chiffon
petals. Even now, when we meet, someone turns into a babbling Bottom or
reproduces Puck's mischievous rhymes - old thespians in a kebab house.
Shakespeare remains for us the greatest inspiration, a lover whose voice
never ages.
It was this engrossing relationship with Shakespeare, I told the Royal
Court writers, which caused a lethal explosion, leaving scars that will
never heal. I was young, fiery and innocent. How was I to know that a
school play (Romeo and Juliet), would end in an almighty scandal that would
take me off the boards for ever? Until now.
The stage was where I felt released from a crushingly painful home life and
intolerable conventions. I had real talent, they said. One night 37 years
ago, I rushed home, an elated Juliet, carrying a precious acting award that
would have led to acting school in London. But these possibilities were
callously snuffed out by my family, my father most of all, who punished me
with a deadly silence. He, who loved Lear, never spoke to me again. He died
four years later. Fathers and daughters: a running theme in Shakespeare.
Dominic Cooke moved to the RSC and offered me a one-woman show based on
this tragedy within the tragedy. For 10 months, I have been transported
back to that hellish moment. My director Gavin Marshall, sharp, perceptive,
has forced me back into the cell of buried emotions and grief. It has been
shattering. Demons lurk and cause havoc in places you have not attended to
in order to go on with life. I am back with Shakespeare on my tongue.
Imagine that. After so many years and all that unfinished business.
This is a story about race, sex and class in that paradise that was Uganda
from where we were ignominiously chucked out by Idi Amin. He was a
monstrous man - cannibalistic, brutish, unpredictable, part child and part
savage, Caliban. We were the self-controlled, cautious, nifty merchants,
decorous fiddlers of accounts, hoarders of wealth, excellent bribers,
family and community creatures governed by manners. We thought of ourselves
as pearls before swine. And they called us the Shylocks of East Africa.
Asians wanted stakes in that gorgeous land, but many could only deal with
black Africans as inferiors. Black Ugandans grew, unjustly, to despise our
entire race. We had been part of a system of unspoken apartheid set up by
the British. Whites on top of the high hills, blacks in the sunless pits,
Asians in the middle.
For Asians, the wheels of life rolled predictably: birth, school, business,
marriage, children, school, business... and into this existence came
subversive forces. Elvis and Cliff first, then the Sixties, which wafted
over carrying Twiggy, op art, miniskirts and The Beatles. Hippies arrived
with unwashed white feet, never seen before. Jim Barrows, an American
draft-dodger who taught at our school, was a cross between Dean Martin and
James Dean. He said he'd been one of the divers in Dr No, and the sight of
him tickled parts we didn't know we had.
Kali and Gopi Gupta (not their real names), a couple from Calcutta, were
teachers and exceptional actors. Kali was voluptuous, walked with a swing.
Gopi had Paul Scofield's chocolate voice. They starred in the Dream
production at the National. Kali was a spiteful, whimsical Titania, Gopi a
charismatic, manipulative Oberon, and the jealousies they acted out seemed
to reflect their own flaming marriage. Can you imagine how exciting that
was for us, their pupils? We, who knew little about sex and possessive love?
This was the period of decolonisation, but with none of the abysmal
rejectionism of contemporary cultural politics. Nobody in Uganda wanted to
burn books by wicked Westerners. It was an expansive time, when ideas
opened up so that Third World artists could come into the canon and joust
with imperial narratives. The Black, Asian and white intelligentsia
believed that Shakespeare's plays were crucial for emerging nations.
But the end of empire also brought uncertainties and apprehension. Asians *
* were fearful that lascivious black men wanted to ravage their women. Some
black men were demanding the right to marry Asian girls and acting lewdly
when we were on the streets. We felt ever more alienated from the country
we loved, its heartbeat, its drumbeats producing only terror. Remember
Prospero's rage when Caliban tries to violate Miranda. It was the final act
of barbarism. For us, it was the final imagined horror.
My father seemed different, complex and awesome, because he hurled himself
against the surf waves of convention. He was an adventurer, a serial
failure in business, wilful, unreliable, but he appeared to understand
politics and injustice and literature. I thought. Life at home was always
confusing, infused with the suppressed fury of a disappointed marriage, the
misery of misfits. Until I was 13, I slept between my parents, ever more
sour to each other, like the air they breathed out.
School was my sanctuary. Run by Mr Raval, a much-respected headmaster, who
had a black and orange smile (he chewed pan all day) and teeth like old
stones in a graveyard. He saw everything. He chastised me for not being a
regular, trembling Asian schoolgirl. He was right, too, not to trust me to
be good.
We had a new drama teacher, beautiful, tall and blonde. Joyce Mann decided
to shake things up by producing Romeo and Juliet for a drama competition.
She, a white woman, decided to cast black Africans as the Montagues and
Asian Africans as the Capulets. It was radical, the right thing to do, but
naive. She didn't know just how deeply divided we were.
I was Juliet. Romeo was like a ballet dancer, had smooth reflective skin
and treacle eyes. Mrs Mann told me recently that she had to train us to
kiss properly on the mouth, alone in a classroom away from horrified eyes.
I had excised this from my memory, possibly because I was moved by John,
there was an erotic charge. The play was lauded, and I won the best actress
prize. The local newspaper, The Uganda Argus, pronounced me an enchanting
Juliet. I felt amazing.
On my way home, going up the dark staircase with its fetid stench, I had
heard ululations that started up on the street getting louder. A thief had
been spotted, the crowds were calling out to each other to come and sport
with him before they kicked him or burnt him to death. Not even this
quelled my joy on this night as I burst into our small sitting-room.
Why were they sitting as if someone had died? My mother was sobbing. Male
relatives came towards me with steely eyes, grabbed my shoulders, banged my
head against the wall, slapped me. They called me a slut, a polluter of
their good name. What good name? How dare he die before we had resolved
anything? What kind of father does that?
We Asians are old Elizabethans. Romeo and Juliet happens every day in our
communities. When Capulet tells his daughter she is his to do as he wishes,
we know what that means. Young lovers howl, run away, sometimes die because
they have dared to cross over, out of race, class, faith, village, caste,
ethnicity. Do the parents love their children? Yes, so much they can kill
them for their own good.
As I started discussing this with my director, Gavin Marshall, he suddenly
understood why Shakespeare, this dead white male, means so much to
immigrants from the old colonies. We are living his plays, not merely
watching them. Cecily Berry, the voice coach who helped me, goes further -
she believes that a comfortable, white, middle-class life has distanced
people from the profundities and experiences in Shakespeare.
Look at the stalking threats on the streets in the plays, the brawls,
knives and angry young men. In Othello, the eruption of violence between
Cassio, Roderigo and Montano rocks society, which feels shaky, vulnerable.
Lady Montague frets that Romeo might have been in another fracas. Think of
Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen, and other mothers of black and Asian and
white boys, praying every time the proud men get dressed to strut. Will
they come back dead? Whence the swagger and bloodlust?
Julius Nyerere, the socialist president of Tanzania after independence,
translated Macbeth into Swahili, and theatre groups took the play to the
villages to get the people to understand the nature of ruthless ambition.
Troilus and Cressida has the most moving testimonies on the destiny of a
mixed-race child. Antony and Cleopatra spins around the dangerous
intoxication of the East, which destroys the most Roman of Romans. In 1930,
at the Savoy Theatre, with Paul Robeson as Othello and Peggy Ashcroft as
Desdemona, critics walked out and the audience hissed when they touched.
Race riots in this country have been triggered by what we may call the
Othello situation.
Every day in our streets, Othellos walk proudly with their Desdemonas. They
hear the insults, they fight the fights for their right to do so. Bright,
open white women have long been drawn to black men who can dance, dress,
seduce, love and talk like Othello. The first confident band of Caribbean
men arrived in their hats and suits after 1948, and they were soon in the
dance halls, champions of the jitterbug, irresistible to women emerging
into the light after the long wartime years.
I once sat in on a lesson on Othello in a London secondary school. Some
white boys said Desdemona was stupid for trusting a black. They are no
good. The girls think these guys are cool. Then they beat them up, get them
pregnant, "kick them about, have other girlfriends..."
And of course it can end badly. Othello does destroy sweet Desdemona. And
though this is not said openly, there are terribly disenchanted white women
who hoped for better from their black lovers. Men disappoint women much too
much of the time. But when the man is black and the woman white, race
intensifies the emotions, poisons meanings.
Oh yes, Shakespeare's truths are still alive and all-pervasive. His England
was the first age of globalisation. The itchy, bold Elizabethans could not
stay put, had to seek adventure and exotica, contact with the fantastic
unknown. Othello is the prize and price of those voyages. Action and
reaction. They understood that.
I called this testimony "Extravagant Stranger", because that is how Othello
is described by the friends of Desdemona's father. Today's extravagant
strangers are the unloved migrants who come here with their outlandish
dreams and huge suitcases, to be demonised and maltreated by our natives.
They were then, too.
This was sent to me by Trevor Phillips. It is from an unfinished work on
Thomas More by Shakespeare, which the RSC will dramatise this year:
Grant them removed...
Imagine that you see the wretched
strangers
Their babies at their backs, with
their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for
transportation
What had you got? I'll tell you. You
had taught
How insolence and strong hand
should prevail
And by this pattern not one of you
should live an aged man
For other ruffians as their fancies
wrought
With selfsame hand, self reasons,
and self right
Would shark on you.
All these evils come from the inability of humans to embrace the other; the
tribal impulse to extinguish those who do in acts of love, of simple
humanity or reaching out to people who have no choice but to leave their
homelands and impose upon suspicious folk in safer places. In this age of
globalisation, the imperatives of purity have been reasserted as the world
gets more messy and mixed-up. Tribalism, nationalism, communalism and even
racism have potent new advocates.
Although it hurt for years, and still does, the fallout from that
production of Romeo and Juliet has proved invaluable. I have learnt that
transgressors are everywhere. We live and laugh and make love and babies
and life-long friends across the boundaries. One day, our children and
theirs will inherit a country where it really won't matter at all what
colour they are, the gods they pray to, the songs they sing. And idealistic
brown girls will not be punished because they dared. And their fathers will
not cut them off.
'Nowhere to Belong: Tales of an Extravagant Stranger', Yasmin
Alibhai-Brown's one-woman show, is at the Soho Theatre, London W1 (0870 429
6883), 1 to 5 March
2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

Bound by Islam:This week's conference for Muslim universities may have implications

2005-03-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,9959,1419428,00.html
Bound by Islam
This week's conference for Muslim universities may have implications
for the west too, reports Donald MacLeod
Donald MacLeod
Tuesday February 22, 2005
Guardian
A gathering of influential Muslims from around the world in London
this week might be expected to attract media attention during an
increasingly xenophobic election campaign. But as they are academics
coming to debate the role of universities in developing countries,
they are probably safe from tabloid intrusion.
The conference organisers hope it will be an important step to
mobilising moderate Muslim opinion. It will aim to promote prosperity
in poor countries and be a place where the successes and failures of
countries as diverse as Iran, Afghanistan and Malaysia can be
rationally debated.
The Aga Khan University in the UK, which has organised the conference,
can point to the success of its Karachi campus not only in helping to
train a new generation of doctors in Pakistan, but in changing
attitudes.
When the university opened its medical college and school of nursing
in 1983, families were wary of allowing their daughters to train as
nurses. After 20 years, the competition for places, even from
conservative communities, is intense, says Abdou Filali-Ansary,
director of the university's London-based Institute for the Study of
Muslim Civilisations.
In the medical school, half the students and 44% of the teaching staff
are women. The only downside, says Filali-Ansary, is that so many
trained nurses quit Pakistan for the US where their skills command
high salaries.
The university is one of the development initiatives of the Aga Khan,
the billionaire spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, who are
scattered through some 25 countries, mainly in west and central Asia,
Africa and the Middle East.
In 2000, he established the University of Central Asia, with campuses
in Kazakhstan,Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which specialises in
development in mountain regions, but with a degree programme "rooted
in the liberal arts and sciences".
This week's conference includes sessions on university governance and
reforms in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco, and one on Iran,
chaired by the former Iranian minister of culture, Seyyed Ataollah
Mohajerani.
There will also be several sessions on women in higher education, as
well as on teaching and research, and international partnerships. One
paper from Professor Elizabeth Hermann, of the Rhode Island School of
Design in the US, will discuss the new Asian University for Women
being established in Chittagong, Bangladesh. If a single-sex
institution is needed in that context to boost female enrolment in
higher education (only 24% in Bangladesh), how does it fulfil its
mission to have women assuming leadership roles in society?
Other papers to be presented range from discussion of civic engagement
among young people in Turkey to whether the United Arab Emirates
should continue to rely on British and American models for their
burgeoning higher education system; from the teaching of English in
Afghanistan as a means to stimulate development to the more nitty
gritty academic issues of quality assurance in Arab countries.
Some of the language threatens to be abstruse, some very much to the
point. Bennacer el-Bouazzati, of Mohamed V University, Rabat, says
that university reforms in Morocco always come late and are imposed by
administrative decisions. "It can be said without exaggeration that
our university continues to operate in an unhealthy atmosphere," says
the abstract of his paper.
Filali-Ansary stresses Muslim civilisations, rather than Islam as a
religion. "We want to look at Muslims in their diversity, different
languages and cultures and historical processes. It's an alternative
to some existing programmes in the Muslim world, which look at norms,
but not at facts."
The institute's approach is to look at the historical facts about how
dogmas - Muslim, Christian or Jewish - have developed over time, not
something fundamentalists are ever comfortable with. In this spirit,
the institute is launching a two-year masters degree in Muslim
civilisations, bringing students from around the world to London to
explore the diversity of their cultures.
It's an approach that involves as many questions as answers, but
Filali-Ansary argues that universities have failed to contribute as
much as they should to the developing world because they have not
inculcated liberal attitudes.
"In the developing world, education has been looked at as a means to
train technicians, medics, engineers, etc, not as a means to educate
in the liberal meaning of the word, to open minds, turn people into
critical thinkers, enable people to become learners throughout their
lives and take control of their own destiny," Filali-Ansary says.
He gives the example of his own country, Morocco, which founded an
engineering school to rival the best in France. It produced, he says,
graduates who were superb at maths or physics, but "like robots" when
it came to handling people. The Aga Khan University in Karachi is
currently debating whether to add a seventh year to its medical
degrees so that future doctors learn more about history, philosophy
and ethics.
These are not the kind of liberal sentiments you would catch one of
Tony Blair's education ministers expressing in public - in the UK the
government tends to talk about universities as part of the knowledge
economy. Filali-Ansary is tactful and generous in reply. "In this
country, you are building on a very solid base. In the developing
world, the problems are different - there's a need for the solid base
first." But one cannot help feeling his "solid base" is made of the
kind of hard-won liberal attitudes that are under attack in Britain.
He wants to see a continuous exchange of ideas between the west and
the Muslim world, and links between universities in the developing
world, between sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, for
instance. The conference, which has no immediate political agenda and
does not involve governments, will foster these links, he hopes.
For Moncef Ben Abdel Jelil, head of faculty at the institute, bringing
together academics and making them aware of reforms going on in other
Muslim countries will encourage them and make them feel less isolated.
Reforms and efforts to counter fundamentalist influence predate 9/11
and were not the result of American pressure, he says.
The conference sets out to look at reform and innovation in terms of
emancipation and social justice, including new and critical approaches
to teaching and research. "Particular attention will be paid to the
cultural forces fostering or hindering the reform activities.
Successful, as well as failed, reforms will both have something to
contribute in the discussion," participants are told.
And since the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq, it has become
increasingly clear that the west has an interest in the future success
of education reform in the Muslim world, just as much as do students
in Tehran or Karachi.
EducationGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

:: Madinah Foundation :: Food for Though by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

2005-02-26T12:02:00.000-08:00

:: Madinah Foundation :: Food for Though by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

www.madinah.org

www.madinah.org

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