Monthly Archives: April 2008

The occupation has frozen Iraq.

Iraq, Iraq War

by Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, April 9 2008

The British troops encamped outside Basra resemble Davy Crockett’s colleagues in the Alamo. Nobody will come to their rescue. Their position is hopeless. They cannot win. They cannot escape. Their boss, the defence secretary Des Browne, has emphasised their political entombment by reneging on Gordon Brown’s pledge to reduce their numbers by a half this spring. The American general, David Petraeus, yesterday said the same of his troops. He wants 140,000 of them to remain at the end of the current surge, dashing hopes that their numbers might come down. The occupation of Iraq is now officially indefinite. Too many politicians have too much to lose by contemplating retreat. Continue reading The occupation has frozen Iraq. →

Human rights violations in the name of religion

Afghanistan, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media, Taliban

by Wazhma Frogh, from Persian Mirror

As the world is witness of Afghanistan stepping into development and rehabilitation phase, but experiences have revealed that no country can ever develop without a sound base for human rights issues. Afghans are suffering from a very harsh situation and human values are worthless in many parts of the region. As I am a researcher on women issues in Afghanistan and I travel frequently to different parts of the region to find out the living circumstances of women.

Some three months before I has a visit to an eastern south province of Afghanistan and observed the situation of women and children, their rights have been massacred entirely under the shadow of ignorance those who call themselves Muslims. In this province, in every 10 families , 9 of them have sold their daughters at a value equivalent to 300 US $. Continue reading Human rights violations in the name of religion →

Hijab or Hellfire

Gender and Sexuality, Qur'an, YouTube Watch

Having grown up in a fundamentalist Baptist church in which even bobbed hair was condemned by some as Satanic, I find it ironic that conservative Muslims resort to the image of the Shaytan to moderate the moral choice of Muslim women’s fashion. There is a slick “Garden of Eden” approach at play in a recent Youtube video featured on Mujahideen Ryder. Check it out.

As for that venal sin of bobbed hair, here is John R. Rice, the spiritual founder of Bob Jones University, holding forth like a salafi mullah:

Long hair, the glory of a woman

“Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God. Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.” (1 Cor. 11:11-15)

Let no woman be discouraged because God insists that she shall take a place of subjection and wear the mark of humility and femininity on her head. It is true that the man was created first and then woman created second as a helpmeet, as we were told in verses 8 and 9 above. But dear woman, be not grieved. Long hair is not a shameful mark. Rather, it is a mark of glory. God did not mean for the man to be without the woman (v. 11). Both are necessary. Each one is a complement for the other. Each is dependent upon the other. And God’s way is the fitting and beautiful and happy way. Continue reading Hijab or Hellfire →

“There is no such thing as an Islamic state”

Islamic Law, Sudan, Terrorism Issue


Prof. an-Naim speaking at Harvard in October, 2007

The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article about Emory law professor Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim and the “Muslims Heretics Conference” held in Atlanta a week ago. Here is a brief excerpt, but click here for the whole article.

Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim has seen what can happen to an Islamic reformer: His mentor was executed in 1985 in Sudan; he himself had to flee the country. Still, the self-described “Muslim heretic” has no trouble traveling the Islamic world spreading his controversial message:

There is no such thing as an Islamic state.

A secular state and human rights are essential for all societies so that Muslims and others can practice their faith freely, he tells his co-religionists.

“My motivation is in fact about being an honest, true-to-myself Muslim, rather than someone complying with state dictates,” says Mr. Naim, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta since 1999. “I need the state to be neutral about religious doctrine so that I can be the Muslim I choose to be.”

So committed is this scholar to opening the door to free debate within his faith that he helped organize the first “Muslim Heretics Conference” in Atlanta over the weekend. Some 75 Muslims, engaged in various reform projects, gathered to discuss issues related to sharia (Islamic law), democracy, and women’s rights – and how to cope with dissent and its consequences.

“We celebrate heresy simply to promote innovative thinking,” he says. “Every orthodoxy was at one time a heresy.”

The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

Iran, Poetry, Sufism

NPR has archived its December 13, 2007 program on the Persian mystic poet Rumi. At the main website you can download the podcast, read the script for the program, watch a video of a Rumi performance at Stanford University and more. This is a treat for all Rumiphiles. By the way, last September 30 was the 800th anniversary of the birth of Rumi.

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #19

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the 19th in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #19

Basra 9/11/1963

My Dear Brother ‘Asim (al-Gindi),

I have been silent too long because I have been going through the final stages of treatment. Neither British nor French medicine has been able to cure my illness, so I finally resorted to popular Arabic medicine, and I followed the saying of our noble Prophet: (cauterization is the last resort of treatment). Yes, I have tried it with hot metal skewers at the hands of a Bedouin healer. The complete results of this treatment have not appeared yet because the wounds caused by cauterization have not healed in spite of the twenty days that have passed. Nevertheless, there is a glimpse of hope. Let us leave all this behind. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #19 →

Turkey’s Secular Fundamentalist Threat

Islamic Law, Turkey


Photograph: April, 2007 demonstration supporting the secular state Reuters

by Alfred Stepan, Project Syndicate

NEW YORK — The Chief Prosecutor of Turkey’s High Court of Appeals recently recommended to the country’s Constitutional Court that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) be permanently banned. Only last July, the AKP was overwhelmingly re-elected in free and fair elections to lead the government. The Chief Prosecutor also formally recommended that Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul, and 69 other leading politicians be banned from politics five years.

Clearly, banning the AKP would trigger a political crisis that would end Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union in the foreseeable future and threaten its recent strong economic growth. So the Chief Prosecutor’s threat should not be taken lightly – all the more so given that the Constitutional Court has banned 18 political parties (including the AKP’s predecessor party) since the current constitution was introduced in 1982. Indeed, the recent call to ban the AKP is directly related to its efforts to change Turkey’s constitution.

The underlying charge in the Chief Prosecutor’s indictment is that the AKP has been eroding secularism. But the origins of the current Constitution, and its definition of secularism, are highly suspect. Continue reading Turkey’s Secular Fundamentalist Threat →

Jihadi studies

Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue


The obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better

by Thomas Hegghammer, Times Literary Supplement, April 2, 2008

We were all frightened by the destruction caused on 9/11. Yet most of us, regardless of political orientation, assumed that there would be people in the intelligence services or in academia who possessed detailed knowledge about the jihadists. It might take time, and we might disagree on the methods, but the experts would eventually bring the perpetrators to justice. How wrong we were. Of course, the CIA knew the basics about al-Qaeda, such as the location of the Afghan training camps and the approximate whereabouts of the top leadership. But as Osama bin Laden slipped out of Tora Bora one foggy morning in early December 2001, al-Qaeda left the realm of tactical intelligence and became the complex organization-cum-movement which, six years later, we are still struggling to understand. For a few years, the commanders of the so-called War on Terror enjoyed the benefit of the doubt. After all, we did not know what they knew. However, it has become increasingly clear how little was known about al-Qaeda back in 2001, and how long it will take for us thoroughly to understand the dynamics of global jihadism. Continue reading Jihadi studies →