All posts by tabsir

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 →

“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.

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 →

Engels on the Ottomans

Islam and Christianity, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Teaching Resources, Turkey

The Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, stands as one of the most important political tracts ever written. It was written at a time when Europe had emerged as the dominant world force, economically and militarily. But even in the mid-19th century, the view in an Oriental direction proved more cluttered with opposition than casual readers of European history might think. The Ottoman Empire, not yet in the throes of its “sick man of Europe” stage, still thrived. In 1855 Engels published a series of articles in Putnam’s Monthly on “the Armies of Europe,” including his assessment of the Turkish army. Given the recent knocking on the EU door by modern Turkey, a re-read of Engel’s commentary is worthwhile…

I. The Turkish Army
by Frederick Engels (1855)

The Turkish army, at the beginning of the present war, was in a higher state of efficiency than it had ever reached before. The various attempts at reorganization and reform made since the accession of Mahmud, since the massacre of the janissaries, and especially since the peace of Adrianople, had been consolidated and systematized. The first and greatest obstacle — the independent position of the pashas in command of distant provinces — had been removed, to a great extent, and, upon the whole, the pashas were reduced to a discipline somewhat approaching that of European district commanders. But their ignorance, insolence, and rapacity remained in as full vigor as in the best days of Asiatic satrap rule; and if, for the last twenty years, we had heard little of revolts of pashas, we have heard enough of provinces in revolt against their greedy governors, who, originally the lowest domestic slaves and “men of all work,” profited by their new position to heap up fortunes by exactions, bribes, and wholesale embezzlement of the public money. That, under such a state of things, the organization of the army must, to a great extent, exist on paper only, is evident. Continue reading Engels on the Ottomans →

Rethinking Secularism: Why Shariah?

Islamic Law, Orientalism


Noah Feldman, left; Said Arjomand, right

by Saïd Amir Arjomand, from The Immanent Frame

Noah Feldman prefaces his plea for the Shariah in his recent article for The New York Times Magazine (”Why Shariah?“) with a reference to the proposal recently made by the Archbishop of Canterbury to allow the Shariah and Jewish law to be considered in voluntary family and arbitration courts. The Archbishop and the Professor are addressing very different issues, however. The situation of a Muslim religious minority having the option of voluntary recourse to arbitration or court settlement in Europe, as proposed by the former, cannot be responsibly compared with that of a Muslim majority using the coercive power of the state to stone women accused of adultery in Nigeria, or to perpetuate patriarchal domination in Pakistan by keeping even those women who are eventually acquitted by superior courts in shackles and behind bars for many years.

In this article, presumably as a forerunner of his new book, Feldman extends the paternalism of the failed American empire in What We Owe Iraq to the entire Muslim world by telling the Muslims how good they really are; surely they would not realize this without the American law professor telling them. In telling them, he displays one of the worst examples of Orientalism. Continue reading Rethinking Secularism: Why Shariah? →

Dancing in the Garden

Iran, Miniatures, Music and Dance, Poetry


Scene from the Divan of Hafiz, Herat School, 1523, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

O beautiful wine-bearer, bring forth the cup and put it to my lips
Path of love seemed easy at first, what came was many hardships.
With its perfume, the morning breeze unlocks those beautiful locks
The curl of those dark ringlets, many hearts to shreds strips.
In the house of my Beloved, how can I enjoy the feast
Since the church bells call the call that for pilgrimage equips.
With wine color your robe, one of the old Magi’s best tips
Trust in this traveler’s tips, who knows of many paths and trips.
The dark midnight, fearful waves, and the tempestuous whirlpool
How can he know of our state, while ports house his unladen ships.
I followed my own path of love, and now I am in bad repute
How can a secret remain veiled, if from every tongue it drips?
If His presence you seek, Hafiz, then why yourself eclipse?
Stick to the One you know, let go of imaginary trips.

Hafiz, Divan, Ghazal 1