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"Surely, those who believe, and the Jews and the Christians and the Sabians, whoever have faith with true hearts in Allah and in the Last-day and do good deeds, their reward is with their Lord, and there shall be no fear for them nor any grief." — Qur'an 2:62 Latest from CIPWahhabi Internal Contradictions as Saudi Arabia Seeks Wider Gulf Leadership Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz • May 21, 2012 • The Weekly Standard Blog Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz last December called for promoting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the Saudi kingdom, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman, into a unified body, which has been described as a "super-state." The Saudis and the other GCC members are currently engaged in discussions intended to bring closer coordination, if not fusion, within the council. Regional ambitions by Shia Iran and the chaos in Syria are the main stimuli for such an enhanced Gulf relationship and possible complete unification. All six GCC members except Oman, the largest aside from Saudi Arabia, are ruled in the name of Sunni Islam. Oman is unique in following Ibadhi Islam, an interpretation that is distinct from Sunnism and Shiism.
The Egyptian Election and the Muslim Brotherhood Stephen Schwartz • May 20, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] On May 23-24, the "new Egypt" will hold its first presidential election. Voters will be presented with a daunting list of candidates, currently totaling 12 individuals, with five in the lead. If there is no clear victor, a second round of balloting will take place on June 16-17. Of the main contenders, two are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the Islamist movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s. They are the official MB standard-bearer, Mohamed Mursi, and an expelled MB figure, Abdel Moneim Abul-Futouh. Mursi, the chairman of the MB's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), replaced Khairat al-Shater, a business executive and prominent MB politician, who was disqualified from running by the Egyptian authorities.
"Keralayathra": A Pluralistic Mirror P.M. Muhammed Muhsin • May 19, 2012 • CIP On Saturday, April 28, the greatest public campaign in the history of independent India, the "Keralayathra" or "Kerala expedition," conducted by traditional Sufi leader Qamarul Ulama Sheikh Aboobacker Ahmed, concluded jubilantly at Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, having provided thoughtful lessons appropriate for the whole of mankind. It was, as all who witnessed it should admit, a most remarkable expression of solidarity, religious harmony, and friendly co-existence between people from all major religions and political parties.
Women stand to lose most in Arab Spring Salim Mansur • May 19, 2012 • Toronto Sun The monthly journal Foreign Policy recently published an essay by Mona Eltahawy titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" Eltahawy is an American of Egyptian origin, a graduate from the American University in Cairo with a master's degree in journalism, who publishes views on politics and culture inside the Arab world. In the large amount of reporting from and about the Middle East, Eltahawy's writings convey the perspectives, and hurt, of Arab and Muslim women trapped in the web of a patriarchal culture with its endemic misogyny and violence. Her recent essay was written after her own traumatic experience last November in Cairo. There she was assaulted, groped and beaten by goons linked to security forces in Tahrir Square where the so-called "Arab Spring" gathered pace and toppled Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship.
Arabs, Iranians, and Turks vs. Balkan Muslims Stephen Schwartz • May 11, 2012 • The Weekly Standard Blog While most of the informed Western public is aghast at the economic and political chaos that appears to be overtaking the government in Athens, southeast Europe has seen aggravated Islamist turmoil in the Balkan Muslim-majority lands and minority communities on and near Greece's borders.
Avoiding Arab-Muslim heart of darkness Salim Mansur • May 5, 2012 • Toronto Sun The bloodletting in Syria should end any further romanticizing of the so-called "Arab Spring." There is more ugly reality yet to see as Egypt's experiment with the Islamist version of democracy unfolds. I do not speak lightly of the Arab-Muslim world's heart of darkness. I have seen it in the all-male crowded streets of Peshawar, in the bustling squares of the Shiite holy city of Qom in Iran, in Ramallah and other towns of the West Bank, in the squalor of overpopulated North African cities. There are the mosques and the calls to prayer. And as one steps inside them to join men at prayer, especially Friday's communal prayer, it is hard not to notice the combustible fusion of piety and anger taking hold of the young and old gathered together in solidarity against an unjust world outside. I have felt the blast of this anger poured forth from pulpits in Peshawar and in Algiers, as I have heard its echo right here in Canada.
Stephen Schwartz • May 4, 2012 • Illyria [New York] Kosovars have experienced successive humiliations already in 2012, 13 years after the conclusion of the armed independence struggle. The recent affair in which the country was forced to accept removal of its title as a "republic" from signage and documentation used in its derisory negotiations with Serbia was shameful and will not be soon forgotten. Serbia further demanded, and obtained, insertion of the so-called "footnote" in references to Kosova, citing UN Security Council Resolution 1244. UNSCOM 1244, adopted in 1999, declared that Kosovars would attain "substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to be decided by the Security Council of the United Nations."
Turks Protest Erdoğan's Re-Islamification Program Ali Uyanik • May 2, 2012 • Gatestone Institute Much of the world appears seduced by the claims to Islamic moderation of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (known as AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But Turkish citizens and immigrants in Western Europe seem to be expressing increasing dissatisfaction with the government's policies on religion, the future of the country's secular institutions, and an apparent disregard for the rights of minorities.
Salim Mansur • April 28, 2012 • Toronto Sun In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Fouad Ajami laments America's abdication of Syria as the country slides ever deeper into the morass of a bloody civil war. Ajami is the pre-eminent Arab-American academic and public intellectual writing about the contemporary Middle East. His realism, honesty, insight of the Arab world and elegant style, make him one of the most widely read scholars on the twists and turns of Levantine politics. But Ajami is at a loss to explain America's abandonment of a Syria traumatized by the sheer ruthlessness of Bashar al-Assad. Ajami knows better than just about anyone how well the current butcher of Damascus absorbed the lessons taught by Hafez al-Assad — Bashar's father and the man responsible for ordering the massacre of the population in Hama in February 1982.
Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi • April 24, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] Is Pakistani radical Islamist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, at 61 years of age, the most powerful man in the world? Observing events of the past month, one might be justified in thinking so. Early in April, the United States government offered USD 10 million for the capture of Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the so-called "Army of the Righteous." LeT is an ally of Al-Qaida supported by the Pakistani military and intelligence services as a jihadist force against Kashmir. It has been involved in numerous terrorist conspiracies and atrocities over the years since September 11, 2001. These have included recruitment of American Muslims to fight against India, planning of the 2006 explosive chemical plot aimed at U.S. and British air traffic, and, most significantly, the deadly 2008 attack on Mumbai.
Veli Sirin • April 24, 2012 • Gatestone Institute Early in 2011, while visiting the Turkish city of Kars, less than 20 miles (30 kilometres) from the Armenian frontier. the country's neo-fundamentalist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the Justice and Development Party (known by its local initials as AKP), discovered a memorial to the Armenian victims of Turkish massacres in 1915. The stone sculpture, 115 feet (35 metres) high, entitled "A Statue of Humanity," represented a human body severed from top to bottom, with the two halves facing each other. It was intended to include a hand reaching between the separated forms. Its creator, artist Mehmet Aksoy, believed the art installation would symbolize relations between Armenians and Turks, and their reconciliation. The former mayor of Kars, Naif Alibeyoğlu, had commissioned the art piece in 2006, when Turkish-Armenian relations were, as so often before, at a low point, so it would be visible across the border.
Bosnia-Hercegovina, Twenty Years After Stephen Schwartz • April 17, 2012 • The Weekly Standard Blog Twenty years have passed since the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia at the beginning of March 1992. Bosnian independence came after Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia had left Yugoslavia in 1991. Slobodan Milošević, the Yugoslav dictator, proclaimed Serbian "independence" inside Yugoslavia—of which Serbia was the dominant constituent—in 1990. Milošević did not object to the secession of Macedonia. But the Belgrade regime sent the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) to assault newly-freed Slovenia. Hostilities between the Milošević government and the well-organized Slovenes lasted only 10 days and left fewer than 100 dead on both sides. The tranquil divorce of Macedonia and the short battle by Slovenia for self-determination are nearly forgotten today. Yet Croatia declared its sovereignty simultaneously with and was attacked at the same time as Slovenia, and underwent four years of war, from 1991 to 1995.
Wahhabi Hate-Mongers' Sham "Peace Convention" Irfan Al-Alawi • April 16, 2012 • Gatestone Institute In one of the most absurd recent exercises in self-deceptive propaganda by radical Islamists, an "International Peace Convention" was announced for April 12 at the Dubai World Trade Center. The event, which is the second of its kind, gave a prominent place to Zakir Naik, an Indian Muslim televangelist whose "Peace TV" beams from Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Mumbai. Naik, an unapologetic adherent of the ultrafundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Islam, is barred from entry into Canada and Britain for exhorting Muslim youth to participate in terrorism. He has incited Muslims against non-Wahhabi observances and interpretations, including Sufism and Shiism, and loudly proclaims his alleged charisma in convincing Hindus, Christians, and other believers to become Muslims.
Hartford Seminary's Shameful Ties to Syria's Dictator Stephen Schwartz • April 15, 2012 • American Thinker The Hartford Seminary has occupied a leading position among theological faculties around the nation in accommodating Islam, particularly in its radical forms, since appointing its first Muslim faculty member more than twenty years ago. Today, that accommodation extends to the murderous regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Hartford maintains a highly questionable relationship with an Islamic religious and Arabic-language school, the Al-Fatiha Islamic Academy in Damascus, approved by, and allied with, the Assad family. Founded in 1956, Al-Fatiha promotes aggressively sharia-based finance (Islamic banking) and denounces the current international financial system.
The Muslim Brotherhood Goes to Washington Irfan Al-Alawi • April 11, 2012 • Gatestone Institute Representatives of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) arrived in Washington DC on April 3, an event that was predictable after the pan-Islamic movement won pluralities in the recent elections in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. The aim of their journey to the Potomac was to improve the organization's image as a leading force in radical Islam. Members of the MB delegation hoped to convince American lawmakers, media, and experts that they represent a "moderate" variety of Islamist doctrine. According to the Voice of America, they were "one of five Middle Eastern Islamist political parties taking part in meetings with U.S. officials in Washington as well as a conference organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." In reality, all five parties at the Carnegie conference were branches of the MB: from Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Libya.
Kerala, India: Awakening Humanity Through Sufism P.M. Muhammed Muhsin • April 9, 2012 • CIP Under the banner of "Awakening Humanity," the Indian state of Kerala will soon witness a massive campaign or Keralayathra (yathra meaning "expedition" in Malayalam, the local language.) This religious journey will led by the traditional Sufi Qamarul Ulama Sheikh Aboobacker Ahmed, known to the Muslims of Kerala as Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar, and general secretary of the All-India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama. Bearing his great humanitarian message, Sheikh Aboobacker is expected to commence his itinerary on April 12 and to conclude it on April 28, delivering a luminous lesson in the history of a human being. The extended agenda, covering 60 large conference assemblies, is unquestionably significant at the dawn of the new common millennium.
Pakistan practically an enemy state Salim Mansur • April 7, 2012 • Toronto Sun Last week I wrote Pakistan is the centre of the global-jihad complex and, in effect, is practically an enemy state at war with the West and its democratic allies, India and Israel. For reasons of diplomacy western officials are loathe to characterize Pakistan as an adversary. The big question, and no one in the western capitals has yet an answer for it, is how to deal with a rogue state possessing nuclear weapons that colludes with jihadis and provides sanctuary to those who have openly declared war against the West? This question is also being asked inside Pakistan by those who are sane enough to recognize how perilous the fate of their country has become due to the reckless, if not criminal, conduct of their political-military elite.
CIP Greetings to People of the Book, Passover 5772 and Easter 2012 Stephen Schwartz • April 6, 2012 • CIP In accord with traditional, moderate, and spiritual Islam, the Center for Islamic Pluralism extends greetings to the People of the Book (Jewish and Christian) on their sacred holidays, Passover (Pesach) for the Jewish year 5772, beginning April 6, and Easter, April 8. "Say, 'We believe in one God and what has been revealed to us and to Abraham and Ismail and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was delivered to Moses and Jesus and what was told to the Prophets by their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, but we submit to God.'" Qur'an, 2:136 "And Moses said to them, 'My Lord knows more than you or me of who bears divine guidance and who will be rewarded in the world to come. Evil-doers will gain nothing.'" Qur'an, 26:38
The Responsibility for Protecting Islam in Kosova Rests With the Islamic Community of Kosova (BIK) Stephen Schwartz • April 6, 2012 • Illyria [New York] On 19 March 2012, I published an article in the major American political journal The Weekly Standard, titled (in English) "Kosovo Continues Fight Against Wahhabi Infiltration" ["Kosova vazhdon luftën kundër infiltrimit të Vahabistëve"]. The article was written during my most recent visit to Kosova. It dealt mainly with the removal of Musli ef. Verbani as imam of the Gazi Sinan Pasha mosque in Kaçanik, and imam Verbani's challenge to Sabri ef. Bajgora.
Living on the Margins Uyghur Human Rights Project • April 2, 2012 • Uyghur American Association A new 89-page report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) documents the Chinese state's top-down destruction of Uyghur communities in Kashgar and throughout East Turkestan, in a targeted and highly politicized push that Chinese officials have accelerated in the wake of turbulent unrest in the region in 2009. Living on the Margins: The Chinese State's Demolition of Uyghur Communities reveals how the destruction of Uyghur neighborhoods has resulted in the loss of both physical structures, including Uyghur homes, shops and religious sites, and patterns of traditional Uyghur life that cannot be replicated in the new, heavily-monitored Chinese-style apartment blocks where many have been forcibly relocated. |
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