Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

'I feel like a stranger where I live’

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 No comments

"When you go swimming, it’s much healthier to keep your whole body completely covered, you know.” The Muslim lady behind the counter in my local pharmacy has recently started giving me advice like this. It’s kindly meant and I’m always glad to hear her views because she is one of the few people in west London where I live who talks to me.

The streets around Acton, which has been my home since 1996, have taken on a new identity. Most of the shops are now owned by Muslims and even the fish and chip shop and Indian takeaway are Halal. It seems that almost overnight it’s changed from Acton Vale into Acton Veil.

Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they never look me in the face.

Canadian 'guilty of crimes against humanity in Libya'

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 No comments

A professional bodyguard who worked on and off for years providing protection to the “playboy” third son of Muammar Gaddafi faces deportation from Canada within days, after an immigration board found he was complicit in atrocities committed during the final days of the regime.

Repeated trips made to Libya during the 2011 uprising came back to haunt Gary Peters, who is originally from Australia, after the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board ordered him deported after finding that he was complicit in atrocities committed by the Gaddafi’s in their last day’s in power and additionally had broken international laws in helping the son, al-Saadi, escape to Niger.

As a bodyguard to al-Saadi, Mr Peters effectively became a “member of the government apparatus” in Libya as it tried to quell the rebellion, a member of the Board, Alicia Seifert, said as she delivered the ruling. She said that while Mr Peters received tens of thousands of dollars to ensure the safety of his client, the regime was committing acts of murder and torture as it struggled to hold on to power.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts

Monday, January 28, 2013 No comments

Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, according to the Saharan town's mayor, in an incident he described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage.

Hallé Ousmani Cissé told the Guardian that al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings that held the manuscripts, some of which dated back to the 13th century. They also burned down the town hall, the governor's office and an MP's residence, and shot dead a man who was celebrating the arrival of the French military.

French troops and the Malian army reached the gates of Timbuktu on Saturday and secured the town's airport. But they appear to have got there too late to rescue the leather-bound manuscripts that were a unique record of sub-Saharan Africa's rich medieval history. The rebels attacked the airport on Sunday, the mayor said.

"It's true. They have burned the manuscripts," Cissé said in a phone interview from Mali's capital, Bamako. "They also burned down several buildings. There was one guy who was celebrating in the street and they killed him."

He added: "This is terrible news. The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali's heritage but the world's heritage. By destroying them they threaten the world. We have to kill all of the rebels in the north."

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Syria: the danger of false dichotomies

Sunday, January 27, 2013 No comments

by ISSA KHALAF

From the initial stirrings of the Syrian uprising, I have felt that unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, or even Bahrain, it is incumbent on analysts to exercise caution, for Syria’s social structural complexity and vulnerability to external rivalries potentially exposes its people to extraordinary, protracted violence and collapse.

The elusive hope for Syria is peaceful change and democratization to preserve its unity. Many may argue that these views perilously echo the regime’s justifications for remaining in power. It does and doesn’t.

On the one hand, Syria’s geopolitical centrality historically turned it into a playground for all manner of cynical, violent, destabilizing external powers. This was true during the Cold War, and is just as true today, for Washington’s perception of its power and interests is little changed, and in fact, its hegemonic obsession with disciplining uncompliant groups and states has morphed into active militarism since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1989. The national security state exists on a steady diet of enemies. Israel and oil, the ‘challenge’ of China and Russia, Central Asia and pipelines, are central to American thinking.

Thus, the Syrian regime has it right, as one can plainly see from Lebanon’s perennial upheavals, Iraq’s precarious existence, and the organic causality between the internal Syrian situation and regional and international rivalries.

Terrorism in Algeria and war in Mali demonstrate the increasing reach of Islamist extremism in Africa

Sunday, January 27, 2013 No comments

ON JANUARY 16th three dozen heavily armed Islamic extremists seized control of a gas plant in the Saharan desert near In Amenas, taking some 650 workers hostage. Their subsequent battle with Algerian special forces, fought across a sprawling landscape of pipeline bundles and housing containers, lasted four days. The hostage-takers were said to have planned to blow up the pipelines, which would have meant a significant drop in Algeria’s exports. But there was no explosion, and soon the hostage-takers were killed, as were at least 37 of the foreign employees at the plant. Algeria takes an uncompromising approach to terrorist attacks.

That battle, along with the escalating war in neighbouring Mali (see article), has raised the spectre of a new jihadism spreading across Africa. Western governments worry that conflicts in the vast Sahara, and in the countries of the Sahel that lie along its southern edge, have become increasingly linked. The attack on the Algerian gas plant was most likely launched from neighbouring Libya. Its architects, hidden somewhere in the sandy expanse hundreds, perhaps many hundreds, of kilometres away, claimed to be supporting the groups in Mali now being attacked by French and west African forces.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Is Qatar fueling the crisis in north Mali?

Thursday, January 24, 2013 No comments

Oil-rich gulf state Qatar has a vested interest in the outcome of the north Mali crisis, according to various reports that have been picked up by French MPs, amid suspicion that Doha may be siding with the rebels to extend its regional influence.

Since Islamist groups exploited a military coup in the Malian capital of Bamako in early 2012 to take control of the entire north of the country, accusations of Qatari involvement in a crisis that has seen France deploy troops have been growing.

Last week two French politicians explicitly accused Qatar of giving material support to separatists and Islamists in north Mali, adding fuel to speculation that the Emirate is playing a behind-the-scenes role in spreading Islamic fundamentalism in Africa.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Communist Party Senator Michelle Demessine both said that that Qatar had questions to answer.

“If Qatar is objecting to France’s engagement in Mali it’s because intervention risks destroying Doha’s most fundamentalist allies,” Le Pen said in a statement on her party website, in response to a call by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani for dialogue with the Islamists.

‘Cash from Doha’

The first accusations of Qatari involvement with Tuareg separatists and Islamist groups came in a June 2012 article in respected French weekly the Canard Enchainé.

In a piece title “Our friend Qatar is financing Mali’s Islamists”, the newspaper alleged that the oil-rich Gulf state was financing the separatists.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Is Turkey Finally Ready to Make Peace with the Kurds?

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 No comments

Last week's massive funeral in Turkey of three Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) activists killed in Paris last week speaks volumes about the PKK's appeal among the Turkish Kurds in Turkey's southeast.

Turkey recently entered peace talks with the PKK, and if these talks succeed, they could bring an end to the bitterest aspects of the four-decade-old conflict between Ankara and the group. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to achieve a settlement with the PKK, if for no other reason than that brokering a peace deal will effectively eliminate the last hurdle to achieve his goal of getting elected as the country's next president in 2014.

Turkey has engaged in talks with the PKK before, but they were always in secret. This time, however, Erdogan is comfortable going public with the negotiations, suggesting that he is confident that the talks will succeed. This optimism most probably stems from the predicament of his counterpart, the PKK's jailed founder and leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was caught by Turkish security forces, with U.S. assistance, in 1999, and sent to solitary confinement after standing trial. Ocalan, who has spent over a decade by himself on the Imrali island jail in the middle of the Marmara Sea, is aching to go free, and hence wants to strike a deal with Erdogan.

Such an agreement would involve a "ceasefire" between the Turkish government and the PKK, after which the PKK would pull its estimated 3,000 members out of Turkey. The PKK would then disarm. Next, Turkey would allow the PKK's top leadership to find a home in Europe while the group's rank and file would be allowed to return to Turkey and integrate into civilian life and politics.

In return, Ocalan would get his freedom, most likely entering house arrest. Even if Erdogan publically denies he will make this concession, the writing is on the wall.

For Erdogan to maximize his gains from the deal, the PKK needs not only to lay down its arms, but also to stay quiet. Fighting with the PKK has resulted in over 900 deaths since August 2011, according to a tally by the International Crisis Group, constituting the heaviest toll on Turkey in more than a decade.

The hawks’ wings are clipped

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 No comments

YAIR LAPID, a former television talk-show host whose secular, middle-of-the-road party soared into second place in Israel’s election on January 22nd, wrote a popular column for years in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, in which he would ask, “What is it to be Israeli?” What, in other words, does it take to feel you belong in the Jewish state? The question became his trademark. Now a large chunk of the electorate—a lot larger than the pollsters predicted—has given an answer that may reshape Israel’s future, not least by improving the chance of a durable peace with the Palestinians.

Mr Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid (There is a Future), running for the first time, got 19 seats in the 120-seat parliament, against 31 for Likud-Beitenu, led by the incumbent prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who is still expected to retain his post. But he will find it much harder in the next month or so to rejig his ruling coalition. Hawkish and religious parties that have been generally loth to offer the sort of territorial and other compromises needed to revive the peace process got half the seats. But the election result shows that Israelis on the more malleable middle ground are still a force to be reckoned with. The post-election bargaining will be a lot trickier than Mr Netanyahu expected.

Two key consequences may ensue. One is that Naftali Bennett, the religious hawk who rejects the idea of Palestinian state altogether, may not have to be brought into a government. Pollsters had expected his new party to do so well that Mr Netanyahu would have had to give him a senior post.

The other is that it may prove impossible for Mr Netanyahu to include both Mr Lapid’s secular party and other religious parties in a ruling coalition.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

The Death of Fatah and the Future of Palestine

Saturday, January 19, 2013 No comments

RAMALLAH -- After nearly a half-century of existence, Fatah has left many loyalists and critics alike pondering its accomplishments. On New Year's Eve, the Palestinian political party -- which has led the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for decades and currently holds the presidency of the Palestianian Authority (PA) -- celebrated its 48th anniversary. In Ramallah, a few thousand mostly young men marched across the West Bank city to the Muqata', the headquarters of the PA president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. The streets were lined with the party's younger supporters, some elderly veterans clad in military fatigues and several high-ranking members of the group's leadership who are based in the West Bank.

As the marchers converged upon the headquarters -- once a ravaged icon of the second Intifada, today it stands a revamped modern military compound -- many started to trickle away. Addressing the enthusiastic group that remained, Abbas, looking every day of his 77 years, spoke of Palestinian leaders of years past. He started with Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian figure unrivaled in his persona, then moved on to Abu Jihad and Abu Eyad -- both icons of Palestinian resistance -- and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas's late spiritual leader, whose group Fatah has been at loggerheads with since it wrested control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Abbas recited the litany of names as if lamenting his party's failure to deliver a unifying leader since Arafat to guide Palestinians through exceptionally troubling times: a moribund peace process, dire economic circumstances brought about by dwindling international aid, mushrooming Israeli settlements, and a political and geographical rift with the Gaza Strip.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Al Jazeera: Must do better

Friday, January 18, 2013 No comments

AL JAZEERA, the Qatari satellite television network that revolutionised Arab news coverage a decade ago, has long defied its critics. No other network has seen its bureaus both bombed by the American air force and torched by Egyptian revolutionaries. None has been damned by so diverse a range of governments and politicians. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi blasted it for fomenting revolution. Syria’s embattled regime accused it of building Potemkin sets of Syrian cities to stage fake anti-government protests. And Al Jazeera was recently described on Fox, a rival American news network, as an “anti-American terror mouthpiece”.

Since launching a 24-hour Arabic satellite news channel in 1996, Al Jazeera has added others devoted to sports, documentaries, local news and children’s programmes, as well as a widely admired English-language current-events channel. Although Al Jazeera English is popular in the State Department cafeteria in Washington, the network’s unfair notoriety as a supposed promoter of jihadism has largely shut its channels out of the broader American market. But its recent purchase of Current TV, a cable network partly owned by Al Gore, a former vice-president, for a reported $500m may extend its footprint to 40m American households, paving the way to launch another dedicated local service, Al Jazeera America.