Iowa Town Named for Muslim Hero Extols Tolerance

Iowa Town Named for Muslim Hero Extols Tolerance

    Sunday, May 05, 2013   No comments

ELKADER, Iowa — Amid an expanse of undulating farmland, deep in the steep valley carved by the Turkey River, the town of Elkader sits most of the year in remote obscurity. Population 1,200 and gradually shrinking, it is the seat of a county without a single traffic light.
Improbably enough, this community settled by Germans and Scandinavians, its religious life built around Catholic and Lutheran churches, bears the name of a Muslim hero. Abd el-Kader was renowned in the 19th century for leading Algeria’s fight for independence and protecting non-Muslims from persecution. Even Abraham Lincoln extolled him.

This weekend, for the fifth year in a row, Elkader will welcome a delegation of Arab dignitaries to celebrate this rare lifeline of tolerance, spanning continents and centuries. Coming less than three weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, which the authorities say were committed by two Muslim brothers, the Abdelkader Education Project’s forum stands more than ever for an affirming encounter between the United States and Islam.

“Our audience is the people who are compassionate already,” said Kathy Garms, 63, a retired human-resources administrator who is the driving force in the Abdelkader project. “But there are so many people who are ignorant or scared or even hateful. We just hope that once they get across the starting line, they will listen.”

Abdallah Baali, Algeria’s ambassador to the United States and an annual participant in the forum, put its impact in global terms. “In our increasingly tormented world,” the ambassador wrote in an e-mail, “Abd el-Kader — a true world hero — is ‘talking’ today to a much broader audience about our shared values and on how humanity could and can prevail over all differences and prejudices.”

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Israel... could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels

Israel... could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels

    Sunday, May 05, 2013   No comments

BEIRUT — A series of explosions that hit just west of Damascus early Sunday, sending fiery mushroom-shaped clouds towering over the landmark Mount Qasioun and brightening the night sky above the city, left the region concerned about an unexpected escalation in the Syrian war.

The Syrian government immediately blamed Israel for the explosions, whose power appeared to far outstrip that of any weapons in the rebel arsenal; many Damascus residents said the attack was by far the most fearsome near the capital in more than two years of fighting.
...
But the explosions that struck Damascus on Sunday, shaking the ground across the city, appeared to be of far greater magnitude and potentially broader political and military significance.

¶ The attack raised the possibility that Israel, even if merely intending to pursue its own national security goals, could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels, who over the last several weeks have faced losses in a series of government offensives around Damascus and the city of Homs to the north.

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U.S. plan: a “moderate crescent” as a counterweight to the “fundamentalist crescent”

U.S. plan: a “moderate crescent” as a counterweight to the “fundamentalist crescent”

    Sunday, May 05, 2013   No comments

The Turkish Foreign Ministry today dismissed a British newspaper report suggesting a role for Turkey in a regional cooperation against the “fundamentalist crescent,” which consists of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah.

“These are manipulative reports which have nothing to do with the reality,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told Hürriyet Daily News.

British daily the Sunday Times reported that Israel would agree to a joint effort with regional powers to counter Iran and the “fundamentalist crescent.”

Israel had been working toward a cooperative agreement in compliance with Turkey and three Arab states to implement an allied system of detection technologies to defend against Iranian ballistic projectiles, the Sunday Times reported.

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Despite stalled Arab Spring, Muslim nations grasp for democracy

Despite stalled Arab Spring, Muslim nations grasp for democracy

    Friday, May 03, 2013   No comments

Elections in Pakistan and Malaysia show step-by-step progress to reconcile Islam with secular values of elected government
By the Monitor's Editorial Board / May 3, 2013

Two years on, the Arab Spring has stalled. Only four countries in the Middle East – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen – have advanced from despotic rule toward democracy, even if slowly.

Yet among the world’s Muslim countries that are already democratic, a similar struggle continues, one to reconcile the world’s second largest religion with secular democracy. Two elections show how this struggle is faring:

On May 11, voters in Pakistan go to the polls in what could be a historic transition – the first democratic transfer of civilian power. Yet while this would signify how the military’s role has lessened in Pakistan, Muslim radicals who denounce democracy as “un-Islamic” have given the secular political parties a hard time – with bombs and guns. Hundreds of people have been killed during the campaign by the Taliban and other militants in an attempt to thwart the elections and create an Islamic state.

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Editorials Call for the Closure Of Guantánamo In New York Times, Washington Post And Guardian

Editorials Call for the Closure Of Guantánamo In New York Times, Washington Post And Guardian

    Friday, May 03, 2013   No comments

By Andy Worthington

As the prison-wide hunger strike in Guantánamo continues (sign the petition calling for its closure here!), nearly three months since the majority of the 166 prisoners still held began refusing food, it is abundantly clear that, after several years in which, frankly, almost everyone had forgotten about Guantánamo or had given up on it, the prison — and the remaining 166 prisoners — are now back in the news and showing no signs of being as easily dismissed as they were three years ago, when everyone went silent after President Obama’s promise to close the prison within a year fizzled out dismally.

The need to exert concerted pressure on the Obama administration is more important than ever, because, until the prisoners appealed to the world by putting their lives on the line, President Obama had been content to abandon them, and had been encouraged to do so by Congress, where lawmakers had blocked all his attempts to close the prison, and had ended up imposing restrictions, in the National Defense Authorization Acts passed at the end of 2011 and 2012, that made it almost impossible to release any prisoners...

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Muslim Bashing in the Wake of Boston Bombing

Muslim Bashing in the Wake of Boston Bombing

    Wednesday, May 01, 2013   No comments

When the FBI identified the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects as Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the American Muslim community braced itself for another onslaught of anti-Islamic feeling—a caustic sentiment that has persisted in the country since 9/11.

In fact, the wave of suspicion and accusations had already begun. A Saudi student, injured in the blast, was tackled by another bystander and labeled a suspect by the New York Post. The hashtag #Muslims trended on Twitter, which was also the platform for one of the more incendiary comments from Fox News contributor Erik Rush, who, when prompted by another user if he was "already blaming Muslims," responded: "Yes, they're evil. Let's kill them all."

American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which issued a statement "expressing deep concern" regarding the negative statements and threats against Arab and Muslim Americans, demanded an apology. When Internet users noted a possible resemblance between one of the bombing suspects and Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown University student missing since March 16 (he was cleared and his body subsequently found), news organizations picked up the story without comment from authorities and overwhelmed his already suffering family with interview requests.

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Partial Readings: Collapsing Factories and the “End Death Traps” Tour

Partial Readings: Collapsing Factories and the “End Death Traps” Tour

    Tuesday, April 30, 2013   No comments

As the death toll of Wednesday’s garment factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh surpasses 320, the incident has become the most lethal disaster in garment industry history, one of the worst manufacturing disasters ever. The New York Times reports that more than one thousand of the Savar factory complex’s 2,500 workers have been injured, and hundreds remain trapped in the rubble. By comparison, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, one of the most widely remembered disasters in industrial history, killed 146 and injured 71.

Like last week’s fertilizer plant blast in West, Texas, the collapse of Rana Plaza was  preventable. A bank and other commercial establishments on the ground floor were reportedly closed after workers complained of a visible crack in the building on Tuesday, but managers of the factories on the upper levels of the five-story complex refused to follow suit. About an hour into the workday on Wednesday, the building collapsed; three days later, volunteers are still pulling survivors and corpses out of the rubble.

The names of international brands whose clothes were being produced in the Savar factory complex are beginning to surface: a range of U.S., European, and Canadian companies, they include the Children’s Place, Benetton, Cato Fashions, Mango, Joe Fresh, and BM Casual. Ether Tex, one of the factories destroyed in the collapse, listed Walmart as one of its customers on its website, but it remains unclear whether the U.S. retail giant was sourcing clothes from the factory at the time of the collapse.

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The violence that ended Qaddafi still rules above elected leaders

The violence that ended Qaddafi still rules above elected leaders

    Tuesday, April 30, 2013   No comments

Gunmen demanding the sacking of former officials of the ousted Kadhafi regime surrounded the justice ministry on Tuesday, stepping up an action started at the foreign ministry, an official said.

"Several armed men in vehicles equipped with anti-aircraft guns surrounded the ministry of justice," spokesman Walid Ben Rabha told AFP.

"They asked the minister and staff present to leave their offices and close the ministry." An AFP photographer saw more than 20 pick-up trucks loaded with machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers and said they had blocked access to the building.

Dozens of gunmen making the same demand have kept the foreign ministry under siege since Sunday, paralysing its work.

The interior ministry and national television station have also been attacked.

On Monday, angry police officers firing their guns in the air stormed the interior ministry demanding higher wages.

Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has denounced the encircling of the foreign ministry and other such attacks.

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eager to get around term limits, Erdoğan eyes the presidency, explains "president is not a king"

eager to get around term limits, Erdoğan eyes the presidency, explains "president is not a king"

    Monday, April 29, 2013   No comments

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan today said that the president in a presidential system would not be a king, speaking at a meeting in Ankara’s Kızılcahamam neighborhood with members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“The president in a presidential system is not a king. But some ignorant people are lying by attempting to represent the president as a king,” Erdoğan told the AKP representatives of district and provincial branches today, calling on them to intervene and persuade in the debates over the presidential system.

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CIA 'buys influence with bags of cash' left at office of Hamid Karzai

CIA 'buys influence with bags of cash' left at office of Hamid Karzai

    Monday, April 29, 2013   No comments

The CIA has delivered tens of millions of dollars to the office of Afghanistan's president during the past decade, according to advisers to Hamid Karzai.

Corruption

Bundled into suitcases, backpacks and plastic bags, the payments were designed to ensure that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) retained influence at the presidential palace.
But the payments may have instead fuelled corruption and ended up in the pockets of warlords.
"We called it 'ghost money'," said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr Karzai's deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. "It came in secret, and it left in secret."
Afghan officials told the newspaper there was no evidence that Mr Karzai personally received any of the money. The cash was handled by his National Security Council, it added.
The payments are one of Afghanistan's worst kept secrets. Rumours have circulated for years and Mr Karzai even confirmed receiving American cash in 2010.

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