Libya, February 24: Army units and militiamen loyal to Moammar Gadhafi struck back against rebellious Libyans who have risen up in cities close to the capital Thursday, attacking a mosque where many were holding an anti-government sit-in and battling with others who had seized control of an airport. A doctor at the mosque said 10 people were killed.
Recent events in the Middle East have many commentators frantically speculating about what the future holds for Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Iran, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and any other country whose citizens are choosing to rise up in protest. Across the region, people are bravely standing up, with many common demands – chiefly, social and economic reforms, as well as an end to rampant corruption and human rights abuses. Who could find fault with that? Unfortunately, a whole lot of people.
Are they Indians who are involved in sabotaging their own country? Are they Muslims who are retaliating against Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat carnage?
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, 38, has never lived a day in which his father Moammar didn’t rule Libya as its undisputed leader inside the country and an enigmatic, controversial voice for the world.
And yet, as the Libyan government faced a stiff popular uprising, it was Moammar Gadhafi’s second eldest son and not the Leader of the Revolution himself — who was first to talk to the nation about the unrest and detail a plan to address it.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are still deprived of the basic elements of social justice due to the Israeli blockade on the coastal enclave, a report says.
Israel announced six months ago that they will ease up the blockade, but the siege is causing the economy of Gaza to suffer greatly, a Media correspondent reported from Gaza on Sunday.
The United Nations General Assembly had proclaimed February 20 as the World Day of Social Justice in 2007 to pursue social justice for all and to promote development and human dignity.
He is head of the world’s biggest family – and says he is ‘blessed’ to have his 39 wives.
Ziona Chana also has 94 children, 14-daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren.
They live in a 100-room, four storey house set amidst the hills of Baktwang village in the Indian state of Mizoram, where the wives sleep in giant communal dormitories
He even married ten women in one year, when he was at his most prolific, and enjoys his own double bed while his wives have to make do with communal dormitories.
“Massacre – it’s a massacre,” the doctors were shouting. Three dead. Four dead. One man was carried past me on a stretcher in the emergency room, blood spurting on to the floor from a massive bullet wound in his thigh.
A few feet away, six nurses were fighting for the life of a pale-faced, bearded man with blood oozing out of his chest. “I have to take him to theatre now,” a doctor screamed. “There is no time – he’s dying!”
So much has been written about women’s rights in Muslim countries, even citing this issue as a justification for the western military invasion, but the western feminist movement remains largely silent about the current pro-democracy uprising in Egypt.
As a result of miniscule coverage in the western press, perhaps many don’t know that Asmaa Mahfouz – a 26-year-old Egyptian woman – was and is a leading figure in Egypt’s three-year old democracy movement.
Afghan women still face imprisonment for so-called moral crimes such as adultery or running away from home
The Afghan government has announced it is to take over the running of women’s shelters despite concerns from human-rights groups that such a move could put lives at risk.
The safe houses are run by foreign and Afghan charities to protect women from domestic violence, but some conservatives and religious leaders accuse them of being fronts for prostitution or set up to remove women from their families.
Egypt Burning tells the story of the Egyptian revolution that forced Hosni Mubarak, the president who had ruled the country for 30 years, from power.
Through interviews with Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground – whose coverage of the popular uprising made them the target of a state campaign to get Al Jazeera off the air – the three-part series revisits those critical moments as history unfolded.
Part One – Breaking the barrier of fear
For a moment, it seemed Egypt wasn’t just throwing off its political shackles. Women long suffering from the scourge of sexual harassment reported Cairo’s Tahrir Square, command central of the uprising, had become a safe zone free of the groping and leering common in their country.
Now the reported attack on a senior US television correspondent during the final night of the 18-day revolt has shown that the threat of violence against women in Egypt remains very real.
Down a road on an industrial estate in Togher, a suburb two kilometres south of Cork city centre, stands a nondescript former engineering premises whose future will mark a significant chapter in the story of Islam in Ireland. Within a year the hulking concrete building will be transformed into a mosque complex capable of accommodating 1,000 or so worshippers. Design plans show a crescent-topped glass tower overlooking gleaming white arches and domes.
Prophet Muhammad’s life, undoubtedly, leads to the conclusion that friend and foe equally shared his mercy.
Every year, the month of Rabi-ul-Awwal brings uppermost to the mind the auspicious event of the blissful birth of Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Prophet Abraham has beseeched Allah: “O our Rabb (Creator and Sustainer)! And raise among them a Messenger from among themselves who may recite to them Your verse, and teach them the Book and the Wisdom, and purify them.
Mosque Approval in Southern California: Bellwether for the Rest of the Country?
The Anti-Muslim fever in this suburban Southern California community has finally broken. Late last month, the City Council definitively ruled in favor of a proposed mosque — but not before a bitter debate that brought to light both interfaith cooperation and bitter Islamophobia.
Since 1947 the backwardness of Muslims in India, especially in north India, has grown quite substantially. A large segment of these nouvo-backward Indian Muslims are the Urduwala Muslims and the North Indian Muslims. Many of these nouvo-backward Muslims come from the otherwise Muslim middleclass, also referred to with the term Ashraf Muslims. Due to their earlier better educational and economic status, the woes of this class of Muslims, are more visible in the Indian media and the Muslim media.
Israel is missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to support Arab freedom. While others cheer Mubarak’s fall, Israel grows apprehensive. Yes, I know. The Egyptian dictator kept the peace for thirty years. But it was a mighty cold peace.
But that’s all beside the point.
So far, he has survived the biggest uprising that Egypt has seen in modern history. Millions marched on the streets of Cairo on what was dubbed as the Day of Departure asking the 82-year-old Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to go. But the dictator sent out a clear message as the world watched — he was not going down without a fight.
Tony Blair, with the blood of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine dripping from his fingers, says Egyptian dictator Husni Mubarak is “immensely courageous and a force for good.” The opinion is based on working “with him on the Middle East peace process.” Mubarak’s record on the pacification process involves helping the Palestinian Authority transform itself into a (stateless) police state apparatus, obstructing Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, and constructing, in concert with US army engineers, a metal wall underneath the Gaza border.
Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s tolerant and pluralist ethos, held Republic Day celebrations across its various chapters in the United States. The emphasis of the Republic Day celebrations was to spread awareness within the Indian Diaspora on how the Indian constitution brings to life the very idea of India as a vibrant and tolerant society whose pluralist ethos need to be cherished and preserved.
In the Western study of medieval Islamic history, the institution of iqta – land grants from the sovereign to his soldiers – once loomed large, because scholars searched for reasons behind the Muslim failure to develop feudalism, and with it the contractual relationships that eventually led to constitutional government.
On Friday, Canadian and American Muslim Leaders produced a religious edict, or fatwa, which clearly states any attack on Canada or the United States, is tantamount to an attack on the 10 million Muslims living in North America. The 20 imams who signed the fatwa come from Texas, Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario.
Imam Syed Soharwardy of Calgary, Alberta and founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada said an assault on the U.S. or Canada is the same thing as attacking Muslims. “We are part of this society,” he said.
As it now stands, the United States appears content to contemplate exchanging Hosni Mubarak for Egypt’s new Vice President, Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian spy master–that is, one dictator for another– to maintain the status quo. Of course, Israel must sign off on this deal, assuring the U.S. that Egypt can remain as its main base in the region, straddling as it does North Africa and the Middle East. Without it, the U.S. would most definitely have to rethink its entire neo-colonial policies in the region.
Rightly proud of their history, Egyptians like to announce, especially to other Arabs, that Egypt is the world’s mother. The Arabic version is far more tender and poetic ‘Misr Um el Dounia’! Light-hearted banter will often ensue between Egyptian and non-Egyptian friends when that statement is brought into the conversation.
Today, I think every Arab will concede that, indeed, Misr Um el Dounia!
It’s such a heady proposition: an end to dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, a newly empowered citizenry, the prospect of real democracy. As Nick Kristof tweeted early on, Innaharda, ehna kullina Misriyeen – “today, we are all Egyptians.”
El-Baradei says Mubarak has until Friday to get on the plane and leave Egypt. But it seems he’s not going to fade gently into the good night. “I wish it could be done so gently,” wrote one commenter on my previous post, rightly sceptical of my optimism.
And now, the thugs. And the specter, after ten days of exhilarating hope, of heartbreak.
International rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleged in a report released Wednesday that security forces in India often subject suspects detained in their anti-terrorism operations to religious discrimination and torture.
The HRW report said such abuses and arbitrary arrests of suspects by Indian security forces increased drastically after the bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. It also warned the Indian government that such tactics could have an adverse effect in the country’s fight against terrorism.