Monday, May 28, 2007

Hamas at Hays

It's only when you hear a person from Hamas talking that you realise how rare it is to hear a person from Hamas talking.

Ghazi Hamad, the spokesperson for the Palestinian government, a survivor of an assassination attempt (last week) who spent five years in Israeli jails, was interviewed on stage at the Hay festival on Saturday

Jamil el-Banna

Stark choice for Guantánamo detainee: stay in jail or face torture in home country·

The government was under pressure last night to allow a London man held in Guantánamo Bay for four years to return to Britain after the US cleared him for release from the notorious prison.

Jamil el-Banna was detained by the US in 2002 after Britain sent the CIA false information about him. He had also failed to accept an MI5 offer to turn informant.
If refused entry to Britain, Mr Banna could be returned to face torture in his native Jordan, from where he fled to Britain in 1994 after alleging ill treatment.

Article continues

Azeris Decry Adhan Ban

BAKU — The ban of amplifiers in raising Adhan across Muslim Azerbaijan has stirred furor among lay people and activists, who called the move a breach of freedom of religion and reminiscent of the abhorrent communist Bolshevik era.
"Hearing the call to prayer is important, it is a reminder of your spiritual duty," Aziz, 50, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday, May 26.
Aziz said it goes without saying that using loudspeakers in crowded and noisy Azeri cities is important to make people aware of the prayers' time.
"There's so much noise in the city that we won't be able to hear it if they don't use loudspeakers," argued Aziz.
The government announced the Adhan ban Wednesday, May 23, citing public disturbance considerations.
"We have had numerous complaints from the public about loud calls to prayer, from many sick people, elderly people and children who were unable to rest," said government spokesman Akif Agayev.
But Aziz begged to differ.
"This is ridiculous," he said. "Do they ban church bells from ringing in Christian countries?"Azerbaijan is an ex-Soviet state where Muslims make up nearly 93.4 percent of the 8.1 million population.
The oil-rich Muslim but secular republic has seen a revival of Muslim faith since it became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The country joined the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) at the end of 1990s.Bolshevik Attitudes
Disgruntled Azeris lamented the Adhan ban, saying it breaches the religious freedoms in the Central Asian state.
"This is absurd," said Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, the director of the non-governmental Centre for Protection of Religious Freedom.
"I don't know of anywhere in the world where there is such a ban on reciting the call to prayer, neither in Europe or the US, let alone in other Muslim countries," he said.
Ibrahimoglu said the ban was a throwback to the "atheistic-Bolshevik attitudes toward religion" of the Soviet era.

The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in a 1917 revolution and founded the Soviet Union.

The Bolsheviks' policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union.
Under the Soviet rule, Azeri mosques were closed down and Muslims were banned from performing prayers in public places or traveling to Saudi Arabia to perform hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Nobel laureate cancels UK trip over Israel boycott

Nobel laureate cancels UK trip over Israel boycott

An academic and Nobel laureate has cancelled a planned visit to a London university because of what he perceives to be "a widespread anti-Israel and anti-semitic current in British opinion".

But today in a letter to his host at Imperial, Michael Duff, Prof Weinberg said he was withdrawing from the trip.
In the letter, the professor said his decision was triggered by an agreement by the National Union of Journalists at its national conference to boycott Israeli products.
He wrote: "I know that some will say that these boycotts are directed only against Israel, rather than generally against Jews.
"But given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-semitism."

Click here for more

Friday, May 18, 2007

The Mothers of Yemen


Audio slideshow: The mothers of Yemen

Photographer Abbie Trayler-Smith talks to Riazat Butt about Oxfam's midwife training program in Yemen. Oxfam, in conjunction with the Guardian and the Times, are also organising a photography exhibition, The World Can't Wait outside the National Theatre on London's South Bank. The exhibition depicts the reality of life without basic healthcare, sanitation, or education.

This is part of a campaign to make the G8 countries to stick to pledges made to the developing world.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Standing up for the Sisterhood

by Yvonne Ridley

There are times when we women are our own worst enemies. And I despair at the way the global sisterhood is often fractured and splintered by women who do more damage than any chauvinists. A classic example was brought to my attention recently after a group of long-suffering neighbours smashed their way into a Pakistan brothel and kidnapped the owner.

Hooray! I hear most feminists cry. But for some reason the reaction changes when you mention the activists wore veils and were from a nearby religious school. Suddenly there are outcries from the media about Taliban-style behaviour of burqa clad zealots. It was actually the first time such courageous, direct action had been taken against the growing prostitution and sex trade in Pakistan. A trade, may I remind everyone, which is illegal in most parts of the so-called civilized world as well as in Pakistan.

The madrassa girls also demanded that local video owners close their stores or start selling Disney instead of dirt. I have seen evidence of the sort of hard core porn videos they are complaining about.

We are talking about stuff you couldn’t even buy under the counter in most European red light districts. So did the global sisterhood rally around the Pakistan brothel busters and congratulate them? Sadly not, and one local writer in particular berated their actions but more about her later.

Of course the Jamia Hafsa madrassa has a reputation for being a thorn in the side of the city administrators and Pakistan's President General Musharraf. Shortly after the raid I saw some ridiculous media reports about the so-called Talibanisation of Pakistan and the behaviour of the students of the madrassa cited as a prime example. The porn and sex industry is loathed by all feminists because it feeds off the blatant exploitation of women in an industry set up purely for the gratification of men who hand over money to other men who control the women.

In Pakistan's tribal areas and in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), religious groups have sought to introduce Islamic law to stamp out the sex industry. These groups have, by the way, being democratically elected into Pakistan’s government so they are not exactly self-appointed. They did make their views known quite clearly in their election manifestos so if shops trading in sex and porn across the tribal areas and in parts of NWFP were forcibly closed it could hardly have come as a surprise. Yet the media calls it Talibanisation.

I would call it an attempt to introduce some respect towards women. Western feminists have been trying to put a spanner in the works of the sex industry for decades and certainly long before the arrival of Mullah Omar's long bearded and turbanned Talibs. The concept of the ‘Top Shelf’ in newsagents and supermarkets is a small tribute to the anti-porn campaigners.

But let’s get back to this brothel in Islamabad. It has been around for years and the authorities have conveniently turned a blind eye despite frequent protests. However, the Hafsa sisters insist they were prompted to take direct action when a young woman was forcibly recruited to become a prostitute, allegedly gang raped with the crime photographed so it could be used as blackmail against her should she complain.

It then transpired that other innocent girls had allegedly been abducted and forced into prostitution. Sadly, the male-dominated authorities in Islamabad and elsewhere in Pakistan continue to turn a blind eye and women continue to be exploited. It is an unjust story which is repeated all too often in corrupt, male-dominated societies East and West.

However, I really can not describe the despair I felt after being shown an article by a female writer Naushaba Burney in a recent edition of Pakistan's The Dawn Newspaper entitled ‘In The Name of Religion’. Does she praise the women from the madrassa for their heroic actions? Does she hell! Instead she pours forth criticism from a quill dipped in misogynistic bile against a group of women whose only crime appears to be their piety and poverty. She opens her article with the sentence: These days Talibanisation no longer creeps, as some newspapers like to say, it zips and flies straight to where it smells a kill, from wherever it rears its unwelcome head.

The Lal Masjid-like influence is all too visible over big cities today. It is surely quite easy to nip the disease in the bud in Islamabad, in the government’s own backyard, if the government so decides. But once it takes root in a teeming city like Karachi with its tentacles spread in every direction, the whole country risks being dragged back into the dark ages. I know very little about Naushaba Burney other than she seems reluctant to acknowledge that the wearing of the hijab or headscarf is an obligation for every practicing Muslim woman. She talks about women’s rights but not the rights of the women who are forced into prostitution at the brothel. What about them, Naushaba? Do they have no rights? She talks about how burqa-clad women are going into fashionable neighbourhoods making uncovered women feel uncomfortable.

Naushaba seems very highly disturbed by some minor hectoring but seems unmoved by the gang rape of young girls pressed into prostitution. She has the nerve to mention how upscale sections of Islamabad are afraid these days of being attacked when they step out of the house in their normal attire. Oh how awful it must be for the privileged few in Pakistan.

She also writes: ‘As for the Lal Masjid and its Hafsa Madrassas, mullas and students, if these self-styled reformers extremist zeal weren’t spreading so fast throughout our illiterate and ignorant populace, one could treat the whole episode as a big joke. Because, really, it is difficult to take black-draped girl students armed with sticks seriously as they go about attacking video shops.’ Naushaba, you have not only betrayed your Muslim sisters by writing this drivel but you have also let down the side as a woman. I, for one, don’t think prostitution is a joke. I regard brothels with despair and the rise in porn with revulsion. Your snooty outlook from your posh parlour tends to suggest that you regard as second class citizens veiled or hijabi women who value modesty. You have not one criticism, not one word of condemnation for Pakistan’s growing sex industry, brothel owners or purveyors of porn?

And I’d like to bet the majority are filthy rich men who have the wealth, power and status you seem to admire only because they have pimped off women. If you really cared about the status of women in Pakistan you would invest your time writing about the shocking rise in violence or sex attacks and you would be asking why the health of your sisters is among the worst in the world. Someone who could see the link between violence, prostitution and porn very clearly was feminist Andrea Dworkin. I have a feeling if she were still alive, she would salute those sisters in the Islamabad madrassa who took direct action against the brothel regardless of their class or wealth status.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Turkey’s glorious past, uncertain future

www.muslimedia.com

If a country’s architecture can be taken as indicating its status in the world, that of Istanbul reflects fairly accurately both Turkey’s past and its present. While the grandeur of its historic buildings are vivid reminders of past glories, the blandness of its contemporary buildings–concrete and glass boxes–reflects the disrupting influence and ultimate vacuousness of its Westernization.

Less than a century ago Istanbul was the capital of a world power that had ruled a vast empire for nearly four centuries, since the capture of the Byzantine capital Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II (1432-1481CE), better known as Sultan Fatih, in 1453. Renamed Istanbul, and symbolically bridging the gap between Europe and Asia, the city became the capital of a new empire that carried Islam deep into Europe, and ruled Muslim societies in three continents. Today, the city boasts some of the greatest monuments of Islamic architecture. The Blue Mosque, commissioned by Sultan Ahmet I and designed by Sedefkar Ahmet Agha, one of the most brilliant students of the great architect Mirmar Sinan, and built between 1609-1616, stands majestically opposite the Aya Sofia and Topkapi museums, flanked by the Marmara Sea to the south and the Golden Horn to the east. Topkapi–meaning the cannon gate–was built by Sultan Mehmet II in 1467 and served as the official residence and court of the sultans until 1839, when Sultan Abdulmecit I moved to the new palace of Dolmabahace on the Bosphorus Sea. It was later converted into a museum, which now houses several relics of the noble Prophet, upon whom be peace, including the original letter he sent to the Roman governor of Egypt, Muqaiqoos, one of his swords, and a sword that he gave to Khalid ibn Walid (ra), the companion famed as a brilliant general who led the early Muslims to many victories.

Istanbul’s other great monument is the Eyup Sultan Mosque, named after the companion Ayub Ansari (ra), in whose house the noble Prophet (saw) initially resided in Madinah after his migration from Makkah, until a modest house was built for him. Ayub Ansari (ra) is buried in a compound alongside the mosque. His grave is carefully preserved and visitors can view it through an outer railing. Worshippers and visitors throng the mosque at all times of the day and night, but the most moving scenes are witnessed during fajr (morning) and isha (night) salats. One cannot help but contrast the respect shown by the Turks to the memory of Ayub Ansari (ra) with the vandalism of historic sites in the Hijaz by the Saudis. Jannatul Maula in Makkah, Jannatul Baqi in Madinah and the cemetery of the shuhada’ at Uhud are all in a sorry state. The Prophet’s first wife Khadijah (ra) is buried in Jannatul Maula, but it suffers from neglect; it is virtually impossible to locate the grave of this illustrious mother of the believers, the first person to accept Islam. Jannatul Baqi, where numerous companions of the Prophet (saw) and members of his family are buried, has suffered even more. On the spurious pretext of the risk of shirk, the Saudis have destroyed almost all the Islamic historical sites of Makkah and Madinah, while carefully preserving relics of their own sorry history, such as the tip of the spear that was lodged in the door of the Mismak fortress when Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, founder of the Saudi dynasty struck it. After their conquest of the Hijaz in 1924, the Saudis embarked upon wholesale destruction of historic buildings and monuments. In the name of development, concrete monstrosities now tower above even the Ka’aba, and the Masjid al-Haram is surrounded by hotels and shopping malls apparently modelled on New York or Los Angeles. McDonalds and Pizza Hut stores, and other symbols of Western consumerism, stand in stark contrast to the spirituality of the Haram. Traffic congestion and noise add to the distractions from the spiritual journey that pilgrims aspire to while circumambulating the Ka‘aba or running between the hills of Safa’ and Marwa.

By contrast, the Turks should be proud that the Ottomans went to extraordinary lengths to preserve Islamic monuments, especially those relating to the time of the Prophet (saw) and his companions (ra), when they ruled the Haramain. But like the Saudis, Turkey’s secular rulers are today determined to destroy their own Islamic heritage in the name of modernization and progress. The establishment in Turkey suffers from a severe crisis of identity: it wants to abandon its glorious past in order to adopt the West’s lifestyle and habits. It is one of the few countries in the world where hijab is officially banned in government offices and universities. Even the Islam-hating West does not go to such extremes. Bizarrely, the wife of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is barred from attending state functions at the presidential palace because she chooses to wear hijab, while Turkish law prohibits hijab at official events.

What Turkey’s generals fail to understand is that when Turkey held the banner of Islam, it was the leader of the Muslim world; by adopting secularism and imitating the West, it has become the sick man of Europe, facing an uncertain future. But the fact that the vast majority of Turkish women continue to wear hijab reflects a commitment to Islam among ordinary Turks that decades of aggressive secularism have failed to obliterate. This commitment holds out the hope that Istanbul might yet again emerge as a centre of Islamic civilization and power, and a source of inspiration for all Muslims, insha’Allah.