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Muslim Academy

Muslim American Society - 0 views

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Muslim American Society

shared by Muslim Academy on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 17 Dec 12
     
    The Muslim American Society (MAS) is an Islamic reform and revival movement founded in 1993. The efforts of Ahmed Elkadi and Mohammed Mahdi Akefi were quite remarkable. This organization sees jihad as a holy legal right in the defense and spreading of Islam. The Muslim American Society freedom foundation is an affiliate of this great nonprofit organization, and is being championed by its executive director, Mahdi Bray. On many occasions, the Muslim American Society has participated in diplomatic dialogues with the U.S. college of Bishops and the U.S. government. MAS describes itself as, "religious, charitable, social, educational, non-for-profit, Islamic and cultural organization." Its secretary general describes this organization as members of the great Muslim Brotherhood. The sole mission of the Muslim American Society is to promote Islam as a supreme way of life. Islam is essential in building and encouraging a moral and virtuous society, to provide veritable Islamic alternatives to the prevailing problems of the society, to promote family values in line with the teachings of Islam and to promote the humane values of equality, brotherhood, mercy, justice, peace and compassion. Also, to encourage coordination, unity, and cooperation among Muslims and Muslim organizations.
Muslim Academy

Umat Islam-Pecahnya Umat Islam - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/pecahnya-umat-islam

pecahnya umat islam umat islam umat islam

shared by Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12
     
    Dunia Islam sangat lemah karena terpecah-pecah. Mulai dari zaman dulu sampai sekarang, kita sering mendengar dan melihat para pemerintah negara-negara Islam atau negara-negara berpenduduk mayoritas Muslim saling membantah, saling mengecam, bahkan saling berperang. Lihat saja: Irak dengan Iran dan Kuwait, Libya dengan Arab Saudi, juga konfrontasi Indonesia dengan Malaysia. Lingkup dalam negara juga tidak kalah besar seperti perang saudara di Suriah. Atau tentu belum lama ini terjadi tragedi Sampang antara Sunni dan Syiah di Indonesia.
Argos Media

Barack Obama woos Muslims from secular Turkey | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...barack-obama-turkey-islam

US Turkey EU Obama

shared by Argos Media on 07 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Barack Obama extended an olive branch to the Muslim world from the floor of Turkey's parliament yesterday by declaring the US was not "at war with Islam" but instead sought its partnership to pursue common goals.
  • Mindful of Turkey's offer to mediate in settling America's 30-year-old dispute with Iran, he reiterated his previous offer of rapprochement to the leadership in Tehran but warned it must abandon any ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.
  • Turkish television channels emphasised Obama's supposed links to Islam throughout the day yesterday by repeatedly referring to his middle name, Hussein.
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  • "The US strongly supports Turkey's bid to become a member of the European Union," he said. "Europe gains by the diversity of ethnicity, culture and faith - it is not diminished by it. And Turkish membership would broaden and strengthen Europe's foundation once more."
  • Soli Ozel, an analyst at Bilgi University in Istanbul, said Obama had pressed "all the right buttons". "It looked at both sides of Turkey's identity, secular and Islamic," he said.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Why Azerbaijan is closer to Israel than Iran - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-19063885

Iran Azerbaijan Central Asia

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Israel and the secular government of Azerbaijan share the same goal: to check the spread of political Islam in general and Iran in particular.
  • Theirs is an alliance reinforced by hardware. In February 2012, Israel sold Azerbaijan $1.6bn (1.3bn euros) of sophisticated weapons systems.
  • Earlier this year, America's Foreign Policy magazine suggested the alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan went deeper than many had previously thought. The magazine reported that Israel had secured an agreement to use Azerbaijan's airfields in case it went ahead with a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
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  • Azerbaijan's population is mostly Shia Muslim. But its government is intensely secular.
  • "Azerbaijan naturally rejects the Iranian Islamic influence because it is perceived as a threat to the very nation state," says Leila Alieva, the Director of the independent Centre for National and International Studies in Baku. "On the other hand, Azerbaijan has always enjoyed a very good relationship with the Jewish community."
  • In May 2012, two Azerbaijani poets were detained in Iran on charges of espionage. Azerbaijan's government has since advised its citizens not to travel to the Islamic Republic.
  • The Azeri people once lived under the Persian Empire. In 1813, the Treaty of Gulistan after the first Russo-Persian war split the ethnic Azeri people into two.
  • Those in the north lived under Russian, then Soviet rule - and are now in independent Azerbaijan. Those in the south lived under the Persian Empire - and are now in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Today, around nine million ethnic Azeris live in Azerbaijan. But even more ethnic Azeris live across the border in Iran. Figures show that there are around 10-20 million Azeris in Iran - around a fifth of the country's population. Millions more Iranians have Azeri ancestry, including Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
  • Among many Azeris there is a desire for reunification.
Argos Media

Zakaria: Has Pakistan's Army Changed Its Stripes? | Newsweek Voices - Fareed Zakaria | ... - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...195786

Pakistan US Husain Haqqani Fareed Zakaria Taliban

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • It was only a few years ago that Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani diplomat who recently became ambassador to Washington, wrote a brilliant book arguing that the Pakistani government—despite public and private claims to the contrary—continued "to make a distinction between 'terrorists' … and 'freedom fighters' (the officially preferred label … for Kashmiri militants)." He added: "The Musharraf government also remains tolerant of remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, hoping to use them in resuscitating Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan." The Pakistani military's world view—that it is surrounded by dangers and needs to be active in destabilizing its neighbors— remains central to Pakistan's basic strategy.
  • While President Musharraf broke with the overt and large-scale support that the military provides to the militant groups, and there have continued to be some moves against some jihadists, there is no evidence of a campaign to rid Pakistan of these groups. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban, headed up by Mullah Mohammed Omar, still work actively out of Quetta. The Army has never launched serious campaigns against the main Taliban-allied groups led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Jalaluddin Haqqani, both of whose networks are active in Pakistan. The group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has evaded any punishment, morphing in name and form but still operating in plain sight in Lahore. Even now, after allowing the Taliban to get within 60 miles of the capital, the Pakistani military has deployed only a few thousand troops to confront them, leaving the bulk of its million-man Army in the east, presumably in case India suddenly invades.
  • The rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan is not, Ambassador Haqqani writes, "the inadvertent outcome of some governments." It is "rooted in history and [is] a consistent policy of the Pakistani state." The author describes how, from its early years, the Pakistani military developed "a strategic commitment to jihadi ideology." It used Islam to mobilize the country and Army in every conflict with India. A textbook case was the 1965 war, when Pakistan's state-controlled media "generated a frenzy of jihad," complete with stories of heroic suicide missions, martyrdom and divine help.
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  • The Pakistani military has lost the wars it has fought via traditional means. But running guerrilla operations—against the Soviets, the Indians and the Afghans—has proved an extremely cost-effective way to keep its neighbors off balance.
  • The ambassador's book, "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military," marshals strong evidence that, at least until recently, the Pakistani military made the pretense of arresting militants in order to get funds from Washington. But it never shut down the networks. "From the point of view of Pakistan's Islamists and their backers in the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence]," Haqqani writes, "jihad is on hold but not yet over. Pakistan still has an unfinished agenda in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
  • The book concludes by telling how Pakistan's military has used the threat from these militant groups to maintain power, delegitimize the civilian government and—most crucial of all—keep aid flowing from the United States. And the book's author has now joined in this great game. Last week Ambassador Haqqani wrote an op-ed claiming that Pakistan was fighting these militant groups vigorously. The only problem, he explained, was that Washington was reluctant to provide the weapons, training and funds Pakistan needs. He has become a character out of the pages of his own book.
Pedro Gonçalves

Foreign Policy: The Battle for Qom's Hearts and Minds - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Iran Hossein Montazeri Iranian Revolutionary Guards Basij Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jun 09 - Cached
  • clerics like Montazeri believe that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his protégé, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, use a distorted interpretation of Shiite theology for their own political ends. As a result, they believe Iran has become an un-Islamic, militarized state where Islamic militias repress the Iranian population in the name of God. There is another fact unknown to those unfamiliar with Iran: The youth are actually fond of some of the clerics, and shout their names at their demonstrations.
  • Khamenei's has, in turn, granted enormous power to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the basij, the Islamic militias under their command
  • This is not to say that the majority of clerics oppose Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. It is likely that the clerics are split, and even those who do not support Khamenei and Ahmadinejad might be unwilling to say so in public for a variety of reasons, including the fact that clerics rely on the state to some degree to fund their seminaries
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  • its chairman, Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, openly announced their support for Ahmandinejad.
Argos Media

Pakistan paramilitary force routed as Taliban militants extend control towards Islamaba... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...stan-islamists-swat-sharia-law

Pakistan Taliban Mingora Swat Valley Buner Maulana Fazlur Rahman Jamiat Ulema e Islam

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • International alarm at the Talibanisation of parts of northern Pakistan near Islamabad was mounting last night after militants ambushed a convoy of soldiers deployed to prevent extremists taking over a district only 60 miles from the capital.
  • Snipers opened fire on police escorting four platoons of Frontier Corps paramilitary troops into Buner district, a day after militants overran government buildings and looted western aid offices. One policeman was killed and one injured, an army spokesman said.
  • Locals said the ambush had forced the Frontier Corps to retreat. "Now Buner is ruled by the Taliban," one resident told the Guardian by phone. "They go anywhere they want."
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  • Two weeks ago the Taliban occupied a Sufi shrine in Buner, accusing locals of using it for "un-Islamic" practices. On Wednesday they swept through the main town, Daggar. Gun-toting militants looted aid agency offices, stole western-funded vehicles and forced police to retreat into their stations.
  • On Wednesday the US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, accused President Asif Ali Zardari's government of "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists". After an outcry from Pakistani officials, she modified her tone yesterday, conceding there was an "increasing awareness" of the threat within government circles.
  • The army spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said that western fears were "overblown" and called for patience in dealing with the militants. Taliban violence was swinging divided public opinion against the militants, he said. "We are giving them enough rope to hang themselves."
  • Certainly a new sense of urgency is gripping Pakistan's political class, where it has been fashionable to call the fight against the Taliban "America's war". The opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, urged the government to contain the militants within Swat.
  • A more surprising statement came from Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, who warned the national assembly on Wednesday: "If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad."
  • But there is little sense yet of a concerted effort to push back the militants, who have exposed the fragility of the federation and resurrected fears that the country is heading towards break-up.
  • The Buner assault is likely to strain the controversial Swat peace accord. In exchange for peace, the provincial government, headed by the secular Awami National party, agreed in February to introduce sharia law in Swat and seven adjoining districts known as Malakand Division - an area of about 10,000 square miles that accounts for one third of the North West Frontier province. But since the deal, the Taliban have established control over much more than the judicial system.
  • In Mingora, the valley's commercial hub, police have been reduced to directing traffic and secular politicians have fled, many under death threats.
Argos Media

Storm of Violence in Iraq Strains Its Security Forces - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25iraq.html

Iraq Islamic State of Iraq Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

shared by Argos Media on 25 Apr 09 - Cached
  • A deadly outburst of violence appears to be overwhelming Iraq’s police and military forces as American troops hand over greater control of cities across the country to them. On Friday, twin suicide bombings killed at least 60 people outside Baghdad’s most revered Shiite shrine, pushing the death toll in one 24-hour period to nearly 150.
  • The bombings on Friday ominously echoed attacks like the one at a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed and pushed the country toward civil war.
  • The latest bombings — there have been at least 18 major attacks so far this month — so far have not prompted retaliatory attacks, but they have strained what remains a fragile society deeply divided between Sunnis and Shiites.
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  • Two suicide bombers struck within five minutes of each other on streets leading to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and his grandson. One of the attacks, and perhaps both, were carried out by women, witnesses said.
  • Nearly half of those killed were Iranians making a pilgrimage to the shrine, a golden-domed landmark in the predominantly Shiite Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad that is devoted to 2 of the 12 imams of Shiite Islam. At least 125 people were wounded, many of them also Iranians.
  • A loose coalition of Sunni militant forces, the Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for carrying out many of the recent attacks.
  • The deadliest of the three bombings on Thursday struck a restaurant filled with Iranian travelers in Muqdadiya, a town in Diyala not far from the border. The toll in that attack rose to 56, with Iranians making up the majority of the dead. Over all, at least 89 people were killed in the bombings on Thursday, and more than 100 were wounded.
  • After the attacks on Friday, angry Iraqis who gathered amid the bloody debris blamed lax security and corruption of the police and government officials for what had happened. Some of their anger had a strongly sectarian cast.“They have been ruling us for 1,400 years,” said a Shiite army soldier who identified himself only as Abu Haidar, referring to the Sunni domination of Shiites in Iraq. “We took it over for four years, and they are slaughtering us.”
  • The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, says the recent attacks as part of a campaign called Harvest of the Good, which it announced in March.
  • In a statement distributed on extremist Web sites at the time, the group’s leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, ridiculed President Obama as “Washington’s black man” and called his plan to withdraw American forces by 2011 an “implied avowal of defeat.”
  • On Thursday, Iraq’s military claimed to have arrested Mr. Baghdadi, but what was touted as a major success appeared to be in question. Extremist Web sites denied his arrest, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors claims and other statements by terrorist and extremist groups. The American military command also said in a statement that it could not confirm “the arrest or capture” of the leader, who the American military believes to be a fictitious Iraqi figurehead of a movement that includes many foreign fighters.
  • A senior national police official on Friday bluntly cited the limitations of Iraq’s security forces and their equipment for detecting explosives, typically hand-held wands used at checkpoints that the official described as fakes.
Argos Media

Extremist Tide Rises in Pakistan - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009041901731.html

Pakistan Sharia Swat Valley Taliban

shared by Argos Media on 20 Apr 09 - Cached
  • A potentially troubling era dawned Sunday in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where a top Islamist militant leader, emboldened by a peace agreement with the federal government, laid out an ambitious plan to bring a "complete Islamic system" to the surrounding northwest region and the entire country.
  • Speaking to thousands of followers in an address aired live from Swat on national news channels, cleric Sufi Mohammed bluntly defied the constitution and federal judiciary, saying he would not allow any appeals to state courts under the system of sharia, or Islamic law, that will prevail there as a result of the peace accord signed by the president Tuesday.
  • "The Koran says that supporting an infidel system is a great sin," Mohammed said, referring to Pakistan's modern democratic institutions. He declared that in Swat, home to 1.5 million people, all "un-Islamic laws and customs will be abolished," and he suggested that the official imprimatur on the agreement would pave the way for sharia to be installed in other areas.
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  • Mohammed's dramatic speech echoed a rousing sermon in Islamabad on Friday by another radical cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, who appeared at the Red Mosque in the capital after nearly two years in detention and urged several thousand chanting followers to launch a crusade for sharia nationwide.
  • "The government made a big mistake to give these guys legal cover for their agenda. Now they are going to be battle-ready to struggle for the soul of Pakistan," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of security studies at Quaid-i-Azam university here. He predicted a further surge in the suicide bombings that have recently become an almost daily occurrence across the country.
  • The government agreed to Mohammed's demands in an effort to halt violent intimidation by Taliban forces that the army was unable to quell despite months of operations in the former tourist haven. In recent interviews, Swati leaders and refugees described armed men in black turbans whipping suspected thieves on the spot, cutting off the ears and noses of village elders who opposed them, and selling videos of police beheadings. "We really had no other choice. We had no power to crush the militants, and people were desperate for peace," said Jafar Shah, a Swati legislator. His Awami National Party, though historically secular, sponsored the sharia deal. "Now people are calling us Taliban without beards," he said ruefully, "but it was the only option available."
  • Provincial and federal officials also hoped their show of good faith would halt further insurgent inroads and buy time for foreign aid programs to shore up the impoverished northwest against the Islamists' message of swift justice and social equality. Instead, the evidence suggests that the extremist forces have drawn the opposite lesson from their victory in Swat and are gearing up to carry their armed crusade for a punitive, misogynistic form of Islam into new areas. There have been numerous reports of Taliban fighters entering districts south and west of Swat, where they have brandished weapons, bombed and occupied buildings, arrested aid workers, and killed female activists.
Argos Media

World news Feed Article | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...8408792

Iran Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Argos Media on 18 Mar 09 - Cached
  • "Like you, I believe the correct path is reforms that return to (Islamic) principles but refine them," Mousavi said Tuesday in a message to Khatami
  • "Mousavi is seeking to win the support of both reformers and moderate conservatives," said Tehran-based political analyst Hedayat Aghaei.
  • He clashed with Khamenei — then Iran's president — over political authority and powers. The prime minister post was eliminated after Mousavi's term.
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  • He was firmly part of the political inner circle after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, serving as editor of Jomhuri Eslami, which was the state newspaper at the time. He then was prime minister from 1981-89 — spanning nearly the entire eight-year war with Iraq that left an estimated 1 million dead and plunged Iran into a crippling economic crisis. There were early hints, however, that he chafed against the system even as he was hailed as a revolutionary patriot.
  • Since leaving office, he has generally stayed in the background in advisory roles and as a member of the Expediency Council, which mediates between the parliament and the non-elected Guardian Council, which is directly influenced by the supreme leader.
  • "To hard-liners, Mousavi is a more acceptable version of Khatami. And to reformists, Mousavi is a moderate who won't seek profound changes," said Hasan Vazini, a political commentator at the conservative Tehran-e-Emrooz newspaper. But others believe that this type of middle ground approach will do little to shake Iran's establishment. "(Mousavi) is Ahmadinejad without the invective or anger," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "He does not appear to be a bold reformer."
  • Political analyst Vazini said that "with Khatami out of the race, conservatives are not so likely anymore to support Ahmadinejad as their sole candidate." The Islamic Iran Participation Front, the country's largest reformist party, quickly threw its support behind Mousavi, a trained architect who is known as an accomplished amateur painter.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran Stepping Up Effort to Quell Election Protest - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25iran.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iranian Revolutionary Guards Pasdaran Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Analysts suggested that the unyielding response showed that Iran’s leaders, backed by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had lost patience and that Iran was now, more than ever, a state guided not by clerics of the revolution but by a powerful military and security apparatus.
  • President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has maintained a low profile, but evidence suggests that he has filled security agencies with crucial allies.
  • “What has been going on since 2005 is the shift of the center of power from the clergy to the Pasdaran,” or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said a political analyst with years of experience in Iran who feared retribution if identified. “In a way one could say that Iran is no longer a theocracy, but a government headed by military chiefs.”
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  • Mr. Moussavi, the defeated candidate who embodied the hopes of reformers, posted a notice on his Web site of a late afternoon rally in front of the Parliament, but he distanced himself from the action, saying it was not organized by the reform movement. It is not clear how far Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister who is essentially an insider thrust into the role of opposition, would go to defy the system. He has not been seen since Thursday. So as the crackdown infuriates protesters, there is a greater gap with their ostensible leader, political analysts said.
  • Those arrested include officials who served from the founding of the Islamic republic in 1979, until Mr. Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005: Behzad Nabavi, a former deputy speaker of Parliament; Mohsen Aminzadeh, a key figure at the Intelligence Ministry for many years; Mostafa Tajzadeh, a deputy interior minister during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami; Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a vice president under Mr. Khatami; and Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman. They were all close to Mr. Khatami, then threw their support behind Mr. Moussavi.
Pedro Gonçalves

Terror Threat: Germany Warns of al-Qaida Attacks Before September Election - SPIEGEL ON... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,629169,00.html

Germany Al-Qaeda Afghanistan Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb BKA

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
  • German intelligence agencies believe al-Qaida is planning attacks on Germans abroad and possibly in Germany ahead of the September 27 general election as revenge for Germany's military mission in Afghanistan and to put pressure on Berlin to withdraw its forces
  • The assessment is based on a warning by the US government that the leadership of al-Qaida in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan has decided to attack Germany, and that the North African branch of al-Qaida -- al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb -- has been tasked with carrying it out.
  • Germany's domestic intelligence agency (the Office for the Protection of the Constitution) and the BKA Federal Criminal Police Office believe that German company offices in Algeria and German citizens across North Africa are especially at risk. But authorities are also warning about possible attacks on German soil.
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  • The new assessment is in keeping with the high number of videos from Afghanistan attacking German government policy. At the end of last week, a new propaganda film by the Islamic Jihad Union emerged and threatened attacks. In early 2009, Bonn-based Islamist Bekkay Harrach, who has gone underground in Afghanistan, threatened attacks on Germany. Harrach is believed to play an important role in al-Qaida.
Pedro Gonçalves

The Eternal Candidate: Turkey Bets on Regional Influence as EU Hopes Fade - SPIEGEL ONL... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,628575,00.html

Turkey EU Recep Tayyip Erdogan Neo-Ottomanism Ahmet Davutoglu Middle East Syria Gaza Lebanon Georgia Russia Caucasus Armenia France Germany Foreign Policy Turkish Foreign Policy

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The Turks, who always used to complain to their Western allies about their rough neighborhood, apparently no longer have any enemies in the east. Turkey's old rival Russia has since become its most important energy and trading partner. Syria and Iraq, two countries with which Ankara has in the past been on the brink of war, are now friends of Turkey, and relations are even improving with Armenia. The Arabs, who never truly took to the successors of the Ottomans, now look with admiration to what they call the "Turkish model," a dynamic, open country that has a better handle on its problems than they do.
  • When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assumed office in 2003, he planned to lead Turkey into the European Union. But Europe was unmoved by this vision, and it has also lost much of its appeal within Turkey. According to Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democratic Party, as the Europeans have become weary of expansion, Turkey has lost interest in joining the EU. Indeed, what Erdogan meant when he spoke of Turkey's "alternative" to becoming an EU member is becoming increasingly clear.
  • Critics and supporters alike describe this new course as "neo-Ottomanism." Ankara remains formally committed to its European ambitions. However, frustrated by the open rejection with which it has long been met in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, and which it has been facing once again during the EU election campaign, Turkey is focusing increasingly on its role as a peacekeeping power in a region it either ruled or dominated for centuries.
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  • The Turkish press touts Davutoglu as "Turkey's Kissinger," and even Erdogan and Gül refer to him as "hoca" ("venerable teacher"). The country's foreign policy increasingly bears his signature. For example, at his suggestion, Turkish diplomats revived talks between Syria and Israel that had been discontinued in 2000, leading to secret peace talks that began in Istanbul in 2004. However, the talks were temporarily suspended in late 2008 because of parliamentary elections in Israel and the Gaza offensive.
  • Davutoglu is convinced that Ankara must be on good terms with all its neighbors, and it cannot fear contact with the countries and organizations branded as pariahs by the West, namely Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. He believes that Turkey should have no qualms about acknowledging its Ottoman past -- in other words, it should become a respected regional power throughout the territory once ruled by the Ottoman Empire (see graphic).
  • Davutoglu, like President Gül, is from Central Anatolia and a member of a new elite influenced by Islamic thought. He completed his secondary-school education at a German overseas school, learned Arabic and taught at an Islamic university in Malaysia. He believes that a one-sided Western orientation is unhealthy for a country like Turkey.
  • Ankara is also seeking to reduce tensions in the Caucasus region, where the Turks have often acted against Russia, prompting Moscow to accuse Turkey of being sympathetic to the Chechen cause. After the war in Georgia last summer, the Erdogan government brought together officials from Tbilisi and Moscow. Turkey and Armenia are now seeking to overcome long-standing hostility by establishing diplomatic relations and reopening their shared border.
  • The Turks say that they achieved more during the Gaza conflict than Middle East veterans like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, arguing that Hamas's willingness to accept Israel's ceasefire offer was attributable to Ankara's intervention. They also say that the fact that Erdogan angrily broke off a discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Summit in Davos cemented his reputation in the Islamic world as a friend of the Palestinians. When street fighting erupted in Lebanon between supporters of the pro-Western government and of Hezbollah in May 2008, Erdogan intervened as a mediator.
  • Off the Horn of Africa, the US Fifth Fleet turned over the leadership of Combined Task Force 151, which is responsible for combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, to the Turkish navy. At the same time, a man paid an official visit to Ankara who had not appeared in public since 2007: Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the notorious Mahdi Army militia. Davutoglu had sent a private jet to bring him to Turkey from his exile in Iran.
  • Critics like political scientist Soner Cagaptay describe Ankara's foreign policy as "pro-Arab Islamist." In a recent op-ed for the Turkish daily Hurriyet, Cagaptay argued that Turkish diplomats, who had once "looked to Europe, particularly France, for political inspiration" have now fallen for the Arab world, and generally for Islamists
  • Diplomats like Hakki Akil, the Turkish ambassador in Abu Dhabi, disagree. According to Akil, Turkey has acquired "soft power" by expanding its sphere of influence from the Balkans to Afghanistan, transporting Russian, Caspian Sea and Iranian oil and gas to the West, and building housing and airports in Kurdish northern Iraq. Europe, says Akil, ought to be pleased with Ankara's course. As Akil's boss Davutoglu said in Brussels, political stability, a secure energy corridor and a strong partner on its southeastern flank are all "in the fundamental interest of the EU."
  • According to a recent internal European Commission report, Turkey has made "only limited progress." Some EU countries have already abandoned the idea of accepting Turkey into their midst. In Bavaria, conservative Christian Social Union campaigners promote a message of "No to Turkey" as they make the rounds of beer tents. At a televised campaign appearance in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made their opposition to EU membership for Turkey clear.
  • Ironically, Turkey's strategic importance for Europe "is even greater today than in the days of the Cold War," says Elmar Brok, a German member of the European Parliament for the conservative Christian Democratic Union who specializes in foreign policy issues. And then there is the paradox of the fact that the more intensively Turkey, out of frustration with Europe, engages with its eastern neighbors, the more valuable it becomes to the West. According to Brok, the West must "do everything possible to keep Ankara on board."
  • Brok and other members of the European Parliament envision making so-called "privileged partner" status palatable to Turkey. It would enable Turkey to have a similar relationship to the EU as Norway does today and to enjoy many of the benefits of EU membership, including access to the European single market, visa-free travel, police cooperation and joint research programs. But it would not, however, become a member.
Pedro Gonçalves

Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...056.html

Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Hezbollah Iranian Revolutionary Guards

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • t's rumble time in Tehran. At dozens of intersections in the capital of Iran thousands of students are protesting on a recent Friday around midnight, as they do nearly every night, chanting pro-democracy slogans and lighting bonfires on street corners. Residents of the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods converge in their cars, honking their horns in raucous support. Suddenly there's thunder in the air. A gang of 30 motorcyclists, brandishing iron bars and clubs as big as baseball bats, roars through the stalled traffic. They glare at the drivers, yell threats, thump cars. Burly and bearded, the bikers yank two men from their auto and pummel them. Most protesters scatter. Uniformed policemen watch impassively as the thugs beat the last stragglers.
  • These Hell's Angels are part of the Hezbollah militia, recruited mostly from the countryside. Iran's ruling mullahs roll them out whenever they need to intimidate their opponents. The Islamic Republic is a strange dictatorship. As it moves to repress growing opposition to clerical rule, the regime relies not on soldiers or uniformed police (many of whom sympathize with the protesters) but on the bullies of Hezbollah and the equally thuggish Revolutionary Guards. The powers that be claim to derive legitimacy from Allah but remain on top with gangsterlike methods of intimidation, violence and murder.
  • Who controls today's Iran? Certainly not Mohammad Khatami, the twice-elected moderate president, or the reformist parliament. Not even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a stridently anti-American but unremarkable cleric plucked from the religious ranks 14 years ago to fill the shoes of his giant predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, is fully in control. The real power is a handful of clerics and their associates who call the shots behind the curtain and have gotten very rich in the process.
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  • The 1979 revolution expropriated the assets of foreign investors and the nation's wealthiest families; oil had long been nationalized, but the mullahs seized virtually everything else of value--banks, hotels, car and chemical companies, makers of drugs and consumer goods. What distinguishes Iran is that many of these assets were given to Islamic charitable foundations, controlled by the clerics. According to businessmen and former foundation executives, the charities now serve as slush funds for the mullahs and their supporters.
  • Dozens of interviews with businessmen, merchants, economists and former ministers and other top government officials reveal a picture of a dictatorship run by a shadow government that--the U.S. State Department suspects--finances terrorist groups abroad through a shadow foreign policy. Its economy is dominated by shadow business empires and its power is protected by a shadow army of enforcers.
  • Ironically, the man most adept at manipulating this hidden power structure is one of Iran's best-known characters--Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been named an ayatollah, or religious leader. He was the speaker of parliament and Khomeini's right-hand man in the 1980s, president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and is now chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which resolves disputes between the clerical establishment and parliament. Rafsanjani has more or less run the Islamic Republic for the past 24 years.
  • He played it smart, aligning himself in the 1960s with factions led by Ayatollah Khomeini, then becoming the go-to guy after the revolution. A hard-liner ideologically, Rafsanjani nonetheless has a pragmatic streak. He convinced Khomeini to end the Iran-Iraq war and broke Iran's international isolation by establishing trade relations with the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the 1990s he restarted Iran's nuclear program. He is also the father of Iran's "privatization" program. During his presidency the stock market was revived, some government companies were sold to insiders, foreign trade was liberalized and the oil sector was opened up to private companies. Most of the good properties and contracts, say dissident members of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, ended up in the hands of mullahs, their associates and, not least, Rafsanjani's own family, who rose from modest origins as small-scale pistachio farmers.
Pedro Gonçalves

Former Iran President at Center of Fight Between Classes of the Political Elite - NYTim... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...22rafsanjani.html

Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Ali Khamenei

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jun 09 - Cached
  • “I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
  • “At a political level what’s taking place now, among many other things, is the 20-year rivalry between Khamenei and Rafsanjani coming to a head,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “It’s an Iranian version of the Corleones and the Tattaglias; there are no good guys and bad guys, only bad and worse.”
  • It seems clear that the 75-year-old is at the center of a fight for the future of the Islamic Republic. Mr. Rafsanjani’s vision of the state, and his position in his nation’s history, is being challenged by a new political elite led by Mr. Ahmadinejad and younger radicals who fought Iraq during the eight-year war.
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  • Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies have tried to demonize Mr. Rafsanjani as corrupt and weak, attacks that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not strongly discouraged. On the other side, opposition leaders, especially Mr. Moussavi, have received support from Mr. Rajsanjani, political analysts said.
  • It is a quirk of history that Mr. Rafsanjani, the ultimate insider, finds himself aligned with a reform movement that once vilified him as deeply corrupt. Mr. Rafsanjani was doctrinaire anti-American hard-liner in the early days of the revolution who remains under indictment for ordering the bombing in of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994 when he was president. But he has evolved over time to a more pragmatic view, analysts say.
  • He supports greater opening to the West, privatizing parts of the economy, and granting more power to civil elected institutions. His view is opposite of those in power now who support a stronger religious establishment and have done little to modernize the stagnant economy.
  • “I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
  • It is not clear what leverage Mr. Rajsanjani can bring to this contest. If he speaks out, the relative said, he will lose his ability to broker a compromise. Mr. Rafsanjani leads two powerful councils, one that technically has oversight of the supreme leader, but it is not clear that he could exercise that authority to challenge Ayatollah Khamenei directly.
  • Mr. Rafsanjani has been in opposition before. In the days of the shah, he was a religious student of Ayatollah Khomeini at the center of Shiite learning, in the city of Qum. He was imprisoned under the shah, and became so closely associated with the revolutionary leader he was known as “melijak Khomeini,” or “sidekick of Khomeini.”’ After 1979, he went on to become the speaker of Parliament.
  • Mr. Rafsanjani later served two terms as president and was instrumental in elevating Ayatollah Khamenei to replace Ayatollah Khomenei in 1989.
  • People who worked in the government at the time said that Mr. Rafsanjani, as president, ran the nation — while Ayatollah Khameini followed his lead. But over time the two grew apart, as Ayatollah Khameini found his own political constituency in the military and Mr. Rafsanjani found his own reputation sullied. He is often accused of corruption because of the great wealth he and his family amassed.
  • He was so damaged politically that after he left the presidency, he failed to win enough votes to enter Parliament. In 2002, he was appointed to the head of the Expediency Council, which is supposed to arbitrate disputes between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.
  • And in 2005, he ran for president again but lost in a runoff to Mr. Ahmadinejad. He was then elected to lead the Assembly of Experts. The body has the power to oversee the supreme leader and replace him when he dies, but its members rarely exercise power day to day.
Pedro Gonçalves

Khamenei: No chance Iran elections were rigged - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views

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Iran Iran Elections 2009 Ali Khamenei Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 19 Jun 09 - Cached
  • "If there is any bloodshed, leaders of the protests will be held directly responsible," Khamenei declared in his first address to the nation since the upheaval began.
  • "The result of the election comes from the ballot box, not from the street," the white-bearded cleric told huge crowds thronging Tehran University and surrounding streets for Friday prayers. "Today the Iranian nation needs calm."
  • He said any election complaints should be raised through legal channels. "I will not succumb to illegal innovation," he said, in an apparent reference to the street protests, which have few precedents in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history.
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  • "It's a wrong impression that by using street protests as a pressure tool, they can compel officials to accept their illegal demands. This would be the start of a dictatorship," Khamenei said.
  • "After street protests, some foreign powers ... started to interfere in Iran's state matters by questioning the result of the vote. They do not know the Iranian nation. I strongly condemn such interference," Khamenei said.
  • "American officials' remarks about human rights and limitations on people are not acceptable because they have no idea about human rights after what they have done in Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the world. We do not need advice over human rights from them," he added.
  • "This election was a political earthquake for [Iran's] enemies and a celebration for its friends," Khameini told the vast crowd. "This election showed religious democracy for the whole world to see."
  • "The enemies [of Iran] are targeting the Islamic establishment's legitimacy by questioning the election and its authenticity before and after [the vote]," Khamenei told the vast crowd.
  • Khamenei told the crowd that it would have been impossible under law of the Islamic Republic to fix the election results and declared Ahmadinejad's victory "definitive."
  • The supreme leader reportedly gave defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi an ultimatum this week to either accept the disputed results of the recent elections, or leave the country for exile.
  • Khamenei had earlier instructed Mousavi to stand beside him as he uses his prayer sermon to call for national unity, according to The London Times. The reformist candidate did not accede to this request and his supporters have so far ignored Kahmeini's call to support Ahmadinejad, holding huge rallies in defiance of an official ban.
Argos Media

Taliban oust Pakistani authorities in Swat Valley sharia zone | World news | guardian.c... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...an-clinton-swat-valley-mingora

Pakistan US Hillary Clinton Jamiat Ulema e Islam

shared by Argos Media on 23 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Taliban fighters spilling out of the Swat Valley have swept across Buner, a district 60 miles from Islamabad, as Hillary Clinton warned the situation in Pakistan now poses a "mortal threat" to the security of the world.
  • The US secretary of state told Congress yesterday that Pakistan faced an "existential" threat from Islamist militants. "I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists," she said. Any further deterioration in the situation "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world", she said.
  • In Buner, Taliban fighters occupied government buildings, ransacked the offices of aid agencies and ordered aid employees to leave. Fighters brandishing guns and rocket launchers patrolled villages, forcing beleaguered local police to retreat to their stations. Local courts have stopped functioning and judicial officials have gone on indefinite leave.
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  • The turmoil in Buner, a district of about 1 million people, does not pose an immediate threat to Islamabad, which lies across a mountain range and the river Indus. But the speed and aggression of the militant advance has stoked a sense of alarm across the country, even among normally conservative forces.
  • "If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema e Islam party, told the national assembly yesterday.The Taliban could soon seize control of Tarbela Dam, a strategic reservoir, Rehman warned.
  • Blame for the turmoil has focused on a controversial peace deal the provincial government signed with militants in February. Hoping to defuse the insurgency, the Awami National party-led government acceded to demands for sharia law in Swat and seven surrounding districts, known collectively as Malakand Division.The changes were ratified by the national parliament last week with cross-party consensus. Since then, the Taliban have moved to establish much more than judicial control.
  • In Mingora, the commercial hub of Swat, the police retain a low-key presence, reduced to directing traffic. Most politicians have fled, many under death threats. Many residents said it was not clear who was in control of the town.
  • In Imam Dheri, the Taliban headquarters near Mingora, a Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan, told the Guardian their goal was the establishment of an Islamic caliphate first in Pakistan and then across the Muslim world."Democracy is a system for European countries. It is not for Muslims," he said. "This is not just about justice. It should be in education, health, economics. Everything should be under sharia."
Argos Media

In Pakistan, Guile Helps Taliban Gain - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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Pakistan Taliban Buner Malakand Swat Valley

shared by Argos Media on 26 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them.
  • But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.
  • That Buner fell should be no surprise, local people say. Last fall, the inspector general of police in North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, complained that his officers were being attacked and killed by the hundreds. Mr. Khan was so desperate — and had been so thoroughly abandoned by the military and the government — that he was relying on citizen posses like the one that stood up to the Taliban last August.
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  • Today, the hopes that those civilian militias inspired are gone, brushed away by the realization that Pakistanis can do little to stem the Taliban advance if their government and military will not help them.
  • The peace deal the military struck with the Taliban in February in neighboring Swat further demoralized people in Buner. Residents and local officials said they asked themselves how they could continue to resist the Taliban when the military had abandoned the effort. The Taliban were emboldened by the deal: it called for the institution of Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran, throughout Malakand Agency, which includes Swat and Buner. It allowed the Taliban amnesty for their killings, floggings and destruction of girls schools in Swat.
  • Still, when the Taliban rolled into Buner from Swat through the town of Gokan on April 5, a well-to-do businessman, Fateh Mohammed, organized another posse of civilian fighters to take on the militants in the town of Sultanwas. Five civilians and three policemen were killed, he said. Some newspaper reports said 17 Taliban were killed.
  • At that point, the chief government official in charge of Malakand, Mohammed Javed, proposed what he called peace talks. Mr. Javed, an experienced bureaucrat in the Pakistani civil service, was appointed in late February as the main government power broker in Malakand even though he was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban, a senior government official in North-West Frontier Province said. The government had been under pressure to bring calm to Swat and essentially capitulated to Taliban demands for Mr. Javed’s appointment, the official said.
  • In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Javed had been too sympathetic to the Taliban, the government announced Saturday that he had been replaced by Fazal Karim Khattack.
  • In what some residents in Swat and now in Buner say had been a pattern of favorable decisions led by Mr. Javed on behalf of the Taliban, the talks in Buner turned out to be a “betrayal,” said a former police officer from the area, who was afraid to be identified.
  • To bolster their strength, and insinuate themselves in Buner, the Taliban also relied heavily on the adherents of a hard-line militant group, the Movement for the Implementation of the Shariah of Muhammad, which has agitated for Islamic law in Pakistan. Their leader, Sufi Mohammed, comes from the region around Swat and Buner and has whipped up local support and intimidated Taliban opponents.
  • early last week the Taliban showed their power by ordering the state courts shut. They announced that they would open Islamic courts, practicing Shariah, by the end of the month. The militants have also placed a tax payable to the Taliban on all marble quarried at mines, said a senior police officer who worked in Buner.
  • The police were so intimidated they mostly stayed inside station houses, he said. “They are setting up a parallel government.”
  • With their success in Buner, the Taliban felt flush with success and increasingly confident that they could repeat the template, residents and analysts said. In the main prize, the richest and most populous province, Punjab, in eastern Pakistan, the Taliban are relying on the sleeper cells of other militant groups, including the many fighters who had been trained by the Pakistani military for combat in Kashmir, and now felt abandoned by the state, they said.
  • It would not be difficult for the Taliban to seize Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, by shutting down the airport and blocking the two main thoroughfares from Islamabad, a Western official with long experience in the province said. At midweek, a convoy of heavily armed Taliban vehicles was seen barreling along the four-lane motorway between Islamabad and Peshawar, according to Mr. Sherpao, the former minister of the interior.
  • Across North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban are rapidly consolidating power by activating cells that consisted of a potent mix of jihadist groups, he said.
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