In September 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York for a week, for the U.N. General Assembly. On September 20, he dined at the Warwick Hotel in New York with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and 100 Muslim leaders from across the U.S. 1 Farrakhan (top left) speaks at dinner; in center, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Ahmadinejad, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Mohammad Khazaee. 2 Left to right: Mustapha Farrakhan, Supreme Captain of the Nation of Islam; ...
Introduction The approach of the Iranian regime towards Israel, the Zionist state, is unambiguous: Tehran rejects its right to exist and calls for its Jewish inhabitants to return to their countries of origin. An ostensibly democratic solution to the Palestinian issue, which Tehran has endorsed, is to hold a referendum about the future of Palestine among all the Palestinians – in Palestine and the diaspora – and among all Jews who lived in Palestine before the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 ...
In an interview posted on the liberal Arab website Aafaq on October 4, 2010, Palestinian reformist Zainab Rashid said that the Arab dictatorial regimes exploit the Palestinian cause in order to divert attention from their own domestic problems and suppress initiatives of democratization and reform. She also opposed the Islamization of the Palestinian cause, saying the Palestinian issue will never be resolved as long as it is construed as a religious struggle destined to continue until Judgment ...
Some of the recent terrorist attacks on various targets in Pakistan by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or the Movement of Pakistani Taliban) reveal an ideological pattern. The Taliban, who owe their allegiance to the Deobandi school of Islamic thought, are not only targeting Pakistani state institutions but are also attacking other Islamic sects in the country. Pakistan is a predominant Sunni country. The Deobandis, who account for only 15 % of all the Sunni Muslims, are well organized, ...
An article dated August 30, 2010 in Sobh-e Sadeq , the weekly of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), called the U.S. magazine Newsweek' s selection of Saudi King Abdallah as one of the world's 10 most respected leaders a joke, adding that he was chosen only because of his close relationship with the U.S. It said that the Saudi regime is the most tyrannical in the world, because the country has never held a single election, the people have no role in choosing their leaders, and ...
Introduction On September 2, 2010, direct negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel resumed in Washington, DC. In contrast to the grim atmosphere on the Palestinian side prior to the meetings – when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed reluctantly, as if under duress, to participate in the negotiations – during the negotiations themselves the atmosphere was considerably lighter. Very quickly, however, the Palestinian leaders, headed by Abbas, reiterated their ...
The issue of the planned Islamic center near Ground Zero, which has sparked a political and media storm in the U.S., has not featured prominently in the Arab press. Nevertheless, a variety of reactions have been published, most of them opposed to it. Some writers called for the Cordoba Initiative, the NGO behind the project, to cancel it, on the grounds that it generates tension between Muslims and non-Muslims. Others pointed to the gap between the tolerance in the West, which allows Muslims to ...
In an article titled "Religious Supremacy is the Root of the Problem," Saudi writer Mamduh Fulatah pointed out that each religion claims to be the only true faith and the only path to Paradise, and its followers consider themselves to be God's chosen and superior to all other people. This sense of superiority, he argued, is the chief source of conflict in the world, and must be done away with. The following are translated excerpts from his article, which appeared on the liberal Arab website ...
