Author: issandr

Bahraini rights activist arrested

Mahmoud gives background of an arrest of a human rights activist in Bahrain.

Something’s amiss (redux!): “The papers are full this morning of the King and the Crown Prince visiting the Prime Minister at his office. When this sort of thing happens, you just know that someone somewhere has “talked bad” about the ruling family or the prime minister specifically.
“

(Via Mahmood’s Den :: Mahmood’s Blog.)

The Party of Tomorrow..

Al Ghad (Tomorrow) party bannerI was at the Administrative Court in Giza this morning to witness (as it turned out) the aspiring Hizb Al Ghad (Party of Tomorrow) once again not get permission to be registered as a political party. The Party Affairs Committee has turned down five attempts for this group to register, as it does with almost all aspiring parties. As others have done before them, the Al Ghad people have gone to the courts, but the judges decided to postpone the case till November 6. I don’t understand the legal intricacies, to be honest, but apparently this postponement means the case will have to be re-argued entirely; they are basically starting from scratch. What happened today (and yesterday, when the decision was postponed 24 hours) was that some of the members of the court never bothered to show up, thus making it impossible to hand down a decision.

Ayman NourThe aspiring party’s leadership consists of several prominent ex-Wafd members, including party head Ayman Nour and secretary general Mona Akram Ebeid. They have a detailed party platform, with constitutional reform one of their topmost priorities. They have also been building up quite a base, providing social services in some of Cairo’s lower class and squatter neighborhoods.

What was interesting today was the very well-planned and photogenic demonstrations of support that were staged outside the court (perhaps Nour’s wife Gameela, who is a journalist and the party’s press coordinator had something to do with this). Fifty to a hundred supporters, including many women, were allowed (or at least weren’t not allowed) not only to spread banners across the front of the building but also to enter the court building en masse. When it was understood that the wayward members were once again not coming (which was seen as an intentional boycott designed to keep the judiciary from handing down the positive decision that many expected), the crowd organized improvised sit-ins, broke into chants, and eventually stormed their way into the courtroom, literally knocking guards aside and battering down the doors.

At the recent NDP conference, there was talk of making it easier to allow new political parties to register. Supposedly, the appointment of several opposition party and independent members to the Party Affairs Committee and the establishment of a deadline after which the committee must answer petitions (they often just don’t ever answer) will streamline the process. Judging from today, those who want to found a new party in Egypt still have an uphill battle. On the other hand, they seem ready to fight.

Iraqi insurgent groups

Iraqi newspaper identifies insurgent groups – (UPI):

“There are three main Sunni groups, and five separate factions within them; two Baathist groups; and two Shiite insurgent organizations, according to a recent issue of the Baghdad al-Zawra in Arabic — a weekly published by the Iraqi Journalists Association and translated into English by the CIA.

The groups are comprised of individual cells that are only loosely affiliated, a supposition endorsed by military intelligence officials in interviews with United Press International.

“The majority of these groups do not know their leadership, the sources of their financing, or who provides them with weapons,” the Sunday’s report stated.”

Yoga not halal

This is the kind of stupid thing that gives Muslims a bad name:

A religious edict saps the energy out of yoga enthusiasts in Egypt, where clerics say the 5,000-year-old practice violates Islamic law.

Answering a religious question put forward, Egypt’s highest theological authority called yoga an “ascetic Hindu practice that should not be used in any manner of exercise or worship.”

The undated but recent edict was signed by the mufti, Ali Gomoa.

The edict, published in the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat and obtained Sunday by the Associated Press, called the practice of yoga “an aberration” and said mimicking it is “forbidden religiously.”

There is a serious problems with the use — and perhaps the tradition itself — of fatwas, especially when they are given out by a government appointed sheikh. There is not meant to be in Islam, as far as I can tell, an “official fatwa-maker.” This is why Ali Gomaa has occasionally clashed with Al Azhar University, which has a council of scholars that often give out fatwas. But in principle, fatwas can be made by any person, and are usually personal advice given to individuals, not a reflection of government policy (and indeed Egypt has not banned yoga). The problem is that when an idiot or extremist decides that yoga is haram, or that a certain writer has insulted Islam, or that it’s OK to kidnap Americans working in Iraq, it often looks like he’s speaking to all Muslims. Particularly if someone powerful — the state, a fundamentalist group, a university — had decided that this person is entitled to make fatwas.

Major Powers Wring Hands Discreetly on Middle East

You gotta love that headline. What a sad state of affairs.

Major Powers Wring Hands Discreetly on Middle East: “Reuters – The world’s major powers wrung
their hands discreetly on Wednesday at the lack of progress
toward peace in the Middle East, chiding Israel and the
Palestinians in equal measure but offering no new ideas.”

Novak: Bush will get out of Iraq quickly

Bob Novak, the conservative columnist who outed Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, says he believes the Bush administration, if re-elected, will leave Iraq as quick as it can:

“Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal.

Getting out now would not end expensive U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, and certainly would not stop the fighting. Without U.S. troops, the civil war cited as the worst-case outcome by the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate would be a reality. It would then take a resolute president to stand aside while Iraqis battle it out.

The end product would be an imperfect Iraq, probably dominated by Shia Muslims seeking revenge over long oppression by the Sunni-controlled Baathist Party. The Kurds would remain in their current semi-autonomous state. Iraq would not be divided, reassuring neighboring countries — especially Turkey — that are apprehensive about ethnically divided nations.

This messy new Iraq is viewed by Bush officials as vastly preferable to Saddam’s police state, threatening its neighbors and the West. In private, some officials believe the mistake was not in toppling Saddam but in staying there for nation building after the dictator was deposed.”

Perhaps not particularly credible — although I don’t quite see how it helps the Bush administration except by signaling hesitant voters that Bush might end US involvement in Iraq — but intriguing. If Novak wrote about it, then someone must have leaked it to him and it was probably on purpose considering how leak-proof this White House has been. If true, I doubt there will ever be a “humanitarian” preemptive war again.

Blogging the NDP convention

For the past two days and until tomorrow, Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party has been holding its annual convention, putting a strong emphasis on what it calls “New Thinking” and the need for reform. And there have indeed been some important reforms introduced over the past two days, for instance the complete overhaul of the tax system — corporate tax for instance has been reduced by more than half. But the political reforms have been lagging and those introduced were mostly cosmetic.

Continue reading Blogging the NDP convention

Al Banna book ban

Gamal Al Banna is one of Egypt’s most prominent thinkers on Islam, although you wouldn’t think so from the treatment he gets from the “official” Islam of Al Azhar, the oldest Islamic university which is based in Cairo but influences all Sunni Muslims. Al Azhar has decided to ban a new book by Al Banna which continues his calls for a radical re-interpretation of Islamic law. As my friend Paul Schemm reports in the Christian Science Monitor:

In the now blacklisted book, “The Responsibility for the Failure of the Islamic State,” author Gamal al-Banna suggests ways for Muslim minorities in Europe and elsewhere to integrate into non-Islamic societies. He argues that it would be permissible for women to cover their hair with a hat, rather than a head scarf, and recommends men use an early Islamic tradition of temporary marriages, legal in the Shiite sect, to avoid intercourse outside of wedlock.

. . .

This is not the first time Banna has raised the ire of Al Azhar. Only a few years ago, he published a three volume work entitled “Towards a New Jurisprudence” that called for total reevaluation of Islamic law. He is also the brother of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood from which most present day militant Islamic movements take their inspiration. Gamal al-Banna, however, has much more moderate views of the religion than his sibling.

“We must open the doors for the freedom of thought without any restrictions at all,” Banna says. “Even if one wants to deny the existence of God.”

Al Banna, of course, is the brother of Hassan Al Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1920s. The Muslim Brotherhood is the first modern Islamist movement, and has been for most of the past hundred years one of the leading political forces in Egypt. Its influence has also extended to elsewhere in the Arab world, from benign Islamist parties such as Jordan’s to more militaristic movements like Hamas in Palestine. Generally, it shuns terrorism, but supports it in Palestine where it sees it as a war of national liberation. The Brotherhood is much further to the right than Gamal Al Banna’s thinking, who is often grouped with a few other reformist thinkers as “leftist Islamists” because of his moderation and emphasis on social issues. In a sense, Al Banna’s precursors were the early Islamic reformers like Jamal Al Din Af Afghani and Muhammad Abdou who were, on the whole, much more moderate than the Muslim Brothers.

One of the tragedies of the political situation in most Arab countries in that these people have had little opportunity to make their voice heard, as they tend to be squeezed out of the political discourse between secular regime parties and organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, which is on the right -wing of a much broader tendency to look for Islam for political guidance. People like Al Banna, who in the past has felt comfortable supporting both leftist and liberal figures (he is for instance a supporter of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who is interviewed in the CSM article and is a leading pro-US liberal in Egypt), are being silenced by fundamentalist Islamists, the stale official Islam of Al Azhar theologians and the decaying Arab regimes. This is why providing them a platform in the West — like Tariq Ramadan — is important if their works are to spread.