Asmaa al-Ghoul is a journalist and writer from the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. Here she reports for Al-Monitor on the Islamist movements inside the occupied territory: I managed to reach the house of one of the jihadist Salafist leaders in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-led Gaza government had imposed limitations on most jihadist Salafist…
Showing all posts tagged Islam
Rejecting hate speech spewed by Geert Wilders
I was proud to be involved in last night’s Sydney rally against far-right, anti-Islam racist Geert Wilders, raising my voice against his bigotry. I believe he has the right to free speech but opponents have a responsibility to challenge his bile. Via AAP: About 100 protesters are rallying outside a function centre in Sydney’s west…
How restricted web access looks and feels in Iran
Fascinating project by Iranian designer Maral Pourkazemi detailing the reality of online censorship and repression in the Islamic Republic: The Iranian Internet – An Infographic by Maral Pourkazemi from Gestalten on Vimeo.
Reflections on #ZeroDarkThirty
Last night I saw the Oscar-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty. It’s a brilliantly made work, brutal, passionate, eerie, exciting and compelling. It’s also a shameless piece of CIA propaganda. It opens on 9/11 and frames many of the successful and failed terror attacks since then as part of one, big al-Qaeda plot, which is dishonest.…
Mali shows that West understands little about failures of “war on terror”
History repeats. Leaders learn nothing or don’t want to. Countless media hacks repeat the talking points about fighting “terrorism” and ask few questions. The “war on terror” has been a catastrophic debacle from day one. If you ask the civilians who suffer under its wrath, which most reporters don’t, you’ll know that. Seumas Milne in…
We suffer the terrorism that we help create
Powerful column by Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent: Western power merchants – particularly British and Americans – in contrast, use each such tragedy to engender discord. They strut the world stage, issue threats and remind us who is boss. When will they see themselves as others see them, or try to empathise with the…
The Western war to assist brutality against the Shia
With the current Western war in Mali (in simple terms, blowback from our intervention in Libya), who and what exactly is the West supporting in the Muslim world? Patrick Cockburn writes in Counterpunch that hypocrisy is name of the game: It is a ferocious war waged by assassination, massacre, imprisonment and persecution that has killed…
Rise of Sunnis in the Middle East and the decline of Iran in 2013
Juan Cole offers some predictions: 2013 will see Iranian influence in the Middle East continue a decline that began with the Arab upheavals of 2011. Iran’s two major allies in the Arab world are Syria and Lebanon. In Lebanon, Iran arms the Shiite party-militia Hizbullah, and does so overland through Iraq and Syria. Since Israel…
“We brought a Nakba upon you”
During protests against Israel’s current aggression in Gaza held in Tel Aviv on the 15th November, there was a counter protest which shows vile racism against Muslims and hatred towards Palestinians. This short film is yet more fine work by Israeli journalist David Sheen and reflects a majority perspective in the Zionist state:
ABCTV News24”²s The World talking Israel and Gaza
Israeli cries of war against Gaza are building. I spoke last night on ABCTV News24’s The World… discussing the growing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the mostly Palestinian civilians caught in the middle: