Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Abdul Wahab Al-Effendi
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The solution to the Gulf crisis begins with Egypt
When three Gulf States decided to withdraw their ambassadors from Doha in March 2014, I wrote that the problem for those countries was not Qatar but Egypt. Some countries, with all their might, bet on the success of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s coup in Egypt and offered all their political and...
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Hamas and the rise of false prophets in the Gulf
Amidst the unprecedented dirty war that is being waged against Qatar by the counter-revolution regimes, the issues of Qatar’s support for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Muslim Brotherhood (classified as a terrorist movement in these countries) have emerged as the two most important reasons for the coalition’s...
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Are we human beings?
It makes you think when a Syrian official comments on the Douma massacres, in which hundreds were killed last week, and says that they did not actually occur. According to this official — the foreign minister no less — the devastation and destruction resulting from the bombing of a...
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Will the Syrian regime triumph?
A number of indications surfaced over the past few weeks, suggesting that the “end game” in the Syrian crisis has begun. The biggest indication of this is Turkey’s involvement in the battle taking place in the Syrian arena for the first time since it has begun. This involvement has...
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Peace be upon Egypt
Over a year ago, I wrote an article where I warned of the “Somalisation of Egypt” and how this outcome is no longer merely a possibility but a blatant reality, especially in the Sinai, which when compared to Somalia makes the latter look like a stable state. Tribal conflicts...
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Where tyranny and terrorism meet
Within the framework of the “War on Terror”, the administration of former US President George W. Bush proposed the idea of promoting democracy in the Middle East as an antidote to terrorism; or at least to correct the error that was believed to be the cause of terrorism in...
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Morsi reversed: The hypocritical legitimacy in Libya and its surroundings
In Egypt, the elected president is suffering in jail and his supporters are arguing that he is the sole legitimate president, while the members of the elected parliament have either been imprisoned or displaced. There is also a president who used the force of arms to appoint himself as...
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Does Gaza symbolise the fall of totalitarianism or the demise of the Arabs?
The most striking thing about the plight of Gaza and its people these days is not the complete paralysis of the Arabs in the face of the barbaric Israeli aggression, or even the satisfaction – if not outright scheming – of the Arab regimes with the attacks. It also...
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Arab Kings in the era of ISIS and Iranian paramilitaries
In May 2003, less than a month before Baghdad’s fall, I participated in the Ralph Miliband Lecture Series at the London School of Economics and Political Science. These lectures commemorate the father of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. The theme for the series was “American Power in the 21st...
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June in Egypt and Sudan: Where are the generals of the revolution?
The anniversary of June 30th is approaching in the Nile Valley; an anniversary that has the same taste in both Egypt and Sudan. In both countries, this anniversary marks the end of the miracle of democracy that was a symbol of its time. Just as the January 25, 2011,...
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The future of the Islamic movements after the Egyptian catastrophe
Over two years ago, on April 3, 2012, I wrote in this same newspaper an article in which I propose the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or limiting their work to propagation and keeping the Freedom and Justice Party an independent political party. At the time, the...
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Returning to Tunisia in the era of 'Al-Nahda'
The last time I visited Tunisia’s capital over a quarter of a century ago, we behaved like the criminals in detective movies. In order to visit Sheikh Rashed al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s Islamic movement which had just been established and was being pursued at the time, we had...
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If only it was a coup with the US playing a role
We can debate whether the incident in Egypt was a popular revolution against Muslim Brotherhood tyranny or a military coup against its democratic legitimacy, but in my view the bad news is that it was not a military coup, it was worse than that. What occurred was not a...
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Egypt's bout of mad judiciary disease
Since ancient times, members of the judiciary have served as the wise, careful, farsighted and impartial arbitrators in litigious disputes. The early Muslim leaders started a trend which no people before them had ever done; they separated the judiciary and politics. They then did something else that nobody else...
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True and false narratives of genocide in Egypt and Syria
The narrative of the Syrian revolution has been transformed from a story of peaceful protests demanding democracy to a civil war involving all members of Syrian society. In fact, the Syrian narrative is subject to variation depending on the narrator’s identity and political affiliations. According to the anti-government forces,...
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The economics of the other gas in Egypt and Bahrain
Last week, media sources revealed that a shipment of tear gas on its way from South Korea to Bahrain was stopped after a campaign by human rights and humanitarian organisations and criticism from the Bahraini opposition. This shipment was valued at about $28 million, which Saudi Arabia is said...