Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Basheer M. Nafi
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Turkish elections surprise everyone
Until the morning of 17 April, those who talked about early elections in Turkey were described as insane or as seeking factional interests and targeting the stability of the country. Therefore, the proposal made by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli, to bring forward the elections to late...
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Why the Balfour Declaration did not promise a Jewish state
For some time, I have been grappling with the British reasons behind the Balfour Declaration and what it really meant. Let us start with what we know. In early March 1915, with a sense of urgency, Czarist Russia demanded that Britain and France should enter into negotiations over various concerns of...
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Egypt is no longer the heart of the Arab world
The status of a country is not determined, as some historians would have us believe, by its history alone, nor just by its geography, nor indeed by its political will. The role of countries is fashioned by the interaction of geography, history, politics and resources together. It is through a...
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Trump, Russia and the Syrian crisis
Ten days ago, US warships fired dozens of missiles at a Syrian air base from where it is suspected fighter aircraft belonging to the Assad regime took off to launch a chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhon in the province of Idlib; dozens of the small town’s residents were...
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The Muslim Brotherhood is an Arab issue, not a US one
The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in 1928 as an Islamic da’wah association, which means preaching Islam to Muslims. It was not the first organisation of its kind, nor was it the last. Egypt was not the only majority Muslim country to witness the birth of such civil associations, whose...
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For Arab revolutionaries, there is no choice but to continue the fight
After nearly six years of battling the regime, its Iranian allies and sectarian militias, the prospect of change in Syria seems farther away than ever before. It is certainly more distant than when the popular revolution erupted in March 2011. The tragedy of human loss and destruction is now...
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Syria: What will happen if the revolution is defeated
Should the loss of Aleppo result in the end of the Syrian revolution, the outcome would be catastrophic for the country and the region as a whole. Aleppo, which has been under siege for months, is just one battleground. Its occupation by the regime should not change the course of...
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Trump's neo-fascist vision undermines the very foundations of America
The election victory of American billionaire Donald Trump came as a shocking surprise for many Americans, including leaders and experts within the Republican party that he represents. But it was also a shock for the overwhelming majority of politicians around the world, including the allies of the United States...
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There's no honour among coup leaders, General Sisi
Egypt's president has alluded to the threat he faces from allies who now see him as a disaster for the country...
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History, not religion, has wrought violence on Islamic societies
The introduction of the European state model and collapse of the Ottoman Empire, not Islam, is at the root of regional violence today When we talk about the roots of political Islam, we can look back to the Egypt of the 1920s and the emergence of such groups as the...
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Towards a new Turkish foreign policy
A few days after he took office in May, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim now famously said that his government would pursue a foreign policy aimed at “reducing the number of enemies and increasing the number of friends”. So it was no secret that the Turkish leadership could see alarming signs...
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The birth of a new Turkish republic
Before the start of the annual gathering of Turkey’s Military Consultative Council last week, the prime minister and top armed force commanders, following tradition, stood before the tomb of the Republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal. Speaking particularly loudly, as if he really desired to be heard and quoted, Binali Yildirim declared...
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Egypt's Regeni crisis: The repercussions of European hypocrisy
In a recent rambling address to the nation, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi stressed that he resorts to neither lying nor deceit (as if the matter necessitated such an explanation). He urged the Egyptians to listen to none but to him. This is the same general who boasted in...
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The entangled relationship between Europe and Islam
In the aftermath of every single bombing or terrorist attacks in any European city, the debate erupts once again about Europe’s relationship with its Muslims as well as with its Muslim neighbourhood. It is not hard to observe that since the London’s terrorist attacks of July 2005 all the...
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Syria's uprising was to topple dictatorship, not divide the country
In a sudden manner, and without prior warning, official Russian and United States statements succeeded one another, not without some ambiguity, about the prospect of turning Syria into a federal state. Since the Americans and the Russians are the sponsors of the process of finding a political solution for the...
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US Sunni-Shia balancing act adds to Middle East tensions
On Saturday, 14 February, the Turkish forces began shelling the positions of the Syrian Kurdish militias in the Azaz region, in its surroundings and in Menagh airbase. The Turks justified the shelling, which continued intermittently over the past few days, in the name of implementing engagement rules, meaning that...
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The West is playing an old game with the minorities of the Orient
Francois Guizot (1787-1874), France’s foreign minister, and Brugière, Baron de Barante, its ambassador in St Petersburg (the capital of Tsarist Russia) were friends. On 31 December 1840, the minister wrote a special letter to the ambassador in Russia. Guizot started his letter saying “my dear friend, there is no...
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The state vs the Arab revolutionary movement
The fatal protest action of a street vendor in a marginal town deep inside Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on 17 December 2010, was the spark that triggered the Arab revolutionary movement. On 14 January 2011, the civil resistance achieved its first and greatest victory by bringing down...
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Turkey’s Justice and Development Party deserved its win even if many are unhappy
I do not recall a single election in any democratic country during the past ten years that created so much media discourse and aroused so much debate around the world as the recent poll in Turkey did; the exception may be Barack Obama’s first bid to be president. The...
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IS and the age of brutality
I used to think that the violence pursued by al-Qaeda since the 1990s and more recently by the Islamic State (IS) was nothing more than an extension of the rebellions that took place in Islam in the Seventh Century – the Khawarij rebellions against the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates....
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Netanyahu, Hitler, al-Mufti Al-Hussaini and the Holocaust
It is remarkable to see Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu debase himself with revisionist history by suggesting grand theories on one of the most sensitive issues in the modern history of mankind. On the evening of 21 September 2015, Netanyahu delivered a speech at the World Zionist Congress in the...
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Arab states and Syria: What's behind the conciliatory gestures?
The Syrian crisis is witnessing a growing political dynamism that is not solely American and Russian, but also Arab. It is even distinctively Arab. The mufti of the Assad government arrives in Algeria; Foreign Minister Walid al-Muaallim, who is rarely allowed to travel abroad, is visiting the Omani capital...
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The failure of political Islam?
In 1994, Harvard University Press published the English edition of a book by the eminent French political scientist Olivier Roy. The Failure of Political Islam had a powerful impact on policy-making circles, as well as among students of modern Islam and the Middle East, be they academics or think-tankers. It...
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Why Saudi and other Gulf states need to rescue Egypt from itself
The crisis in Egypt is growing in complexity and severity by the day. In the meantime, major Arab states, foremost among them Saudi Arabia, behave as if they have decided to ignore Egypt and its exacerbated crisis. But no one should behave as if Egypt has vanished completely from the...
