Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Basheer M. Nafi
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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 way…
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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 they…
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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 necessity…
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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 Ben…
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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 difference,…
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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. Only…
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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 Muscat…
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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…
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The flagrant collapse of Iraq’s national identity
In a weird spectacle that reflects the oddities witnessed by post-occupation Iraq, former Iraqi prime minister and current Vice President Nouri al-Maliki recently took to the podium lecturing about early Islamic history, about the companions of the Prophet Muhammad and about the Koran. Throughout the years of his opposition to…
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The crisis within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood
A crisis exists within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It is described at times as the generational conflict. At other times it is seen as a dispute over the strategy of standing up to the 3 July 2013 regime. Since the movement has, for the past two years, been facing an…
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The fragile structure of the Palestinian national movement
Throughout the weeks of war and negotiations, various Palestinian leaders from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Fatah, all sought to stress the unity of the Palestinian position: their position against the Israeli aggression, the management of the war, and the position on negotiations. However, on 30…
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Egypt’s unnecessary battle
Opposition to something like President Mohamed Morsi’s now-controversial constitutional declaration is an inherent right in a democracy. In any free country, authority needs to have a strong opposition, up to a point. Such opposition should not include trying to overthrow a democratically-elected President by using the judiciary and taking the…