Articles for August 2004
April 2004 Articles
AMIRI:
While the world's attention is
focused on the ever deteriorating situation in Iraq, Pakistan's
self-appointed President, Pervez Musharraf, has quietly and
deliberately taken measures to remain ensconced in power and
shamelessly stifle internal dissent. Two recent disturbing events
orchestrated by Musharraf are making Pakistan look more and more
like a police state, as the military's influence over civilian
affairs widens and human rights continue to erode. As we shall see,
the United States support for the dictator, allegedly invaluable in
the "war on terror," is yet another example of a shortsighted
foreign policy which is unable to fathom the long-term consequences
that legitimizing two-bit tyrants (and I need not mention the
multitude of names) eventually brings.
Read on...
FISK: So
President George Bush tears up the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan
and that's okay. Israeli settlements for Jews and Jews only on the
West Bank. That's okay. Taking land from Palestinians who have owned
that land for generations, that's okay. UN Security Council
Resolution 242 says that land cannot be acquired by war. Forget it.
That's okay. Read on...
March 2004 Articles
Amiri:
Rarely has controversy over a film simultaneously encompassed the
religious, social, and political spheres as has Mel Gibson's The
Passion of the Christ. The primary focus of the discussion has been
on whether it represents an accurate portrayal of Jesus’ last twelve
hours, and if so, if it qualifies as anti-Semitic. The participants
in this discourse, for the most part, have obviously been Christians
and Jews. The secular public did learn that the word passion refers
to Jesus' suffering during the crucifixion in the Christian account
of events (incidentally from where the word excruciating is
derived), but can equally apply to the suffering of any martyr.
.
Read on...
Shehadeh:
he rise of the Arabic language to
the status of a major world language is a result of the rise of
Islam as a major world religion. In the pre-Islamic period, al-jāhiliyyah
(ignorance of God), Arabic was a minor member of the southern branch
of the Semitic family, whose native speakers belonged to some
nomadic tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. Within a century after the
death of the Arab prophet, Muḥammad, (632 A. D.) Arabic became the
official language of a vast empire. Since the seventh century,
Arabic and Islam, meaning both peace and submission to God’s will,
became inseparable and Arabic spread like wildfire. Thanks to the
Qur’ān the destiny of the Arabic language was different from
numerous other Semitic sister languages such as Accadian, Ugaritic
and Aramaic (lawlā al-qur’ān al-karīm la-kānat al-lughah al-`arabiyyah
fī khabari kāna). .
Read on...
SOUAIAIA: Once again, Western scholarship
comes face to face with a branch of Islam that has been neglected
thus far and about which very little is known. The insistence of one
of the Iraqi religious authorities on holding direct elections
instead of the limited caucuses proposed by the US administration
has complicated the political and military plans for that nation.
However, the impact of this confrontation will have a lasting effect
on the status and role of marja`iyyah that could be felt in
Iran and other countries where Shi`ites represent a significant
minority or commanding majority. This essay is intended to account
for the events that have led to the current power structure and
preview the major shifts of authority as the boundaries between
religion, politics and jurisprudence are collapsing under the weight
of war and peace. Read on...
February 2004 Articles
Amiri: The political unrest occurring in
both Iraq and Iran over the past month may not be directly related,
but on closer scrutiny, an inescapable connection is readily
apparent. The calls for democracy in the Middle East are now
emanating from what many would consider a most unlikely source:
Shi'ite Muslims.
Read on...
Tehranian: The invasion of Iraq is the
seventh oil war in some 50 years. Wars are largely violent struggles
for material and symbolic resources. They also demonstrate the
failure of human imagination to find peaceful solutions to their
problems. Resorting to war is easy. Peace building is difficult.
Read on...
Maxwell: I was so struck by a story
last September in a Nairobi local newspaper, Daily Nation, that I
clipped it for my files. To me, it captured the hopelessness of the
AIDS tidal wave facing Africa’s children.
Read on...
Wehrwein: As the HIV epidemic deepens in
Africa, it is leaving an economically devastated continent in its
wake.
More than one-quarter of working-age adults are infected with HIV in
some communities in sub-Saharan Africa, a statistic that brings
profound economic repercussions for families and communities.
Read on...
SOUAIAIA: The outcome of the year 2000
presidential election was an irreplaceable opportunity to
educate the citizens about their civil duties and inherent rights.
For the first time, it is possible that those who did not vote
especially in the state of Florida may have felt the weight of guilt
resulting from not taking their own vote seriously since it was
shown that every single vote did matter then, just as it matters in
any other election. Read on...
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Op-Ed articles are not peer-reviewed.
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