Islamism

Iraqi students defy Islamist militia

From the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) . Students at the University of Basra went on strike for over a week in March. They organised demonstrations outside government buildings in Basra. The strike and demonstrations were about a vicious attack on Basra students by the Islamists in the city. On 15 March a group of armed militia belonging to Al Sadr in Basra attacked a group of students from the Engineering Faculty on an picnic outing in one of the city's parks. While police stood by the armed thugs launched a vicious attack against the students, destroying all their...

Basra students strike against Islamists

See report on the Iraq Union Solidarity website . Also on that website: statement from the Basra Oil Union about an assassination attempt against one of its activists .

Reforming Saudi Arabia

By Cathy Nugent In February Saudi Arabia held the first round of municipal council elections — the country’s first direct elections since 1964. As democratic elections go they are very poor: only half the council seats are to be elected, the rest are appointed; the decision-making power of these councils is limited; no party affiliations are allowed (because all political parties are banned in the country); women were not allowed to vote, despite election rules which say that all Saudi citizens over the age of 21 are eligible to vote. A US spokesperson’s comment on the election was, “Saudi...

Anti-semitism on the rise

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were unorthodox Marxist academics and German Jews. In the early 1930s, like others of their sort who could, they fled Nazi Germany for the USA. And they reported that, in ordinary day-to-day life, they encountered more anti-semitism in the USA than they ever had in Germany. In other words, the idea of anti-semitism as something far away and long ago, unfortunate but solidly dealt with by the gallant World War 2 allies, is false. A recent report shows that anti-semitism is on the rise in Britain today. The Community Security Trust says that there were many more...

Al-Qaeda and those who will come after

Cathy Nugent reviews Al-Qaeda: the true story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke (Penguin, £7.99) Despite its tabloidesque sub-title, Burke’s book is an extremely lucid, balanced and useful account. It is especially useful because it brings together summaries of most of the events, myriad roots of, and religious and political background to the rise of Al-Qaeda and groups like it. It would have been easy to write the “true” account, which sets out to scotch the myths of the bourgeois press about the war on terror. But this book is much more than that. A few aspects of what is a hugely convoluted...

The Iraqi people against Islamic terrorism

Day after day the bloody hands of terrorist Islamic gangs are destroying new aspects of the life of Iraqi society. Everyday they violate the civility of the society and stamp upon its secularity and all the gains of freedom, equality, prosperity and humanism achieved by the masses over decades. Everyday, we hear the news of crimes committed by Islamists which disgust and stun everybody for the amount of violence and wickedness embedded in the methodology used by their perpetrators. A fascist Islamic group that calls itself “Jammat Shura al-Mujahideen” issued a fatwa (religious decree) calling...

Jilbab row in London

A girls’ school in the East End of London recently decided to ban the wearing of the jilbab by students. The jilbab is the long coat or dress, which covers the body from the neck to the feet and is worn over the school uniform. As a result of the ban, three students stayed away from school and those wearers of it that continued to attend set up a petition demanding the right to do so. The school is in Tower Hamlets, which has the largest Bangladeshi population in Britain. The school has a very high proportion of Muslim students on its rolls. Many of the students wear the hijab, the head...

Ramadan’s Islam

Rhodri Evans reviews To be a European Muslim , by Tariq Ramadan. (The Islamic Foundation, Leicester.) If you read this book by Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Muslim professor top-billed at the European Social Forum, from a certain angle, it is easy to convince yourself that he is a progressive thinker. He rejects the idea of the ultra-Islamist Hizb ut Tahrir that Europe is an “abode of war” for Muslims, somewhere they can live only at war with the society around them. On the contrary, he emphasises that Muslims in Europe have more freedom of religious practice than in many avowedly Muslim countries...

A reply to the Stop The War Coalition

The officers of the Stop The War Coalition have issued a statement denouncing the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (pictured), which was printed in the Morning Star of 11 October 2004. Here are the statement and a reply. Stop The War Coalition officers' statement Since the bloody and illegal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq by US and British armies, the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) has consistently called for the withdrawal of foreign troops and the ending of the occupation. This position commands the support of the great majority of the British people, and was recently reaffirmed...

NUS opposes religious obscurantist speaking at ESF - or does it?

On Wednesday October 6th, the National Union of Students National Executive Committee overwhelmingly passed a motion proposed by AWL member Alan Clarke, stating that since Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan is an Islamist reactionary, NUS should oppose his invitation to speak at the European Social Forum. However, following a campaign by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies , NUS President Kat Fletcher and National Secretary James Lloyd are refusing to carry out the resolutions involved. They cite the fact that 13 out of 26 NEC members have written in asking for the carrying out of the motion...

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