Mohamad Bazzi For many Shiite Muslims, whose religion was born of rebellion, last year’s popular uprising in Iran was just the latest in a centuries-long struggle against injustice and tyranny. Now, as the clerical regime consolidates its grip on power a year after the tainted reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran remains torn by what seems to be a hopeless conflict between Islam and democracy. But the 2009 unrest and violent crackdown in Iran were actually battles in a larger war that has been raging for centuries within Shiism — a war over who should rule the faithful, and how. … Continue reading Khomeini’s Long Shadow – How A Quiet Revolution in Shiism Could Resolve the Crisis in Iran

Veiled Truths The Rise of Political Islam in the West By Marc Lynch This spring, Tariq Ramadan arrived in the United States nearly six years after being denied a visa by the Bush administration. The U.S. government had previously refused Ramadan entry on the grounds that he had donated to a French charity with ties to Hamas. Then, last January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Ramadan was welcome. His appearance in the United States seemed to manifest the White House’s changing rhetoric about the Muslim world. In June 2009, President Barack Obama spoke in Cairo of reaching out … Continue reading The Rise of Political Islam in the West

Oops, I tweeted again By Sreeram Chaulia In death, Lebanon’s revered Shi’ite Ayatollah Mohammad Fadlallah claimed a few unintended scalps last week. His cachet of attracting goodwill from those perched on the other side of the political fence in the Arab-Israeli conflict landed some tech-savvy sympathizers in the soup. The first victim of Fadlallah’s posthumous cross-spectrum charm was a veteran senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs at the US television channel, Cable News Network (CNN). Octavia Nasr posted a message on Twitter on the day the cleric deceased that said she was “sad to hear of the passing” since he … Continue reading Blapshemy of Octavia Nasr

Hawks sharpen claws for Iran strike By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON – “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August,” explained then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card in September 2002, in answer to queries about why the administration of George W Bush had not launched its campaign to rally public opinion behind invading Iraq earlier in the summer. And while it’s only July – and less than a month after the United Nations, the European Union and the US Congress approved new economic sanctions against Iran – a familiar clutch of Iraq war hawks appear … Continue reading Hawks claws for Iran?

Rage of a lost generation By Sudha Ramachandran BANGALORE – Kashmir is on the boil again. Some 15 people, mostly teenagers, have died in police firing over the past month. In an attempt at quelling the unrest, the government called out the army last week in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. This is the first time ever that the army has been called out in Srinagar for crowd control. The decision to send in the army was taken when even the imposition of curfew on an angry city failed to get protesters off … Continue reading Rage of Kashmiri youth

Al-Qaeda aims to cash in on Kashmir By Syed Saleem Shahzad ISLAMABAD – Pakistan-sponsored proxy operations that were largely abandoned several years ago have been revived at both the political level and on the armed insurgency front in Indian-administered Kashmir. For al-Qaeda, watching from Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area, this provides an opportunity for which it has waited a long time – to hijack Pakistan’s “bleed India” operations for its own cause, that is, to pull India into the region’s war theater. The struggle for the right of self-determination in Indian-administered Kashmir, which died down following Pakistan’s crackdown on Kashmiri … Continue reading Al-Qaeda – Kashmir