Clashes reported at funeral of Iranian dissident cleric Montazeri, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Clashes reported at funeral of Iranian dissident cleric Montazeri

Iranian reformist supporters have clashed with police following the funeral of a dissident cleric, opposition websites say.

Earlier tens of thousands took part in a procession for Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri in the holy city of Qom.

Clashes reportedly broke out but the scale of the confrontation is not clear, says a BBC correspondent.

Ayatollah Montazeri, who was 87, had denounced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election as a fraud.

The reformist Jaras website said mourners chanted slogans in support of the grand ayatollah and also of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Mr Mousavi took part in the procession along with fellow opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi.

Another site, Rahesabz.net, said some members of the hardline pro-government faction Ansar Hezbollah tried to stop chanting in the crowd, but left "after clashing with some people".

Many mourners were carrying green banners or wearing green - the colour of Iran's opposition.

Opposition website Kaleme.org said that following the funeral, some mourners threw stones at police surrounding the grand ayatollah's house and clashes with security forces followed.

Footage broadcast on the internet also showed thousands of mourners marching in the cleric's hometown of Najafabad, near the central city of Isfahan.

They beat their chests and chanted: "Oppressed Montazeri, you are with God now."

The government knows the funeral is one demonstration it cannot forbid, says the BBC's Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne, although it fears it could spark another round of protests.

Continue reading at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8423794.stm

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Iran warning over Saudi attack on Yemeni Shia radicals, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Iran warning over Saudi attack on Yemeni Shia radicals

10 November 2009

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has warned against foreign intervention in the conflict between the Yemeni government and rebels.

Unidentified parties were adding fuel to the crisis, and attempts to help or to take military action would have negative consequences, Mr Mottaki said.

Correspondents say his comments appear to have been intended for Saudi Arabia.

Shortly afterwards, Riyadh promised it would continue air strikes until the rebels moved back from its border.

"We are not going to stop the bombing until [they] retreat tens of kilometres inside [the Yemeni] border," Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khaled Bin Sultan said, according to the AFP news agency.

Saudi forces launched a ground and air offensive on the rebels, known as the Houthis, after a security officer was killed in a cross-border raid by the group in its south-western Jizan region.

The Houthis meanwhile said on their website that Saudi fighter jets had bombed villages on the Yemeni side of the frontier on Tuesday, killing two women and wounding a child.

Strikes also targeted a government building in the village of Shida, they said.

'Be careful'

In Tehran on Tuesday, Mr Mottaki was asked about Yemeni allegations that Iranian religious and media organisations were backing the rebels, who want more autonomy and a greater role for their version of Shia Islam, Zaydism.

http://newageislam.com/iran-warning-over-saudi-attack-on-yemeni-shia-radicals/islamic-world-news/d/2080

Iran: Where is the Islamic Republic going?, Islam and Politics, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Politics

Iran: Where is the Islamic Republic going?

By Houshang Sepehr

September 2009

The character of the movement

Apart from a section of the faction in power, a few cynics and partisans of conspiracy theories, to which some confused leftist groups and personalities have unfortunately been attracted, nobody doubts that the people of Iran, in their overwhelming majority, have strongly and clearly expressed their desire to finish with the present political system. Since the so-called “reformist” faction wasted invaluable time and missed its one occasion, it is the whole Islamic system, and not only the conservatives, which is being challenged.

In Iran nobody believes a word of the government propaganda which proclaims that the protests that followed the announcement of the results of the presidential election were organized from outside Iran. This crisis has all the aspects of a total bankruptcy of the Islamic Republic. For the last thirty years, in order to survive its crises and mask its fall, the regime has constantly invoked foreign threats, real or imaginary.

On the other hand, in the West certain left “analysts” declare that the crowds of demonstrators in the streets of Teheran and other cities come from the best-off layers of the urban middle-class and that Moussavi is their political representative. According to them Ahmadi-Nejad continues to have strong support among the overwhelming majority of the population in poor urban and rural areas. These alleged analysts know nothing about the class structure of Iranian company, nor about the nature of the Islamic Republic, nor what was at stake in this election, nor its consequences for the future of the country, nor the facts concerning the results of the election.

http://newageislam.com/iran--where-is-the-islamic-republic-going?/islam-and-politics/d/1869

The Tragic Illusion of the Islamic State by Tarek Fatah, Islamic Ideology, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Ideology

The Tragic Illusion of the Islamic State by Tarek Fatah

Book review by Babar Ayaz

Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of the Islamic State

By Tarek Fatah;

Fatah touches this issue to set the course of research: “Most Muslims too believe that countries with majority Muslim populations are Islamic countries with a distinct character. However, this is not how the Islamists see the world. From the perspective of those who follow the doctrine of Wahhabism or Salafi Islam or even the ruling ayatollahs of Iran, a country can be labelled an Islamic State only if it is governed by the laws of Shariah. Thus neither Turkey nor Indonesia is an Islamic State in the eyes of the Islamists.”

Fatah has devoted chapters to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which claim to be Islamic states, and has argued that there was nothing that proves the claim of these countries that they are Islamic states. Maintaining his blunt style, he has broken the myth these states have tried to build around themselves. He maintains that the institutions of Saudi Monarchy supported by Wahhabi clergy and Iranian Velayat-e-faqhi (a religious institution which is supreme and above the elected parliament) have no place in Islam.

He rejects the two-nation theory, considered the basis for the creation of Pakistan. To him: “The biggest losers in this great game of divide and rule were India’s Muslim. In the name of Islam, they were divided into three separate parts and cut off from each other.”

http://newageislam.com/the-tragic-illusion-of-the-islamic-state-by-tarek-fatah--/islamic-ideology/d/954