A Veiled Movement for Women's Rights Sweeps Iran, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

A Veiled Movement for Women's Rights Sweeps Iran

Iran's Green Movement has embraced a new symbol of protest: the woman's veil. In an unprecedented show of support for women's rights, Iranian men have posted photos of themselves wearing the head covering typically worn by Muslim women. The images show hundreds of men clad in bright green headscarves posing mockingly for the camera.

This campaign was sparked by the government's attempt to humiliate leading student activist Majid Tavakoli. Authorities arrested Tavakoli after he delivered a fiery anti-government speech during Iran's Student Day demonstrations on December 7th. Following his detention, the semi-official Fars News Agency published photos of him wearing a woman's veil, claiming that he had been found trying to escape from campus using it as a disguise. Many members of the opposition believe the photos were fabricated to discredit and disgrace the young activist.

Once again, Iran's young and tech savvy opposition has cleverly utilized new media to bypass government censorship and laugh in the face of authority. The online campaign highlights the absurdity of the regime's attempts at character defamation. A similar strategy was used after the government subjected hundreds of reformers to show trials following the disputed June election. People posted YouTube videos of themselves confessing to the most ridiculous things in order to show how baseless and empty the government's forced confessions and accusations against its critics have become. By co-opting the government's own tools of repression, the opposition has rendered such tactics ineffectual.

Given the politically fraught history of the veil, this campaign is deeply symbolic. In 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi banned women from wearing a head covering in public in an attempt to move Iran away from what he considered religious backwardness and toward modernity. Prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, there was a revival of social traditionalism and women would don the veil to reaffirm their Iranian-Islamic identity against the perceived onslaught of Western influence. Today, young women flout Islamic dress codes by exposing their hair from under colorful headscarves in mass defiance of the Islamic Republic.

http://newageislam.com/a-veiled-movement-for-women-s-rights-sweeps-iran/islamic-world-news/d/2244

Islam's 'enemy within': growing fear of Shia influence across the Sunni world, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Islam's 'enemy within': growing fear of Shia influence across the Sunni world

Six Shia Muslims have gone on trial in Jordan, accused of "promoting Shia ideology and instigating religious sectarianism". Their case – the first of its kind in Jordan – is being heard behind closed doors in a military court.

Jordan is a Sunni-majority country but has no law that prevents Shias from practising their faith and its constitution says very clearly that there shall be no discrimination "on grounds of race, language or religion".

There is no suggestion that the accused did anything more than a bit of missionary work – holding meetings, issuing membership cards and raising funds – but the case reflects a growing fear of Shia Islam among the Middle East's Sunni regimes.

In Egypt last June, Hassan Shehata, a Shia cleric, was reportedly arrested with dozens of his followers and 13 were said to have been detained on charges of spreading Shiism.

Egypt has had a small Shia community for centuries, though today it's probably less than 1% of the population. The sect is not officially recognised and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights has documented periods of harassment by the authorities – arrests, interrogation, torture, etc – dating back to 1988.

The Sunni Arab regimes, most of which use religious credentials to bolster their claims to legitimacy, have become increasingly apprehensive during the last few years – mainly as a result of the Iraq war, which brought Shia Muslims to power in Baghdad, to rule alongside those already in place in Tehran.

From time to time there are also outbreaks of scaremongering in the media, very similar in tone to the western newspapers articles that claim Muslims are taking over Europe. One Egyptian magazine warned of "a real danger that Egypt and other Sunni countries might be converted to Shiism".

http://newageislam.com/islam-s--enemy-within---growing-fear-of-shia-influence-across-the-sunni-world/islamic-world-news/d/1682

The Counterinsurgency in Pakistan, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

The Counterinsurgency in Pakistan

By Kamran Bokhari and Fred Burton

August 13, 2009

This dramatic change begs the question: How was the government of Pakistan able to turn the situation around? This is an important question given the complex and historic relationship between the country’s security establishment and Islamist militants of various stripes. This relationship has long prevented the state from taking decisive action — even in the face of a growing threat to the state’s integrity. The first stirrings of the change can be traced back to the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, which brought Pakistan to the brink of war with India at a time when Islamabad was also facing a raging insurgency at home.

The dual security threats from domestic and foreign jihadists, coupled with political instability and an economy on the verge of collapse, created intense pressure on the Pakistani state. This pressure led to a consensus within the military-intelligence establishment that regaining control over Islamist militants was critical to the survival of the country. After aligning with Washington in the war against the jihadists, Islamabad had gradually lost control of Islamist militant groups it had previously backed as instruments of foreign policy in dealing with Afghanistan and India. (Islamabad had even helped create some of these groups.) While Pakistan was trying to balance its need to maintain influence over these groups with its obligations to the Americans in the U.S.-led war against jihadists, many of these groups, to varying degrees, moved into al Qaeda’s orbit.

http://newageislam.com/the-counterinsurgency-in-pakistan/current-affairs/d/1678

Terror Most Imperial, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Terror Most Imperial

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Part I

The case of Mojahedeen-e Khalg (MEK) showcases the ever present imperial influence of the West in defining the ‘other’ due to the ownership of language. The hypocrisy is stark given that the U.S. with the help of her ally the British waged a ‘war on terror’ which has resulted in the death of over a million people to date. Yet, a certain Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, a member of the House of Lords from Gordon Brown's ruling Labor Party, has coauthored an opinion piece with Congressman Bob Filner (D-CA), both of whom promote the terrorist organization of the MEK. In their opinion, these two argue that engagement with Iran would risk, among other things, a “support for international terrorism”[i].

Lord Colbert does not do his title justice; to paraphrase Samuel Butler, a degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is under ground. Else how can he explain throwing in his lot with terrorists who are in the employ of Israel? "Israel is said to have had a relationship with the M.E.K at least since the late nineties, and to have supplied a satellite signal for N.C.RI. broadcasts from Paris into Iran” [ii]. Their servitude to the Israelis was after they had committed treason, murder, and terrorism while under the tutelage of Saddam Hossein – the man that the Americans and the British considered a threat to world peace, and whose demise and the invasion of Iraq has now caused a threat to world peace.

http://newageislam.com/terror-most-imperial/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/64