Both US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron reveal their simplistic, and somewhat imperialist, Western approach to a complex Middle Eastern situation, irrespective of the aims and intentions of the two parties chiefly involved: the radical Islamists of Gaza and the West Bank, and the State of Israel itself.
The tribe of Thaqeef remained hostile to Islam for a long time. It was one of the most important tribes in Arabia, living in Taif, where they were virtually immune from attack, as they lived high up in a mountainous area. Three years before he fled to Madinah to escape a plot by the Makkans to kill him, the Prophet aimed at Taif to win a new base for Islam, but they gave him a very hostile reception, hurling stones at him.
Introduction
A critical view of the various moderate Islam projects put forth by Muslim-majority states reveals the interplay between piety, domestic politics, and geopolitical developments. Singaporean Muslims need to discern an interpretation of Islam that best fits Singapore’s multi-cultural, multi-religious landscape.
Two recent high-profile Arab events honouring Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest and most moderate Muslim civil society movement, highlight a subtle tug-of-war over who will define ‘moderate Islam’ in the 21st century.
At the core of the tug-of-war is whether Islam in the 21st century will foster religiously and politically pluralistic societies or advocate autocracy.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn may be the 1970 Nobel Prize winner for literature, but that does not make his work The Gulag Archipelago enjoyable reading. The detailed description of the methods of torture employed within the Soviet system alone will turn many readers away. Beyond the interrogations are the trials based upon a mock-legal system epitomized by Soviet jurist Andrei Vyshinsky’s theory that truth is relative and that evidence can be ignored, to be replaced by forced confessions gained under torture.
Bashar al-Assad issued an administrative order to retire about 7,000 volunteers, according to Shaam Network.
The Ministry of Defense in the Assad regime’s government announced on Tuesday, January 2nd, the retirement of approximately seven thousand volunteers from Assad’s militias. Additionally, the Ministries of Defense and Interior unveiled the 2024 promotion schedule, encompassing the elevation of numerous officers.
Turkey bears responsibility for possible war crimes in Syria, Human Rights Watch says
Human Rights Watch says Turkey bears responsibility for some of the abuses and possible war crimes committed in Syria, mostly against Kurdish residents in northern Syria
In swathes of northern Syria, Türkiye is an occupying power.
Latest Developments
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed on February 26 that Iran violated a mandatory obligation to inform the agency of plans to construct a new nuclear facility. In a quarterly report viewed by FDD, the IAEA said Tehran’s recent groundbreaking on a new nuclear power reactor near Darkovin, known as the IR-360, ran afoul of an IAEA rule known as Modified Code 3.1. The code requires Iran to report to the agency when the regime decides to build a new nuclear-material production facility and provide initial design information. Iran’s violation of the code intensifies concern that Tehran will fail to inform the IAEA if it constructs a secret uranium enrichment plant to rapidly make fuel for atomic weapons.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza will be remembered as the moral collapse of the West.
As soon as the Israeli war began, following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, every moral or legal frame of reference that Washington and its western allies supposedly held dear was suddenly dropped. Western leaders rushed to Israel, one after the other, offering military, political and intelligence support – along with a blank check to rightwing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals to torment the Palestinians.
Border tensions between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, have been rising over the past two months. Following Israel’s counteroffensive on Hamas in Gaza, after the latter’s actions on the 7th of October, Hezbollah has vowed to support Hamas in their war against Israel.