Iran, Israel, India, Lebanon, Somalia

October 26, 2007, 2007
The Independent (UK)

U.S. Hits Iran With Toughest Sanctions Since 1979
by Leonard Doyle

The Bush administration has moved a step closer to military conflict with Iran, imposing punitive measures on its Revolutionary Guard Corps and calling the al-Quds unit of the guards a terrorist organisation.

Vladimir Putin immediately called the new US sanctions the work of a " madman with a razor blade in his hand". The Russian President said: "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end?"

. . . The US was forced to act alone, however, with Britain only offering rhetorical support for unilateral action outside the United Nations Security Council. A plan to have gradually tightening UN sanctions is foundering following opposition from Russia and China. . . .


[Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.--Gidi Weitz and Na'ama Lanski, " Livni behind closed doors: Iranian nuclear arms pose little threat to Israel," Haaretz, October 24, 2007]


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October 26, 2007
The Washington Post

Hindus Detail Involvement In Deadly '02 Riots in India On Video, Assailants Tell of State Collusion
by Rama Lakshmi

Five years after one of India's worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence, a series of videotaped confessions released Thursday showed Hindu activists acknowledging their roles in the killings and detailing blatant state collusion.

In the video footage, recorded as part of an undercover expose by a New Delhi-based weekly magazine called Tehelka, Hindu activists and politicians bragged about hacking Muslims to death and burning their bodies. One assailant said he slit open a pregnant woman's stomach.

The violence began in February 2002 when a Muslim mob torched a train [It is still unclear whether any inflammable material was hurled into the train from outside or whether a short circuit triggered off the blaze.--see "Fresh probe in India train attack" at link below] in India's western Gujarat state, killing 58 Hindu passengers. Angry Hindu groups launched a wave of reprisal killings and set fire to Muslim homes and shops across the region. In all, an estimated 1,000 people died.

Human rights groups in India and the United States have charged that Gujarat's ruling party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, tacitly supported the mob violence against Muslims. Several thousand cases related to the riots are still pending in Indian courts and state inquiry committees.

At a packed news conference on Thursday, the editor of Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal, released the magazine's forthcoming issue, which contains 106 pages of coverage on the killings. . . .

Reason and Revelation

September 29, 2007
The Wisdom Fund

Reason and Revelation
by Enver Masud

[Speech given by Mr. Masud at the Aligarh Muslim University Alumni Association of Washington, DC fund-raising dinner in Rockville, MD.]


When Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) passed away in 632 A.D., he was the effective leader of all of southern Arabia. By 711 A.D., Arabs had swept across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. In less than 100 years, the Bedouin tribesmen, inspired by the Word of God, had carved out an empire stretching from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean - the largest empire that the world had yet seen.

Muslims conquered lands as was the custom of the day, but Islam was not spread by the sword. Indonesia is a prime example. Indonesia, with 6000 inhabited islands, today has the largest Muslim population. No Muslim armies landed in Indonesia.

Muslims offered an appealing message: There is One God; mankind is one; goodness is the only measure of a person's worth. Man was urged to care for the poor, the infirm, the orphan, to respect all faiths, and to search for knowledge.

200 years later Muslims are divided; the path forward is less clear.

In the Baghdad of 813 A.D., Caliph al-Mumun struggling to build a nation, is caught between the ideas of literalists and those of religious thinkers, and he has a dream.

He sees a figure of light and gold standing before him.

"Who are you?" asks a frightened al-Mamun.

"I am Aristotle", the spirit says. "I have come to answer your question".

"And what is my question?" al-Mamun asks - he knows but wants the spirit to say it.

"Your question is, What is better for the affairs of man and the affairs of society, reason or revelation?"

Al-Mamun nods, and asks, "And what is your answer to the riddle?"

"My son," says Aristotle, "they are not in opposition. But to find true revelation, man must first choose reason, because reason is the doorway to revelation."

Of course, the dream is imaginary. Author Michael Hamilton Morgan describes it in his book "Lost History" (p. 47).

So great was al-Mamun's love of knowledge that after defeating the Byzantine emperor, he asks not for caskets of gold but a a copy of the Almagest - Ptolemy's book on astronomy written around 150 A.D.

Al-Mamun goes on to establish the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Later al-Hakim will build the House of Knowledge in Cairo.

Revelation won hearts and minds

Reason gave Muslims the superior strategy and technology that helped win battles. Revelation taught Muslims the principles of just-war, and of mercy and compassion.

Muslims taught and practiced a degree of tolerance remarkable for their time. The Quran reminded them: "For each we have appointed a divine law and traced out the way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community." (5:48)

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was twice president of the Indian National Congress, a renowned scholar, and India's first Education Minister (my father was his private secretary), wrote:

"The unity of man is the primary aim of religion. The message which every prophet delivered was that mankind were in reality one people and one community, and that there was but one god for all of them, and on that account they should serve Him together and live as members of one family."

By providing opportunities based on merit to all, Muslims won the hearts and minds of the conquered people. Muslims worked side by side with Jews, Christians, Hindus, and others to create the centers of learning and cultural expansion in Iraq, Iran, Spain, Egypt, and India.

Knowledge lifted civilization

The Quran is replete with verses inviting man to use his intellect, to ponder, to think and to know, for the goal of human life is to discover the Truth. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) tells us: "The first thing created by god was the Intellect." And that: "One learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand ignorant worshippers." His words exhort us to: "Go in quest of knowledge even unto China." And to: "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave."

The love of knowledge helped create cities that drew scholars from across the world.

Will Durant in his Story of Civilization (vol. IV, p. 237) writes:

"When Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols it had thirty-six public libraries. Private libraries were numberless. It was a fashion among the rich to have an ample collection of books. A physician refused the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara to come and live at his court, on the ground that he would need 400 camels to transport his library. Al-Waqidi, dying, left 600 boxes of books, each box so heavy that two men were needed to carry it. Princes like Sahab ibn Abbas in the 10th century might own as many books as could be found in all the libraries of Europe combined."

Muslims built a civilzation that would lift Europe out of darkness.

HRH, The Prince of Wales, in his October 27, 1993 speech titled, "Islam And The West", said:

"Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, it also interpreted and expanded upon that civilization, and made a vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour -- in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture, architecture, theology, music.

"Cordoba in the 10th century was by far the most civilized city of Europe. . . . Many of the traits on which Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians to practice their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West.

"[Islam] has contributed so much towards the civilization which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and present, in all fields of human endeavor. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart."

End of Empire, beginnings of Aligarh University

The Christian reconquest of Spain in 1492 under Ferdinand and Isabella was the beginning of the end of the Muslim era. By 1858, the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar, who ruled little more than the city of Delhi, was exiled by the British to Burma.

In 1875, Sir Syed, seeking to improve literacy among Indian Muslims, founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. This college became Aligarh University. It nurtured many leaders of India and Pakistan. You, the alumni of Aligarh University, are continuing the tradition by funding scholarships for those less fortunate than yourselves.

Today, as it was for Muslims in the early 7th century, the key to successfully negotiating the path ahead, for yourselves and for generations to come, remains reason and revelation.

Update on 'The Israel Lobby'

September 30, 2007
The New York Times

New Group Boasts Big War Chest and Rising Voice
Freedoms Watch, founded by the Republican Jewish Coalition, to raise $200 million to target 'radical Islam', Iran
by Don Van Natta, Jr

Freedoms Watch, a deep-pocketed conservative group led by two former senior White House officials, made an audacious debut in late August when it began a $15 million advertising campaign designed to maintain Congressional support for President Bushs troop increase in Iraq.

Bradley Blakeman, the president of Freedoms Watch, who left the Bush administration as an assistant deputy to the president.

Founded this summer by a dozen wealthy conservatives, the nonprofit group is set apart from most advocacy groups by the immense wealth of its core group of benefactors, its intention to far outspend its rivals and its ambition to pursue a wide-ranging agenda.

Its next target: Iran policy.

Next month, Freedoms Watch will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States, according to several benefactors of the group.

Although the group declined to identify the experts, several were invited from the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group with close ties to the White House.

. . . Freedoms Watch has quickly emerged from the crowded field of nonprofit advocacy groups as a conservative answer to the 9-year-old liberal MoveOn.org, which vehemently opposes the Iraq war.

The idea for Freedoms Watch was hatched in March at the winter meeting of Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Fla., where Vice President Dick Cheney was the keynote speaker, according to participants.

Next week, the group is moving into a 10,000-square-foot office in the Chinatown section of Washington, with plans to employ as many as 50 people by early next year.

One benefactor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008.

Raising big money will be easy, the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. Mr. Blakeman would not confirm or deny whether any donor gave $1 million, or more, to the organization. . . .

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September 25, 2007
I.N.N. World Report

Exclusive TV interview with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer
Authors of "The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy"
by Claire Brown

In an exclusive, and sometimes controversial, interview with I.N.N. World Report, Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, discuss their groundbreaking book, "The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy."

After being asked about which 2008 Presidential candidate would stand up to the Israel Lobby, Stephen Walt responded, "It's obvious already that all of the major candidates have gone through enormous lengths to demonstrate their personal devotion to Israel, and that they will do nothing to change the U.S. - Israel relationship."

VIEW at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIPv298fdRY

CIA offered $2m to Lockerbie witness

October 3, 2007
The Herald (UK)

Revealed: CIA offered $2m to Lockerbie witness and brother
by Lucy Adams

The CIA offered $2m (£1m) to the Crown's key witness in the Lockerbie trial and his brother, sources close to the case have told The Herald.

Recently discovered papers show Scottish police officers investigating the 1988 bombing were aware the US intelligence service had discussed financial terms and witness protection schemes with Tony Gauci and his brother, Paul. . . .

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October 4, 2007
The Scotsman

Lockerbie evidence withheld from defence
by Michael Howie

FRESH doubt has been cast over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber after it emerged a document containing vital evidence about the bomb timer has never been shown to the defence.

The Scotsman has learned that the failure to disclose the classified document, which concerns the supply of timers identical to the one said to have been used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, led a review body that examined the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to conclude a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

It was not previously known that doubts over the timer were grounds for an appeal. . . .