Getting to understand Lebanon – its politics and its soul
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

I have long harboured the wish to visit Lebanon but have always had some misgivings about safety. Most people associate Lebanon with civil war, which after 15 years of sectarian violence, ended in 1990. There was also low level fighting between the Hizbollah and the Israeli occupying army in Southern Lebanon, and who could forget the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila camps just outside Beirut. I was pleasantly surprised that I found it very safe travelling alone recently to most parts of that small country which has an amazingly rich history and beautiful, varied landscape. The only place that I dared not venture was Southern Lebanon, until recently under Israeli occupation before the Hizbollah guerillas drove them out after nearly 20 years. I have always been keen to understand Lebanon, which I thought is the most enigmatic among Arab countries. I was especially curious about the Cedars and Mount Lebanon, two mystical symbols of the Lebanese nation. However I could not get satisfactory answers from Lebanese immigrant families that I befriended when I was studying in Australia in the early 80’s. Now I could understand why – my Lebanese friends in Brisbane and Sydney were simple, sunni muslims who had migrated to Australia to escape the ravages of civil war, whereas the Cedars and Mount Lebanon are exclusive symbols revered by the Maronite Christians for whom the Lebanese nation was carved out from Greater Syria by the French Mandate authority. The French were the guardians of the Maronite Christians and their special relationship stretched back to the Crusades. When the first Crusade arrived in the region of Tripoli in 1099, they were welcomed by the Maronites, who advised them as to the safest route to Jerusalem. The French played a leading role in forcing the Ottomans in 1860 to create the Special Province of Mount Lebanon under european protection for the Maronites. In 1920 the Maronites pressured the French to enlarge Mount Lebanon administrative region to include the major coastal plain, where the major cities are, to carve out for themselves a sufficiently large territory to be able to survive as an independent state separate from muslim Syria. It happened that the major coastal cities of Sidon, Tripoli and Beirut are predominantly muslim. It is this peculiar social mix of Lebanon, which also include the Greek Orthodox Christians, Druze and Shia muslims and later Palestinian fighters and refugees that led to the difficulties and volatility of her sectarian politics until a decade ago.

Travelling in many parts of Lebanon feeling secure and comfortable among its friendly people, and while in Beirut staying at the swanking new Movenpick Hotel built onto the side of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean where every night there was a glittering party or wedding reception of upper class families, and on top of that the frenetic phase of reconstruction in Beirut, it was hard to imagine that until a few years ago there was a bitter and bloody civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims, plus a host of permutations of side conflicts – Syrian troops vs. Maronites (in defense of Palestinians), Maronites vs. Palestinians, Syrians vs. the PLO and back to the Maronites, Israeli bombardment of Beirut in pursuit of the PLO, the Hizbollah vs. Israelis, Hizbollah vs. Amal, Druzes vs. Christians, and not least, fighting between Christian militias.. Near the site of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps now stand a new football stadium that one can see as one heads south out of Beirut towards Sidon. But one need not look very hard for the scars of violence past. A doctor friend took me around his hometown of Sidon, an Islamic city where there are still many buildings with pock marks and mosque minarets partly damaged by Israeli shells as they marched north to Beirut. In Tripoli, an Islamic city in the north of Lebanon where Arafat and a core of PLO fighters were entrenched for a period, there were similar reminders of attacks by rival Palestinian factions supported by the Syrians. Downtown Beirut (Beirut Central District) was the site of the bloodiest fighting during the civil war. One can see testimony of this in a few buildings still left with pock marks from snipers’ shells on their walls which become more concentrated around windows frames. Happily today much of Downtown Beirut has undergone massive redevelopment, restoring many of the Ottoman and French Mandate era buildings. The area around Place d’Étoile is especially beautiful, its layout and buildings modeled along Paris Right Bank’s. In the vicinity, within walking distance from one to another are many, very beautiful old churches and mosques. The magnificent Omari Mosque (Grand Mosque), now under renovation, was originally built in the 12th century by the Crusaders as the Church of St. John the Baptist, and later converted to a mosque when the Mamelukes finally drove them out of Beirut for the last time. Nearby are Amir Munzir Mosque built in 1620 and Amir Assaf Mosque built in the 1570’s. And yet there is a huge modern mosque being constructed just nearby. Sharing the same area are the many churches and cathedrals like the Maronite Cathedral of St. George, completely restored after the civil war, the Greek orthodox cathedral of St. George, the St. Louis Capucin Church, among others, all exquisitely beautiful buildings.

The seeds of the civil war was Lebanon’s uneasy mix of confessional groups, with the Maronite Christians given an edge of supremacy over the others by the French at the birth of the nation. Accordingly to its constitution, the President is always a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of Parliament, a Shia Muslim, and Lebanese politics has always had a heavy sectarian bent, its political parties largely organized around these confession groups. Things came to a boil with the first civil war in 1958 between sunni muslims who were largely pro Pan Arabism of Nasser and the pro west Christians. Apart from that sectarian bent, their politics was also intensely clannish. Suleiman Franjieh, elected to the Presidency in 1970 was fiercely militant in his championing of Maronite supremacy and equally fiercely tribal. A commentator said of him, “His only previous claim to fame had been his involvement in the machine gunning inside a church of 22 members of a competing Christian Lebanese clan”. The second civil war, still fresh in many people’s memory today, broke out in 1975 as a result of a heavy Palestinian presence in Lebanon, both as refugees and as PLO fighters after the events of Black September of 1970 in Jordan. The civil war erupted when a bus load of Palestinians were massacred as revenge killings by Maronite Phalange militias. The Militias flourished around political groupings, the most well known of them was the Maronite phalangistes, which had close ties with Israel, and on the muslim side, a loose grouping called the National Movement.

But pure religious motives were probably not the real inspiration for the civil war. The Christian militias at times worked together against the National Movement and the Palestinians, and at other times were engaged in vicious infighting amongst themselves. It is really baffling for an observer from outside the region to grasp that a people who share many things in common – language, ethnicity, Arabic script (even in churches), and almost all having muslim sounding Arabic names, could be at each others’ throat for so long.

But today such a bitter civil war would probably not recur. The memory of death and destruction surely is still painful for the orphan, widows relatives of those who died, and the scars are still evident that many Lebanese would probably be inclined to think that what took place was sheer stupidity. But more so perhaps the influence of religion in people’s lives is much diminished today and increasingly private. With the secular materialist culture which globalization has wrought everywhere especially in the less conservative arab countries like Lebanon, people are more preoccupied with keeping up with the latest things and the most fashionable in popular culture, and few would want to fight and die for a cause. At least that was what I could discern in Beirut. I was there during the height of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, yet it was hard to notice any outrage among Beirutis, and my Arab friends did not talk about it, and even less so Lebanese television with its endless entertainment, talk and games shows. In a way, the much-attenuated influence of religion in daily life and as a social bond may mean less likelihood of a religiously motivated war, but the fast erosion of local culture, both Arab Christian and Arab Muslim, each with their rich traditions and history, and in their place, a secular, western consumerist culture is very disconcerting.

Going back to my earlier curiousity about the mystical Cedars and Mount Lebanon, the most satisfying aspect of my visit to Lebanon was making that long trip up the Qadisha valley, high up in the northern part of the Lebanese mountains. Mount Lebanon, I found out, is not one solitary mountain, but the range of mountains which make up much of Lebanon’s territory. Rising abruptly from the narrow coastal strip, it is a totally different world from the swirl and congestion of Beirut. The Qadisha valley is the spiritual home of the Maronite Christians. They were driven out of Syria by the Eastern orthodox Christians and took refuge in the isolated valleys of Mount Lebanon. This is another world of beautiful mountain scenery and cool alpine climate, with many villages hugging the steep sides of the valley, the houses typically clustered around a church. At the head the valley near the top of the mountains, is B’Charré, the seat of the Maronite patriarchs. Two large churches stand out clearly from a distance, the Mar Saba Church and the Virgin Mary Church. The deep gorge of the Qadisha valley at B’Charré combines spectacularly beautiful natural scenery with some of the most important religious centres of the Maronite faith. On the steep sides of the gorge and valley floor are numerous isolated grottoes, hermitages, chapels and monasteries. For those who had been mesmerized by Kahlil Gibran’s “the Prophet” at some point in their life, B’Charré is the poet-artist’s birth place. The Gibran museum is one of those monasteries, carved out from a rocky promontory overlooking the valley. His body was brought back from New York and the monastery/museum is his final resting place as well as a gallery for his paintings, books and memorabilia.

The Cedars, as a place, is a plateau surrounded by an amphitheatre of snow-capped mountains a few kms up from B’Charré. I had expected to see an extensive forest of Cedars like those of the Moroccan Cedars in the Middle Atlas Mountains, whose wood is extensively used for the beautiful woodwork in mosques all over Morocco. But today all that remains of the once extensive forests is a small stand of Cedars in an otherwise barren landscape. This was it – Al Arz Ar Rabb (the Cedars of the Lord), the soul of the Lebanese nation and source of great pride among Lebanese Christians. This stand contains some of the oldest (1000 – 1500 years old) and largest Cedar trees in Lebanon. The forests were steadily depleted over thousands of years and it was only by the mid 19th Century that the local people became aware of the threat of its extinction. The Maronite patriarchs of B’Charré placed them under their personal protection, building a small chapel in the midst of the stand in 1843 and forbidding any further felling of the trees. There is also a small army camp beside the stand of trees, ostensibly to protect them too one presumes. The Cedars area, quite desolate in May, is actually a large snowfield and an excellent ski resort in winter. From the Cedars the road crosses the highest ridges of the mountains and descend onto the Bekaa valley, and heading south and one can take the much longer way back to Beirut, which I intended to do. But already just above the Cedars the road was still blocked by heavy snow and I had to go back down the Qadisha Valley to Tripoli.

I was very pleased to have finally made that trip to Lebanon, one that I would certainly recommend to others. For such a small nation, Lebanon packs it in terms of outstanding natural beauty and historical monuments – Roman ruins, Crusaders castles and churches, Mameluke and Ottoman mosques, palaces and civil buildings and French Mandate buildings. From another aspect, Lebanon’s recent history like that of Yugoslavia, and to a certain Malaysia too, where people of different cultures and confessions are forced to live together in a nation-state by accidents of history, provides sobering lessons on how to turn such pluralism into a constructive and vibrant force rather than a destructive one.

Looking at suicide bombing/martyrdom operation – beyond political correctness
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

In the concluding chapter of Ziauddin Sardar’s just recently published memoir, “Desperately seeking paradise – journeys of a sceptical muslim” (Granta Books, London 2004), a friend lamented at the intellectual and moral paralysis gripping the muslim world. In anger and despair, muslims are reduced to meeting the challenges of the modern world by summoning people to die for Islam. Ziauddin remarked “its time some of us demanded to live for Islam, unfashionable as that may sound. Martyrdom has its uses, but right now living for Islam takes more courage and more effort. You don’t have to think to offer yourself for death… But to live, you’re got to think all the unthinkables and face all the slings, arrows brickbats and siren songs of the entire gamut from the West to the Rest, from without and within, and then come up with a way forward worth traveling…”.

If there is anyone who has suffered the most vulgar of abuses and vicious denunciations in the media and in public, it is Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, a scholarly figure widely regarded as the world’s chief proponent of moderate Islam. At a time when the confused and despairing muslims cheered the Al Qaeda suicide bombing of the Twin Towers, Qaradawi condemned the act as heinous crime. When the Taliban leader Mullah Omar decreed that the Buddha statues of Bamiyan be destroyed, Qaradawi was among a delegation of scholars who went to Afghanistan and counseled them against that decree, suggesting that they should instead “focus on fighting poverty, diseases, unemployment and bloodshed on their soil”. During his recent visit to London for a series of conferences, the influential and well connected zionist lobby and right-wing Islamophobes lobbied the government to bar his entry into Britain using over the top smear campaigns and media vilification, citing his endorsement of terrorism for his stand on Palestine. Sheikh Qaradawi has of course visited London on numerous occasions in the course of the past decades. His 3 daughters completed doctorates at British Universities and he is a trustee of the Oxford University Centre for Islamic Studies. The zionist lobby and friends of Israel, seeing that the muslims are at their lowest ebb, with the popular perception among westerners that Islam equates terrorism, anti-west and incompatible with modernity, pounced on the affable and gentle old man to make sure that muslims in Britain (and Europe) are prevented from integrating into and contributing meaningfully to mainstream society. The zionists cannot afford to have muslims integrate into the mainstream. They must be kept alienated at the margins, trapped in the ghettos with no possibility of good education and social mobility for their children. The zionists would try hard that the western public only hears their version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An alternative narrative of palestinians as victims of the victims, having their land stolen and expelled from their towns and villages to languish in abject misery in refugee camps for more than half-century and subjected to brutal, colonial policies of the Israeli occupation must not reach the ears of the western public at all cost. When he arrived in Britain the Sun called Qaradawi a “devil” and its headline read “The Evil Has Landed”. Some newspapers and parliamentarians from all parties have urged the government to deport Qaradawi, claiming that he supports terrorism and preaches race hate and intolerance. Labour MP for Liverpool, Louise Ellman, known for her staunch support for Israel, wrote a letter to Home Secretary Davie Blunkett urging the government to deny access to Qaradawi. During Prime Minister’s question time in the parliament, the Conservative leader, Michael Howard said that Qaradawi should have been prevented from entering the country. Even if muslims found themselves on the ropes, it was heartening to see that common sense prevailed in an atmosphere of openness and freedom of expression, unheard of in muslim nations, even if those who wield influence, money and connections with the powerful media and politicians exerted their weight in a vulgar manner. Credit most be given to Qaradawi’s hosts, the Muslim Association of Britain, whose leadership ranks consist of articulate and educated professionals, for its mature vision and balanced, moderate stance on many issues relating to Islam and Muslims especially after September 11. Furthermore, the zionist lobby cannot have the monopoly of the Israeli-Palestine conflict narrative forever. At the opening of a conference for Muslims in Europe at the Greater London Authority’s building, he shared a platform with the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone. Interestingly, apart from the Mayor, American Rabbi Yisroel David Weiss also defended Qaradawi against the attacks by the media, condemning the Zionist state as a perversion of true Judaism.

The London episode, discomforting and unpleasant as it was, served an object lesion for muslims. Prejudice against Islam is still very strong, even among mainstream politicians, and this is despite official calls for bridging the gap between muslims and the West, and for integrating ethnic minorities. The zionist lobby and islamophobes will take every opportunity to exploit the western public’s ignorance of Islam to perpetuate this prejudice so that Israel can do anything she wants. But the answer to that is more efforts towards engagement and integration with mainstream society, something that muslims are beginning to appreciate, rather than retreating into the ghettos in anger and frustration, into the arms of Al Qaeda recruiting agents.

And the zionists never sleep – they will scrutinize every statement and gesture to pin us down onto that catch-all, convenient label of “supporter of terrorism”. For all of Qaradawi’s positive pronouncements on the need for dialogue and interaction with the west and non muslims, his categorical condemnation of the September 11 attack, Bali bombing and those in Riyadh and Casablanca, his detractors managed to get the mud to stick on 1 issue – the Palestine suicide bomber. Indeed, this is an issue that muslims must examine thoroughly, yet find it difficult to debate especially when a scholar of Sheikh Qaradawi’s stature has issued a fatwa (religious edict) that “suicide attack” against Israel are licit and that they should be called “martyrdom operation”. In defence of Qaradawi, Sohaib Saeed argued that “A question such as that over the rights and wrongs of suicide-bombing in Palestine can legitimately be approached from different angles. A jurist like Mr. Qaradawi is required to draw conclusions about its status within Islamic law – his comments are made in the context of a debate about the interpretative of Islamic texts” (If Qaradawi is an extremist, who is left? – the Guardian, July 9, 2004). Still, with all the respect for Sheikh Qaradawi as an eminent scholar, there is an element of human fallibility, as in all matters of interpretation, especially when the modern context of Israeli-Palestine conflict has no precedence in the classical texts. Have all angles and the role of reason been exhausted, and what is the impact on the wider picture of the Palestinian struggle for justice? While Sheikh Qaradawi and the mainstream, traditional Islamic scholars are unanimous in condemning acts of terrorism on unarmed, innocent civilians are heinous crimes in Islam, the case of suicide attacks against Israel are different. In an interview by Gilles Keppel, Sheikh Qaradawi’s argument was that Israel is a Muslim land (Dar al Islam) taken over by the zionists. It was therefore legitimate to wage jihad to reclaim it. Moreover, Israelis are not civilians, because all citizens are drafted into the army, even if they are in civilian clothes (Tightrope walks and chessboards : an interview with Gilles Keppel, Open Democracy 14 April 2003). The rules of engagement during war with regards to women, children, the old and infirm (non-combattants), religious sanctuaries, plants, animals and water sources have been clearly spelled in Islam, based on the prophetic traditions. The argument that the entire Israeli society is militarized and that they are colonizers, and therefore fair target for “martyrdom operations” is problematic. The most obvious thing concerns Israeli children. Even if they have been indoctrinated to hate arabs and consider them subhuman, they cannot choose where they want to be born, have no capacity to be conscientious objects and have no means of leaving Israel. In fact the same goes for adult Israelis who become its citizens by accident of birth, yet deplore the colonial policies of Israel and sympathize with the arabs, however small may be their number.

Many sympathizers of the Palestinian cause can readily understand why arab teenagers are driven to blowing themselves up in buses and restaurants – chiefly the unspeakable despair, frustration, and desperation of life under Israeli occupation and an uncomphending, indifferent world, coupled with religious notions of sacrifice. Understanding the phenomenon is one thing but giving it moral legitimacy is another, let alone accord it religious sanction. In a post September 11 world where “terrorism” has becomes the catch-all phrase to conveniently isolate and denounce the slightest challenge or grievance against the US hegemony, to whose coat tails Israel tightly clings, it demands Muslims to be extremely careful in our stand on issue like this – an over cautions political correctness if we like. But I think its worth the trouble. Unfair in the extreme we may complain, but the world’s judgement on the legitimacy or otherwise of the Palestinian struggle today appears to hinge only on one thing – the suicide bombers, the Archilles heel of the Palestinian struggle. Everything that is legitimate about the struggle – the quest for dignity and respect as a people, a truly sovereign state, right of return/compensation for what happened in 1948, the rights to Jerusalem etc, are wiped out by these acts of desperation, and it has to be admitted that targeting children in buses is revolting to the civilized world. Conversely, Israeli’s oppressive colonial policies, state terrorism, and destruction of Palestinian society are given tacit approval or grudgingly accepted as justifiable on the basis of tit for tat moral equivalency. For the few Israelis killed by suicide bombers, the reprisals and repression visited on the Palestinians are many times over in terms of loss of life and property, and worse, the rapid depletion of its leadership ranks. Maxime Rodinson, the distinguished French orientalist and long time supporter the Palestinian struggle who died just recently (May 2004) once wrote that Israel more or less tells the arab world in a clear and simple language, “We are here because we are the strongest. We will remain here because we will remain the strongest, wether you like it or not. And we will always remain the strongest, thanks to our friends in the developed world. It is up to you to draw your conclusions, to recognize your defeat and weakness, and to accept us as we are on the land that we have taken” (from “Vivre avec les Arabes”, written by Rodinson for the Le Monde in June 1967 just before the 6 day war, republished in the July 2004 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique).

Clearly, suicide bombing/martyrdom operation is too feeble to confront the Israeli military might, and the backlash against it too costly to be a viable strategy for the Palestinian struggle for justice, regardless that eminent scholars have given it a religious sanction, although I feel it still deserves further debate within the muslim ummah.

Beyond political correctness, today’s climate demands exceptional moral scrupulousness on the part of muslims if we need the solidarity of the world’s public on the issue of Palestine, which at present remains stifled by the revulsion towards suicide bombings. Sustaining its moral legitimacy seems to be the only way out, no matter how slow and painful the process may take.

Returning to Ziauddin Sardar, perhaps it is time that we ask muslims live for Islam, a much more difficult thing to do than its opposite.

Darfur Issue #1
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

I have to say that I am very disturbed by what is happening in Darfur.I have been trying to get an alternative narrative to challenge the mainstream bbc world/cnn reporting on the issue but so far nothing substantial has emerged.The response by the Sudanese general that I saw on bbcworld last weekend and on this posting the claim by gen Omar bashir that darfur is an excuse to target islam are not convincing. Other than saying that the west is targetting islam,they made no attempt to answer the charges of complicity in genocide.Has anyone got a more reliable alternative report to rely on?If not,then we should call a changkul a changkul,that what is happening is genocide on a black civilian population by arab militias backed by the govt.The footage I saw sometime back of militias on camel-backs looting and burning African huts did not seem irrefutable.So are the accounts of survivors(all civilians) which so far have remained unchallenged.Genocide and systematic expulsion of a people from their homeland come under crimes against humanity in international law.I hope the Sudanese muslims did not commit this, but if they do,we should not cover up their crimes in the name of Islamic brotherhood.

By the way,some of those black African refugees do look like muslims by the way they dress.Is this a racist crime arabs against blacks? I hope not.

It is true that western govts and Christian NGOs have been supporting the SPLA rebels in the south,and bill Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum,but in matters of justice muslims have to be very objective even if it is not in favour of our brethren.

Just being a spoilsport.
mazeni

Darfur Issue #2
by Dr. Fauzi

“you will not find the jews as well as the christians being completely at ease with you the muslims, untill you become the followers of their paganistic beliefs” the meaning of a verse of the Quran, this thing about the non muslims (jews and christians) against us is not a fantasy, there are views that the muslims’ overreactions are partly to blame, our ways in dealing with the non muslims, the over zealotness of the muslims, failure to comprehend the changing circumstances, the western sensibility is a potent force, well these half truths are there but the story of darfor yet again illustrates that muslims are the targets of the western machinations especially if they choose to profess the rules of Allah SWT as supreme,

“do you think that you will left at ease after you have professed to the truth of Allah SWT, have you not seen what have been afflicted to those who believed before you untill HE discerned ……..”

interesting read:

Darfur an excuse to ‘target Islam’
By AFP and AP correspondents in London
July 26, 2004

SUDANESE President Omar al-Beshir has brushed off mounting international concern over the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, accusing the West of using the issue to “target Islam”.

As Australia joined Britain in considering a possible troop commitment to Sudan, and the US and European Union warned of economic sanctions, Mr Beshir said the “real aim” of such moves was to stop the spread of Islam in the northeast African nation.

Pro-government newspaper Al-Anbaa reported that Mr Beshir made the remarks to supporters in the central region of Gezira following evening prayers on Friday. “The international concern about the Darfur issue is targeting the status of Islam in Sudan,” the paper quoted him as saying.

He said his national “salvation” Government, as its supporters refer to it, would continue to adhere to Islamic law, “set an example for social cohesion and bring humanity out of darkness to the light of Islam”.

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is 70 per cent Muslim. Mr Beshir seized power in a bloodless Islamist coup in 1989.

The UN estimates that 50,000 people have died in Darfur and about 1.2 million have been driven from their homes since a revolt against Mr Beshir’s Arab-dominated Government broke out among indigenous black African ethnic minorities in February 2003.

In response, an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, widely believed to be backed by Mr Beshir’s regime, launched a campaign of violence against black African villagers that the US Congress has declared to be attempted genocide.

The US has presented a draft UN Security Council resolution authorising sanctions against Sudan should it fail to prosecute leaders of the Janjaweed.

“They must stop Janjaweed violence, they must provide access to humanitarian relief for the people who suffer,” US President George W.Bush said last week.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot warned yesterday that “if the situation doesn’t improve quickly, sanctions by the international community will inevitably follow”. The Netherlands currently holds the EU presidency.

However, the chairman of the Sudanese parliament’s foreign relations committee, Al-Tigani Mustafa, warned yesterday that sanctions would “escalate and complicate, rather than solve, the Darfur crisis”. He won support from Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, who said Sudan should be given time to implement its commitments to the UN and the US.

Arguing that the Darfur situation was complex, Mr Abul Gheit said the Sudanese Government, with the support of the African Union, had begun taking steps to address it. “We cannot tell Sudanese officials … ‘Tomorrow you should immediately achieve complete calm’,” he said.

Britain has said it could send thousands of troops to the region if required. British army chief General Sir Michael Jackson told the BBC that “we could put a brigade together very quickly indeed”. Asked how many troops that would entail, he replied: “Five thousand.”

Darfur Issue #3
by Dr. Musa

asm
Like most of you i am disturbed by the crisis in darfur. I am however similarly disturbed by the responses of some of us towards the issues. Whilst admitting naivety at most of the ovewhelming issues at play there, we’ve made insinuations or displayed nuances which are in my mind lacking at the very lowest level of ukhuwah islamiah. And this my dear bros/sis is the adab/culture of husnuzzan (harbouring good thoughts of your fellow muslim bros/sis). And this concept as alluded to by al-Ghazali (may Allah bless his soul) is the least that a bro can expect of another ; especially so in the midst of uncertainty, vagueness and raging disinformation which is waged by the forces of disbelief.

I make no pretense of my unflinching and deep fraternity with the muslim bros in the Sudanese govt since the early 70s becos many of them were my teachers and friends during our formative years in the UK. Let there be no 2 ways about this – this is a govt which is committed to the upholding of the shariah. Her shortfalls in this holy endeavour is for another deliberation. It bleeds my heart reading Mazeni’s mail ( the hurt is more so following his alternative view of the syahid bombers and the Malaysiakini caption says it all ). Despite all that has been written and the various argumentations the other equally pivotal concept of “almautufisabilillah hi asma amanina – allahu akbar walillahil hamd” (and to die in the path of jihad fisabilillah is our greatest ambition) is inadvertently thrashed ; and thrown out of the window by the likes of malaysiakini.

My first intro to maqasid as shariah was by the likes of Zubair Taha, a minister in the Sudanese Islamic govt ( our father Prof. Malik Badri will testify personally that this psychology student of his has never been part of this savage, irreprehensibe and inhumane treatment of their citizenry) Despite being a minister; he personally travelled south and took up arms to lead the charge of the Sudanese soldiers against the treacherous SPLM (Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement) led by the American Proxy, John Garang. He was in the twilight of near death in one of the battles having been severely injured but a “dream” woke him up and he survived to fight the next battle.

The foreign minister, Dr. Mustafa was once my colleague in the FOSIS (Fed of Student Islamic Societies in the UK & Eire) executive committee. He remains one of the most articulate in the cabinet and is most able to counter the barrage of diplomatic animosity.

Dr. Hasan Turabi (in the late 70s with a few friends/reporters we had a close session with him on the Sudanese experience) who I much admired in the early days of the Sudanese Islamic Project; has unfortunately changed his Islamic ways – yes even prominent islamist do change hence the celebrated dua. Considered one of the most versatile and progressive Muslim leaders his fatwa of late has been “quetsionable” and in some instances “wayward”. His alienation from mainstream islamic politics was evidenced from his collusion with the American sponsored rebels; SPLM when his party PNC (Popular National Congress) signed the MOU with Garang in feb 2001.

So bros, Sudanese politics which you only just heard over the past week or so is webbed in a complexity of sorts. The other regions seeing the “gains” acquired by Garang are toying with cessionist ideas – like penang getting ideas of the succesful s’pore project in 1969! The least our bros expect from us is husnuzzan – is that too much to ask …

wallahualam

musa