Skip to main content

Posts

" The post-67 radical movements in the Arab world can also be called 'creeping': no 'big nights,' no general strikes or coordinated revolution ..."  Actually, there were general strikes (in 1978 in Tunisia, for example) and there were "bread uprisings" in Tunisia and Egypt. The problems was that the left was already weak as a pole of attraction, the Islamist organization had attracted more members and had more money. The balance of forces was significantly in favour of the regimes (there were brutal and also supported by external powers to maintain stability). Despite their superiority, a few Islamist organisations either adapted to the regimes repression and containment or were crushed (Algeria with the help of the French), or both (i.e. they joined the regimes parliament in spite of being repressed, e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt). Also missing in the summary the blunder of the Iraqi Communist Party in the 1950s althought it was the bigg
See comments in the previous post.
An example of how we do business in Britain A BBC Panorama undercover investigation , has just reported that  abuses and assaults on asylum seekers by G4S staff in a detention centre near Gatwick Airport. Many have heard of the Olympics 2012 scandal by the same security firm. However, the trail of crimes of G4S is long and that has not prevented the British government from encouraging crime.  What other examples do we have: the crimes of the banks (triggering the 2008-09 crisis and austerity), HSBC banks money laundering, Panama Files, a court ruling that selling arms to the Saudi monarchy is legal (although we know it used in killing Yemenis), most aggressive neoliberal regime and the second least regulated product market in the EU 
I have just finished reading The Mosaic of Islam  (the ebook version) I have some comments and a couple of corrections. 
P. 38: "most Muslims do not understand Islam correctly." I find this shocking. It assumes that there is a correct Islam. There is a historical Islam not a correct or a wrong one. As Ahmad Shahab put it beautifully there are contradictions and coherence of what Islam is in most Muslims. It has been the case in most of Islam's history. And the spectrum is so wide from Mauritania to Indonesia.. 
 P. 58: There is no socio-political explanation of the reason(s)/background behind the emergence of Muhammaed and Islam. There is no mention at all of the state and the character of the new society as if the changes in the juriprudence just sprung from a Caliph's brain with no connection to the material life. 
P. 66: "Part of the reasons where there is so much chaos ..." How does the beginning of the chaos in Libya (an uprising and NATO inte