Category: Islam

Islam, Politics, Russia, Terrorism, USALeave a comment

Moscow attack proves Russia — and US — have lost sight of priorities

Fernando Kaskais

People lay flowers at a makeshift memorial to the victims of a shooting attack set up outside the Crocus City Hall concert venue in the Moscow Region, Russia, March 24, 2024. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov We both have the same enemies but spend most of the time ignoring that fact By ANATOL LIEVEN The Islamic State terrorist attack in Moscow is the starkest possible reminder that despite the war in Ukraine, Russia and the West also still have some of the same enemies. What the terrorists — ISIS-K, an Afghanistan offshoot of IS, took responsibility — did in Moscow, they have done … Continue reading Moscow attack proves Russia — and US — have lost sight of priorities

Bizarre, Esoteric, Islam, War, ZionismLeave a comment

The Gaza War and the Red Cows of Prophecy

Fernando Kaskais

Image: The Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible Illustration. How an arcane Old Testament legend and Rapture-ready Texas evangelicals may have helped set the table for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. By CHRISTOPHER LORD Hamas plotted the Al-Aqsa Flood operation in great secrecy. Although Israeli military intelligence caught wind of extensive and mysterious training in Gaza months earlier, the final preparations for the Oct. 7 attacks were known only among Hamas’ top leadership. A rare window into the decision-making process, however, was opened during a bizarre interview on Oct. 26 on the Egyptian satellite TV channel Sada El Balad.  Mustapha Bakri, an … Continue reading The Gaza War and the Red Cows of Prophecy

Islam, Middle East, Military, War, ZionismLeave a comment

In Gaza, Satellites Show 157,200 Damaged or Destroyed Buildings

Fernando Kaskais

Top: On February 21, 2024, a boy stands atop a damaged building following Israeli air strikes in Rafah, Gaza. Visual: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images As the field of conflict remote sensing grows, experts are leaning on satellite images for humanitarian purposes. BY RAMIN SKIBBA ON OCT. 22, 2023 Israeli warplanes bombed buildings near Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, according to Reuters. Over the following weeks, airstrikes hit near the medical facility and neighboring structures, with some damage documented on video by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. By Nov. 12, in need of both electricity and generator fuel, Gazan health officials were forced to shut down both … Continue reading In Gaza, Satellites Show 157,200 Damaged or Destroyed Buildings

Freak Religion, Islam, Manipulation, Media&Culture, War, ZionismLeave a comment

How the Gaza War Can Be Big News and Invisible at the Same Time

Fernando Kaskais

Illustration by Walker Gawande by Norman Solomon – Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war. We are not. What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as a pointed finger is from the moon. The media words and images … Continue reading How the Gaza War Can Be Big News and Invisible at the Same Time

History, Islam, Middle East, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

Secularism in Iran

Fernando Kaskais

Iranian women visit the International Book Fair in Tehran, Iran, 12 May 2023. Photo by Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters Postcolonial intellectuals and Iran’s rulers agree that secularism is just Western imperialism in disguise. They are wrong Patrick Hassan is a lecturer in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University in Wales, UK. He is the editor of Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy (2022) and the author of Nietzsche’s Struggle Against Pessimism (2023). Hossein Dabbagh is assistant professor in applied ethics at Northeastern University London and an associate member of the Oxford Department of Continuing Education. He is the author of The Moral Epistemology of Intuitionism (2022). The latest … Continue reading Secularism in Iran

Islam, Middle East, Politics, War, ZionismLeave a comment

When Victims Become Executioners

Fernando Kaskais

Ibrahim Rayintakath for Noema Magazine Converging shifts in the Middle East erupt in the Israeli-Hamas war. BY NATHAN GARDELS – editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. The threads of conflict go back ages in the Middle East and never seem to end. Antipathies gestating from long-ago wounds are triggered by some current set of circumstances into fresh bouts of violence and war that conjoin with and compound past harms. What’s worse is that the impassioned hostility arising from existential stakes has intensified over the years into the horrifically unspeakable face-to-face brutality witnessed in the Hamas attack followed by the collateral toll from Israeli … Continue reading When Victims Become Executioners

History, Islam, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Praying in shoes

Fernando Kaskais

Egyptian Salafis listen to a speech by a presidential candidate in 2012. Photo by Moises Saman/Magnum Photos The Sunni movement of Salafism was born at the beginning of the 20th century, with the goal of modelling life on the 7th Aaron Rock-Singer is a social and intellectual historian of the modern Middle East and Islam. A fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, he is the author of Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and the Islamic Revival (2019) and In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the 20th-Century Middle East (2022). There are tens of … Continue reading Praying in shoes

History, Islam, Middle East, PoliticsLeave a comment

The Arab Kingdom

Fernando Kaskais

Sharif Hussein (centre, c1923-24), Amman. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress Amid the chaos of the First World War, a new pan-Arab empire was proclaimed. It faltered, but its historical lessons remain Adam Mestyan is associate professor of history at Duke University in North Carolina. He is the author of Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (2017), Primordial History, Print Capitalism, and Egyptology in Nineteenth-Century Cairo (2021) and Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East (2023). In December 2022, Abdullah II, the king of Jordan, gave an interview to the CNN anchor Becky Anderson. Sitting close to the … Continue reading The Arab Kingdom

Activism, Freak Religion, Islam, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

Iran Has Become a Prison

Fernando Kaskais

What I learned about the challenge of resisting a regime that locks up thousands of political prisoners. By Kian Tajbakhsh Amid the nationwide protests that have rocked Iran since the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, a riot and a fire broke out at Tehran’s Evin Prison on October 15. Iran’s security services reportedly responded with extreme severity, threatening to shoot prisoners unless they retreated to their cells. According to the authorities, eight prisoners died. Evin Prison occupies a special place both within the regime’s security apparatus and in the political imagination of … Continue reading Iran Has Become a Prison

Hypocrisy, Islam, Politics, Racism, Rights, UnbelievableLeave a comment

Gulf slave society

Fernando Kaskais

The glittering city-states of the Persian Gulf fit the classicist Moses Finley’s criteria of genuine slave societies by Bernard Freamon, adjunct professor at New York University School of Law and emeritus professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. He is the organiser of a website on the Islamic law on slavery, ijma-on-slavery.org. His most recent book is Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures (2019). He lives in New York City. Edited by Sam Haselby The six city-states on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, each formerly a sleepy, pristine fishing village, are now … Continue reading Gulf slave society