This was my first visit to Lebanon. Nearly fifty years ago I was only able to glimpse the country from the Israeli side, it was then enemy territory to me. I lived in Israel for a few years searching for my identity. At that time, the Jewish state was part of my identity and I contemplated staying there. Here I was again, surveying enemy country, only this time from the opposite side. Now I wholeheartedly support the Palestinians’ resistance and their right to return home in accordance with FN resolutions. In fact, I go even further. I believe that the whole of the Jewish settlement state is illegitimate and should therefore be returned to its rightful owners who should decide which settlers stay.

On the second day of the conference, I took part in a seminar where representatives from most of the countries that have liberated themselves from colonialism told of their experiences. I was particularly struck by the fact that none of the liberation movements agreed to disarm as a condition for peace negotiations, and that historically recognised, justifiable struggles for liberation such as those in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan are today called terrorism by the western world, though nothing in the armed struggle has actually changed and it is still protected in human rights law.

A journalist from Syria’s largest daily newspaper who interviewed me asked especially why I, in connection with my work for the Palestinians, had abandoned my Jewish identity. I replied that as a Jew I felt guilt about the treatment of the Palestinians because it is carried out in the name of all Jews. I converted guilt into responsibility by taking up the political cause for the dissolution of the Jewish state. Thus, as I have never been a religious person, the grounds for my identity as a Jew ceased to exist. I then urged all diaspora Jews to distance themselves from the Jewish apartheid state, mainly for the sake of the Palestinians, but also for their own, as they otherwise risk being held to account for Israel’s crimes on the day of reckoning.

I also had the opportunity to talk with leaders for different Palestinian organisations from the refugee camps in Lebanon. They were very keen to stress their close collaboration with Hezbollah and Hamas, that they had open minds and that they were Islamists. I now have a standing invitation to visit the refugee camps and they will be my guides.

It should be said that Palestinians in Lebanon are not permitted to buy land or houses, or to work outside of the camps; they cannot become Lebanese citizens, and as stateless persons they have fewer rights than the Palestinians living under the apartheid laws in Israel. They cannot launch armed attacks against Israel without permission because Hezbollah controls the whole of southern Lebanon and the border. However, Hezbollah wholeheartedly supports the Palestinians and tries to improve their situation in Lebanon. But Hezbollah is not a Palestinian liberation movement. It is a national Lebanese movement that governs in coalition with others, and has successfully defended its country against Israeli attacks.

Along the road that borders Palestine, there are pictures of martyrs from the latest war and of Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah, and loot. Special permission is needed to travel on this road. We passed several UN outposts.

Our caravan of buses and cars from the resistance conference was on its way to the top of a hill at the entrance to the Beqaa Valley and the border to the country of Palestine. We had a break there and visited a large open-air establishment with a restaurant, probably built by Iran because only the Iranian flag was flying. Viewing the terrain south of the Litani River in Lebanon with its mountains and deep valleys and narrow winding roads, it is easy to understand why Israeli tanks encountered great problems in comparison with Hezbollah’s small, easily moved units in the war of 2006..

While I felt very happy about the generous support given by all to the Palestinians, I could not but help realise that their chances of liberating themselves, especially through military struggle, are smaller than ever today, not least because of the rift caused by Abbas’ s collaboration with Israel. Considering the Wall, the sectionalised West Bank and the crowded flatlands of the Gaza Strip, the odds of winning an armed struggle against one of the world’s most powerful military forces are very bad. I therefore believe that a prerequisite for the liberation of Palestine is that Israel’s influence on US foreign policy must stop, and Zionism’s hold over the media in the western world must end.

In my discussions with religious leaders, I was astonished not only by their vast general political knowledge and insight but also that they were so keen to distinguish between Jewish settlers, Jewish leaders, ordinary diaspora Jews and the Jewish mafia in their struggle against the Zionist enemy. I had the feeling though, that they do not really understand that most people who identify themselves as Jews are actually secular and to them the line drawn between Judaism and Zionism is indistinct.

The Swedish group had a long, specially arranged interview with Dr Sheik Hareth Al-Dari, spokesman for most of the Iraqi resistance and general secretary of The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI). He lives in exile in Jordan, together with his closest colleagues. A delegation from AMSI visited Stockholm in the spring of 2009, a visit I helped plan and implement. I conveyed my warmest greetings before I asked some questions about how we might improve our support of the resistance in Iraq. I pointed out that the delegation had encountered marvellous weather and warmth that probably did not correspond to their expectations of Sweden. Al-Dari replied that given such a warm reception, even snow and ice would have melted.

He said that the resistance continues with unimp***d force, but that information on the web has been scarce due to resistance websites being hacked into by the enemy. Al-Dari was eager to point out that all tribes/families in Iraq consist to a certain extent of both Shia and Sunni and that the absolute majority of the people are against the occupation and also critical of Iran’s interference.

A small amusing example of this is that the now world- famous journalist who threw his shoe at President Bush was a Shia Muslim. His brother was present at the interview and can be seen here with me.

Most of the armed resistance fighters, however, are Sunni Muslims. Up until now it has been difficult to enrol Shia Muslims. According to Al-Dari this is partly because, before the invasion, the US bargained with certain Shia leaders promising favours if they did not resist, partly because Shia leaders in southern Iraq keep postponing their promises to start armed resistance.

I myself believe the fact that the Quisling regime is dependent both on the occupation powers and on Shia-governed Iran makes it difficult to enrol Shiites in the armed resistance movement. The Quislings’ foreign minister and all their foreign ambassadors are Kurds and this also favours the occupiers’ attempts to divide the country.

Al-Dari was keen to point out that the picture, promoted by the occupation powers, of the division between Sunni and Shia is greatly exaggerated, and that it is the occupiers themselves who are responsible for the terror against civilians and often they who perpetrate it. Al-Dari concluded by stressing the Muslim duty to resist and the importance of national unity against US warfare – which in actual fact is primarily a war for Israel, I added and received a nod and a wide smile for an answer.

Safar 14, 1431

The Philippine government of president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has asked the parliament to discuss the necessary mechanism to divide the autonomous region of Mindanao into two parts based on ethnicity and geography and not religion - but should abide by the Supreme court decision on the aborted memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain that was declared unconstitutional in August 2008.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is the largest Muslim group carrying-on resistance against Catholic-dominated Manila government. After peaceful negotiation failed to establish a Muslim Bangsa state in the Southern Philippes - Muslims took arms against the Manila government in 1960s. Since then 120,000 people have been killed, 700,000 people were displaced at the height of the government’s brutalities against the Muslims and over 250,000 people remain in evacuation centers across Mindanao.

While some government agencies are optimistic about the outcome of the negotiation being held in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday - Manila’s chief negotiator, Rafael Segius has downplayed MILF peace accord.

Phillipines president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in her July 27, 2009 State of Nation Address said: “We inherited an old-age conflict in Mindanao, exacerbated by a political popular but near-sighted policy of massive retaliation. This only provoked the other side to continue the war.” Even then she has been maintaining the Marcos’ trany against Muslim minority. Moshe Obama performed a similar act in Cairo while continuing Bush’s “War on Islam”.

The ‘Moroland’ consists of Mindanao, the second largest island within Phillipines, along with Sulu, Palawan, Basilan and neighboring islands – are home to over 12 million Muslims (out the total population of 20 millions). Islam came to Moroland in 1210 CE through Muslim Arab traders - 300 years ahead of Christianity brought by Portuguese invaders in 1521 CE. For more than three centuries the Spanish Christians tried to eradicate Islam from Moroland, followed by forty-seven years of American occupation and destruction of Islamic identity. In 1946, while ending American occupation – Washington, against the wishes of the Muslim-majority – awarded Moroland to Christian Phillipine in exchange for US military bases.

Safar 4, 1431

Yvonne Ridley is a British author and news reporter, who made world headlines when she was captured by Taliban while she sneaked into Afghanistan wearing burqa. She converted to Islam over one year after her release. She is a patron of the human right group Cageprisoners. Yvonne Ridley’s article on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui who was arrested by US authorities in 2003 on drum-up charges of she being connected to Al-Qaeda - was published in The Canadian Charger as follows:

“Why is there even a trial?” It was,of course, a rhetorical question and probably the most poignant and tellingobservation made during the opening proceedings against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui inNew York this week.

It is a question I hope every US journalist and media group across the world keeps on asking every day as American tax dollars are squandered persecuting an innocent woman for no other reason than someone is incapable of saying: “I made a mistake”.

I don’t know who this individual is, other than he is very senior in US intelligence and is directly responsible for ordering the kidnap, rendition, torture and abuse of Dr Aafia and the disappearance of her three children.

In his drive to cover his own tracks and frame Dr Aafia she ended up being shot several times by US guards in an Afghan police cell in the province of Ghazni.

Initially, he may have done nothing more than sign a piece of paper which brought about her kidnap from Karachi way back in March 2003 – but by now he will know that the entire Muslim world is watching and waiting to see what happens when the trial gets underway for real on Tuesday, January 19.

Despite the judge’s futile attempts to keep switching and changing pre-trial hearings, supporters of Dr Aafia still manage to fill the spectator gallery and overspill room.

Judge Richard Berman will by now be acutely aware he is handling one of the most sensitive cases ever brought before a court in the entire history of George W Bush’s ill-fated War on Terror.

I know he has received hundreds of postcards from those who have attended Cageprisoner meetings demanding he uses his influence to stop the primitive and brutal strip searches Dr Aafia has been forced to endure every time she meets with her legal team and attends court.

Should she resist these searches, I can tell you having witnessed CCTV footage of a woman prisoner doing the same, Dr Aafia will be held down by around four to five male prison warders while two female officers tear away at her clothes and then carry out full cavity searches.

What I witnessed on CCTV footage is tantamount to rape and had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have thought it was filmed in a third world country.

Sadly this primitive practice and the pleas of hundreds, if not thousands of westerners to Judge Berman to have the practice stop, has yet to take effect.

The trial is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, January 19 at 9am in the Federal Court in Manhattan, New York where the frail Pakistani mother-of-three faces charges for an alleged crime which happened in Afghanistan in July 2008.

The pre-trial hearing on Monday was quite illuminating in itself after the prosecution ..

ADMITTED Dr Aafia is not a member of al-Qaida

REVEALED she has no links to any terrorist organization

STATED there were no fingerprints on the gun she was supposed to

have wrested from one of the soldiers.

CONCEDED no bullets were recovered from the cell

The defence complained that the prosecution had still not turned over the list of witnesses they intend to call so defence lawyers have no idea who those witnesses are.

It had previously been agreed that the legal team representing Dr Aafia would get those names at least 1 week before the start of trial.

Dr Aafia’s lawyers requested once again that she be spared the strip searches and have a video link.  The judge said he wanted now for her to have the right to confront her accuser so she must be forced to court.

It should be noted that the defense made the argument that if Aafia’s ability to face her accusers is so paramount, why is this not applied to the “evidence” when those who accuse her of having this evidence are not being brought to court and so she has no right to confront them? However she still must be strip searched and brought to trial against her will for the sake of this same right.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Aafia made one appeal to the public saying that she was for peace and wanted to help.  She said that she was not against America and many injustices are being done to her. Many people in the audience cried as the US marshalls again forcibly removed her, physically pushing her at times.

The defence lawyers pleaded with the US marshalls and the MDC prison legal representative, Christa Colvin, to allow even a 5 minute meeting between Aafia and her brother but the US marshals refused. When her brother attempted to say a few words to her, the marshals turned Aafia’s head away so she could not respond.

So, this is justice US style.

The case, outlined by the prosecution appears to be so thin it is anorexic. It all rests on whether this tiny framed, frail woman wrestled an assault rifle from the hands of a burly US soldier and fired off two rounds while she was in a dazed and confused state.

The fact that she was kidnapped from her home city in Pakistan at the behest of US intelligence, beaten, tortured and abused in Bagram for several years before being dumped outside the governor of Ghazni’s home five years later is not up for discussion.

The fact her three children, two of the US citizens, were also kidnapped and two of them are still missing is, apparently not relevant either.

All Judge Berman wants to establish is: “Did Aafia wrestle the gun for a US soldier with the intent to shoot him?”

And since there’s no forensic evidence tying Dr Aafia to the gun, there seems to be no case. No fingerprints, no bullets, no residue – NOTHING.

The prosecution have even conceded there are no terror links which blows the New York tabloids’ headlines calling her the ‘Al-Qaida Mom’.

As I said at the start of this article the rhetorical question asked by one observer was probably the most poignant one of the day: “Why is there even a trial.”

But here’s an even better question I challenge the US media to ask: “Who is responsible for putting this innocent women through six years of hell and where are her missing children?”

Safar 1, 1431

Brother Zafar Bangash is a Pakistani-born Canadian citizen. He is an Engineer by profession but also a great speaker and writer. He edited Toronto-based monthly magazine ‘Crescent International’ for many years. Currently, he is with ‘The Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought’ an Islamic think tank with offices in Canada, Pakistan, the UK and South Africa. He wrote the following article for Crescent International.

Two laments are common among Muslims: lack of unity and negative projection of Muslims in the Western media. Most Muslims believe cooperation between Muslim rulers and governments constitutes unity. The desire for favourable projection in the Western media is based on an equally faulty assumption that journalists do not know the truth about Islam and Muslims. If only Muslims made the effort to write letters to editors, the media would correct their negative reporting.

The very existence of Muslim nation-states is a violation of Allah’s (swt) designation of Muslims as one Ummah (21:92, 23:52). The nation-state structure is a European colonial imposition to divide Muslims. By adopting this concept, Muslims are ipso facto, guilty of rejecting the Qur’anic command of living as part of the Ummah. To accept that the beneficiaries of such division will forgo their interests and work for unity is unrealistic.

Reasons for negative reporting about Islam and Muslims in the Western media must also be properly understood. Western reporters are not ignorant about Islam; their distortions are part of a wider war: to project policies that advance the corporate elites’ agenda of rapacious greed under the rubric of civilizational mission to promote human rights. Creating enemies — real or imagined — is part of this agenda. Since the Muslim world has resources, primarily oil and gas, that the West covets and the fact that the Muslims are a soft target, they are projected as the enemy to justify the wars being waged against them. If multinationals do not care about their own people, why should they care for Muslims in distant lands?

Muslim rulers work in tandem with and for the interest of the West because their personal survival depends on it. Thus one is confronted with a curious paradox: while hundreds of millions of Muslims live in abject poverty their rulers lead a lifestyle that would be the envy of most people in the West. Expecting unity from such people is unrealistic. What Muslims and the Islamic movement must strive for is to change this situation but the question is: how? Getting rid of individual rulers may help assuage Muslim anger but it does not solve the fundamental problem of illegitimacy of the systems imposed in their societies. The Islamic movement must work to dismantle these systems rather than vent their anger by killing rulers, hateful as they may be. We can compare the situations in Iran and Egypt. In Iran, the Muslim masses led by a muttaqi leader, overthrew the oppressive order in 1979 and ushered in an Islamic system. In Egypt, the Muslims killed then President Anwar Sadat in October 1981 but they are faced with an even more oppressive dictator.

How did Muslims end up in this sorry state? The answer lies in our history, both distant and recent. The seeds of disunity were sown in early Islamic history when the khilafah was subverted into mulukiyah. This was the fundamental breach in the divinely-inspired system that occurred so soon after the Prophet (s) left this world. The deviation at the core worked its way through the Islamic polity and a thousand years later Muslims were so weakened that they easily succumbed to the colonial onslaught. The nation-states that emerged from the bowels of colonialism were infected by the same germs that had weakened the Ummah in the first place. There was also a deadly virus attached to it: sectarianism. This virus has wreaked havoc in the Ummah and has been used to deadly effect by the enemies of Islam.

We must also add nationalism to the viruses infecting the Ummah. Nationalism is little more than glorified tribalism, a primitive social construct that was challenged and defeated by the liberating influence of Islam in Arabia 1,400 years ago. Muslims that imbibed the Islamic spirit fully had to contend with the jahili spirit of tribalism. The Umayyads, the principal standard bearers of tribalism, were the first to strike at the core of Islamic values. Jealousy was also a factor. Before the advent of Islam, the Abd Shams clan to which the Umayyads belonged considered itself superior to the Banu Hashim clan of the Prophet (s). Muhammad’s (s) prophethood upset this hierarchy of power and prestige in Makkah. The Umayyads did not reconcile with such loss, hence their staunch opposition to the Prophet (s) and his message until the very end when it was no longer tenable. Abu Sufyan led the Makkan mushriks in all the battles against the Prophet (s) except Badr. On that occasion Abu Sufyan was leading the Qurayshi caravan on its way back to Makkah from Syria. Muslim threat to the caravan was the main reason for the battle of Badr.

It appears little has changed in the Middle East in 1,400 years. The early opponents of the Prophet of Allah (s) are alive, their jahili spirit manifeting itself in their descendants who rule the Middle East today. They not only promote tribal loyalties but are also aligned with the enemies of Islam. The Middle East has once again become a cauldron of intrigue and superstition. Instead of supporting the struggling Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon or joining hands with the Islamic State of Iran for dignified existence, Arabian rulers are openly aligned with the US and Israel. They are busy stoking the flames of sectarianism to divide Muslims.

If Muslims want to change their present sorry state, they must first develop a better understanding of the reality facing them. Killing one or two rulers, trying to infiltrate the military to bring about a coup or hoping to win power by participating in fraudulent elections is not the answer. The Islamic movement has to bring about a revolution through non-violent resistance in their societies. For this, the emergence of muttaqi leadership that has clear directional course is an absolute necessity. There are no short-cuts in the Islamic movement.

Muharram 27, 1431

Barack Obama has not only boosted on-going western genocide of Muslim Afghans - he has opened another war front against Muslim Yemen. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia were more than glad to the proxy gladiators against the militarily ill-equipped Shia Zaidi resistance which has been fighting the communists and the secularist regimes which divided the country after the abolition of centuries-old Zaidi Imamat in Yemen.

Professor Mohamed Elmasry in his recent article titled Yemen, Arabia Felix no more, wrote:

Three years ago, I visited Yemen and was surprised to discover one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Since then, I have developed a closeness to the country, its people and its history.

The ancient Romans called Yemen “Arabia Felix” (Happy Arabia), because travelers, after passing though the harsh, lifeless Arabian desert on the north–south route from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, found a paradise of plants, trees, water, mountains, greenery, and a civilization of happy, hospitable people.

Today, Yemen is Arabia Felix no more.

The mountainous northwest province of Saada is beset by war along its 800-kilometre common border with Saudi Arabia. Yemeni and Saudi forces are using air force and ground troops in a combined attack against the Jamat-Al-Houthi (The Houthi Group), which belongs to the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam.

Abdel-Malik Al-Houthi, the group’s leader, says they’re striving to reinstate better local government and protect the rights of northern Yemen’s many Zaidi adherents.

During the last four years, the group has taken over schools and police stations and set up military training camps. Al-Houthi has appealed to the Arab League to form a fact-finding mission to stop Saudi Arabia’s “unjustifiable aggression.”

On the other hand, the official Yemeni position is that the group consists of “traitors and agents” who want to overthrow the republic and reinstall an Islamic imamate system.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh said the rebellion was part of a war against the revolution of Sept. 26, 1962, which overthrew the “reactionary, backward, clerical, racial and tyrannical nature” of Zaidi-Shia clerical rule. “We will not backtrack, so let the battles continue for five or six years,” he said at a ceremony held to mark the revolution’s 47th anniversary.

The Saleh government has also accused Shia scholars in Iran, Kuwait and Bahrain of giving support, but the group has denied that it receives any. (Saleh was president of North Yemen from 1978, and has been president of united North and South Yemen since 1990.)

The civil war has so far left countless dead and wounded civilians, and 300,000 displaced Yemenis, who are living a miserable life. UN agencies, the Yemeni Red Crescent and International Committee of the Red Cross representatives have all expressed concern at the inability of thousands of people to move from the conflict zones to a place of safety.

While the Yemeni and Saudi forces might win the battle against the lightly armed Jamat Al-Houthi, it would likely not end the political movement, which is strongly supported by a good number of Yemen’s influential tribes. About 40 per cent of Yemenis, including the president, are Zaidi.

The violence in Saada has also taken on a broader international aspect. Last September the foreign ministers of the U.S., the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq met with their Yemeni counterpart during the UN General Assembly meeting in New York and issued a joint statement supporting “the unity, security and stability of Yemen.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country was ready to be part of a diplomatic solution, but cautioned against “foreign (read: Saudi) intervention” and imposing a military solution that would only complicate the crisis.

Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament, was even stronger in his criticism: “The intervention of the Saudi government in Yemen and repeated bombardment of unprotected Yemeni Muslims by Tornado and F-15 fighters is astounding. How has his Excellency [Saudi King Abdullah], the servant of the two honourable shrines, allowed Muslims’ blood to be spilt in Yemen by means of [Saudi] military devices? The news proves that the U.S. government has been the accomplice and assistant in such suppressive measures.”

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah called for rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to solve the conflict. “Every conflict in our region is being interpreted only from the perspective of the Sunni-Shia divide,” he said in a recent speech commemorating the Day of the Martyr. “It is being said that Turkey, the Sunni state, is engaging in the Middle East to take the role of Iran, the Shia state…There should be an initiative from any Arab or Muslim nation to bring those two big and important nations together to dialogue in order to put out the sectarian fire.”

In Saudi Arabia, the religious establishment issued a statement bestowing its blessing on the Saudi military operation.

“In their media and public debates, Saudis portray the war as one being initiated by Iran through its stooges; i.e. the Al-Houthis,” said London-based Saudi scholar Dr. Mai Yamani. “They say we are only fighting Iranian influence in Yemen.”

However, the tactic of fuelling sectarian discord has heightened discontent and anger among young Saudi Shia, who constitute 15–20 per cent of the population, and are a majority in the oil-rich eastern provinces.

For them, sectarianism is being used to divert attention from the more important issues of poverty, underdevelopment, and the economic and political marginalization in northern Yemen and southwest Saudi Arabia. “They express their frustration and solidarity on blogs,” said Yamani.

If the Al-Houthi movement should join forces with the separatist movement in the south, the country would split into three Yemens, none of which would be Arabia Felix.