I. Special Focus Syria: Economic Reform or Economic Stagnation Syria's predominantly state-controlled economy remains stagnant because of the failure of the political establishment to implement extensive economic reform. Falling growth rates, rapidly rising population, an old-fashion socialist command economy, inefficient and heavily-regulated public sector, and restricted political freedoms have deterred direct foreign investments or the emergence of a viable market economy. Syria's inadequate ...
Tunisian journalist Lafif Lakhdhar was recently fired from the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat , for his liberal views. The paper is owned by Saudi Prince, Khaled bin Sultan . Lakhdar used to write a weekly article for Al-Hayat's Sunday Madarat section for liberal journalists 1 . Lakhdhar is a leading figure in the drive for modernization and secularization in the Arab world, and his positions had long irritated the paper's Saudi management, as he had previously been suspended for two months ...
Introduction Depicting Jews – and sometimes also Zionists – as "the descendants of apes and pigs" is extremely widespread today in public discourse in the Arab and Islamic worlds. For example, in a weekly sermon in April 2002, Al-Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the highest-ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world , called the Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." 1 In one of his sermons, Saudi sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam and preacher at the Al-Haraam mosque ...
Ayatollah Jalal Al-Din Taheri, the Friday preacher of the city of Isfahan , recently announced his resignation from the post he had held for over three decades. He explained that his resignation was in protest of Iran's human rights violations, the regime's failure to meet the people's expectations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the harsh situation of unemployment, poverty, the spread of prostitution, illegal drug use, and AIDS. Ayatollah Taheri's announcement came on the eve of the ...
I. Saddam Hussein: The West Admits Defeat In a meeting with high ranking Iraqi military and government officials, Saddam Hussein commented on Western statements about current economic conditions in Iraq: "… They say that the economic situation and the standard of living in Iraq today, even under siege, is better than that of Egypt, and that Iraq improved and developed itself despite the siege. This is an admission that they were defeated in their efforts to kill the economy as well as the ...
During Friday prayers held at the University of Tehran campus on April 5, 2002, which were attended by thousands, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah 'Ali Khamenei called on Yasser Arafat to resist Zionist pressure to the death and attacked the U.S. stance on Israeli-Palestinian fighting, equating President George W. Bush with Hitler. Following are excerpts from the speech: The Zionist Regime and the Palestine Issue "The Zionist regime, as the symbol of bloodthirstiness, barbarianism, and ...
The Islamic (unofficial Al-Azhar) website, Lailatalqadr, 1 has published in recent months a series of articles on some aspects of the Islamic economics discipline and the role and performance of Islamic banking and financial institutions. The articles were written by Islamic scholars, including professors of economics at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which is the leading Islamic academic institution of higher learning in the Arab world. The following pages highlight key elements of these ...
A Saudi Call Against Politicization of Oil An unsigned op. ed. under the above title in the London-based, Saudi paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, refers to a "gentleman's agreement" last spring between OPEC and Russia, Norway, and Mexico, in addition to Ecuador and Oman, whereby these countries committed themselves to supporting OPEC's pricing policy. However, as soon as prices began to decline, "these countries reneged on the agreement and left OPEC to twist in the wind." The commentary goes on to say ...
Following September 11, the topic of anti-U.S. incitement coming from the Egyptian government press has been brought to the attention of the American public. Al-Ahram Weekly, which is available on the Internet in English, has received hundreds of emails from Americans responding to the content of its papers. The following are some excerpts: "We are told that thousands were massacred on 11 September," wrote William K. Black, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, LBJ School of ...
Syrian born radical Islamist Sheikh Omar bin Bakri Muhammad is the founder of the London branch of HizbAl-Tahrir (the Islamic Liberation Party 1 ), and of the organization "Jama'at Al-Muhajirun" ("The Emigrants," inreference to those who accompanied the Prophet Muhammad on his Hijra from Mecca to Medina). Additionally,Sheikh Bakri presents himself as the spokesman of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad AgainstJews and Crusaders. This organization, by Bakri's own admission, ...
