A collection of videos from Muslim women around the world speaking about the challenges facing humankind in preparation for tomorrow’s historic conference in Tunisia.
(Video: Interview with one of the Women of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Yemen)
Photo: Turkish and Syrian protesters shout slogans against Syrian President Bashar Assad at a demonstration after Friday prayers in Istanbul, Turkey.
(Photo Credit: Tolga Bozoglu / EPA)
ihya, Syria, the Arab Awakening, Occupy & Change
ihya started out to cover the revolutionary trends shaping the Arab world. There were many ideas about this publication, to report what was happening, and to facilitate debate and discussion. We’ve not been able to fully realise our goals. However, having read about the atrocities being committed in the Arab world, simply reporting what’s happening is just not good enough for me or those involved with this publication.
We are all on a journey to discover ourselves and the truth of this world. This past year has been one of trying to reconcile many conflicting emotions and thoughts, and now, I think I’ve reconciled many things in my mind, which prevented me from conveying my own thinking, as I try to find my way in the world.
ihya will now take a different style and approach, from addressing global policy problems to political analysis to tackling scientific and philosophical conundrums.
May Allah (swt) forgive me for my procrastination and weakness.
ihya
Inside the torture chamber of Assad’s inquisition squads
Jolan refused to talk, causing the torment to become even more cruel. He was given 50 lashes with a metal cable in the morning and 50 in the evening. He was then subjected to what Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch describes as the “dulab” method. A tyre is forced over the victim’s neck and his legs so he is folded forward. He is then tipped on his back, immobile, and beaten. Another day, Jolan says, he was suspended from the ceiling by a cable. On his 45th day in detention, they finally took the blindfold off. But Jolan was not prepared for the sight that greeted him. “When I opened my eyes, I could see two girls who were taken from the demonstrations. They were religious girls – usually they would wear the veil – but they were totally naked: the only item they were wearing was a blindfold,” he says. “From this moment, I started crying.” With this image etched on his mind, he was taken back to the interrogation room and told that unless he talked, his mother and sister would be hauled in, also stripped naked and tortured in front of him. The UN report details similar “psychological torture, including sexual threats against them and their families”.
“Allah will torture those who torture people in this world.”
[Hadith of the Prophet (saw) - Sahih Muslim, Book 32, Number 6327]
US policymakers hope they can control the Arab Revolution
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a US think tank is hosting a book launch for “The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East” by Dr. Marc Lynch. US policymakers hope they can control the Arab Revolution and shape the nature of change according to US interests.
In The Arab Uprising, Dr. Lynch examines the emerging regional landscape in the Middle East, one in which, he argues, the old heavyweights - Iran, al Qaeda, even Israel - have all been disempowered, and nations like Saudi Arabia are powering a new cold war. Dr. Lynch highlights the new fault lines that are forming between forces of revolution and counter-revolution and shows what it all means for the future of U.S. foreign policy. Deeply informed by inside access to the Obama administration’s decisionmaking process and first-hand interviews with protestors, politicians, diplomats and journalists, The Arab Uprising is an unprecedented and indispensible guide to the changing lay of the land in the Middle East and North Africa.
Occupy London eviction: in pictures
In a Baghdad E.R., Womens’ Psychological Wounds Go Untreated
Another blog to bring tears to one’s eyes. The blog is written by Lubna Naji for the New York Times, a 25-year-old junior doctor who works in the countryside in Iraq’s Wasit Province.
These women are especially at risk in a health care system in which overworked doctors like me focus only on saving their lives; healing their invisible wounds is another story. Even though Iraqis have been living in a violent, unstable environment for years, there is still no culture of mental health care here. It has little to no support from the state or health authorities, and people who do seek psychiatric help are stigmatized by their families and society: these two truths reinforce each other. Even blast victims, if they recover, don’t get counselling.
Syria timeline: how the conflict has escalated - interactive
Global Art Uprising
Inspired by a Year of Revolutionary Protests, Artists Across the World Seek to Occupy the Public Imagination
(Photo Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr - “Tantawi is Mubarak” reads this street portrait from Cairo)
Libyan artists turns the remnants of war into art. Ali Al-Wakwak, a longtime artist in Benghazi, has collected the chunks of iron, burned out jeeps and rusted weaponry from the Libyan revolution and turned it into sculpture. Above are his pieces The Ant, meant to represent the Libyan people (“Gaddafi told us we were insects, OK then, we might be ants, but we are huge ants!”), Faces of War, which is still incomplete and made from old helmets, and The Dinosaur, meant to symbolize the now extinct Gaddhafi.
Photos by Karim Mostafa.
The Arab Spring, another development of historic importance, might portend at least a partial “loss” of MENA. The US and its allies have tried hard to prevent that outcome — so far, with considerable success. Their policy towards the popular uprisings has kept closely to the standard guidelines: support the forces most amenable to U.S. influence and control. Favored dictators are supported as long as they can maintain control (as in the major oil states). When that is no longer possible, then discard them and try to restore the old regime as fully as possible (as in Tunisia and Egypt).
The Imperial Way: American Decline in Perspective, Part 2
by Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
U.N. Report Accuses Syrian Government of Crimes Against Humanity
The commission received credible and consistent evidence… identifying high- and mid-ranking members of the armed forces who ordered their subordinates to shoot at unarmed protesters, kill soldiers who refused to obey such orders, arrest persons without cause, mistreat detained persons and attack civilian neighborhoods with indiscriminate tanks and machine-gun fire. (UN Investigators)
Download the report here.
The Khilafah: A bright Model for Women’s Rights and Political Role
Much has been written about the role of women in the Arab Awakening, and many stereotypes have been perpetuated by the media about women in Islam. This conference in Tunisia is a clear indication that women in the Arab and Muslim world are no longer going to be subject to stereotypes or oppression.
Women of Hizb ut-Tahrir from across the world have launched a global campaign entitled, “The Khilafah : A bright Model for Women’s Rights and Political Role”” that will culminate in a truly historic International Women’s Conference in Tunisia on the 10th of March, the week of International Women’s Day. The conference will gather female opinion makers from across the Muslim world and beyond to present a detailed vision of what the Khilafah ruling system based purely upon Islamic laws and principles would mean to the status, rights, and lives of women. Both the campaign and conference aim to explain how the Khilafah holds credible, viable, and practical solutions to the multitude of political, economic, and social problems afflicting women across the Muslim world. It will also challenge the worn-out narrative of women’s oppression under Islamic rule.
“From Tunisia, a place that was once a bastion of secularism in the Muslim world and hailed as a model for women’s rights by many in the West, the women of Hizb ut-Tahrir will aim to show that it is the Islamic system of governance that can bring true liberation to the region’s women.”
Injured French journalist Edith Bouvier in Homs appeals for help – video
In this video journalist for the French newspaper le Figaro, Edith Bouvier, appeals for help to get out of Syria after she was injured in the same rocket attack that killed Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remy Ochlik. Bouvier and Time photographer William Daniels are in the outskirts of Homs under the care of a Syrian doctor
Art For Syria
Sama Wareh, a Syrian artist together with fellow Syrian artists in the U.S are putting together an art exhibition to raise money for Syria.
In February, I will be launching an art campaign to raise funds for the refugees of the Syrian Genocide. The UN has declared over 5,000 Syrian Refugees in Lebanon alone and an estimated total of 17,000 refugees crossing the border of Syria to escape the violence, most of these numbers being women and children.
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