Hamas Wins Palestinian Elections

I’m still in shock. I knew that Hamas was likely to win a large number of seats, but to actually win the election just seemed unthinkable. This is a historical moment and I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I’m excited about the possibility of Hamas taking a path of democracy and influencing significant change (for the better) in the Middle East, but on the other hand I’m very worried. Abu Aardvark has written about this and makes some interesting points:

“we are going to see some major political science propositions put to the test:  does power moderate or radicalize Islamist groups?   Will they be willing and able to work with non-Islamist parties in a coalition?   Will they use their democratic victory to abolish democracy?”

And whilst on the face of it, it seems that the Palestinians have given up on hopes of Peace, Abu points out that:

“it seems fairly likely that the Palestinians vote for Hamas was less about endorsing an Islamist state or violence against Israel than about rejecting the corruption and incompetence of the Fatah Palestinian Authority.  Sweeping away the Fatah old guard would in and of itself be a service to everyone, especially Palestinians but also everyone who wants to see the rise of a competent Palestinian state.”

So the world waits with bated breath as the reality of what has just happened in the Middle East sinks in.

Fatwas are Cool

 
REUTERS
A police officer in Meerut in northern India pursues a young woman who has violated the city’s moral code.

The first time I heard the term “fatwa” was in 1989 when Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called for the death of Salman Rushdie because of his “blasphemous” book “The Satanic Verses“. For those of you who’ve been living in igloos, a fatwa as Wikipedia will tell you is:

“a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist on a specific issue”

And by the way, that doesn’t mean that fatwas are always “calls for somebody’s death”. The vast majority of fatwas are actually about the most mundane day to day matters. But I guess a fatwa on whether you can keep a beard dragon lizard as a household pet doesn’t really make headline news. But it seems that ever since Osama starting issuing fatwas, they’ve become “cool” in the non-Muslim world. We’re already used to hearing the use of Mecca as a slang in the non-Muslim world e.g. “California is the Mecca of the film-industry“. For many of us Muslims, hearing phrases like that is about as irritating as hearing the noise of finger nails scraping down a blackboard.

But now it seems that any term which “advocates an extreme religious or political position” gets described as a fatwa. But it still made me laugh when I read Padma Rao’s article about “The Fatwa against Mini-Skirts“. Now it seems that even in India – a predominantly Hindu country (where even 140 million Muslims are just a minority) a “fatwa” is used to describe the behavior of India’s (mostly Hindu) consersative middle class.

So are fatwas getting cool or is it just a sneaky way of pinning it all on the Muslims?

Who Really Killed the President of Pakistan?

In 1988 I remember hearing the news of the plane crash that killed the President of Pakistan, General Zia-Ul-Haq, and feeling sad. I didn’t really understand or have much of an interest in politics at the time, but I knew that he was a courageous man who had played an incredibly important role in defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. I also recognized him as a deeply religious man who was committed to fighting the corruption in Pakistan. Many just viewed him as a tough and cruel dictator, but he really bought hope to many Pakistanis that finally we had someone in power who would help to create the state that many of us dreamed of. And when he was killed, that hope was gone.

Although the official line was that it was an accident, no one that I knew (who knew anything about Pakistan) actually believed that. He had many enemies and there were many conspiracy theories – the Soviet Union, India, the United States and Benizer Bhutto. Of course, there is always a conspiracy theory about Israel, but I’ve learnt to not pay too much attention to those, otherwise we’d be attributing everything that happens in the Muslim world to Israel (although in some cases, it is actually true).

So when I just read Eric Margolis excellent post about the former U.S. Ambassador to India, John Dean, accusing Israel of being behind the assassination of General Zia-ul-Haq, two things struck me:

1. How Dean’s statements have been completely ignored by the US media.
2. There has never been a full and independent investigation.

Should we really care about ”old news” and something that happened nearly 20 years ago? Well, perhaps not. But we know that the US government prevented the FBI from carrying out a proper investigation (despite the fact the US ambassador to Pakistan and a US general were also on the plane) and the fact that every successive goverment in Pakistan since 1988 has made no real effort to investigate this, makes me wonder more and more that there is a ”real” conspiracy theory behind this. As Margolis points out:

“The 1988 assassination of Pakistan’s President, Zia ul-Haq remains one of our era’s abiding major mysteries. Only the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy has produced wilder speculation and more conspiracy theories”

And to many Pakistanis, this is more important than JFK. So isn’t it time that we really got the truth about what happened?

 

Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

Haroon makes some really good and interesting points about the current situation in Israel. I also never thought that I’d be worried that Ariel Sharon might not be prime minister for much longer.

 

But how things change. Now I’m more concerned about the alternatives.

Are we ever going to see any meaingful and lasting peace in the Middle East?