Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources

Paper tigers/Daily Star/September 19/13
The Oslo Accords and Historical Revisionism/By: Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Alawsat/September 19/13
Qaradawi and Religious Sentiment/By: Mshari Al-Zaydi/Asharq Alawsat/September 19/13

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources For September 19/13
Lebanese Related News
UK eases travel advice for Lebanon
Nasrallah's Aide from Rabieh: Zahle Grid Uproar a Silly Thing, Country's Real Components Must be Represented in Cabinet
Suleiman Sets Ground for Lebanon Syria Refugee Aid Meet
Sleiman urges parties to soften Cabinet demands
Thailand Jails Alleged Hizbullah Bomb Suspect
Jezzine Christians protest Syrian refugee complex
Hezbollah calls ties with Aoun 'excellent'
Israeli soldiers to withdraw from border villages
Budget deficit rises to 28 percent of spending
Mikati signs $800M advance to cover wages
Arslan, Marada Laud Berri's Initiative, Tashnag Calls for Dialogue without Preconditions
Berri Says Reaction to his Initiative 'Encouraging,' it will Reveal who is Obstructing Dialogue
Three Lebanese Sentenced to Life in Prison over Attacks against UNIFIL
Israeli Unit Crosses Technical Fence in Southern Lebanon
Arrest Warrants Issued against 3 Syrians over Attempt to Fire Rockets from Aramoun to Dahieh
Aoun Says Dialogue Succeeds when there Are No Prejudgments
Miscellaneous Reports And News
Obama softens on nuclear Iran: Keep components, just promise not to weaponise them
Snipers haunt Syrian Christian town of Maalula
Syria gives Russia chemical weapons evidence
Assad Thanks Russia for Helping Syria Face Down 'Savage Attack'
Russia Says Will Send U.N. Evidence of Rebel Chem Attack
Obama pledges to test Iran's willingness for dialogue
Car bomb kills seven at Syria-Turkey border crossing
The big issues revolve around Tehran
U.N. says chemical arms report on Syria attack 'indisputable'
Russia says U.N. report on Syria attack biased
U.N. Powers Hold New Syria Chemical Talks
Hagel Says U.S. to Retain Military Threat against Syria
UN inspectors 'ignored' Damascus's chemical weapons evidence: Russia
Qaeda affiliate overruns Syrian town near Turkish border: activists
Egypt military court jails 5 Palestinians: army
Nigerian army says kills 150 insurgents, loses 16 troops
Two Canadians held in Egypt go on hunger strike

UK eases travel advice for Lebanon
September 18, 2013/Daily Star/BEIRUT: The United Kingdom has relaxed its recently tightened travel advice to Lebanon and is now only advising against travel to some areas in the country, a statement from the embassy said Wednesday.“We are no longer advising against all but essential travel to Lebanon. However, we continue to advise against travel to some areas in Lebanon,” the statement said.The UK advised its citizens last month against all but essential travel to Lebanon due to spiking regional tensions and an increase of violence linked to the war in Syria, changing a long-standing position on the safety of its citizens in the country. The warning came as the possibility of strikes against Syria by Western countries loomed. The official travel advisory in August warned against all but essential travel to Lebanon and specifically discouraged travel to Tripoli, the Syrian border, parts of the Bekaa Valley and Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs. British Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher said he is “pleased to signal that we are no longer discouraging travel to Lebanon.”“The situation remains uncertain, and we will keep our advice under close review. We are keen to keep faith with this resilient and inspiring corner of the region, and to play our part in helping Lebanon come through the storm,” he added.The ambassador also reiterated the UK’s continued support to Lebanon and support for the country’s stability.
 

Obama pledges to test Iran's willingness for dialogue
September 18, 2013/The Daily Star
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama pledged Tuesday to test the sincerity of signs that new Iranian President Hassan Rowhani may be ready for a newly productive nuclear dialogue with the West. Days after revealing he and Rowhani had swapped letters, Obama however said that Iran would have to demonstrate its own seriousness by agreeing not to "weaponize nuclear power.""There is an opportunity here for diplomacy," Obama said in an interview with the Spanish language television network Telemundo. "I hope the Iranians take advantage of it. There are indications that Rowhani, the new president, is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the West and with the United States -- in a way that we haven't seen in the past.  "And so we should test it," Obama said. Hopes for a new round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers expected to resume soon were boosted earlier Tuesday by cryptic remarks by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei, who bears ultimate responsibility for the nuclear issue, said that sometimes flexibility was necessary in diplomacy.
On September 11, Rowhani said he had the tacit support of Khamenei for "flexibility" in nuclear talks. Rowhani has said he wants to allay Western concerns but that he will not renounce Iran's goal of an independent civil nuclear program.Washington and its allies say Iran's nuclear program is designed to produce weapons and is unacceptable. Obama has refused to rule out US military action against Iran if diplomacy fails. Iran insists that its nuclear ambitions are directed towards civilian energy generation. There is renewed speculation that Obama and Rowhani could have some kind of informal meeting in New York next week at the UN General Assembly in New York.
The White House said for the second day running Tuesday that it has no current plans for such an encounter -- but did not dismiss the possibility out of hand.

Hezbollah calls ties with Aoun 'excellent'
September 18, 2013/The Daily Star/BEIRUT: A Hezbollah official described ties between his party and Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun as “excellent” and said Wednesday they both agree on the need to form a new Cabinet with a fair representation of political parties. “Our viewpoints are largely similar to General Aoun's points, the ties between us are excellent and we are not upset with him over anything,” said Hezbollah official Hajj Hussein Khalil after a delegation of his group met with Aoun in Rabieh. Recent political paralysis in the country has strained relations between many parties, but Khalil said Hezbollah and FPM have similar views and are working closely. “We agree with General Aoun on the need to form a Cabinet in which political parties are represented in respect to their representation in Parliament, he said. “We also agree on speeding up the Cabinet formation taking into consideration all the political forces in the country. Whoever wants to violate such rule is working in an unacceptable way,” Khalil said. The Cabinet formation process has been stalled for nearly six months over conditions and counter conditions made by the country’s political rivals. The March 14 coalition is calling for a neutral Cabinet in which political parties are excluded; Hezbollah insists on a government that joins all political groups. Hussein said that both his group and the FPM are ready to engage in National Dialogue. Earlier during the day, Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Ali Fayyad also stressed Hezbollah’s unconditioned readiness to partake in dialogue.“Hezbollah is ready to immediately engage in National Dialogue without any preset conditions,” Fayyad said. The Hezbollah MP also urged all the political parties not to impose conditions for the new government’s lineup.

Two Canadians held in Egypt go on hunger strike
September 18, 2013 /Agence France Presse/OTTAWA: Two Canadians being held in Egypt have launched a hunger strike in protest at their incarceration without charge, a family member told AFP on Wednesday. John Greyson is a Toronto filmmaker and university professor, and Tarek Loubani is an emergency room doctor from London, Ontario. The men were detained last month soon after trying to enter Gaza, where Greyson was scouting for a documentary and Loubani planned to help train local doctors. But they were turned back at the Gaza border and later arrested in Cairo. "They're on the third day of their hunger strike," Greyson's sister Cecilia told AFP. She had rallied filmmakers and moviegoers at the Toronto International Film Festival last week to press for the pair's release, prior to a scheduled meeting with Egyptian prosecutors over the weekend. But the meeting was pushed to next week and in the meantime the pair were ordered held for an additional 15 days. "We're losing confidence in the process as it's been going so far," Cecilia Greyson said. On their detention, she said previously that there were "blanks in the picture" because their families have not had an opportunity to speak to the pair directly. She said the men had asked at a police station for directions back to their hotel room, and were arrested.
 

Syria gives Russia chemical weapons evidence
September 18, 2013/Associated Press
BEIRUT: Syria has turned over materials to Russia which aim to show that a chemical weapons attack last month was carried out by rebels, a top Russian diplomat visiting Damascus and a Syrian official said Wednesday.
The Aug. 21 attack precipitated the current high tensions over Syria's chemical weapons and sparked a plan under which it is to abandon them. A report by U.N. investigators confirmed that chemical weapons were used Aug. 21 but did not say by which side in Syria's civil war. The report did however provide trajectory data that suggested the chemical-loaded rockets that hit two Damascus suburbs were fired from the northwest, suggesting they came from nearby mountains where the Syrian military is known to have bases. New York-based Human Rights Watch also said in a separate report that the presumed flight path of the rockets led back to a Republican Guard base in the same area."Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible," Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch. But, he added, the evidence was "not conclusive."
However, the ITAR-Tass news agency on Wednesday quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that Syria told Russian officials the material it handed over shows "rebels participating in the chemical attack" but that Russia has not yet drawn any conclusions.
He also told broadcaster Russia Today that Russia has submitted to the U.N. Security Council abundant and credible evidence that suggests it was not the government that fired the chemical weapons.
"We are unhappy about this report, we think that the report was distorted, it was one-sided, the basis of information upon which it was built is insufficient," he said, referring to the U.N. report.
Also Wednesday, Syrian President Bashar Assad received a U.S. delegation of former members of Congress and anti-war activists including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
"Policies adopted by the American administration that are based on launching wars, intervening in other countries affairs and imposing hegemony on people do not achieve the interests of American people and contradicts with their values and principals," SANA quoted Assad telling the U.S. delegation.
Elsewhere in the country, Kurdish gunmen captured the northeastern village of Alouk after four days of fighting with extremist groups including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Four Kurdish gunmen and 17 jihadis were killed in the fighting, it added.
Meanwhile Syrian troops backed by members of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group fought rebels in the town of Beit Sahem, just south of the capital and near the highway leading to Damascus International Airport, the Observatory said.
Russia has been Syria's main ally since the start of the conflict in March 2011, blocking proposed U.N. resolutions that would impose sanctions on Assad's regime and opposing an attempt to authorize the use of force if Syria does not abide by the agreement to get rid of its chemical weapons.
Assigning responsibility for last month's attack has become a heated international diplomatic issue. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius sharply differed on the topic after meeting in Moscow on Tuesday. Lavrov said Moscow has reason to believe the attack was a provocation staged by the rebels, while Fabius said the evidence clearly implicates the government side.
Russia also has repeatedly claimed that a chemical weapons attack in Syria on March 19 was committed by the rebels.
The reports did not specify the nature of the new material turned over by Syria to Russia, which Ryabkov said would be closely analyzed.
"But considering that earlier we came to the corresponding conclusion about the incident of March 19, we are inclined to treat with great seriousness the material from the Syrian side about the involvement of the rebels in the chemical attack of Aug. 21," Ryabkov said, according to ITAR-Tass.
Also Wednesday, the chief U.N. chemical weapons inspector said his team will return to Syria "within weeks" to complete the investigation it had started before the Aug 21 gas attack and other alleged chemical weapons attacks in the country.
Ake Sellstrom told The Associated Press the team will evaluate "allegations of chemical weapons use from both sides, but perhaps mainly from the Syrian government's side."
He said he doesn't currently think there is a need for more investigations of the Aug. 21 attacks, but said "if we receive any additional information it will be included next time we report."
In London, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed the recent American-Russian agreement on eliminating chemical weapons in Syria, saying he thinks the "credible threat" of military action was the real reason "why diplomacy got a chance."
He said that in order to ensure implementation of that agreement, it is crucial for the United Nations Security Council to "expeditiously adopt" a firm resolution to act as a framework for the process.
"In order to keep momentum in the diplomatic and political process the military option should still be on the table," he added.
The fighting in Syria has killed more than 100,000 people, according to activists and the U.N., and has forced 7 million to flee their homes. Five million Syrians have been displaced inside the country and more than 2 million have sought refuge in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, according to the U.N.

Snipers haunt Syrian Christian town of Maalula
September 18, 2013/By Sammy Ketz
Agence France Presse
MAALULA, Syria: "Maalula, city of culture and history, welcomes you," reads a sign at the entrance to Syria's best known Christian town. But any semblance of welcome evaporates once inside Maalula.
The army is fighting an invisible enemy, and an AFP team narrowly escaped sniper fire.
"We never see them, but we hear the shots fired by their Dragunovs," the Russians' favourite sniper rifle, said a soldier holding his weapon as he sheltered behind a wall.
A car is parked at the roadside, its windscreen has exploded and its driver looks dead. His belongings lie strewn on the pavement of this ghost town.
After an AFP photographer crossed one of Maalula's streets, a sniper opened fire at the journalist. Bullets landed just metres (yards) away.
The journalist was forced to lie on the ground and hide behind a wall to escape the shots.
Every time he tried to move, the sniper opened fire immediately. It was only as loyalist soldiers fired their own guns in the sniper's direction that the journalist managed to escape. An armoured vehicle arrived at the scene and opened fire, allowing the journalist to escape.
The soldier said: "It's like this every day. We can only move without fear of sniping during the evenings."
Maalula is nestled under a large cliff, whose summit is controlled by the rebels, making it difficult for the army to secure its grip there. The town is strategically important for rebels, who are trying to tighten their grip on Damascus and already have bases circling the capital. The army has "reclaimed most of the town, but the terrorists use their snipers to stop us from bringing it totally under control", said a colonel who leads the loyalists' operations in the historic town.
"We are continuing to make slow progress. But it is very difficult because we cannot bombard it, there are historic treasures," the colonel told AFP.
Maalula's population of up to 5,000 fluctuates throughout the year, with Christian families flocking there each summer from Damascus and abroad.
While the majority of its winter residents are Muslim, the town is majority Christian in summer.
Rebel forces, among them Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists, took control of Maalula on September 9. Three days later, the army entered the town.
Maalula lies some 55 kilometres (35 miles) north of Damascus. It is considered a symbol of the ancient Christian presence in Syria.
Its people are among the world's last remaining speakers of Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ.
The town's name comes from the word "maala", which in Aramaic means "the entrance".
On September 14, for the first time, the town known across the Middle East for its "Exaltation of the Cross" feast day was not decorated with lights, nor did it host Christian and Muslim visitors dining and celebrating together. The archway at the town's entrance has been damaged by a suicide attacker who detonated a car bomb at the start of the battle for the town.
But much of the rest of Maalula has been unscathed, as the army has refrained from shelling it.
Only the Saint Elias church dome has been punctured.
"This battle may be long because they (the rebels) are hiding in the hills and in the Safir hotel," perched above the town, said the colonel.
"But I think we will win in the end."
 

Obama softens on nuclear Iran: Keep components, just promise not to weaponise them
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis September 18, 2013/The moderate mien of Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani has had its intended effect – even before nuclear dialogue began. President Barack Obama had only one demand of Tehran: “Iran would have to demonstrate its own seriousness by agreement not to weaponise nuclear power,” he said Wednesday, Sept. 18. He thus took at his word Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared the day before: “We are against nuclear weapons. And when we say no one should have nuclear weapons, we definitely do not pursue it ourselves either.”
The symmetry between the words from Washington and Tehran was perfect in content and timing – and not by chance. DEBKAfile’s Washington and Iranian sources disclose that it was choreographed in advance.
Obama and Khamenei have been exchanging secret messages through Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman, who visited Tehran in the last week of August and conferred with both Khameini and Rouhani.
In the last message, carried to Tehran by Oman’s Defense Minister Sayyid Badr bin Saud Al Busaidiat, the US president said that Rouhani’s conciliatory gestures towards Washington needed to be backed up by an explicit pledge not to weaponise Iran’s nuclear program. That pledge must come from the supreme leader in person and delivered publicly to Iran’s most hawkish audience, Revolutionary Guards chiefs.
And indeed, Khamenei acted out his part Tuesday under TV cameras. Full details of the exchanges going back and both between Washington and Tehran will appear in the coming DEBKA Weekly 603 out Friday, Sept. 20.
They will confirm that the US president has come to terms with a nuclear-capable Iran and will be satisfied with Ayatollah Khamenei’s word that Tehran will not take the last step to actually assemble a bomb.
To subcribe to DEBKA Weekly click here Our sources note that in his direct secret dialogue with Tehran, Obama is pursuing the same tactics he used for the Syrian chemical issue with Russian President Vladmir Putin: Moving fast forward on the secret track while pretending that the process is still at an early stage and then a sudden leap to target – a particular form of diplomacy consisting of verbal calisthenics.
This pretense was played out at the G20, when the two presidents acted as though they were irreconcilably divided on the Syrian question, while secretly tying up the ends of the chemical accord.
Obama’s willingness to accept Khamenei’s oft-repeated assurance that his country’s nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes – while letting its military program advance to the brink – leaves Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lagging far behind and his Iranian policy with nowhere to go. At the Israeli cabinet meeting Tuesday, the prime minister said his White House talks with President Obama on Sept. 30 would focus on Iran and his four demands:

1) Complete halt of uranium enrichment; 2) Removal of enriched materials from Iran; 3) Closure of the Fordo enrichment plant; 4) Termination of plutonium production at Arak.
Notwithstanding the briefing offered by Secretary of State John Kerry when he visited Jerusalem on Sunday, Sept. 15, it looks as though Obama is keeping the Israeli prime minister in the dark on his moves towards Iran.

Paper tigers
September 18, 2013/The Daily Star
Amid the diplomatic debacle surrounding Syria over the last few weeks, Russia, and in particular President Vladimir Putin, has appeared the major player on the global stage. After decades of American hegemony internationally, is the order being reversed? Are we witnessing – if not a complete switch in roles – a return to Cold War days of parity between the two powers?
Upon his first election, U.S. President Barack Obama seemed to represent a new era for American foreign policy: the promise of an administration which would be nuanced and calmer than the preceding years, based on decisions led by reasoned thinking and reflection.
Instead, on Syria at the very least, Obama has stumbled and fumbled his way through the last few years: he has dithered, and flip-flopped, never genuinely seeming to know what he believes. He has issued seemingly black-and-white ultimatums, which, in the end, were apparently not ultimatums. His secretary of state, John Kerry, has spoken in similarly hazy or amateurish language. Ahead of assumed military strikes on Syria he said that any action would be “unbelievably small.” What then, the U.S. public, and indeed many advisers and actors within his own administration, were left asking, was the point? This diplomatic weakness has left those in the Kremlin hardly believing their luck and given Putin the impetus to take the initiative. The Russians have thus been able to climb back up the superpower ladder, in a region which has always been so important to them, while simultaneously claiming to have the Syrians’ best interests at heart through stalling the threat of airstrikes. But in reality they are pushing for a U.N. resolution without teeth, one which will do nothing to limit the regime’s power, chemical or otherwise, and have no effect on the rate of killings, which have actually appeared to have increased since the Geneva deal was struck. Putin, with almost admirable stealth, clearly realized that revenge was a dish best served cold. Years of resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union coupled with divisions within the U.S. administration – between Obama and Kerry, the president and defense chiefs and between the president and Congress – have allowed him to manipulate the current situation to his own ends. This Syrian chapter – quite apart from the thousands of deaths, the destruction of a country’s infrastructure and the millions of lives uprooted – will forever be a black mark in the annals of American history. And this latest incident – the use of sarin gas to kill hundreds of people on Aug. 21 – will perhaps be a turning point in America’s standing in the world. A regime which has committed crimes against humanity, the U.N. tells us, is, it appears, about to get away with mass murder, yet again, a red line which Obama himself drew. Assad and his backers are aware that the forest is full of paper tigers.

The Oslo Accords and Historical Revisionism
By: Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Alawsat
Opinion: The Oslo Accords and Historical Revisionism
The majority of those who have written about the Oslo Accords—whose 20th anniversary went largely unacknowledged last week—are of the view that the agreement is dead, but not yet buried.
They are justified in their view that the agreement has been dead for a long time, but they are wrong to blame its failure entirely on Israel’s actions. There are many saboteurs of the Oslo Accords including: Saddam Hussein, Hafez Al-Assad, his successor Bashar Al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, Iran’s mullahs, and finally Hezbollah, the group that, for decades, has deceptively presented itself to the Arabs as the primary force of resistance against Israel. The agreement itself was not a dismal failure, but rather a milestone in acknowledging the 50 year struggle of the Palestinians. It also validated the pressure exerted by the international community in supporting the rights of the Palestinians, or so it was thought. Israel was obligated to accept the agreement, which caused uproar among the Israeli public who judged the signing a treacherous act that empowered the Palestinians. Two years later, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in punishment for signing the agreement with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. For Assad and the Iranians it was vital to sabotage the agreement, which they orchestrated indirectly through their Palestinian agents. Palestine, for them, is the goose that lays the golden egg: a conflict in the region that grants them legitimacy. What is Assad’s raison d’être either in Syria or the Arab world? What is Hezbollah’s raison d’être? And what is Hezbollah’s justification for taking over the Lebanese state with their arms? The universal excuse used by all of these actors to vindicate their actions is the defence of the Palestinian Cause.
Even before Oslo, these actors wrestled with the late Arafat and attempted to eradicate him both as a person and as a cause because he refused to be their pawn. They even pitted Palestinian opposition against him, like Ahmad Jibril and Abu Nidal. The warring of Hafez Al-Assad against the Palestinians was because they were perceived as an obstacle preventing him from controlling Lebanon. He besieged them in their camps and assassinated their leaders. Additionally, in coordination with one of the factions affiliated with him, he planned the assassination attempt against the Israeli ambassador to London in order to grant Ariel Sharon a licence to invade Lebanon. In 1982, Sharon besieged the Lebanese capital, Beirut, drove Arafat out and abolished the Palestinian Liberation Organization. After Arafat was forced out, Hezbollah, Iran’s armed proxy, raised the slogan of Palestine to establish legitimacy. The Oslo Accords attempted to promote the right for the existence of a Palestinian state in the occupied lands of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yet Syria, Iran, and Gaddafi, at different times, funded operations aiming to wreck the agreement and obstruct the Palestinians’ return from exile in Tunisia to the West Bank and Gaza. Premeditated suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets were conducted to damage the agreement. These three actors cooperated with extremist Israelis to undermine the internationally supported Oslo Accords that aimed to establish a Palestinian state.
Yes, Oslo the agreement is, in substance, dead. Its orphans, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, do not have the power to revive it. Iran and the Assad regime succeeded in trapping the Palestinians in the current state of affairs in which they hold minimal bargaining power. This is compared to the bargaining evidenced by Arafat in his agreement with Rabin and Clinton 20 years ago. During the two decades of Assad-Iranian sponsored terrorism against the agreement, these supposed heroes of resistance never submitted an alternative roadmap. Neither did they confront Israel, nor support the Palestinians.
This is an accurate summary of the history of the Oslo Accords and not the misconstrued version that they have taught to us for generations. This is just one chapter of a long-forged history, assisted by the propaganda of several regimes, now facing revolt from their own people.

Qaradawi and Religious Sentiment
By: Mshari Al-Zaydi/Asharq Alawsat
The religious discourse in the Arab and Muslim media is blazing. What makes things even worse is the increase in the number of inflammatory platforms spouting religious fanaticism: The Shi’ites are insulting the Sunnis, the Sunnis are cursing the Shi’ites, while those seeking fame and fortune are immersing themselves in this quagmire in a quest for applause and celebrity.
Thus, “controlling” religious discourse has now become a security requirement and a social necessity rather than a redundant call for reform.
Religion, or to be more accurate, religious sentiment, is a profound feeling that directs much of people’s conduct in life, including their political views. Therefore, those seeking fame find religious sentiment easy to exploit.
Earlier this week, renowned Mauritanian preacher and jurist Dr. Abdullah bin Bayyah resigned from his post as vice chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS). The post of chairman is, of course, held by none other than Egyptian-born cleric Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. Now, Sheikh Qaradawi has displayed a sudden partisan rush of empathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood, thereby placing his colleagues in IUMS—who hate to be branded as Brotherhood supporters—in a particularly embarrassing situation. This is particularly the case as IUMS is dominated by people who adopt the Brotherhood’s discourse and ideology, even if they are not necessarily official members of the group and are viewed as being “formalistically” independent.
The original objective of IUMS was to “create” an entity for issuing fatwas, serving as a juristic wing that could influence all Muslims whereby it would achieve full stature as a religious institution independent of the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, this was the big challenge facing the Muslim Brotherhood and those adopting its culture.
IUMS incorporated well-known names in the world of jurisprudence [Islamic Fiqh] such as Qaradawi himself and Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah. Yet, those affiliated to the organization also include “activists” and zealous preachers who hold influential posts despite lacking the requisite jurisprudential experience and qualifications. The majority of such figures did not resign in the same manner as Bin Bayyah, and remain affiliated to Qaradawi’s Union. Were it not for the uprisings against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, the organization may have swallowed the fatwa issuing institutions and all traditional religious entities, as was manifested by the plot hatched by the Brotherhood against Egypt’s Al-Azhar.
In my opinion, IUMS, founded in 2004 with a council of trustees incorporating Rachid Ghannouchi and Fahmi Howaidi, was nothing more than a first attempt at creating a Brotherhood-friendly fatwa wing. Yet, the uprising against the Brotherhood has called for old calculations to be reconsidered. For his part, Sheikh Qaradawi opted to deny and escalate the situation, whilst others have submitted to the new reality and taken a step backward, attempting to distance themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood.
The question that must be asked here is: Since religion influences and effects society in untold ways, which in turn has a direct impact on issues such as security, politics, foreign relations, and civil peace, is it fair for religious reform to be monopolized by sheikhs and preachers? This is not to mention issues such as who is and is not entitled to issue fatwas or Friday sermons.
Isn’t it true that the issue of whether to go to war or not should not be held solely in the hands of the military? Similarly, reforming our society’s understanding and dealings with religion must also be something that concerns everyone, although, of course, the sheikhs must be at the forefront of this.