Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

Mideast Players Differ On Approach to Hamas

During a trip to the Middle East this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served as an informal go-between for Hamas and its sworn enemy, the government of Israel, helping to arrange a tentative truce, according to U.S., Israeli and Arab officials. ..

Saudi Activist Still Held Without Charge a Year After His Arrest

A prominent Saudi political activist and academic remains in solitary confinement "without charge and without access to counsel" a year after he was arrested, his lawyer said Wednesday...

The Shah of Pakistan?

America’s most vulnerable ally in the war on terror is Pakistan. But our alliance with the nuclear-armed Islamic state may be exacerbating that country’s instability...

Iran’s Clerical Old Guard Being Pushed Aside

After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s followers toppled a U.S.-backed autocracy in Iran, he brought to power a coterie of politically engaged clerics who sought to create the world’s first Islamic republic...

The Headscarf in Turkey

Walking the streets of Istanbul a few years ago, my wife, a devoted Muslim who does not wear a head scarf, remarked, “I feel totally comfortable here...

Zoning Board Rejects Islamic Center Plan

After months of heated debate, the zoning appeals board in Walkersville has rejected a proposal by a Silver Spring-based Muslim sect to build a mosque and retreat facility on a 224-acre farm in the rural Frederick County town...

Rights Group Faults U.S. for Support of Autocrats

A leading human rights group said Thursday that the United States has lost its moral authority by supporting autocratic governments in strategic countries despite their continuing violations of civil liberties. ..

Egypt Cheers Films Critical of Police

One of Egypt’s latest hit films opens with scenes of police brutally beating pro-democracy protesters and ends with angry masses storming a police station where demonstrators are tortured. The audiences cheer...

Democracy Activists Disappointed in Bush

President Bush on Wednesday ended a Middle East tour that political activists saw as lacking the strong calls for democratization made earlier in his administration, disappointing those once encouraged by the statements of American leaders. In Egypt and elsewhere, people are growing more concerned with food than with rights...

Islam and democracy in Southeast Asia

From Dec. 10 to 12, 44 sisters and brothers from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia gathered at the historic Manila Hotel for the First South East Asian Forum on Islam and Democracy. This regional conference is the product of four previous roundtable discussions in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The group represented a wide range of civil society organizations and leaders, many representing religious and political organizations..

Bush Nudges Mideast on Democracy

Shortly before President Bush showed up in the region last week, human rights activist Abduljalil Alsingace tried to deliver a petition to the U.S. Embassy complaining about the lack of democracy in his native Bahrain. He thought he might have some hope, given the strong language coming from the White House on the need for political reform in the Middle East...

The New Year’s Resolution for the American Muslim Leadership:

We the American Muslims are at the right place in a critical time in history to make a difference: The difference which is most urgently needed for the world to get out of this confrontational and destructive phase and to help lead humanity towards a positive direction for generations to come...

Democracy Gets Small Portion of U.S. Aid

Two years before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while leading her Pakistan People’s Party in its campaign against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration devoted this much new aid money to strengthen political parties in Pakistan: $0...

What Islam Wrought

The title of David Levering Lewis’s surprising new book, God’s Crucible, brings to mind another piece of ceramic phrasing, Colin Powell’s warning to President Bush about invading Iraq: "You break it. You own it." The people and the land of Iraq that we now own as occupiers can be counted among the shards, but the invasion and occupation have also wreaked havoc on a culture, a country’s history, and its religion...

A Drunken Night in Iraq, A Soldier Is Left Behind

The sun had not yet risen in Taji. A young Army soldier lay alone in the dirt. She was alive, but barely. Her ribs had been crushed; her spleen, ruptured. Her right side was marked by the angular tread of a tire...

Egypt’s YouTube Democrats

Is the cause of liberal democracy in the Arab Middle East dead? It would be easy to jump to such a conclusion in Washington, given the Bush administration’s shameless retreat from its "freedom agenda" and the recent campaigns by Arab autocrats to crush liberal politicians, journalists and civic activists...

Want to Understand Islam? Start Here.

Nearly half of Americans have a generally unfavorable view of Islam, according to a 2006 Washington Post-ABC News poll, a number has risen since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That climate makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that the majority of mainstream Muslims hate terrorism and violence as much as we do -- and makes it hard for non-Muslims to know where to begin to try to understand a great world faith. ..

Younger Muslims Tune In to Upbeat Religious Message

Muna el-Leboudy, a 22-year-old medical student, had a terrible secret: She wanted to be a filmmaker. The way she understood her Muslim faith, it was haram -- forbidden -- to dabble in movies, music or any art that might pique sexual desires...

Jordan Vote Reflects Islamic Parties’ Slide

Voters rebuked Islamic politicians in parliamentary elections in Jordan last week, following poor showings by Islamic-oriented political blocs in Egypt and Morocco over the past six months. ..

Aid Request Emphasizes U.S. Support of Palestinian Authority Leadership

President Bush has proposed a sixfold increase in aid to the Palestinians, including $150 million in direct cash transfers to the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to bolster the government in advance of a Middle East peace conference planned for later this month in Annapolis. ..