Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

John Prescott expresses doubt over British support for Iraq invasion

John Prescott has become the latest senior Labour politician to voice open doubts about his own support for Tony Blair's decision in 2003 to place British military forces behind the American-led invasion of Iraq...

Targeted by the New McCarthyites

[John] Denham is entertaining Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB, who gave a taste of the 'progressive' policies Labour is encouraging when he wrote an article defending Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi,..

The pro-Israel lobby and antisemitism

Lobby correspondent: Peter Oborne, presenter of Channel 4's Dispatches documentary Inside Britain's Israel Lobby, in Westminster, London. Photograph: Channel 4 Pictures..

Israel 'personally attacking human rights group' after Gaza war criticism

America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza...

In Egypt, it's who you know

It isn't really about whether Gamal Mubarak, the younger son of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, would be a good leader. That is not the point. It is partly about him as a person and what he represents, but more about what he would take from Egyptian society if he became president: hope...

The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan

Early on in his book Eugene Rogan, who teaches the modern history of the Middle East, confesses that in "any free and fair election in the Arab world today, I believe the Islamists would win hands down". Again, towards the end of this engrossing and capacious book, he reiterates that the "inconvenient truth about the Arab world today is that, in any free and fair election, those parties most hostile to the United States are most likely to win"...

Oppression extinguished Tunisia's light

After its independence in 1956, Tunisia was considered in several western capitals to be one of the most serious candidates for democracy. Its first president, Habib Bourguiba, invested far more in education than in defence and before adopting a constitution he passed a new personal status code giving women equal rights with men. These first steps taken by Tunisia's new leadership – in a region shaped by coups, civil wars and dictatorships – were deemed revolutionary at the time...

We must engage with nonviolent Islamists

Political reform in the Middle East requires dialogue with Islamic parties, so why does the Foreign Office knock such efforts?..

Welcome to the Middle East, 2030

What if Barack Obama can make peace between the Arabs and Israel? It’s easy to see how he might fail. But what if he succeeds and really does create a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims"? Here is a first draft of history for the next 20 years. The events are fantasy, of course, but the logic is based on four big trends: ..

We must chart our own course on sharia

I come from the "most religious country in the world":100% of surveyed Egyptians told Gallup that religion is a very important part of their daily lives..

Gaza: pursuit of the laws of war

The Israeli government and its supporters have lashed out at the report of the UN board of inquiry into Israeli attacks on UN installations during Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza. The report, they say, is biased, tendentious and inaccurate...

Cairo is the wrong choice for Obama

Like a grandmaster positioning his pieces for the first attack, President Obama has diligently prepared the ground for his own entrance into the murky waters of Middle Eastern diplomacy...

Muslim Brotherhood at a crossroads

There are several recurring themes one becomes wearily familiar with when following the erratic world of Egyptian politics. Sensational revelations about Zionist/Iranian plots to destabilise the nation are a permanent fixture, as are empty policy statements parroted by government spokesmen and stoic silence from the regime on any issue that actually matters. One thing you don’t often hear about, though, is resignation speeches – it takes a lifetime’s work acquiring wasta (connections,..

Secularism in a veil

In a series of recent articles, Brian Whitaker explored the role of Islam in Arab politics, the decline of secularism and what can be done to reinvigorate it. He describes how "the decline of Muslim secularism reflects the rise of Islamism and the more generalised religious revival that has swept across the Middle East since the 1960s"...

Talking to Hamas is a step toward peace

The first response to word that Barack Obama is prepared to make contact – albeit low-level and clandestine – with Hamas should be caution...

Israel accused of indiscriminate phosphorus use in Gaza

Israel’s military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today...

The West Should Feel Shame Over its Collusion with Torturers

I invited Abdullah Almalki to breakfast in Ottawa but he only took coffee. And while I wolfed down my all-English breakfast in the Chateau Laurier Hotel (beloved of Churchill and Karsh of Ottawa fame), he sipped gingerly at his cup with much on his mind. Snooped on by the Canadian secret service and then tortured in Syria while the Canadian authorities did nothing for him – save supplying his perverted torturers with questions – he had much to think about. A carbon copy of Binyam Moham..

Claims of British collusion in torture spread to Egypt

Allegations of British collusion in torture have widened to Egypt, where a young British man says he suffered appalling mistreatment during a week of illegal detention while being interrogated on the basis of information that he says can only have come from the UK...

Who is America to judge?

The US state department’s annual human rights report got an unusual amount of criticism this year. This time the centre-left coalition government of Chile was notable in joining other countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela and China – who have had more rocky relations with Washington – in questioning the moral authority of the US government’s judging other countries’ human rights practices..

Facebook launches Arabic version

Facebook, the world’s most successful social networking site, has officially launched in Arabic, tapping into a potentially huge market in the Middle East and beyond, the company has announced...