Arab Youth Step in Where Islamism Failed

By David Gardner in London

Only six months on and the metaphors are already starting to grate. The Arab spring has entered a long, hot summer and, in the view of some commentators, is headed for the deep freeze of winter. There is something unexamined about this view, which appears to hanker after the old order in the Middle East, and perhaps wants it replaced with some sort of status quo-lite.

But has the pent-up yearning for change across the Arab world really gone so wrong?

There was never even a remote possibility that the transition from entrenched, often western-backed autocracies could be anything other than messy and prolonged, and often violent. The successful topplings of the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes in Tunisia and Egypt are seen as peaceful – which they were in comparison to the present conflicts in Syria and Libya. Yet, in Egypt, for example, while the tactics of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries were for the most part non-violent, 850 people were still killed by regime forces, according to official figures.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON

After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation

UBA, South Sudan — The celebrations erupted at midnight. Thousands of revelers poured into Juba’s steamy streets in the predawn hours on Saturday, hoisting enormous flags, singing, dancing and leaping on the back of cars.

“Freedom!” they screamed.

A new nation was being born in what used to be a forlorn, war-racked patch of Africa, and to many it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After more than five decades of an underdog, guerrilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic ofSouth Sudan, Africa’s 54th state, was about to declare its independence in front of a who’s who of Africa, including the president of the country letting it go: Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, a war-crimes suspect.

Many of those who turned out to celebrate, overcome with emotion, spoke of their fathers, mothers, sons and daughters killed in the long struggle to break free from the Arab-dominated north.

“My whole body feels happy,” said George Garang, an English teacher who lost his father, grandfather and 11 brothers in the war.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

Muslim American Convention Tackles Islamophobia

CAIRO – Addressing American Muslim concerns, leading Muslim figures urged thousands of attendants at the continent’s largest Islamic convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to be more involved in the society to stem the growing Islamophobia, The Huffington Post reported.

“We have to balance the internal needs of the Muslim-American community with our need as Muslims to defend Islam,” Ingrid Mattson, a member of ISNA’s executive council and a professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, said during ISNA’s 48th convention.

“We have to constantly battle those negative threats to define us.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM ONISLAM.NET

 

US Reaches out to Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

CAIRO, Egypt — The U.S. government announced today it was opening a dialogue with Islamist political parties amid sweeping changes brought on by the Arab Spring and announced it was seeking “limited contacts” with members of Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who recently visited Egypt, said, “It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence. We welcome therefore dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us.”

Clinton made the comments to reporters while traveling in Budapest, according to the Associated Press.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE GLOBAL POST 

Oklahoma Launches Anti Immigrant, Anti Muslim Crusade

Oklahoma has relatively few immigrants – about 5 percent of the population – but it has long been in the vanguard of anti-immigrant and more recently anti-Muslim legislation of the type sweeping the nation.

Last fall more than 70 percent of voters passed a constitutional amendment outlawing the use of Sharia law in Oklahoma courts, and state legislators have also pushed anti-Sharia laws, even though the Muslim legal code has never been introduced in an Oklahoma courtroom. On June 14 the Oklahoma state Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the state’s strict anti-immigrant law, passed in 2007 and seen as a precursor to Arizona’s infamous legislation. And this year Oklahoma City state senator Ralph Shortey introduced a suite of anti-immigrant laws including one billed as “Arizona Plus.”

Shortey is Native American and as a child lived on a South Dakota reservation. He said that’s one of the reasons he wants to send a message to undocumented immigrants that they are “not welcome” in Oklahoma. In March Shortey told a group of reporters with the Institute for Justice and Journalism that he knows what it feels like to have one’s land stolen, and he doesn’t want it to happen again through an influx of undocumented immigrants.