From: imnet2@max.u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: ISLAMIC WORLD NEWS (7th)
Date: 7 Apr 92 07:34:39 GMT
Originator: hanan@mcs213k.cs.umr.edu

BISMIHI TA'ALA

NEWS APRIL 6, 1992

EUROPE/NORTH AMERICA
The unprecedented attacks carried out by the Munafiqeen Organization,
otherwise called Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), against Iranian
Missions in 10 different countries simultaneously on April 5, were
clearly pre-planned and well-orchestrated.
The western-backed MKO terrorists entered Iranian Missions in Bonn &
Hamburg (Germany), The Hague (The Netherlands), Oslo (Norway), Stockholm
(Sweden), Bern (Switzerland), Copenhagen (Denmark), London (England),
Paris (France), Ottawa (Canada) and New York (US), and carried out
brutal attacks against the embassy staff. Many buildings were vandalized,
much computer equipment destroyed and many telephone systems smashed.
The MKO terrorists were armed with iron bars, clubs and knives as well
as bombs.
In several countries, they set buildings and cars on fire.
THE MKO terrorists were confident that the law would deal with them
leniently. They were not disappointed.
In Ottawa, Canada, for instance, the munafiqeen assaulted and injured
several embassy staff including the ambassador, Muhammad Lavasani. The
Ottawa police refused to enter the building to rescue the embassy
staff, saying that they had no authority to do so.
The terrorists ransacked the embassy and stole hundreds of files before
leaving. On the way out, they were arrested by the police.
In Stockholm, the MKO set fire to the embassy buildings and six cars.
The ambassador's wife and two young children were treated for shock while
an embassy employee sustained fire burns.
In Tehran, meanwhile, foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, called several
western ambassadors to his office to protest to them at the attacks in
their countries.
Dr Velayati also demanded that those involved in these terrorist activities
against Iran's Missions should be extradited to Iran. Most of them are
Iranian citizens anyway.
It will be intersting to see whether the US, Britain and France, in the
forefront of a campaign demanding that Libya hand over two suspects in the
1988 Lockerbie bombing, would comply with the Iranian request to hand-over
self-confessed criminals.
The Baghdad-based MKO terrorists had attacked villages in western Iran
on April 4. The armed attackers were driven out after several hours.
Iran retaliated by striking at the MKO's training camp in Iraq in
a pre-dawn raid on April 5.
The MKO has carried out horrible crimes within and outside Iran over
the last 13 years. Their activities have included planting bombs in
public places to carrying out assassinations against leading figures
of the Revolution.
The group has enjoyed support from the regime of Saddam Husain of Iraq
as well as several western governments. A number of US congressmen as
well as British MPs are supporting them.
The group's leader, Masoud Rajavi, lives in Paris.
Members of the group carried out another attack in Canberra, Australia,
on April 6.

ARABIAN PENINSULA
British Aerospace (BAe) has won another contract worth $2.6 billion
to supply military aircraft and helicopters to Saudi Arabia. The deal
includes the supply of 48 Tornado aricraft, 68 Hawk light fighters,
85 Black Hawk helicopters, 3 mine sweepers and other infrastructure
facilities.
The Saudis already have a $20 billion contract with BAe for the supply
of similar equipment. 
The Saudis will pay for the latest deal through the supply of 500,000
barrels of oil per day.

In another development, the flamboyant Saudi ambassador to Washington,
Bandar bin Sultan, is to return to Riyadh by the end of the year.
Bandar gained notoriety for his expensive and vulgar parties in
Washington.
He also allowed American decision-makers direct access to all policy-
matters in the Kingdom.
Bandar has the strong backing of the Americans. There is speculation
that he is being groomed to take over from the ailing and aging Fahd.
Recent changes in Saudi Arabia, under American prodding, opening the
system to the sons and grandsons of the ruling brothers, makes it possible
for someone like Bandar to assume an important position.
Fahd was no less a puppet of the Americans but Bandar even speaks and
understands their language. Carrying out the orders will be
that much easier.
For the Muslims, Fahd being the Khadim al-Haramain was bad enough;
the very thought of considering Bandar as the next Khadim al-Haramain
is too horrifying to contemplate.

INDIA
Another Indian has become a casualty of the Bofors arms scandal that seems to
linger on like a bad odour. India's foreign minister Madhavsinh Solanki
was forced to resign on March 30 when it became known that he had sent a
letter to his Swedish counterpart relating to the Bofors deal.
In 1984, then Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was accused of taking
a massive bribe in a multi-billion dollar artillery deal with the
Swedish arms manufacturer, Bofors.
A successor government, headed by V P Singh, had ordered an
inquiry into the scandal but he was ousted in a political intrigue by
one of his ambitious rivals, Chandrashekar, who became prime minister
with the support of the Congress Party. The inquiry was essentially
put into cold storage then. In May 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was killed during
the parliamentary election campaign and his bomb-shattered body was
set on fire on the banks of the River Jumna with the Bofors scandal still
hanging over his head.
The scandal has now claimed another politician. How many more skeletons
are hidden in the Bofors closet, only time will tell.

KASHMIR
Five political activists were released from jail by the Indian occupation
forces in Srinagar, Kashmir, on April 1. While the Hindu governor of the
State tried to present this as evidence that India was working towards
a political solution to the Kashmir issue, the five released activists
immediately rejected any idea of a compromise with the occupiers.
They demanded that the Indian occupation forces must withdraw and that
a referendum be held in the State to determine the wishes of the
people.
According to the most conservative estimates, at least 25,000 people have
been killed in Kashmir by Indian occupation forces over the last two
years, 15,000 of them in the last year alone. There are believed to be
56,000 people in jails without trial. Many of them have been brutally
tortured.
Women have been a particular target: several thousand have been gang-raped
by the Indian occupiers. Several hundred of them have simply disappeared,
unable to bear the stigma of this crime.

 Courtesy: CRESCENT INTERNATIONAL              
           Phone: 416 474-9292

EVENT SCAN
-----------
TATARS RESIST EROSION OF THEIR ISLAMIC IDENTITY

By Yaqub Zaki
--------------
In the former Soviet Union Muslims were concentrated in three areas,
Central Asia, Transcaucasia and the Volga Basin, where a
tongue of Dar al-Islam projects into the frozen spaces of Russia.
Kazan, the northermost outpost of Islam, is in the same latitude as
Moscow; it is usually under snow from November to the end of March
each year.
Mostly Tatars inhabit the former territories of the Tatar khanates,
Kazan, Astrakhan and the Crimea, although there is a huge diaspora.
Now the Tatars dispossessed by Stalin are recolonising their ancestral
Lands in the Crimea with the encouragement of the Ukrainians, who need
their support against any eventual showdown with
the Russians.
As a result of demographic policies pursued before and after the
1917 Revolution, the Tatars now form a minority (47.6 percent) in
their own country, with Russians making up most (41 percent) of the
remainder. Neighbouring Bashkiria has more Tatars than Tatarstan.
Between the Volga and the Urals (where Europe ends) live some seven
million Tatars, of whom only a million and a half are in
Tatarstan.
The process of dilution was at its most intense in Kazan, with its
population of 1,082,000, of whom less than half are Muslims.
Attracted by industries, of which Tatarstan has many, 70 different
nationalities live within Tatarstan's borders.
The result is a mish-mash, with a high level of intermarriage,
posing serious problems for the future of Islam. A well-known Tatar leader,
Fauziyya Bairamova, caused a lot of controversy recently by her opposition
to intermarriage, a practice which saddles the next generation with an
identity problem and all too often results in an erosion of faith. Much of
the opposition comes from those married Russians; there is a high rate of
intermarriage in the cities.
Tatarstan is situated on the boundary between two cultures, the Turkic
and the Slavic, and between two religions, Islam and Christianity,
a fact which promotes and discourages fraternisation. For alongside the
situation described, there exists 'neighbour syndrome', so that,
paradoxically, the level of Islamic consciousness is probably higher
in Tatarstan than anywhere else in the former Soviet Union.
Though living in Europe, the Tatars are not European.  Apart from the
Albanians, the only truly European Muslims are the Yugoslav Muslims,
who are Slavic by race.  The Tatar presence in Europe is a consequence of
patterns of tribal migration in the Middle Ages.
Tatars are the southern part of the Golden Horde, although only partially
(12 percent) Mongoloid. Though otherwise easy to confuse with
Europeans, Tatars are usually recognisable on account of their eyes.
Their Arabic names reveal the channels through which Islam reached them.
The Tatars were converted to Islam in 922 CE by Ibn-Fadlan, although,
when he reached them, he found that some were Muslim already.
Tatars are a gifted, industrious people who, throughout history, have
formed a prosperous agricultural and mercantile community. Rich arable
land extending either side of the Volga tempted this originally nomadic
people to settle.

There they live in traditional Tatar style in villages composed of
houses of uniform size (all Tatar houses are 8 X 12 metres).
We called on two families to wish them the blessings of Eid. Neither had
been warned of our coming, for the houses were chosen at random. On entering,
our first reaction was one of astonishment: houses so clean seem out of
place in the squalid Soviet Union. One could eat one's food off the floor;
in Tatar houses the yellow-painted floorboards gleam like mirrors because
of the incessant polishing. Tatar women are very houseproud, and practically
every Soviet Muslim, given his choice, would prefer to marry a Tatar.
Moscovy's expansion began with the conquest of Kazan in 1552. The Tatars
were the first victims. Nearly half the population of the khanate
was killed: 40 percent within 10 years. Kazan and its 548 mosques (counting
the satellite conurbations) was levelled with the ground, and, for some
years, for a radius of 50 miles around no Muslim was allowed to live.
Movement of populations was something in which Russians had had a lot
of experience.
Expelled from the city, some Tatars went into exile in Kashgaria,
Siberia and Uighur territory; but most of them settled in Zakania, a rural
area 50 miles to the east. Consequently, Tatar culture migrated to
the villages. The Tatar artistic sense survived, but, denied expression
in stone, it expressed itself in the minor arts, such as costume and
jewellery. The Ethnographical Museum in Kazan, opposite the entrance to
the Kremlin, which is presently only partially open as the result of a fire,
contains exquisite examples of both. Bereft of money and patronage,
architecture, except vernacular architecture such as we encountered in
the collective, died out.
The Tatars were exposed to intense missionary activity. There were five
phases of such activity, the last in 1861, when many Tatars fled to
Turkey. There was an eighteenth century bishop of Kazan who boasted that
he had demolished 200 mosques. In the nineteenth century the Russians
opened a large school in the heart of the Tatar quarter on purpose
to convert the Muslims. The huge buildings still stand, desolate and empty.
The Tatars reverted to Islam in three massive waves, the last and biggest
being at the time of the 1905 Revolution, when many restrictions were
lifted. Even today, however, eight per cent of the Tatars remain
Christian.
The big mistake of the Ottomans was not to defend Kazan. The Crimea was
the back door of the Ottoman Empire; having prised it open, the Russians
swept round the Black Sea unimpeded until they reached the Danube.
A second attempt to contact Turkey was made by the Tatars in 1918, but
the Ottomans failed to respond, and Kazan was taken by the Red Army with
Trotsky in command. Trotsky personally conducted the assault from the other
side of the river (Kazan stands on a tributary of the Volga). The city
sustained very little damage, and even today, looks like a film set because
of its nineteenth century buildings.
The grid-plan also preserves the original layout of the Islamic city.
Muslim cities are usually filled with narrow, tortuous streets, but it is
a question of climate. Here in the northern part of Dar al-Islam the streets
are always wide and straight.

*********************                                      (END - Travels)


        Algerian confrontation develops into a wider face-off

BY ZAFAR B.
-----------

  The showdown between the FIS and the Algerian government is about
  to develop into a wider confrontation as other apprehensive
  Arab dictators translate the lessons they have drawn from the conflict
  into comprehensive crackdowns on the Islamic movements in
  their own countries.
  Their fear is aggravated by the continued resistance of the
  beleaguered FIS (despite its formal dissolution and the decimation
  of its leadership) and the sagging morale of the Algerian
  authorities.
  The Arab rulers' loud sigh of relief, after the dissolution of
  the FIS on March 4 was a measure of their concern that its influence
  could engulf the whole region.  At the time a worried member of
  the Kuwaiti royal family actually put a provisional timetable on the
  spread of the dreaded epidemic.
  He issued a warning that, if the FIS had taken power in Algeria,
  Tunisia would have followed suit immediately, Morocco a year later
  and the ripple-effect would have spread throughout the area.
  The Arab despots' sense of relief was also an indication of their
  naive belief in the power of suppression.  However, the relief proved
  short-lived and the belief took a battering when the FIS activists,
  seeking arms for an underground war, attacked police-stations in and
  around the capital. Government disarray in the face of the assault
  did not help.
  The week-long guerrilla-raids panicked the Algerian authorities
  into holding a press-conference to announce the loss of police lives.
  In an unprecedented move, the director-general of national security (DGNS),
  held the press-conference on March 20, admitting that 18 policemen had
  been killed and 128 others wounded in six weeks.
  Three policemen were killed in the Algeria district of Ksar el-Boukharri,
  and two others killed in a night-attack at Boufarik, south of the city.
  At the nearby Bilda, where leaders of the FIS had been held since last June,
  the car of a senior justice ministry official was machine-gunned
  and his chauffeur killed.
  The strategy and motive behind the raids on the police-stations were
  foreshadowed in an FIS communique issued before the attacks.
  It warned that the FIS was 'ready to go underground' if the supreme court
  failed to rescind the March 4 court-order decreeing its dissolution.
  The communique threatened to start by killing the 'traitors and cowards'
  and 'cleansing the inner city areas of police military'.
  'The slaves must be eliminated before we get at the masters,' it added.
  Despite the mobilisation of the resources of the entire State to crush it,
  the organisation proved that it could still carry out its threats,
  demoralising the Algerian authorities and serving notice to other
  Arab regimes that Islamic movements acquire immunity against terror.
  Most Arab States already bristle with the paraphernalia of
  repression, and the Islamic movements are either outlawed
  (as in Tunisia and Egypt) or held on a tight rein.  Where, as in Jordan,
  cosmetic reforms have led to some representation of Islamic groups in the
  toothless legislatures, those reforms are being withdrawn in with
  unseemly haste.
  The Jordanian parliament is now considering a draft-law seeking to
  amend the law on political parties, which enabled the Jordanian
  Muslim Brothers to slip into the assembly.  The draft amendments have
  obviously been conceived in the light of the Algerian
  'democratic experiment', which led to the rise of the FIS, and aim
  to exclude young Algerians from organising politically.  Most of the
  FIS supporters are young people.
  King Hasan's amendments - which also coincide with his reacceptance
  as a US proxy, and the return of thousands of Jordanians and Palestinians
  with Jordanian travel-documents from Kuwait - say that individuals
  wishing to establish political parties must be not less than 25 years of age;
  and must be Jordanian citizens who have lived in Jordan for
  at least 10 years.
  Thousands of Jordanians returning from abroad, who might have been
  exposed to Islamic influences, will be excluded, while those who qualify
  under the 10-year residence rule are likely to be known to the
  ubiquitous secret police. Other amendments designed to curb their
  activities shut off all external funds and give the minister concerned
  the right to examine their books at will.  The rules also order the parties
  to inform the minister of all their decisions and resolutions.
  However, Jordan is heaven compared to the Saudi hell on earth. One of
  the most paranoid rulers in the world has actually banned Qur'anic verses
  in the very land where they were revealed, especially if they reflect
  adversely on monarchs. In particular the following verse is not allowed
  to be quoted or mentioned by the Saudi press, radio or television:-
  'Whenever kings enter a city, they cause it to be corrupt, turning its
  honourable people into a humiliated people.  Verily they do just that'.
  (chapter 27, verse 14).
  The verse accurately describe the humiliation visited on the Saudi people
  by their ruling family, who have turned the holiest places of Islam
  into US superbases. The same could be applied to the rest of the
  Arab dictators, whose survival depends on the whims of western imperialism
  and the suppression of Islam.

NOTE:
----
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