From: imnet2@max.u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.pakistan,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: ISLAMIC WORLD NEWS (28th)
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:34:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: max.1992Jul28.093432.1

***************************** NEWS UPDATE **********************************

BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA
While the Serbs are continuing their slaughter of innocent people in the
Muslim republic, the British convened a conference in London on July 27 to
try to work out the future political arrangement in
Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Nobody wants to stop the slaughter of innocent people; their energies
are directed towards discussing peripheral issues.
The question of refugees has now taken over from getting food supplies into
Sarajevo. All of these -- whether getting food into Sarajevo or the
influx of refugees into Europe -- are the result of the relentless
bombardment by the Serbs. Yet nobody wants to stop that or give the Bosnians
the wherewithal to defend themselves.
This western attitude stands in sharp contrast with the threats issued
against Saddam Husain for refusing to allow UN inspectors to go around
sniffing in the Iraqi agricultural ministry.
US president George Bush was threatening to use force if Saddam did not
immediately comply with every single demand of the UN resolutions.
Saddam, of course was not going to stand up to the US; he is as much a 
thug as Bush and company; but in his own ways, Saddam again exposed the
hypocrisy of western leaders.
The US is prepared to send its fleet to bomb Baghdad but it is not interested
in saving thousands of innocent lives in Bosnia.
Threats against Saddam were also designed to help Bush's re-election
campaign although it appears as if it did not turn out as well as Bush and
his handlers had expected.

TUNISIA
At least 300 Muslim activists, some of them members of An-Nahdha, the
Islamic Party in Tunisia, were put on trial in two military courts in Tunis
on July 27.
They were accused of plotting to overthrow the regime of general
Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali, who himself grabbed power in a military coup in
1987.
Many of the defendants acuused the security forces of extracting confessions
from them under torture.
Meanwhile, another North African country, Egypt, was accused by the New York
based group, Middle East Watch, of torturing detainees. In a report released
on July 27, the group accused Egyptian security forces of sexually
abusing detainees, many of whom are held without trial.

AFGHANISTAN
Iran's deputy foreign minister Alauddin Burujerdi led a delegation to
Kabul on July 27. During a meeting with leaders of the Afghan interim
government, Burujerdi said that the Afghans must sort out their own
affairs and must not look to outsiders to solve their differences for them.
He also stated that Iran did not favour one group over another.
It was for the people of Afghanistan to decide whom they wanted to have
as their leaders.
Two days earlier, in an attempt to defuse tensions between two groups
that had been fighting for control of the western suburbs of Kabul,
Ahmed Shah Masoud, the Afghan defence minister appointed two members from
the Ittehad-e Islami and one from the Hizb-e Wahdat, to be his advisors.
The two groups were most recently involved in fighting on July 21 when
the government negotiated a ceasefire.

INDIA
Hindu fanatics stopped construction of the concrete platform on July 26 
after prime minister Narasimha Rao gave personal assurances to the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad that he will resolve the matter within three months.
Ashok Singhal, leader of the fascist group, said that he accepted the
prime minister's assurance and decided to agree to his request.
On July 9, Hindu fanatics had stormed the Babri Masjid compound in
Ayodhya and started construction work in defiance of a court order.
The Hindus want to destroy the 450-year-old Mosque built by the Moghul
emperor, Babar and want to erect a temple there instead.
The Hindus claim that the Mosque stands on the site where the Hidus'
mythical god, Rama, was born and there was, at some earlier date, a
temple there.
Even Hindu archaeologists have dismissed such claims as utter nonsense.
But the Hindu fanatics are neither interested in archaeology nor facts;
they are driven by their hatred of the Muslims and simply want to
destroy a historic monument.
For the moment, the problem has been postponed but it is far from over.
The chances are that it may erupt before the three-month period is
over.
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EVENT SCAN ###############################################################

                    SUDAN; PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
  
 By a correspondent in Khartoum

 The recapture of a small town deep in southern Sudan by government
 troops on July 13 may figure prominently when the history of Islam's
 spread across the African continent comes to be written - unlikely as
 that might sound. The fall of Torit - near the Ugandan border and cradle
 of all rebellions by Christian secessionists since 1955 - is a serious
 setback to church and western plans to detach the largely animist south
 from the wholly Muslim north in order to establish an effective barrier
 preventing Islam's advance southward of that line.
 Those plans had come perilously close to fruition as northern Sudanese,
 exhausted and demoralised by a long and costly civil war they were
 unable decisively to win, began to believe in the wisdom of letting
 the south go. Even Islamic activists saw merit in the argument that
 the secession of the south could aid the successful introduction
 of an Islamic revolution in the north.
 However, that was before the current government offensive against the
 Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which has achieved
 a resounding victory, clinched by Torit's recapture.
 The tumultuous crowds that thronged the streets of northern cities
 and towns to celebrate the fall of Torit demonstrated that this
 defeatist reasoning was a thing of the past. Even the anti-Sudanese
 Saudi and Egyptian media could not claim that the crowds were
 a rent-a-mob lot arranged by general Umar Hasan al-Bashir's military
 regime.
 Torit was Garang's military and political headquarters and a vital
 supply centre, with an airport and an all-weather road to Kenya through
 which church, western and Saudi provisions and arms had been channelled
 to the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The colonel was so convinced
 he could defend it against the advancing troops that he had invited
 foreign reporters to witness a massacre.
 In the event, it was the SPLA forces that were routed ignominously
 and compelled to withdraw to Kajo, Nimule and Kaia in the west of
 the country. Garang threw everything into his most crucial battle and lost
 the war, while his forces suffered grievous losses in men and
 munitions.
 A spokesman for the SPLA in Nairobi, George Garang, admitted on July 14,
 that Torit had fallen to government troops; however, he claimed that
 the SPLA forces had withdrawn tactically to set up a trap for the enemy,
 adding that they were being surrounded even as he spoke.
 General Bashir and the overjoyed crowds in Khartoum had no doubt that
 a crucial victory had been achieved in the nine-year campaign against
 the SPLA. 'Torit has now joined the liberated areas of the homeland,
 with national banners flying high,' declared the jubilant general on the day
 after the fall of Garang's main headquarters.
 Bashir had good reason to rejoice.  He pulled off in four months what
 no Sudanese leader before him had achieved: to inflict military defeat
 on southern rebel army. His troops launched their 'final offensive' only
 last March, capturing over a dozen towns before winning the glittering
 prize on July 13.
 The southern rebellion began in Torit just before Sudan's independence
 in August, 1955, when the soldiers of the town's garrison mutinied
 after being ordered to Khartoum without their weapons to take part in
 a military parade.

 The southern soldiers had been led by northern military officers who
 had replaced the British officers during the transitional period leading
 to full independence in 1956 and this provoked resentment in their ranks;
 reinforced by the fact that no southerners were appointed to the civil
 service either to replace the departing British officials.
 Due to these grievances the minor mutiny in Torit was the spark which
 ignited a civil war which lasted for 17 years, resulting directly or
 indirectly in the deaths of over 500,000 people. The civilian regimes
 were unable to suppress the Anya-Nya, as the first rebels were called.
 Nor could Ja'afar Numeiri, who seized power on October 25, 1969 and who
 elected to negotiate a political settlement successfully in 1972, with
 the help of Ethiopia's emperor Haile Salassie.
 Southerners' grievances over the alleged theft of their Nile water and
 crude oil discovered in the region developed into a new rebellion in 1983.
 The spark was provided when Numeiri redivided the south into their
 original three districts to allay small southern tribes' fears of the
 numerically dominant Dinka tribe, to which colonel Garang belongs.
 The small tribes unfairly sided with the Dinka who claimed that the division
 of the region into three provinces sought to marginalise the south.
 The result was the establishment of the Sudanese People's Liberation
 Army (SPLA) in 1983.
 The SPLA received a boost in numbers and finance when the beleaguered
 Numeiri announced the 'implementation of the Shari'ah throughout the
 country in September 1983. Numeiri's successor, general Suwar al-Dhabab,
 who came to power on April 6, 1985, at the head of a Transitional Military
 Council (TMC) was equally unable to defeat the SPLA or conclude a political
 settlement with them. So was the civilian coalition government led by
 Sadiq al-Mahdi, to which the TMC handed power after a year in office.
 General Bashir, who overthrew the Sadiq al-Mahdi administration in a
 military coup on June 30, 1989, has roundly defeated the SPLA in the face
 of western and Arab hostility to his regime, and of Saudi, Israeli and
 Kuwaiti backing for the southern rebels.
 Egypt and the Gulf States are determined to overthrow Bashir because
 of his support for Iraq during the Gulf war and his continued links
 with Baghdad.
 Khartoum, in fact, condemned the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on August 2,
 1990, but refused to join the US-led assault on a country with which it
 had a mutual defence pact under the Arab League grouping.
 As the capture of the SPLA weapons by government troops progressed with
 the successive fall of towns in rebel hands, the Saudi military backing
 for Garang became obvious. Bashir went public with the new information
 on May 27, when he accused Riyadh of supplying the SPLA through the port
 of Mombasa. Later Sudanese officials gave further details by naming
 the ships involved.
 Egypt raised the level of its harassment of Sudan when it laid claim to
 a Red Sea region in which Khartoum had licensed oil companies to prospect
 for oil.
 This occured at the height of the current offensive.  Subsequently,
 Cairo publicly accused Khartoum of arming the Islamic activists in
 southern Egypt across the border - a serious charge, which coincided with
 the battle for Torit.
 Bashir's triumph over Garang and his foreign backers was made possible
 partly by the overthrow of Ethiopia's former president Mengistu Haile
 Miriam in 1991, a development which cut the supply line through which
 Israeli and Saudi financial and military assistance was being transmitted.
 The new Ethiopian government also closed the SPLA bases in the
 country.
 This does not detract from the Sudanese people's victory over the
 southern rebels, who are a mere front for western powers that are
 determined to roll back the frontiers of Islam in the African continent.
 In that sense, Bashir's triumph is a victory for Muslims the
 world over.
 However, Sudan is a huge country - the largest State in Africa and
 the ninth largest in the world. It is larger than the combined area of
 the twelve EC nations, and shares borders with eight countries. As such it
 is an ideal country for guerrilla warfare; and, given tribal diversities
 as well as church and western conspiracies having Saudi oil wealth at
 their disposal, there will always be intermittent unrest in the far-flung
 districts of the south.
 The victory at Torit ensures that such local unrest will not develop
 into a full-scale rebellion in the near future, but it is no insurance
 against longterm challenges.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    THE ISLAMIC ECONOMY

By Mohammed Baaker As Sadr
Translated by Ahmed E. Souaiaia

PART III

                Principle of Social Justice

     The third pillar of the Islamic economy is "Principle
of Social Justice" required by the order and the guarantees
of distribution of wealth in a Muslim society.  Indeed by
introducing the principle of Social Justice as a fundamental
pillar of the Islamic economy, Islam did only not adopt it
as a general abstract concept and did not leave it an open
subject to be determined any way we wish, but Islam
clarifies and defines this principle in a social platform,
and manage - after that - realizing this platform in a live
social movement.
     So it's not enough to know this call for social
justice, but we need to know also the detailed visualization
of the Islamic justice which contains two general principles
also: Public mutual solidarity, and Social Balance. These
two principles, Solidarity and Balance, shape and create the
limits and the framework of the Islamic social justice.
     The Islamic struggle to create the best human society
is very clear from the shining examples and the declarations
of the prophet (PBUH). In the first address and the first
political action undertaken by prophet in his newly formed
state in Madina he said:
          "By Allah . . . each of you will meet his lord and
     Allah will ask him: "has not my prophet told you the   
     truth, and I granted you wealth and favored you? So    
     what have you done for yourself for today?" Then he    
     looks right and left and sees nothing, then looks      
     ahead to see only hell. You people whoever wants       
     to save himself from hell - even with half a grain     
     of date - do it, whoever cannot find one, do it even   
     with a good word indeed the reward of one good deed is
     ten to seven hundred of its kind, and peace and        
     blessings of Allah be upon you."

 The prophet started his political work by creating a bond
of brotherhood between the Immigrants and the Ansar of
Madina and by practicing the principle of Solidarity among
them.
     So that was the three pillars of the Islamic economy:
Blended Economy, Limited Freedom, and Social Justice. Two
characteristics may lack other systems are well noticed in
the Islamic Economy: Practicality and Ethicality. Islam in
its approach and its goals differs from all other systems by
adopting a practical and ethical perspective.
     It is a practical economy in its goals, because the
Islamic economy in its laws and orders recognizes the
aspiration that fits with human life, with all its instinct
and general characteristics. Islam always tries not to add
an other burden to humanity in the Tashri', and at the same
time not to imagine things and hope for ideal dreams beyond
our reach and beyond our capabilities. . . But Islam built
its economic plan based on a practical vision and adopt the
practical goals that is compatible with that vision. The
communist economy for example may dream of an Ideal Human
society capable of overcoming all ill instincts like greed
and selfishness, and capable of distributing work and wealth
without need of a government, but this does not agree with
the nature of the Islamic Tashri' and the practicality of
the Islamic economy.
     The Islamic economy is also practical in its approach.
As it sets practical goals and objectives, the Islamic
economy also guarantees the realizations of these goals and
objectives practically and materially not just by providing
advice and guidance or leaving it under the mercy of 'fate'
and chances. When calling for Social Solidarity, for
instance, Islam does not beg and play on the string of
emotion, but sets the rule and the guidelines to make that
happen any way.
     The second characteristic of the Islamic economy,
ethicality, apply to the goals, in that Islam does not
extract the objectives that are needed to be realized in the
social economic life from material circumstances and natural
conditions independent from the human being himself, as it
is the case in communism when it plans its objectives
according to the forces of production, but Islam looks at
those objectives and goals as translations of practical
values needed to be realized from an ethical perspective as
well. For example when Islam decides to protect the rights
of the workers, it is not because this action has been
necessitated by the material needs to protect production,
rather an example of a practical ethical value that need to
be realized.
     As for the Approach, Ethicality means that Islam
considers the psychological factor when putting forward the
means and the approach to realize the objectives. So Islam
amalgamates the psychological and the personal factors to
reach the goal. For example, money could be taken from the
rich and given to the poor to fulfil his needs, and thereby,
achieve the social solidarity called for by Islam, but that
is not all for the Islamic system because the mean or
expedient is as much important as the goal. If we ignore the
Approach or the mean, we could simply use force to take the
money from the rich and give it to the poor, and hence
actualize the objective (solidarity), but Islam does not
agree with that as long as the solidarity is originated from
a sense of ethical values and goodness elements of the rich
individual.  For that reason, Islam makes the material
obligations (Zakat, Khums and Sadakaat), a form of
worshiping that need to flourish deep from the human being
soul and enable him to participate in creating the goals of
the Islamic economy in a conscious manner hoping for the
pleasure of Allah Ta'la.
#######################################################################
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For more information, please contact Dr. Mohammad Amjad Alvi,
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special service to support the struggle in Bosnia.
To find out how to contribute to this effort please contact:

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