RUTHFULLY YOURS

At least 19 people, including some children, were killed and 59 wounded when a suicide bomber struck as thousands of fans streamed out of a concert by U.S. singer Ariana Grande in the English city of Manchester on Monday.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the incident was being treated as a terrorist attack, making it the deadliest militant assault in Britain since four British Muslims killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London’s transport system in July 2005.

Police said the attacker detonated the explosives shortly after 10:33 pm (2133 GMT) at Manchester Arena, which has the capacity to hold 21,000 people. Children were among the dead, police said.

“We believe, at this stage, the attack last night was conducted by one man,” Manchester Chief Constable Ian Hopkins told reporters. “The priority is to establish whether he was acting alone or as part of a network.

“We believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device which he detonated causing this atrocity,” said Hopkins, who declined to answer questions about whether the attacker was British.

A witness who attended the concert said she felt a huge blast as she was leaving the arena, followed by screaming and a rush by thousands of people trying to escape the building.

A video posted on Twitter showed fans, many of them young, screaming and running from the venue. Dozens of parents frantically searched for their children, posting photos and pleading for information on social media.

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001701.html

Last week, Amalia Rubin, an American Jew who works as an English teacher in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, received a robust round of applause when she sung Moishe Nadir’s 1927 Yiddish classic, “The Rebbe Elimelech,” live on one of Mongolian TVs most popular programs, the Mongolian equivalent of American Idol.

Rubin also sings in both Mongolian and Tibetan and she is popular the Tibetan Diaspora for being one of the few westerners to promotes traditional Tibetan songs long repressed by China.

For utopians viewing the world stage there is war or unending conflict and peace. However, the reality of world affairs offers nuanced meaning of each. Every action can be understood horizontally through a sequence of causes and vertically in the structure of things. The precipitating factors for war involve causes such as territorial claims, alliance commitment, ideological fervor and competing national interests. Beyond these material factors are the historic factors and genetic disposition for conflict. The tocsin in the air is often an expression of DNA.

At the moment the world is in disarray, Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, expresses concern that the nations of the world are arrayed against him. His saber rattling gestures include everything from missile testing to rhetoric that describes inflicting devastation on the United States. What no one knows is what motivates this leader of the Hermit Kingdom other than financial concessions from the West in return for empty promises. Like his father and grandfather before him, Kim is an extortion artist.

Denuclearizing the Korean peninsula makes sense from an American perspective, but North Korea has nothing to trade or influence to save its nuclear arsenal. As a consequence, a military option to eliminate the threat of nuclear exchange cannot be removed from the negotiating table. Yet war in the nuclear age is a prospect so horrific that it cannot be “another option;” it is the unpalatable option.

Hence the real option in most cases of conflict is stability. In the North Korean case, this may entail protocols and verification on the testing, use and placement of nuclear weapons.

There is a difference between crime and tragedy. The world now unfolding is comprised of many criminals whose notion of war defies the horror of nuclear exchange, believing as they do that the West will never use weapons of mass destruction even if it means surrender.

Solzhenitsyn made it clear that the elimination of war is a grand theme that enters the realm of the utopian and non-existent. The opposite of war is not peace, but stability. Should one consider this to be the appropriate backdrop for analysis, North Korean nukes must be controlled since their elimination is likely to lead to war. And this may be achieved through regional negotiation among China, South Korea and Japan.

Solzhenitsyn also noted that a state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. Surely North Korea reinforces this claim. The country is in a dire condition since it can neither feed itself, nor provide electricity. War chatter has a chilling effect on North Koreans and an even more frightening effect on regional neighbors. That explains why the U.S. is the “Great Satan.” The challenger, in this case the U.S. – it is argued – doesn’t lead the free world; it coerces allies into the adoption of key policies.

Where this crisis is headed is anyone’s guess, but I am persuaded that the conditions for stability will emerge even if they are unclear at the moment. Should North Korea actually precipitate a war, it would be eliminated from the map in minutes. However erratic Mr. Kim may be, he knows that.

In Leo Tolstoy’s majestic novel, War and Peace, fact or fiction merge into a tapestry of Russian life in the Napoleonic Wars. What the book demonstrates is the moral depravity and philosophical stagnation as war’s effect. Despite the devastation, war holds out promise of resolution, of that moment when stability emerges – a reprieve from horror. That is the only realistic prospect for North Korea now that the beasts of war have been unleashed and the threat is so great a response is inevitable. It is hoped that cool heads will seek the pathway to stability without the bombs bursting in air. God help us if this isn’t the case.

Some forms of “honor based” abuse, such as “breast ironing,” often go undetected because teachers are unaware that it exists. Helen Porter said: “Breast ironing has been carried out for many generations and is usually performed by mothers who wish to prevent their daughters from being sexually attractive to men in a bid to protect them from child marriage and pregnancy, sexual harassment, rape and the spread of HIV… In the UK, girls in London, Leicester and Birmingham are most at risk.”

The Charity Commission asked Islamic Relief to explain why it invited a hardline Muslim preacher to star in a fundraising tour of Britain. Yasir Qadhi, a Saudi-educated American academic, has been recorded telling students that killing homosexuals and stoning adulterers was part of Islam. Qadhi, who featured in an eight-city tour, described Islamic punishments such as cutting off the hands of thieves as “very beneficial to society.” The commission also questioned two other charities, Muslim Aid and Read Foundation, about their sponsorship of a speaking tour by Qadhi in 2015

Sainsbury’s and Asda, two of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, refused to sell Easter eggs that tell the story of Christianity. Both chains, however, sold eggs that are not specifically Christian, including a halal version made by the Belgian firm Guylian. Stephen Green, of the lobby group Christian Voice, said: “You are whitewashing the Christian message out of Christian holidays. It’s difficult to find any explicitly Christian products, like Christmas cards, in supermarkets.”

“It’s all right for the judge respecting the human rights of the prisoner, but what about the human rights of the prison staff he was threatening to behead?” — Philip Davies, a Tory MP for Shipley.

April 1. The British Home office stripped Sufiyan Mustafa, 22, of his UK passport after he traveled to Syria to fight with jihadists. Mustafa is the youngest son of the cleric Abu Hamza, who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States after being convicted of terrorism charges. Mustafa complained that he is now stateless and stranded in Syria:

“Britain is the place where I was born and lived. I have never been a threat to national security in Britain and will not commit aggression on its population because our religion does not allow attacks on unarmed innocents.”

April 1. Frankland Prison in County Durham became the first of its kind to open “a prison within a prison” to isolate Islamic extremists. Convicted terrorists are to be moved to a “jihadist prison block” to reduce the risk of other inmates being radicalized. A government report recommended that the “most subversive extremist prisoners” should be jailed separately to tackle the problem of jihadists radicalizing their fellow inmates.

April 5. A BBC investigation found that online services in Britain are charging divorced Muslim women thousands of pounds to take part in “halala” Islamic marriages. Halala involves the woman marrying a stranger, consummating the marriage and then getting a divorce, after which she is able to remarry her first husband. Some Muslims believe that halala is the only way a couple who have been divorced, and wish to reconcile, can remarry. The BBC reported that women who seek halala services are at risk of being financially exploited, blackmailed and even sexually abused. One man, advertising halala services on Facebook, told an undercover BBC reporter posing as a divorced Muslim woman that she would need to pay £2,500 ($3,250) and have sex with him in order for the marriage to be “complete” — at which point he would divorce her. The man also said he had several other men working with him, one who he claims refused to issue a woman a divorce after a halala service was complete.

April 5. The Salafi Independent School, an Islamic private school in Small Heath, was found to have placed an advertisement for a male-only science teacher. Although the advertisement, which breached the Equalities Act, was retracted, the headmaster claimed that the role must be occupied by a male teacher because of “religious observance reasons.” The decision prompted calls for the school to be investigated, amid fears it promotes “gender-based discrimination” and threatens to undermine “British values.”

Cairo was the political capital of the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was the most charismatic ruler in the region, and he tried to become the undisputed leader of the Arab world. In his 1954 memoir, The Philosophy of the Revolution, Nasser revealed his vision of Egypt as a unique geostrategic influence in the African, Arab, and Islamic world. He believed Egypt was destined to play a pivotal role in Arab affairs.

Initially, Nasser was concerned primarily with consolidating power and expelling the British from Egypt. After stabilizing his rule by suppressing communists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, he championed pan-Arabism as a strategic tactic to unify the Arab world under his command. Pan-Arabism was a secular ideology that advocated Arab unity, freedom from foreign control, and the liberation of Palestine – a euphemism for a Palestinian state built on Israel’s ruins.

Nasser’s political star rose after he nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and subsequently survived a direct assault from the UK, France, and Israel. He graced international venues as a hero of the Nonaligned Movement, rubbing shoulders with established anti-imperialist leaders like Tito of Yugoslavia, Nehru of India, Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia. No major world leader could dispute Nasser’s growing popularity and legitimacy.

Through his spokesperson Muhammad Heikal, editor of Egypt’s state-run newspaper al-Ahram, Nasser adopted a brilliant strategic communications campaign to shape and influence public opinion. Cairo became the Arab capital of influence. Nasser’s policies were cautiously observed by Israel, neighboring Arab states, and the Western powers, as well as the Soviet Union. In the era of Cold War rivalry, Nasser adroitly played off the two rival superpowers to maximize his country’s economic, political, and military stature while offering minimal concessions.

Nasser’s Egypt demonstrated how a developing country with a large population could persevere in the face of tremendous economic, political, and military challenges. Despite the expectations of Western and Soviet intelligence officials, the regime did not collapse. Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip after the 1967 War, but Nasser managed to turn that stunning military defeat into a political victory. He employed skillful diplomacy at the UN to appease Moscow and the West in order to rebuild Egypt’s military and sustain his own unique leadership status in the Arab world.

Nasser remained defiant. Egypt endured, despite losing territory and suffering from a depressed economy due to a collapse in tourism and the closure of the Suez Canal. After the war, Egypt lost $30 million a month to lost Canal revenues and an additional $1.5 million in tourism each week. (The Canal remained closed until 1975, when Israel withdrew its troops from the east bank as part of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and the second Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement).

After Nasser’s untimely death in 1970, other Arab leaders like Qaddafi, Assad, and Saddam tried to replicate his successes – but none had the charisma or mandate to shape public opinion and extract concessions from Washington and Moscow. Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, long suppressed under Nasser, gradually resurfaced, capitalizing on the political and ideological vacuum.

Those movements argued that Muslims had become weak because Nasser, Qaddafi, Saddam, and Assad were not true believers. They had failed to implement sharia (Islamic law), aligned with kuffar (infidel) Western or Russian powers, and abandoned the pursuit of the liberation of Palestine. They had become apostates, unfit to rule, and should be replaced with Islamic governance.

The solution to secular pan-Arabism, in their view, was Islam. They promoted Islam as the only ideology with the capacity to satisfy Muslim aspirations. Secularism, nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and communism were foreign concepts incompatible with Muslims.

The Muslim Brotherhood expanded its influence through social services and redoubled its devotion to the eventual construction of an Islamic state governed by sharia. Extremist Islamist movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS continue to seek to achieve these goals by engaging in terrorism against the West and committing genocide against non-conforming Muslims and ethnic and religious minorities.

The removal of Saddam and subsequent violence and instability of the 2003 Iraq War, the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world, and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accelerated the expansion of these non-state Islamist actors, as well as Iran. In this “new” Middle East, these players compete for influence while Egyptian and Arab leaders grapple with instability, insurgency, civil war, and failed states.

n the days before President Hassan Rouhani’s re-election victory in Iran this weekend, a video of one of his old speeches circulated on social media. Speaking at Iran’s parliament, Rouhani says dissidents against the new regime should be publicly hanged during Friday prayers as a message.

Rouhani was a younger man in this speech, in his early 40s. The revolution was also young. And many Iranian leaders of that era have taken the journey from revolution to reform. The reason Rouhani’s speech though is so relevant to Iran today is because, in public at least, the president of Iran has changed his tune.

During his campaign, he told voters that he would be a “lawyer” defending their rights. He criticized his main rival, Ebrahim Raisi, for his role in ordering the executions of political dissidents. He promised gender equality and a freer press.

All of that sounds pretty good. And for those in the west looking for an Iranian version of Mikhail Gorbachev, it makes a nice talking point. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe Rouhani will deliver, or even try to deliver, on any of these promises.

There are a few reasons for this. To start, Rouhani delivered the same line back in 2013 when he first won the presidency. We now know that human rights in Iran have further eroded during his tenure. A lot of this has been documented by the Center for Human Rights in Iran. The organization noted in October that Rouhani supported a law that would essentially place all Iranian media under government control. The center also documented a wave of arrests of journalists in November 2015, following Iran’s agreement to the nuclear bargain with the U.S and five other world powers. In the run-up to Friday’s vote, 29 members of the European Parliament wrote an open letter urging Iran to end its arrests, intimidation and harassment of journalists in the election season.

Sadegh Zibakalam, an activist and professor of political science at Tehran University, summed this up well in November: “Rouhani did not have the power to free political prisoners or end the house arrests, but he didn’t even pretend that he wanted to do something.”