From Tunisia to Pakistan, the Muslim world is in turmoil, as each country struggles to find its own path to an Arab Spring.

Pessimists say that, in the end, all of these countries will end up with soaze form of authoritarian regime either because Islamic parties cannot accept democracy or out of a fear that these regimes will keep a nation out of the modern world.

But I am an optimist. I believe that eventually the democratic ferment in the Arab world will bring an era of relative democracy, religious tolerance and good governance. And I believe guiding Islamic principles will lead the way.

Without a doubt, revolutions are messy.When revolutions occur after decades of authoritarian rule, the next stage is often chaotic and sometimes violent. In this region, there are many examples of long-simmering distrust between ethnic and sectarian groups that go back centuries that had been held in check by despotic rule. Now, suddenly, the grip that had stifled these competing groups has been released.

But I believe after an initial flailing about, conflicts between sectarian groups will slowly abate. Most Muslims want to join the modern world. They want to be part of the international community, not held in suspicion. They want governments that serve them. They do not want to serve the government. They want the freedom to develop their own ideas and live their own lives in harmony with their neighbors.

In short, they want a government that is as responsive to their needs as a Western democracy.

Many people, both in the West and the Middle East, believe that a Western-style democratic government would preclude including Islamic principles. That’s because in the past 40 years, throughout the Muslim world, Islamic law has become dominated by narrow and literalist interpretation that has many Westerners and Muslims believing it is all about regulations on what people can wear and archaic ways that people are punished.

I view this transition as a native Egyptian knowing Egypt as a center of Islamic learning with universities dating back 1,200 years. I have a hard time with how Islam is being used by political groups and governments.

But to think a democratically elected government in a Muslim-majority country will not have some kind of Islamic influence is naïve. The question is what form of Islamic law will have the most influence.

Islamic law is based on six objectives. The law must protect and promote life, human dignity, property, religion, family and intellect. The law is about enhancing the human experience, not restricting it. The Quran contains specific demands from God about justice, about feeding and helping the poor, about taking care of orphans, about the rights of women, about religious freedom and tolerance and about human rights.

In order to be truly an Islamic state, a country needs to pay close attention to these principles. Yet if one were to look closely at the six objectives, one can almost hear Thomas Jefferson talking about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Once a country has embraced democracy, then radical Muslims no longer have a home. Whoever is elected to leadership must then join the political world that requires compromise and coalition building. Radical Islamic regimes can only be imposed by countries ruled by tyrants or ayatollahs who have rejected democracy.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood may want to impose more Islamic values in the government as a result of their election to power. But if the Muslim Brotherhood governs by a strict, literalist interpretation of Islam, they will see the backlash.

Women in Egypt are highly educated. They are not going to acquiesce to losing their rights. The people of Egypt want to be part of the modern world. They will have to insist, as should we, that what the Muslim Brotherhood enacts is, in fact, Islamic law that promotes social justice by protecting the people from tyranny.

This transition period provides a great opportunity for American diplomacy. Instead of fighting the influence of Islam in government, U.S. diplomats should explore with their counterparts in the Middle East the positive aspects of it and how it can be implemented to create a form of government that expands human rights, religious freedom and dignity for all.

If they succeed, both the U.S. and Muslim countries will recognize that they have more in common than they ever thought.

SOURCE:Detroit Free Dress

PARIS (AP) — French authorities filed preliminary terrorism charges Tuesday against a Tunisian administrator of an extremist French website who is suspected of playing a key role in financing and recruiting for al-Qaeda and other violent groups.

The announcement of the suspect’s arrest was unusually dramatic and public for French authorities, but it did not spell out what evidence has been culled or how much money may have been involved, or provide the man’s name. It is the first publicly announced suspected terrorist arrest since President Francois Hollande took office in May.

The suspect – whom prosecutors described as a “formidable financier of the bloodiest terrorist groups” – was questioned Tuesday by anti-terrorism Judge Marc Trevidic in Paris.

Preliminary charges were filed against him for suspected plotting of terrorist acts and financing a terrorist enterprise, the prosecutor’s office said. Under French law, preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates have strong reason to believe a crime was committed, and allow further time for investigation before a decision is made on whether to send the case to trial.The suspect will remain in custody pending further investigation.

Prosecutors say he is suspected of acting as a financier and recruiter for an unusually broad range of terrorist groups stretching from South Asia across the Middle East to North Africa: al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Lebanon-based Fatah al-Islam, the Islamic State of Iraq, Tawhid al-Jihad, and Palestinian extremist group Jaish al-Islam.

The man, born in Tunisia in 1977, was based in the southern French city of Toulon. He was arrested Friday after a yearlong investigation, the prosecutor’s statement said.

Masked agents took part in the raid to arrest him in Toulon, then he was transferred to national anti-terrorist authorities in Paris, said a judicial official in Toulon. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing investigations.

The Paris prosecutor cited “serious and concordant evidence” that the suspect sent material from his computer to terrorist groups. It says he played a “central role” in collecting funds for terrorist groups to buy weapons, but did not elaborate on how much money was involved.

Investigators studied thousands of email messages and analyzed a “considerable mass” of data, prosecutors said. They called it an exceptionally advanced example of “the use of the Internet for terrorist ends in the domain of radical Islam.”

A former senior French counterterrorism official, Louis Caprioli, said the suspected terrorism financing was likely in the thousands of euros, to purchase weapons, and not something on a larger scale.But he said it is “unusual” to find enough evidence to charge someone with alleged terrorism financing and said this suspect “has a dangerous profile, a profile superior to other suspects.”

France’s Europe-1 radio reported that the suspect’s website was in French but hosted outside France, and that it included an encrypted private messaging function that allowed the suspect to communicate with foreign terrorist groups.

In a separate terrorism probe, three suspected members of the Islamist extremist group Forsane Alizza were arrested Tuesday in suburbs of Paris, an official said. Anti-terrorist investigators searched their homes before making the arrests, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be publicly named.

European authorities in countries ranging from Italy to Germany and Spain have made periodic arrests over the last year of suspects accused of al-Qaeda-inspired financing or recruiting. But the arrest in France stood out because of officials’ description of the man’s financing capabilities and his alleged work for so many al-Qaeda offshoots.Such detentions are unusual in Europe, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terror expert at the Swedish National Defence College. “Usually it’s one-offs, pretty small fish,” he said. “It is very rare that you will have facilitators who work with so many multiple franchises.”

Ranstorp also said the volume of electronic information seized indicates the suspect didn’t take adequate security precautions. “If what they say is true, a lot of people (who were in contact with the suspect) will now spend more time on their own security than they will on plotting and planning,” Ranstorp said.

French authorities are sometimes criticized for being too zealous in rounding up terrorist suspects, and arrests do not always result in convictions. They also are sometimes criticized for not acting fast enough.

That was the case with Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman killed in a standoff with police in March after allegedly killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi, and three paratroopers in a rampage in southern France. Those were the country’s worst terrorist attacks since the 1990s.

Authorities later acknowledged that Merah, who espoused radical Islam and had trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been questioned by French intelligence well before the attacks.

Also earlier this year, a French court sentenced an Algerian-born nuclear physicist to five years in prison for his role in plotting terrorism with al-Qaeda’s north African wing via online contacts. Adlene Hicheur, a former researcher at Switzerland’s CERN physics laboratory, was convicted of “criminal association with a view to plotting terrorist attacks.”

His defenders say Hicheur was a victim of France’s over-zealous anti-terrorism laws and that he explored ideas on jihadist websites but never took any concrete step toward terrorism.

SOURCE:Pressconnects.com

Islamist militants have continued their destructive rampage through the ancient city of Timbuktu, smashing ancient mosques and destroying the shrines of Muslim saints.Fighters from the Ansar Dine group, which controls much of northern Mali, have vowed to destroy all of the city’s shrines, which they consider to be un-Islamic.

Pickaxe-wielding militants wrecked seven tombs of Muslim saints over the weekend and show no sign of ending their rampage, despite threats of prosecution for war crimes.

Overnight they smashed the entrance to the city’s 15th century Sidi Yahya mosque, listed as one of Timbuktu’s three great mosques by the UN cultural agency UNESCO.

The door on the south end of the mosque has been closed for centuries due to local beliefs that to open it will bring misfortune.

Residents sobbed as turbaned men chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) broke down the “sacred door”.

Video footage showed militants chanting while smashing a mausoleum with pickaxes in a cloud of dust.

There were gaping holes in the side of the mud-brick tomb, which had rubble piled up alongside it.

“The Islamists have just destroyed the door to the entrance of the Sidi Yahya mosque. They tore the sacred door off which we never open,” a resident of the town said.

Another man, a relative of a local religious leader, said he had spoken to members of Ansar Dine.

“Some said that the day this door is opened it will be the end of the world and they wanted to show that it is not the end of the world,” he said.

The door leads to a tomb of saints, however the Islamists appeared unaware of that. One witness said if they had known “they would have broken everything”.
Centre of Islamic learning

Sidi Yahya is one of Timbuktu’s three great mosques and was built around 1400, dating back to the city’s golden age as a desert crossroads and centre for learning.

The fabled city, which became a metaphor for a mythic, faraway place, is considered one of the centres from which Islam spread through Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Mali’s government and the international community have expressed horror and outrage at the destruction of cultural treasures in the city.

Last week, UNESCO placed Timbuktu on its endangered list because of continuing violence in the country’s north.

The rebels, who seized the city following a coup in March, are attempting to impose Sharia law and consider the shrines to be idolatrous.

Pleas have poured in for the Islamists to halt the destruction, which has been compared to the Taliban blowing up the giant Buddhas of the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan – an ancient Buddhist shrine on the Silk Road – in 2001 after branding them un-Islamic.

The International Criminal Court has warned the rebels’ campaign amounts to a war crime.

“My message to those involved in these criminal acts is clear: stop the destruction of the religious buildings now,” ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said.
“This is a war crime which my office has authority to fully investigate.”

SOURCE:ABC Radio Australia