Apologies over, Obama throws down gauntlet

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama warned yesterday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, and made a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

Last week he struggled to deal with mounting anger regarding the excesses of the wealthy on Wall Street, he criticized “greed and irresponsibility,” then declared that the Wall Street bonuses — $18 billion paid out in Wall Street bonuses last year — were “shameful.”

This week, he announced that companies getting future bailout funds would have to cap executive compensation at $500,000 and place limits on stock options.

Condemning a “culture of narrow self-interest and short-germ gain at the expense of everything else,” Obama said that while “we believe success should be rewarded... what gets people upset, and rightfully so, are executives being rewarded for failure.”

In his first op-ed piece as president, Obama wrote in The Washington Post yesterday that each day without his stimulus package, Americans would lose more jobs, savings and homes.

“This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose five million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse,” Obama wrote.

His message came as congressional leaders struggled to control the huge stimulus bill that’s been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.

Obama, meanwhile, has grown combative since his apologies this week over his administration’s chief performance officer withdrew her nomination because of unpaid taxes, and, on the same day, the president’s choice to be secretary of health and human services withdrew his nomination, also because of his unpaid taxes.

Making matters worse, Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer pulled announced their resignations just hours before Obama was to hold a host of individual interviews with major broadcast networks.

His sessions with the news anchors turned into a series of ‘mea culpas’: “I messed up,” he told CBS’s Katie Couric.

“I screwed up,” he told NBC’s Brian Williams.

“This is self-induced injury,” he told ABC’s Charles Gibson.

His most thoughtful response was with CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I campaigned on change in Washington, bottom-up politics, and I don’t want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards — one for the powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying taxes.”

Having apologized earlier this week, Obama has now grown combative. Americans voted for him, not the other guy, he told Americans, and demanded that lawmakers “put aside politics” and start working together — a statement aimed mainly at the Republican lawmakers who prefer tax cuts to a new spending to bounce Americans out of its financial mess.

“In the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that help lead us into this crisis — the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems,” the president said at the White House Wednesday.

“I reject that theory, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.”

Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties.

With the Senate preparing to vote on its version of the economic stimulus package, Obama has stepped up his sales pitch to put public pressure on lawmakers to approve it.

His latest plea came on the same day the economy dealt with another dose of bad news: A massive jump in jobless claims and another round of weak retail sales.

Initial jobless claims rose to 626,000, a 26-year high, the Labor Department said. And the number of claims by people continuing to apply for unemployment benefits reached a new record of nearly 4.8 million.

The housing tax break was the most notable attempt to date to add help for the crippled industry and gave Republicans a victory as they work to remake the legislation more to their liking.

Interview by Andrea Bistrich: Karen Armstrong (4)

So why aren't religious people compassionate? What does that say about them? Compassion is not a popular virtue. Many religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They don't want to give up their egos. They want religion to give them a little mild uplift once a week so that they can return to their ordinary selfish lives, unscathed by the demands of their tradition. Religion is hard work; not many people do it well. But are secularists any better? Many secularists would subscribe to the compassionate ideal but are just as selfish as religious people. The failure of religious people to be compassionate doesn't tell us something about religion, but about human nature. Religion is a method: you have to put it into practice to discover its truth. But, unfortunately, not many people do.

Islam and the West

Discussing Western ideas of justice and democracy in the Middle East, British foreign correspondent of The Independent, Robert Fisk, says: "We keep on saying that Arabs ... would like some of our shiny, brittle democracy, that they'd like freedom from the secret police and freedom from the dictators-who we largely put there. But they would also like freedom from us. And they want justice, which is sometimes more important than 'democracy'". Does the West need to realize that Muslims can run a modern state, but it is perhaps not the kind of democracy we want to see?

As Muslim intellectuals made clear, Islam is quite compatible with democracy, but unfortunately democracy has acquired a bad name in many Muslim countries. It seems that the West has said consistently: we believe in freedom and democracy, but you have to be ruled by dictators like the shahs or Saddam Hussein. There seems to have been a double standard. Robert Fisk is right: when I was in Pakistan recently and quoted Mr Bush-"They hate our freedom!"-the whole audience roared with laughter.

Democracy cannot be imposed by armies and tanks and coercion. The modern spirit has two essential ingredients; if these are not present, no matter how many fighter jets, computers or sky scrapers you have, your country is not really "modern".

The first of these is independence. The modernization of Europe from 16th to the 20th century was punctuated by declarations of independence on all fronts: religious, intellectual, political, economic. People demanded freedom to think, invent, and create as they chose.

The second quality is innovation as we modernized in the West: we were always creating something new; there was a dynamism and excitement to the process, even though it was often traumatic.

But in the Muslim world, modernity did not come with independence but with colonial subjugation; and still Muslims are not free, because the Western powers are often controlling their politics behind the scenes to secure the oil supply etc. Instead of independence there has been an unhealthy dependence and loss of freedom. Unless people feel free, any "democracy" is going to be superficial and flawed. And modernity did not come with innovation to the Muslims: because we were so far ahead, they could only copy us. So instead of innovation you have imitation.

We also know in our own lives that it is difficult-even impossible-to be creative when we feel under attack. Muslims often feel on the defensive and that makes it difficult to modernize and democratize creatively-especially when there are troops, tanks and occupying forces on the streets.

Do you see any common ground between Western world and Islam?

This will only be possible if the political issues are resolved. There is great common ground between the ideals of Islam and the modern Western ideal, and many Muslims have long realized this. At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was in love with the West and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. Some even said that the West was more "Islamic" than the unmodernized Muslim countries, because in their modern economies they were able to come closer to the essential teaching of the Koran, which preaches the importance of social justice and equity. At this time, Muslims recognized the modern, democratic West as deeply congenial. In 1906, Muslim clerics campaigned alongside secularist intellectuals in Iran for representational government and constitutional rule. When they achieved their goal, the grand ayatollah said that the new constitution was the next best thing to the coming of the Shiite Messiah, because it would limit the tyranny of the shah and that was a project worthy of every Muslim. Unfortunately the British then discovered oil in Iran and never let the new parliament function freely. Muslims became disenchanted with the West as a result of Western foreign policy: Suez, Israel/Palestine, Western support of corrupt regimes, and so on.

What is needed from a very practical point of view to bridge the gap? What would you advise our leaders-our politicians and governments?

A revised foreign policy. A solution in Israel/Palestine that gives security to the Israelis and justice and autonomy to the Palestinians. No more support of corrupt, dictatorial regimes. A just solution to the unfolding horror in Iraq, which has been a "wonderful" help to groups like Al-Qaeda, playing right into their hands. No more situations like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. Money poured into Afghanistan and Palestine. A solution to Kashmir. No more short-term solutions for cheap oil. In Iraq and in Lebanon last summer we saw that our big armies are no longer viable against guerrilla and terror attacks. Diplomacy is essential. But suspicion of the West is now so entrenched that it may be too late.

Interview by Andrea Bistrich: Karen Armstrong (3)

In addition, you have stressed the importance of a "triple vision"-the ability to view the conflict from the perspective of the Islamic, Jewish and Christian communities. Could you explain this view?

The three religions of Abraham -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- can and should be viewed as one religious tradition that went in three different directions. I have always tried to see them in this way; none is superior to any of the others. Each has its own particular genius; each its own particular flaws. Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God and share the same moral values. In the book A History of God, I tried to show that throughout their history, Jews, Christians and Muslims have asked the same kind of questions about God and have reached remarkably similar solutions-so that there are Jewish and Muslim versions of the incarnation, for example, and very similar notions of prophecy. In The Battle for God, I tried to show how similar the fundamentalist movements are in all three faiths.

Jews, however, have always found it difficult to accept the later faiths of Christianity and Islam; Christianity has always had an uneasy relationship with Judaism, the parent faith, and has seen Islam as a blasphemous imitation of revelation. The Qur'an, however, has a positive view of both Judaism and Christianity and constantly asserts that Muhammad did not come to cancel out the faiths of "the People of the Book": you cannot be a Muslim unless you also revere the prophets Abraham, David, Noah, Moses and Jesus-whom the Muslims regard as prophets-as in fact do many of the New Testament writers. Luke's gospel calls Jesus a prophet from start to finish; the idea that Jesus was divine was a later development, often misunderstood by Christians.

Unfortunately, however, religious people like to see themselves as having a monopoly on truth; they see that they alone are the one true faith. But this is egotism and has nothing to do with true religion, which is about the abandonment of the ego.

Too often it seems that religious people are not necessarily more compassionate, more tolerant, more peaceful or more spiritual than others. America, for example, is a very religious country, and at the same time it is the most unequal socially and economically. What does this say about the purpose of religion?

The world religions all insist that the one, single test of any type of religiosity is that it must issue in practical compassion. They have nearly all developed a version of the Golden Rule: "Do not do to others what you would not have done to you." This demands that we look into our own hearts, discover what it is that gives us pain and then refuse, under any circumstances, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion demands that we "feel with" the other; that we dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there. This is the bedrock message of the Qur'an, of the New Testament ("I can have faith that moves mountains," says St. Paul, "but if I lack charity it profits me nothing."). Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, defined the Golden Rule as the essence of Judaism: everything else, he said, was "commentary." We have exactly the same teaching in Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. I have tried to show this in one of my most recent books, The Great Transformation.

The traditions all insist that it is not enough simply to show compassion to your own group. You must have what the Chinese call jian ai, concern for everybody. Or as Jewish law puts it: "Honour the stranger." "Love your enemies," said Jesus: if you simply love your own kind, this is purely self-interest and a form of group egotism. The traditions also insist that it is the daily, hourly practice of compassion -not the adoption of the correct "beliefs" or the correct sexuality- that will bring us into the presence of what is called God, Nirvana, Brahman or the Dao. Religion is thus inseparable from altruism.

Interview by Andrea Bistrich: Karen Armstrong (2)

Could you specify the political reasons that you identified as the chief causes of the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies?

In the Middle East, modernization has been impeded by the Arab/Israeli conflict, which has become symbolic to Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists and is the bleeding heart of the problem. Unless a just political solution can be found that is satisfactory to everybody¸ there is no hope of peace. There is also the problem of oil, which has made some of these countries the target of Western greed. In the West, in order to preserve our strategic position and cheap oil supply, we have often supported rulers-such as the shahs of Iran, the Saudis and, initially, Saddam Hussein-who have established dictatorial regimes which suppressed any normal opposition. The only place where people felt free to express their distress has been the mosque.

The modern world has been very violent. Between 1914 and 1945, seventy million people died in Europe as a result of war. We should not be surprised that modern religion has become violent too; it often mimics the violence preached by secular politicians. Most of the violence and terror that concerns us in the Muslim world has grown up in regions where warfare, displacement and conflict have been traumatic and have even become chronic: the Middle East, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir.

In regard to the Arab-Israeli-conflict you have said that for Muslims it has become, "a symbol of their impotence in the modern world." What does that really mean?

The Arab-Israeli conflict began, on both sides, as a purely secular conflict about a land. Zionism began as a rebellion against religious Judaism and at the outset most Orthodox rabbis condemned Zionism as a blasphemous secularization of the Land of Israel, one of the most sacred symbols of Judaism. Similarly the ideology of the PLO was secular-many of the Palestinians, of course, are Christian. But unfortunately the conflict was allowed to fester; on both sides the conflict became sacralized and, therefore, far more difficult to sort out.

In most fundamentalist movements, certain issues acquire symbolic value and come to represent everything that is wrong with modernity. In Judaism, the secular state of Israel has inspired every single fundamentalist movement, because it represents so graphically the penetration of the secular ethos into Jewish religious life. Some Jewish fundamentalists are passionately for the state of Israel and see it as sacred and holy; involvement in Israeli politics is a sacred act of tikkun, restoration of the world; making a settlement in the occupied territories is also an act of tikkun and some believe that it will hasten the coming of the Messiah. But the ultra-Orthodox Jews are often against the state of Israel: some see it as an evil abomination (Jews are supposed to wait for the Messiah to restore a religious state in the Holy Land) and others regard it as purely neutral and hold aloof from it as far as they can. Many Jews too see Israel as a phoenix rising out of the ashes of Auschwitz-and have found it a way of coping with the Shoah.

But for many Muslims the plight of the Palestinians represents everything that is wrong with the modern world. The fact that in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians could lose their homes with the apparent approval of the world symbolizes the impotence of Islam in the modern world vis-à-vis the West. The Qur'an teaches that if Muslims live justly and decently, their societies will prosper because they will be in tune with the fundamental laws of the universe. Islam was always a religion of success, going from one triumph to another, but Muslims have been able to make no headway against the secular West and the plight of the Palestinians epitomizes this impotence. Jerusalem is also the third holiest place in the Islamic world, and when Muslims see their sacred shrines on the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary, also known as Temple Mount]-surrounded by the towering Israeli settlements and feel that their holy city is slipping daily from their grasp, this symbolizes their beleaguered identity. However it is important to note that the Palestinians only adopted a religiously articulated ideology relatively late-long after Islamic fundamentalism had become a force in countries such as Egypt or Pakistan. Their resistance movement remained secular in ethos until the first intifada in 1987. And it is also important to note that Hamas, for example, is very different from a movement like al-Qaeda, which has global ambitions. Hamas is a resistance movement; it does not attack Americans or British but concentrates on attacking the occupying power. It is yet another instance of "fundamentalism" as a religious form of nationalism.

The Arab Israeli conflict has also become pivotal to Christian fundamentalists in the United States. The Christian Right believes that unless the Jews are in their land, fulfilling the ancient prophecies, Christ cannot return in glory in the Second Coming. So they are passionate Zionists; but this ideology is also anti-Semitic, because in the Last Days they believe that the Antichrist will massacre the Jews in the Holy Land if they do not accept baptism.

Do you think the West has some responsibility for what is happening in Palestine?

Western people have a responsibility for everybody who is suffering in the world. We are among the richest and most powerful countries and cannot morally or religiously stand by and witness poverty, dispossession or injustice, whether that is happening in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya or Africa. But Western people have a particular responsibility for the Arab-Israeli situation. In the Balfour Declaration (1917), Britain approved of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and ignored the aspirations and plight of the native Palestinians. And today the United States supports Israel economically and politically and also tends to ignore the plight of the Palestinians. This is dangerous, because the Palestinians are not going to go away, and unless a solution is found that promises security to the Israelis and gives political independence and security to the dispossessed Palestinians, there is no hope for world peace.

Interview by Andrea Bistrich: Karen Armstrong (1)

Karen Armstrong was a Catholic nun for seven years before leaving her order and going to Oxford. Today, she is amongst the most renowned theologians and has written numerous bestsellers on the great religions and their founders. She is one of the 18 leading group members of the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative of the former UN General Secretary, Kofi Anan, whose purpose is to fight extremism and further dialogue between the western and Islamic worlds. She talks here to the German journalist, Andrea Bistrich, about politics, religion, extremism and commonalities.

ANDREA BISTRICH: 9/11 has become the symbol of major, insurmountable hostilities between Islam and the West. After the attacks many Americans asked: "Why do they hate us?" And experts in numerous round-table talks debated if Islam is an inherently violent religion. Is this so?

KAREN ARMSTRONG: Certainly not. There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. The Qur'an forbids aggressive warfare and permits war only in self-defence; the moment the enemy sues for peace, the Qur'an insists that Muslims must lay down their arms and accept whatever terms are offered, even if they are disadvantageous. Later, Muslim law forbade Muslims to attack a country where Muslims were permitted to practice their faith freely; the killing of civilians was prohibited, as were the destruction of property and the use of fire in warfare.

The sense of polarization has been sharpened by recent controversies — the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, over the Pope's remarks about Islam, over whether face-veils hinder integration. All these things have set relations between Islam and the West on edge. Harvard-Professor Samuel Huntington introduced the theory of a "clash of civilizations" we are witnessing today. Does such a fundamental incompatibility between the "Christian West" and the "Muslim World" indeed exist?

The divisions in our world are not the result of religion or of culture, but are politically based. There is an imbalance of power in the world, and the powerless are beginning to challenge the hegemony of the Great Powers, declaring their independence of them-often using religious language to do so. A lot of what we call "fundamentalism" can often be seen as a religious form of nationalism, an assertion of identity. The old 19th-century European nationalist ideal has become tarnished and has always been foreign to the Middle East. In the Muslim world people are redefining themselves according to their religion in an attempt to return to their roots after the great colonialist disruption.

What has made Fundamentalism, seemingly, so predominant today?

The militant piety that we call "fundamentalism" erupted in every single major world faith in the course of the twentieth century. There is fundamentalist Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, as well as fundamentalist Islam. Of the three monotheistic religions-Judaism, Christianity and Islam-Islam was the last to develop a fundamentalist strain during the 1960s.

Fundamentalism represents a revolt against secular modern society, which separates religion and politics. Wherever a Western secularist government is established, a religious counterculturalist protest movement rises up alongside it in conscious rejection. Fundamentalists want to bring God/religion from the sidelines to which they have been relegated in modern culture and back to centre stage. All fundamentalism is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation: whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, fundamentalists are convinced that secular or liberal society wants to wipe them out. This is not paranoia: Jewish fundamentalism took two major strides forward, one after the Nazi Holocaust, the second after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In some parts of the Middle East, secularism was established so rapidly and aggressively that it was experienced as a lethal assault.

The fact that fundamentalism is also a phenomenon in politics was stressed only recently by former US president Jimmy Carter when he voiced his concerns over the increasing merging of religion and state in the Bush administration, and the element of fundamentalism in the White House. Carter sees that traits of religious fundamentalists are also applicable to neo-conservatives. There seems to be a major controversy between, on the one hand, so called hard-liners or conservatives and, on the other, the progressives. Is this a typical phenomenon of today's world?

The United States is not alone in this. Yes, there is a new intolerance and aggression in Europe too as well as in Muslim countries and the Middle East. Culture is always-and has always been-contested. There are always people who have a different view of their country and are ready to fight for it. American Christian fundamentalists are not in favour of democracy; and it is true that many of the Neo-Cons, many of whom incline towards this fundamentalism, have very hard-line, limited views. These are dangerous and difficult times and when people are frightened they tend to retreat into ideological ghettos and build new barriers against the "other". Democracy is really what religious people call "a state of grace." It is an ideal that is rarely achieved, that has constantly to be reaffirmed, lest it be lost. And it is very difficult to fulfil. We are all-Americans and Europeans-falling short of the democratic ideal during the so called "war against terror."

Ashrawi says Obama's policies indicate he wants to engage the Palestinians

Hanan Ashrawi, the prominent Palestinian politician, is cautiously optimistic about the impact Barack Obama, the US president-elect, and his administration will have on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Al Jazeera attended a breakfast round-table with Ashrawi while she was visiting Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Below are her responses to the questions that were put to her.

Question: With the new US administration coming in and Hillary Clinton being appointed as US secretary of state, in your view are we likely to see a similar stance from her towards the Middle East peace process as there was under Bill Clinton's administration?

Hanan Ashrawi: First of all, we must not personalise issues. I don't think it is a matter of individuals. It's a matter, first of all, of the team as a whole and their policies. Obama's policies certainly indicate that he wants to engage. He doesn't want to postpone things until the end as [Bill] Clinton and Bush did. And secondly, he's marking a departure from the Bush administration, which was disastrous for everybody.

Now having said that, I must caution against any type of unrealistic optimism. There are constants in Amercian policy - such as the strategic alliance between the US and Israel - that are not going to be changed by individuals.

Individuals change their own positions and their own policies to serve their own interests and their own careers. Hillary Clinton was outspoken about Palestinian rights when she was First Lady, but when she ran for office in the Senate for New York she did a 180 degree turn and became not just totally supportive of Israel, but of the extreme right in Israel and hostile to Palestinians.

Later on, as she ran for the Democratic party's nomination, she gave a speech to Aipac [the Israeli lobby in the US] that could have been written by [Benjamin] Netanyahu [leader of the conservative Likud party]. Then afterwards she said that she's committed to peace and a two state solution.

The question is how is the whole team going to shape American foreign policy - what are the constants and what are their values? How do they define what is in Israeli interests?

This is a team that included Jim Jones [Barack Obama's nominee for national security adviser] who knows the realities on the ground; and Hillary Clinton who also is aware of what's happening; and Barack Obama who doesn't need to be educated and who expressed a willingness to engage. What type of engagement, we shall see.

We have to engage also -as Palestinians and Arabs - the new administration in a serious dialogue; a serious discourse about the mistakes of the past; about what is required and about the sense of urgency now that has to dominate. You cannot put the Palestinian question on the back burner. You cannot leave a political vacuum. You have to move rapidly and you have to set limits and constraints on Israeli behaviour.

Q: The Arab peace initiative was re-proposed in 2007, what do you think it will take for that initiative to be successful?

A: I think it takes a political will on the part of the Arabs who adopted this initiative to translate it into a workable process. If it remains just verbal and an initiative that moves from one document to the other and does not see concrete steps on the ground, then it's not going to be anything except one more initiative and one more document.

It should be seen for what it is - a unique historical opportunity for a solution. If they don't see it as such - if they waste it - then everybody is going to pay the price. The Palestinians foremost. So, the Arab initiative needs to be the blueprint. It's a simple one and sometimes there is virtue in simplicity.

Q: What will the Israeli elections in February mean for the peace process?

A: It's the right-wing that's on the ascendence. It's the more hardline policies that are emerging now. Very clearly Tzipi Livni [the leader of the Kadima party] is tempering her own previous public declarations about peace. Creating new red lines. The refugees - of course she's always been dead set against the right of return. Talking about peace 'in the future', talking about Jerusalem in more hardline terms. She is competing on a hardline basis.

And she is criticising Ehud Olmert [the Israeli prime minister, who stepped down as Kadima leader] for making conciliatory statements. As he is in a lame duck situation, and as he is leaving, he's trying to break a few taboos and talk about sharing Jerusalem and returning the land and saying that 'if he had time' and 'if he had stayed' then he would have done all these things.

But right now the Israeli public is moving to the right.

There are all sorts of issues - not just the Palestinian issue. The weakness of Kadima, corruption. There are domestic issues, the economy and so on. So they will make another mistake again by electing [Benjamin] Netanyahu, [leader of the Labour party]. Well, of course, you can never be certain about Israeli politics, the only thing that is certain is its unpredictability.

Q: Hamas has said it won't recognise the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president after January 9th. What kind of scenarios do you see unfolding in the new year?

A: I think there's lots of talk. If they don't recognise the legitimacy of the presidency - the same way they don't recognise the legitimacy of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] - this will further enhance the division.

I think we should have a more constructive positive attitude. We should work together and go to a serious dialogue, a substantive dialogue, on the causes of this rift with seriousness of intent, goodwill and co-operation to resolve not only as a matter of show but as a matter of undoing a lot of the damage that was done.

Q: So how can that divide between Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank be bridged?

I think there's a problem because there's a power struggle. The sharing of the spoils of power.

We have to repair the Palestinian democracy and we have to create a system where differences can be resolved in a democratic, pluralistic, inclusive system. Not by divisions and not by talking power but by understanding that Palestinian democracy means that we have peaceful means to resolve our differences.

We need to have a critical dialogue. I like the Egyptian initiative [to reconcile Hamas and Fatah], and before it the Yemeni initiative. It's important the Arabs play a constructive role and really embrace the Palestinians and move to help us resolve our differences.

We've always said we need to unite the West Bank and Gaza - not geographically, except through the corridor - but unite them institutionally, unite them administratively, unite them legally and politically through a common political system.

Of course we are one people, but if the division remains we are in danger of having a serious risk that will create two separate systems that in the future will become irreconcilable. Right now they are reconcilable and we must work on that.

Q: Can we count on you running in any upcoming election?

A: No. I've decided I'm not running. What you can count on me doing is supporting young women, young leaders, the new generation to run for office.

We need the young. People my age should know how to step aside and how to provide a system of support and solidarity for the new leaders. We have a disastrous situation of a leadership that doesn't know the meaning of a graceful exit, but I see lots of hope in the younger generation.
Source : Al Jazeera

Best Islamic Financial Institution in United Kingdom (Global Finance 2008): HSBC Amanah

HSBC Amanah is the global Islamic banking division of the HSBC Group, and was established in 1998 with the aim of making HSBC the leading provider of Islamic banking worldwide. With more than a hundred professionals serving the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas, HSBC Amanah represents the largest Islamic banking team of any international bank.
The HSBC Group is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world. With operations in twenty OIC member states, no international bank is more widely represented in the Muslim world than HSBC. Nor has any made a greater investment in Islamic banking. Headquartered in London, the Groups international network comprises about 10,000 offices with almost 110 million customers in 77 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa. With a rich history of community banking and a commitment to meet the particular needs of our diverse customers, we are the world's local bank.
HSBC Amanah has won the Euromoney 2005 awards for Best Islamic Wholesale Bank and Best for Private Banking Services.
HSBC has a rich tradition of community banking, and HSBC Amanah was established to serve the particular financial needs of Muslim communities. Our mission statement and corporate values reflect this vision.
HSBC Amanah considers Shariah compliance of its business operations as its most important & strategic priority. This is reflected in its Corporate Values, "In developing our products and services, we are committed to the highest Shariah standards in the Islamic banking industry." In addition to Global Shariah Advisory Board and Regional Shariah Committees, HSBC Amanah employs a team of qualified professionals to ensure that the guidance and advice received from the Shariah Committees is implemented in letter and spirit.
HSBC Amanah brings together the largest team of any international Islamic financial services provider. We are widely recognised as a market leader in terms of global reach, innovative products and services and our investment in industry building initiatives. With more than 100 people in eight countries, the HSBC Amanah family continues to grow.

HSBC Amanah has won the following awards:
Euromoney awards, Best International Provider of Islamic Financial Services (2004), Best International Sukuk House (2004, Best Islamic Wholesale Bank (2005), Best for Private Banking Services (2005)

Award-winning transactions:
Emirates ECA-backed financing 2001, (Euromoney, Jane´s Transport Finance, Institutional Investor, Airfinance Journal), Government of Malaysia Global Sukuk - 2002,(Euromoney, Institutional Investor, Asiamoney, FinanceAsia), Emirates IV, with Islamic Development Bank - 2003, (Jane´s Transport Finance)

The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business

Many internet superstars owe much of their success to the active and passive contributions made by countless people from outside their organizations. Think, most obviously, of Facebook profiles, eBay goods, YouTube videos, Wikipedia entries, and, less obviously, of the aggregated buying behavior underlying Amazon recommendations and the donated use of personal-computer resources underpinning Skype’s internet-based phone network.
Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 120 million active users worldwide.
eBay Inc. is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. In addition to its original U.S. website, eBay has established localized websites in thirty other countries. eBay Inc. also owns PayPal, Skype,StubHub, Kijiji,and other businesses.The online auction website was founded in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb,part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.In 1997, the company received approximately $5 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
YouTube, LLC is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees.In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google Inc. for 1.65 billion dollars, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by members of the public, although media organizations including CBS and the BBC offer some of their material via the site.YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Amazon.com, Inc.is an American electronic commerce (e-commerce) company in Seattle, Washington. It is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the internet sales revenue of runner up Staples, Inc.Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994, and launched it online in 1995. Amazon.com started as an on-line bookstore, but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs, MP3 format, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China and Japan. It also provides global shipping to certain countries for some of its products (Wikipedia).
Cook, the founder of Intuit (maker of financial software products such as Quicken and TurboTax), challenges traditional companies to tap this emerging source of value by actively creating what he calls user contribution systems.
The user can be a customer, employee, sales prospect—or someone with no previous connection to the company at all. The contribution can be actively offered work, expertise, or information, as well as passive or even unknowing contributions, such as behavioral data that are gathered automatically as a by-product of a transaction or an activity. The system is the method, usually internet based, by which contributions are aggregated and made useful to others. Such a system creates value for a business as a consequence of the value it delivers to customers.
In this article, Cook describes the personal journey that led him to see the tremendous value in user contributions. He creates a taxonomy of the systems that can capture user contributions and shows the variety of ways in which companies from Honda to Procter & Gamble to Hyatt Hotels are leveraging them. And, drawing on his successes and failures in trying to put them to work at Intuit, he offers advice on how business leaders can catalyze action to create user contribution systems in their own organizations.

Source : Harvard Business Review

Do Muslims Want Democracy and Theocracy?

According, John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, cutting across diverse Muslim countries, social classes, and gender differences, answers to our questions reveal a complex and surprising reality. Substantial majorities in nearly all nations surveyed (95% in Burkina Faso, 94% in Egypt, 93% in Iran, and 90% in Indonesia) say that if drafting a constitution for a new country, they would guarantee freedom of speech, defined as "allowing all citizens to express their opinion on the political, social, and economic issues of the day."
However, while acknowledging and admiring many aspects of Western democracy, those surveyed do not favor wholesale adoption of Western models of democracy. Many appear to want their own democratic model that incorporates Sharia -- and not one that is simply dependent on Western values. Actually, few respondents associate "adopting Western values" with Muslim political and economic progress. Abuses in the name of Sharia have not led to wholesale rejection of it.
In our data, the emphasis that those in substantially Muslim countries give to a new model of government -- one that is democratic yet embraces religious values -- helps to explain why majorities in most countries, with the exception of a handful of nations, want Sharia as at least "a" source of legislation.
• In only a few countries did a majority say that Sharia should have no role in society; yet in most countries, only a minority want Sharia as "the only source" of law. In Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, majorities want Sharia as the "only source" of legislation.
• Most surprising is the absence of systemic differences in many countries between males and females in their support for Sharia as the only source of legislation. For example, in Jordan, 54% of men and 55% of women want Sharia as the only source of legislation. In Egypt, the percentages are 70% of men and 62% of women; in Iran, 12% of men and 14% of women; and in Indonesia, 14% of men and 14% of women.
Ironically, we don't have to look far from home to find a significant number of people who want religion as a source of law. In the United States, a 2006 Gallup Poll indicates that a majority of Americans want the Bible as a source of legislation.
• Forty-six percent of Americans say that the Bible should be "a" source, and 9% believe it should be the "only" source of legislation.
• Perhaps even more surprising, 42% of Americans want religious leaders to have a direct role in writing a constitution, while 55% want them to play no role at all. These numbers are almost identical to those in Iran.

Global Islamic Market

Mohammed Yussuf picks up a giant onion and smiles as he admires it. The vegetable on display at a trade fair here pleases him not only because of its proportions; the onion's main virtue in his eyes is that it is halal, acceptable on Muslim dining tables.

Mr. Yussuf, a Malaysian businessman, makes a tidy profit importing halal foods from this remote corner of northwestern China. He's the type of foreign trader this Muslim region hopes to attract more of, in its bid to grab a slice of the multibillion dollar global Islamic food business.

"One-third of our population is Hui," says Ma Yingqiu, this city's deputy mayor, referring to the Muslim ethnic minority who live in the Autonomous Region of Ningxia. "They have the same habits as people in Islamic countries. They are this region's competitive advantage."

As the local government strives to forge new economic ties with Middle Eastern and other Muslim nations, citizens of this impoverished part of China bordering the Gobi Desert are rediscovering Islam. Emerging from centuries of religious isolation, Ningxia Muslims are developing "an international sense of community," says Ma Ping, head of the Institute of the Hui and Islam here.

While that might once have unnerved the Chinese government, always uneasy about divided loyalties, Ningxia's desperate economic straits – it is the country's third poorest province – have prompted a rethink, says Professor Ma.

"Stability used to be the top priority here, but now it is development," he says. "What the government wants most is money."

It was in search of money that the Ningxia government last week held the third annual International Halal Food and Muslim Commodities Trade Fair, which closed here over the weekend. "This fair is Ningxia's chance to march into the world," provincial governor Wang Zhengwei proclaimed at the opening ceremony.

For four days, local producers manned stands offering meats and vegetables, which Hui Muslims consider halal if they don't use manure made from human or animal excrement to grow them. Vendors also sold clothes, ceramics, and other goods aimed at Muslim consumers.

Yussuf was one of the few foreign buyers at the fair, however, and his supplier, Ma Shengke, seemed to be one of only a handful of success stories so far in Ningxia's efforts to break into the competitive Islamic food market.

Most producers are having difficulty carving out a niche, a challenge to all newcomers but one that is heightened for Ningxia's would-be exporters by the recent rise in the value of the Chinese currency, which makes their goods more expensive on world markets.

"We have lost our price advantage, so the solution is to produce better quality meat," says Zhang Hongen, a local sheep farmer. "We need to impose standards."

Ningxia's halal food industry is worth nearly $700 million a year, according to government statistics, but less than 3 percent of its output is sold abroad, Ma Yingqiu points out. "We are still at the beginning of this and we have to work on it," the deputy mayor acknowledges. "But since we are starting from such a small base, it should be easy to grow fast", reported by msmonitor.com

Islamic Banking: Opportunity or Threat?

According Rodney Wilson, director of postgraduate studies at Durham University's Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Islamic banking, which implies the avoidance of interest, has become a substantial industry during the last four decades. One obvious question is whether its emergence further segregates Muslims from Western values and norms, creating a financial ghetto. An alternative view is that as increasing numbers of people in the West are dissatisfied or skeptical about the banking services they receive, and see them as exploitative or even unethical, the emergence of Islamic banking with its own distinctive morality results in Islam projecting a much more positive face.

Many Western bankers view Islamic finance as a curiosity, and perhaps even a business opportunity, but seldom as a threat comparable to that from Muslim extremism. Indeed, Islamic banking and finance can be regarded as a gentler aspect of Islam, and one that lends itself to dialogue between Westerners and Muslims.

Islamic retail financial institutions, including the Islamic Bank of Britain, the European Islamic Investment Bank, and Lariba Bank in California, are now well-established in a number of Western countries. Furthermore, the leading international banks, including Citibank, HSBC Amanah, Deutsche Bank and UBS of Switzerland, all offer Islamic deposits and Shari'a-compliant financing facilities.

There has been much dialogue between the Western bankers working in these institutions and the Shari'a scholars who advise what is, and what is not, permissible. This dialogue extends to insurance, where Islamic takaful companies have become increasingly active, their distinguishing feature being that they do not hold conventional interest-yielding bonds, and that shareholder funds and premiums paid by policy holders cannot be co-mingled, which could result in the former exploiting the latter's misfortune.
As Shari'a is about universal, divinely inspired principles rather than national laws, leading international law firms have also become involved in Islamic banking and finance, as contracts need to be drafted under English or American law in a way that is consistent with Shari'a. Indeed, the main job of the Shari'a committee members who serve on the boards of Islamic banks and conventional banks offering Islamic products is to ensure that new contracts are compatible with Shari'a principles and, if they are not, to pursue a dialogue with the lawyers concerning amendments and redrafting.

The aspiration of many Islamists is to have divinely inspired Shari'a replacing man-made laws, perhaps even the establishment of a universal caliphate under which everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim, should live. Not surprisingly, such an aspiration is unacceptable for most non-Muslims, and indeed for many Muslims, as it denies choice.

Islamic banking and finance can point to the way forward: it is about extending choice, not restricting options. As each institution has its own Shari'a board, Shari'a compliance is effectively privatized, rather than being a matter of national law. Indeed, each Shari'a board passes its own fatwas, or religious rulings, which further extends choice in the marketplace for religious ideas. Religion, of course, flourishes under competitive conditions and Islam is no exception, whereas when it is nationalized, its adherents soon become alienated.

The Islamic Republic of Iran can be regarded as an example of how not to encourage the development of Islamic banking and finance. There, all banking has been Shari'a - compliant since the Law on Interest Free Banking was passed in 1983. Bank clients have therefore no choice but to use the Shari'a system. The banks, however are state-owned and have little autonomy, even in determining what deposit and financing products to offer. They also do not have Shari'a committees, the argument being that this is unnecessary as the law ensures Shari'a compliance in any case.

The result has been that banking development has been slow, there is little financial innovation, and most Iranians do not have bank accounts. In contrast, on the Arab side of the Gulf and in Malaysia, where Islamic and conventional banks compete, Islamic banks have attractive products on offer and a growing client base. Al Rajhi Bank of Saudi Arabia has become the world's largest Islamic retail bank, and its range of services and delivery channels compares favorably with the best that Western banks can offer.
Islamic banking is here to stay, it is an opportunity rather than a threat, and it has an exciting future. Gaps remain-there is no Islamic bank in Israel, for example, to serve its Muslim population. But if the Central Bank of Israel licensed such an entity it could create much goodwill. It might also encourage the Jewish population living there to question whether the operations of their own banks are compatible with religious teaching in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Ultimately Islamic banking and finance is about the emergence of a distinctively Islamic form of capitalism that may co-exist and interact with Western, Chinese, Russian or any other capitalism. Such a development should be welcomed and facilitated, and not hindered or suppressed.

Moderates Versus The Radicals: Democracy And Freedom Versus Islam?

Yamin Zakaria examines closely what ‘freedom and democracy’ really means in western ‘democratic countries’ and looks at their grow...

The moderates ask: Is Islam compatible with democracy and freedom? The radicals ask: Is democracy and freedom compatible with Islam? So what’s the difference? The difference is in the ordering of the words - that determines which notion (Islam or freedom and democracy) is used as the reference point. That will be taken as the axiom to evaluate other idea(s). Therefore, the moderates use democracy and freedom as the yardstick to judge Islam, but the radicals take, Islam as the reference point to judge democracy and freedom. Let us first elucidate some of these terms, before examining the aforementioned questions.

Fox '24' Producer Pulls Endorsement of Anti-Muslim Film

Washington, DC: A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group announced October 5 that Howard Gordon, the executive producer of Fox’s television drama “24,” has withdrawn his endorsement of the anti-Muslim film “Obsession,” which is currently being distributed to some 28 million households in presidential election swing states by a shadowy non-profit organization called the Clarion Fund.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement by Gordon in which he said:

"After being contacted by a number of people whose opinions I respect and after reviewing Obsession with their criticisms and concerns in mind, I have asked the film makers to remove my endorsement from the Obsession website and from any future promotional materials. While I remain committed to the film's essential message - that the hate-mongering promoted by radical Islamism presents a real threat to western values of tolerance and pluralism - I also appreciate that the goal of co-existence and tolerance is not being served by films like Obsession."

CAIR welcomed Gordon’s statement and noted that others are withdrawing their support for the film that many commentators have called anti-Muslim “propaganda.”

“We commend Mr. Gordon for recognizing the harm caused to our society by intentionally inflammatory and divisive films such as ‘Obsession,’” said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. “As public outrage grows over this hate-filled production, people of conscience are spontaneously withdrawing their support.”

He said newspapers that distributed copies of the “Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West” DVD have received an outpouring of negative feedback from readers of all faiths. A number of newspapers refused to carry the DVD as an insert and there have been reports of anti-Muslim bias related to the film’s distribution.

In Ohio, a public school bus driver who also takes children to an Islamic school reported that other bus drivers were talking about the DVD and asked him how he could transport "those people.”

Islam and the West

According John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, looking at certain world events through Muslim eyes helps us understand the global anger and outrage that fueled the now infamous cartoon controversy.
Newspaper cartoons, including one depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban -- first published in Denmark in 2005 and then in other European cities -- set off an international row in 2006. Protests erupted in an arc stretching from Europe through Africa to East Asia. Muslim journalists were arrested, and newspapers were closed for publishing the cartoons in Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen. European countries evacuated staffs of embassies and non-governmental organizations, and Muslim countries withdrew ambassadors.
The fallout also had economic repercussions. According to the Gulf News, Danish exports that had averaged more than $2.6 billion a year dried up as consumers in Muslim countries shunned Danish products in protest. Danish dairy firm Arla Foods reported losing $1.5 million per day as a result of the regional consumer boycott that brought its sales to a standstill.
The cartoon controversy once again highlighted these questions: Is Islam incompatible with Western values? Are we seeing a clash of civilizations, a culture war? While many answer yes, others counter that the issue had little to do with a defense of Western democratic values and everything to do with a European media that reflects and plays to an increasingly xenophobic and Islamophobic society. Still others charge that the rush to reprint the Danish cartoons was as much about profits as about prophets.
Here again, data from the Gallup World Poll serve as a reality check on the causes for widespread outrage. As we have seen, a major complaint across Muslim societies is that the West denigrates Islam and Muslims and equates Islam with terrorism. The cartoons did not satirize or ridicule terrorists like Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but chose instead to satirize the venerated Prophet Muhammad, whom Muslims regard as the ideal model of Muslim life and values, in what was seen as a direct attack on Islam and a denigration of the faith.
Did Muslims react so strongly because they did not understand or believe in freedom of speech? Gallup's data, which demonstrate Muslim admiration for Western liberty and freedom of speech, indicate otherwise. The core issues of this apparent clash, or "culture war," are not democracy and freedom of expression, but faith, identity, respect (or lack of it), and public humiliation. As France's Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk observed in The Associated Press in the midst of the cartoon controversy: "We gain nothing by lowering religions, humiliating them and making caricatures of them. It's a lack of honesty and respect." He further noted that freedom of expression "is not a right without limits."
Many British and French citizens agree. Gallup's national representative polling in both countries shows that a majority of Britons (57%) and a plurality of the French (45%) say that newspapers printing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad should not be allowed under protection of free speech, while 35% and 40%, respectively, say it should be allowed. Britons and the French are even stronger in their disapproval of other expressions potentially covered by free speech: More than 75% of both populations say that a cartoon making light of the Holocaust should not be allowed under protection of free speech, and roughly 86% of the British and French public say the same about newspapers printing racial slurs. Clearly, for many European citizens, free speech is nuanced and contextual, not a black and white absolute.