US Seizure of Iran Assets "Highway Robbery"

The foreign minister denounced as "highway robbery" and vowed to fight the US Supreme Court ruling that $2 billion in Iran's blocked assets must be used to compensate the families of US soldiers killed in attacks allegedly linked to Iran.

Tehran was given access to its frozen funds in US banks after international sanctions were lifted in January under the July 2015 nuclear deal, in return for temporary curbs on its nuclear program.

The Central Bank of Iran had complained that US Congress was intruding into the business of federal courts when it passed a law in 2012 stating that the frozen money should go toward satisfying a $2.65 billion judgment against Iran won by the families in a US federal court in 2007.

The Supreme Court found that the Congress had not usurped the authority of the courts.

The ruling would affect, among others, the families of 241 US soldiers killed in truck bomb attacks on a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in October 1983.

"It is a theft. Huge theft. It is highway robbery. And believe me you, we will get it back," Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview with the New Yorker published on Monday.

"People can legislate in other countries to confiscate American assets. Would you be happy with that? The United States has committed a lot of crimes against Iranians, against the people of Vietnam, the people of Afghanistan, the people of Iraq," Zarif said.

"Can they legislate in their own countries that for every collateral damage suffered because of American bombing … Would you be willing to accept it?"

"So why should we accept the Supreme Court ruling? The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court of the United States, not the Supreme Court of the world. We're not under its jurisdiction, nor is our money," he said.

  US Backseat Approach a Problem

In response to a question about complications related to the implementation of the nuclear deal, the top diplomat said, "The most important problem is that the United States is taking a backseat after eight years of scaring everybody off, imposing heavy penalties on people who wanted to do business with Iran. Billions of dollars of penalties were imposed on various European financial institutions.

"The United States was supposed to go to various banks and tell them bygones are bygones."

A US ban on access to its financial system and the US dollar in the transactions involving Iranian businesses has deterred international firms from entering Iran's market.

This has sparked protest from Tehran, arguing that the ban is preventing the delivery of promised benefits from the accord.

"I want to see European banks doing business with Iran without fear of US retaliation. A lot depends on it. As we implemented our obligations fully, we are entitled to benefit fully. The United States needs to do way more. They have to send a message that doing business with Iran will not cost them. Period. No ifs and buts," Zarif said.

"International regimes, international treaties, international norms are observed not because of the goodness of anybody but because they bring benefits. If they don't, then the longevity of those agreements comes into jeopardy."

Asked whether the deal is in danger of collapse, he said, "No, the deal is in place. But if one side does not comply with the agreement, then the agreement will start to falter."

  US Policy Shift Needed for Détente   

Zarif said a detente in Tehran-Washington relations is contingent on a considerable shift in US policy toward Iran.

"As the Leader [of the Islamic Revolution] said last year, if the experience of the nuclear negotiations proves that the United States is changing its approach toward Iran—is basing its approach to Iran on mutual respect and interests—then there is a chance of change."

On the attempts by US lawmakers to impose new sanctions on Iran over its missile tests earlier this year, Zarif said, "The missile tests are our right. We have made it very clear that these will not be used other than in self-defense. They're not designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

"What do you expect, Iran to lie dead? You've covered the Iran–Iraq war, you remember missiles pouring on Iranian cities with chemical weapons. You remember that we didn't have any to defend ourselves … Here I think you owe us. US planes were giving [former Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein intelligence to hit our civilians with chemical weapons. We don't owe anybody anything on defense."

Where will we end up? Terrorism, Islamophobia and the logic of fascism

BY ILYA AFANASYEV 

27 April 2016

Fascism is not only a form of prejudice, it is also a political logic. A logic that reduces complex problems to ‘us and them’ issues.

Rally for 'Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West' (PEGIDA) hold German flags during a demonstration in Dresden, Germany, Jan. 5, 2015. Jens Meyer /Press Association. All rights reserved.

What is fascism? Perhaps one way to answer this question is to say that fascism is a political logic that assumes that there is an easy solution to complex political, economic and societal problems, and that this solution is grounded in being ‘honest’ and ruthless about who ‘us’ and ‘them’ are.

Political practice is then understood as a necessity and even a moral obligation to pursue this reductive identity-based vision to its logical conclusions. In this view, the complexity of society and all structural socio-economic conditions are rendered ultimately unimportant, while identity is equated with ideology and political action. Hence, for example, in classic Nazism, an integrated, baptised and ‘Germanised’ Jew, who had nothing to do with any ‘Jewish community’, was seen as ultimately representing the same coherent entity, conceived as a conscious and malevolent political agent, as a traditional religious Jew, who spoke Yiddish and practised Judaism. No matter what their appearances were, they were all the same at some level and must have been treated as an alien element in the body of the nation.

Today, a very similar logic is propagated by those who are obsessed with the connection between Islam and terrorism. Charlie Hebdo’s recent editorial ‘How did we end up here?’ is a perfect example of it. The article’s main argument is that every Muslim, who publically reveals her or his religion, engages in an act of terror and is, therefore, complicit in violent terrorism.

A peaceful intellectual, a polite baker who does not serve ham sandwiches or a woman daring to wear the veil in public – they all are members of the same entity that is not only different from ‘us’, but is also attacking ‘us’, either with their alien cultural practices or their bombs, a distinction between the two turned into a difference of scale, not of quality.

A conclusion, which is offered implicitly, is that to end terrorism we must admit that ‘Muslims’ are a problem, alongside those ‘politically correct’ lefties who do not want to acknowledge that. The only thing that is still missing here is an explicit form of biological racism: we are not yet told that everyone of ‘Muslim descent’ is guilty by definition. For now, we are ‘only’ sold comprehensive cultural discrimination.

At least, this is the case at the level of discourse. When one looks at it in practice, the situation is already more blurred, as police forces across western countries are systematically harassing those citizens and immigrants who look ‘Muslim’. For many liberals and leftists, the far-right undercurrent of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial is obvious in its attempt to build a case for a comprehensive discrimination against, in fact, a heterogeneous group of people mainly engaging in harmless activities. But we should notice that there is more to it. Fascism is not only a form of prejudice, it is also a political logic. A logic that reduces complex problems to ‘us and them’ issues.

Multiple factors, homegrown and otherwise

Terrorism is a complex problem. Any attempt to deal with it cannot be separated from understanding its multiple roots, causes and structural conditions. As even security services admit, Islamist terrorism in the west is linked to western countries’ foreign policies across the globe. This is logical in the most basic common-sense way: if you claim to wage a war, how can you be so surprised that there will be people who would want to bring it back to you?

But there is also a more complex socio-economic and geo-political dimension, related to both the west’s historical support of various Islamists movements, as well as its ongoing support of the most oppressive dictatorships across the world. Next, although systematic poverty and exclusion of (post)immigrant communities in Europe is not the only explanation of terrorism (neither is it its justification, for that matter), terrorism is indeed inseparable from the structural conditions imposed on those communities by European states and societies.

Finally, one should not dismiss the role of Islamism as a form of religiously-sanctioned political ideology and practice that attracts alienated individuals seeking empowerment. In that sense, all well-meaning proclamations that ‘terrorism has nothing to do with Islam’ are not only a form of wishful thinking, but also an explicitly harmful contribution to the reification of ‘Muslims’ as a coherent and uniform group.

The key point here is that none of the reductive singular explanations will do. Islamism and its rise in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Europe is a complex story. The attractiveness of violent Islamism to a certain segment of immigrant and post-immigrant communities in the west (a very small segment, one should add) cannot be understood outside the long history and immediate politics of the west’s actions in Muslim-majority regions, those regions’ own political, socio-economic and ideological dynamics, as well as the systemic poverty and exclusion affecting minorities in the west itself. These are just three interconnected factors causing and shaping Islamist terrorism today. There are many more, as well as many more forms of terrorism, both in the west and in the world as a whole.

Banal binaries

All this should be fairly banal, but instead, we are constantly being sold a different identity-focused narrative. It is assembled in a few simple steps. There is a terrifying problem of terrorism, terrorism perpetrated by ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the only solution is to admit that there are ‘us’ and ‘them’ and stop pretending that ‘they’ are not a threat, with all their veils, refusal to serve ‘us’ ham sandwiches, smart talk of Muslim ethics and bombs.

Only when we admit that can we somehow get rid of the actual physical threat of terrorism. For now, nobody is yet telling us how exactly to solve this problem in practice (although Trump with his suggestions of banning Muslims from entering the US is coming close).

That is the difference between fascism as political practice and fascism as logic and rhetoric. But the latter is of course enabling the possibility of the former. This is why it should be resisted fiercely. To everyone who insists on a direct link between Islam, ‘the Muslims’ and terrorism, we should reply that there are no ‘Muslims’ as a coherent group, that religion itself, independently of whether we like it or not, is not a cause of political violence and that the problem of terrorism will never be solved by an insistence on any reductive identity-based approach to it.

Serious solutions

Of course, a genuine solution to the problem of terrorism is difficult to imagine short of a radical transformation of the world. Such a transformation would address the three problems singled out above and involve at least three massive structural changes.

First, ending the neo-colonialist practices of the west, Russia and China. Second, opening up a political space for going beyond the wrong choice between phony-capitalist murderous dictatorships and thuggish Islamism in the Middle East (and other post-colonial regions). Third, resurrecting the social state in Europe, one able to efficiently address the appalling conditions and exclusion of its post-immigrant communities.

While these changes remain utopian, the problem of terrorism is going to stay with us and will influence where we are going to end up. Its actual influence has nothing to do with challenges to ‘our way of life’ or any other pseudo-threats, omnipresent in the rhetoric of mainstream politicians.

The real danger is in what must be called the myth of terrorism: a view that terrorism is the ultimate form of evil, simultaneously an act of war and the most despicable vile crime, somehow both cunning and meaningless. This emotional and a-political understanding of terrorism is widespread and makes the job of those who want to reduce politics to scapegoating imagined communities easier.

The potential harm here is not only in increasing prejudices against people who are already discriminated against, but also in the replacement of necessary struggles over the forms of political-economic organisation and the distribution of wealth with reductive and simplistic politics of ‘us and them’. This is why we must prevent the supporters of fascist logic from using it to enable a new age of fascist politics to prevail in the west.

*About the author

Ilya Afanasyev is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), the University of Oxford, having studied history for his first degree in Moscow.

Where will we end up? Terrorism, Islamophobia and the logic of fascism

ILYA AFANASYEV 

Fascism is not only a form of prejudice, it is also a political logic. A logic that reduces complex problems to ‘us and them’ issues.

Rally for 'Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West' (PEGIDA) hold German flags during a demonstration in Dresden, Germany, Jan. 5, 2015. Jens Meyer /Press Association. All rights reserved.

What is fascism? Perhaps one way to answer this question is to say that fascism is a political logic that assumes that there is an easy solution to complex political, economic and societal problems, and that this solution is grounded in being ‘honest’ and ruthless about who ‘us’ and ‘them’ are.

Political practice is then understood as a necessity and even a moral obligation to pursue this reductive identity-based vision to its logical conclusions. In this view, the complexity of society and all structural socio-economic conditions are rendered ultimately unimportant, while identity is equated with ideology and political action. Hence, for example, in classic Nazism, an integrated, baptised and ‘Germanised’ Jew, who had nothing to do with any ‘Jewish community’, was seen as ultimately representing the same coherent entity, conceived as a conscious and malevolent political agent, as a traditional religious Jew, who spoke Yiddish and practised Judaism. No matter what their appearances were, they were all the same at some level and must have been treated as an alien element in the body of the nation.

Today, a very similar logic is propagated by those who are obsessed with the connection between Islam and terrorism. Charlie Hebdo’s recent editorial ‘How did we end up here?’ is a perfect example of it. The article’s main argument is that every Muslim, who publically reveals her or his religion, engages in an act of terror and is, therefore, complicit in violent terrorism.

A peaceful intellectual, a polite baker who does not serve ham sandwiches or a woman daring to wear the veil in public – they all are members of the same entity that is not only different from ‘us’, but is also attacking ‘us’, either with their alien cultural practices or their bombs, a distinction between the two turned into a difference of scale, not of quality.

A conclusion, which is offered implicitly, is that to end terrorism we must admit that ‘Muslims’ are a problem, alongside those ‘politically correct’ lefties who do not want to acknowledge that. The only thing that is still missing here is an explicit form of biological racism: we are not yet told that everyone of ‘Muslim descent’ is guilty by definition. For now, we are ‘only’ sold comprehensive cultural discrimination.

At least, this is the case at the level of discourse. When one looks at it in practice, the situation is already more blurred, as police forces across western countries are systematically harassing those citizens and immigrants who look ‘Muslim’. For many liberals and leftists, the far-right undercurrent of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial is obvious in its attempt to build a case for a comprehensive discrimination against, in fact, a heterogeneous group of people mainly engaging in harmless activities. But we should notice that there is more to it. Fascism is not only a form of prejudice, it is also a political logic. A logic that reduces complex problems to ‘us and them’ issues.

Multiple factors, homegrown and otherwise

Terrorism is a complex problem. Any attempt to deal with it cannot be separated from understanding its multiple roots, causes and structural conditions. As even security services admit, Islamist terrorism in the west is linked to western countries’ foreign policies across the globe. This is logical in the most basic common-sense way: if you claim to wage a war, how can you be so surprised that there will be people who would want to bring it back to you?

But there is also a more complex socio-economic and geo-political dimension, related to both the west’s historical support of various Islamists movements, as well as its ongoing support of the most oppressive dictatorships across the world. Next, although systematic poverty and exclusion of (post)immigrant communities in Europe is not the only explanation of terrorism (neither is it its justification, for that matter), terrorism is indeed inseparable from the structural conditions imposed on those communities by European states and societies.

Finally, one should not dismiss the role of Islamism as a form of religiously-sanctioned political ideology and practice that attracts alienated individuals seeking empowerment. In that sense, all well-meaning proclamations that ‘terrorism has nothing to do with Islam’ are not only a form of wishful thinking, but also an explicitly harmful contribution to the reification of ‘Muslims’ as a coherent and uniform group.

The key point here is that none of the reductive singular explanations will do. Islamism and its rise in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Europe is a complex story. The attractiveness of violent Islamism to a certain segment of immigrant and post-immigrant communities in the west (a very small segment, one should add) cannot be understood outside the long history and immediate politics of the west’s actions in Muslim-majority regions, those regions’ own political, socio-economic and ideological dynamics, as well as the systemic poverty and exclusion affecting minorities in the west itself. These are just three interconnected factors causing and shaping Islamist terrorism today. There are many more, as well as many more forms of terrorism, both in the west and in the world as a whole.

Banal binaries

All this should be fairly banal, but instead, we are constantly being sold a different identity-focused narrative. It is assembled in a few simple steps. There is a terrifying problem of terrorism, terrorism perpetrated by ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the only solution is to admit that there are ‘us’ and ‘them’ and stop pretending that ‘they’ are not a threat, with all their veils, refusal to serve ‘us’ ham sandwiches, smart talk of Muslim ethics and bombs.

Only when we admit that can we somehow get rid of the actual physical threat of terrorism. For now, nobody is yet telling us how exactly to solve this problem in practice (although Trump with his suggestions of banning Muslims from entering the US is coming close).

That is the difference between fascism as political practice and fascism as logic and rhetoric. But the latter is of course enabling the possibility of the former. This is why it should be resisted fiercely. To everyone who insists on a direct link between Islam, ‘the Muslims’ and terrorism, we should reply that there are no ‘Muslims’ as a coherent group, that religion itself, independently of whether we like it or not, is not a cause of political violence and that the problem of terrorism will never be solved by an insistence on any reductive identity-based approach to it.

Serious solutions

Of course, a genuine solution to the problem of terrorism is difficult to imagine short of a radical transformation of the world. Such a transformation would address the three problems singled out above and involve at least three massive structural changes.

First, ending the neo-colonialist practices of the west, Russia and China. Second, opening up a political space for going beyond the wrong choice between phony-capitalist murderous dictatorships and thuggish Islamism in the Middle East (and other post-colonial regions). Third, resurrecting the social state in Europe, one able to efficiently address the appalling conditions and exclusion of its post-immigrant communities.

While these changes remain utopian, the problem of terrorism is going to stay with us and will influence where we are going to end up. Its actual influence has nothing to do with challenges to ‘our way of life’ or any other pseudo-threats, omnipresent in the rhetoric of mainstream politicians.

The real danger is in what must be called the myth of terrorism: a view that terrorism is the ultimate form of evil, simultaneously an act of war and the most despicable vile crime, somehow both cunning and meaningless. This emotional and a-political understanding of terrorism is widespread and makes the job of those who want to reduce politics to scapegoating imagined communities easier.

The potential harm here is not only in increasing prejudices against people who are already discriminated against, but also in the replacement of necessary struggles over the forms of political-economic organisation and the distribution of wealth with reductive and simplistic politics of ‘us and them’. This is why we must prevent the supporters of fascist logic from using it to enable a new age of fascist politics to prevail in the west.

How Saudi Arabia dangerously undermines the United States

By Ralph Peters

Iran is our external enemy of the moment. Saudi Arabia is our enduring internal enemy, already within our borders and permitted to poison American Muslims with its Wahhabi cult.

Oh, and Saudi Arabia’s also the spring from which the bloody waters of global jihad flowed.

Iran humiliates our sailors, but the Saudis are the spiritual jailers of hundreds of millions of Muslims, committed to intolerance, barbarity and preventing Muslims from joining the modern world. And we help.

Firm figures are elusive, but estimates are that the Saudis fund up to 80% of American mosques, at least in part. And their goal is the same here as it is elsewhere in the world where Islam must compete with other religions: to prevent Muslims from integrating into the host society.

Wahhabi cult of Islam

The Saudis love having Muslims in America, since that stakes Islam’s claim, but it doesn’t want Muslims to become Americans and stray from the hate-riddled cult they’ve imposed upon a great religion.

The tragedy for the Arabs, especially, has been who got the oil wealth. It wasn’t the sophisticates of Beirut or even the religious scholars of Cairo, but Bedouins with a bitter view of faith. The Saudis and their fellow fanatics in the oil-rich Gulf states have used those riches to drag Muslims backward into the past and to spread violent jihad.

The best argument for alternative energy sources is to return the Saudis to their traditional powerlessness.

I’ve seen Saudi money at work in country after country, from Senegal to Kenya to Pakistan to Indonesia and beyond. Everywhere, their hirelings preach a stern and joyless world, along with the duty to carry out jihad (contrary to our president’s nonsense, jihad’s primary meaning is not “an inner struggle,” but expanding the reach of Islam by fire and sword).

Here’s one of the memories that haunt me. On Kenya’s old Swahili Coast, once the domain of Muslim slavers preying on black Africans, I visited a wretched Muslim slum where children, rather than learning useful skills in a state school, sat amid filth memorizing the Koran in a language they could not understand. According to locals, their parents had been bribed to take their children out of the state schools and put them in madrassas.

Naturally, educated Christians from the interior get the good jobs down on the coast. The Muslims rage at the injustice. The Christians reply, “You can’t all be mullahs — learn something!” And behold: The Saudi mission’s accomplished, the society divided.

The Saudis build Muslims mosques and madrassas but not hospitals and universities.

The basic fact our policy-makers need to grasp about the Saudis is that they couldn’t care less about the welfare of flesh-and-blood Muslims (they refuse to take in Syrian refugees but demand Europe do so). What the Saudis care about is Islam in the abstract. Countless Muslims can suffer to keep the faith pure.

The Saudis build Muslims mosques and madrassas but not hospitals and universities.

Another phenomenon I’ve witnessed is that the Saudis rush to plant mosques where there are few or no Muslims, or where the Wahhabi cult still hasn’t found roots. In Senegal, with its long tradition of humane Islam, religious scholars dismiss the Saudis as upstarts. Yet, money ultimately buys souls and the Saudis were opening mosques.

And jihadi violence is now an appealing brand.

In Mombasa, Kenya, you drive past miles of near-empty mosques. Pakistan has been utterly poisoned, with Wahhabism pushing back even the radical (but less well-funded) Deobandis, the region’s traditional Islamist hardliners.

Shamelessly, the Saudis “offered” to build 200 new mosques in Germany for the wave of migrants. That was too much even for the politically correct Germans, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy had as close to a public fit over the issue as toe-the-line Germans are permitted to do.

But our real problem is here and now, in the United States. Consider how idiotic we’ve been, allowing Saudis to fund hate mosques and madrassas, to provide Jew-baiting texts and to do their best to bully American Muslims into conformity with their misogynistic, 500-lashes worldview. Our leaders and legislators have betrayed our fellow citizens who happen to be Muslim, making it more difficult for them to integrate fully into our society.

President Obama meets with King Salman in September.

In the long run, the Saudis will lose. The transformative genius of America will defeat the barbarism. But lives will be wrecked along the way and terror will remain our routine companion.

Why did we let this happen? Greed. Naivete. Political correctness. Inertia. For decades, the Saudis sent ambassadors who were “just like us,” drinking expensive scotch, partying hard, playing tennis with our own political royalty, and making sure that American corporations and key individuals made money. A lot of money.

But they weren’t just like us. First of all, few of us could afford the kind of scotch they drank. More important, they had a deep anti-American, anti-liberty, play-us-for-suckers agenda.

And we let the Saudis exert control over America’s Muslim communities through their surrogates. No restrictions beyond an occasional timid request to remove a textbook or pamphlet that went too far.

Think what we’re doing: The Saudis would never let us fund a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia. There are none. And there won’t be any.

Wouldn’t it make sense for Congress to pass a law prohibiting foreign governments, religious establishments, charities and individuals from funding religious institutions here if their countries do not reciprocate and practice religious freedom? Isn’t that common sense? And simply fair?

Saudi money even buys our silence on terrorism.

Decades ago, the Saudi royal family realized it had a problem. Even its brutal practices weren’t strict enough for its home-grown zealots. So the king and his thousands of princes gave the budding terrorists money — and aimed them outside the kingdom.

Osama bin Laden was just one extremist of thousands. The 9/11 hijackers were overwhelmingly Saudi. The roots of the jihadi movements tearing apart the Middle East today all lie deep in Wahhabism.

Which brings us to 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission’s report. Those pages allegedly document Saudi complicity. Our own government kept those revelations from the American people. Because, even after 9/11, the Saudis were “our friends.”

(We won’t even admit that the Saudi goal in the energy sector today is to break American fracking operations, let alone face the damage their zealotry has caused.)

There’s now a renewed push to have those 28 pages released. Washington voices “soberly” warn that it shouldn’t be done until after the president’s upcoming encounter with the Saudi king, if at all.

Do it now. Stop bowing. Face reality.

If we’re unlucky, we may end up fighting Iran, which remains in the grip of its own corrupt theocracy — although Iranian women can vote and drive cars, and young people are allowed to be young people at about the 1950s level. But if fortune smiles and, eventually, the Iranian hardliners go, we could rebuild a relationship with the Iranians, who are the heirs of a genuine, Persian civilization. Consider how successful and all-American Iranian-Americans have become.

War with Iran will remain a tragic possibility. But the Saudi war on our citizens, on mainstream Islam, and on civilization is a here-and-now reality.

Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

The 20th anniversary of Dr. Kalim Siddiqui

Waseem Shehzad

Colleagues, friends and admirers of the late Dr Kalim Siddiqui gathered in Toronto to pay tribute to this great son of Islam and a leading intellectual of the last century.

Glowing tributes were paid to the late Dr. Kalim Siddiqui on the 20th anniversary of his passing away. One of the leading intellectuals and activists of the late-20th century, his colleagues, friends, and admirers participated in a memorial conference on April 23 in Toronto to not only remember him but reflect on his works and life’s struggle.

Dr. Kalim Siddiqui is most fondly remembered as founder and director of the Muslim Institute in London as well as leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain. This latter role overshadowed his more important intellectual contributions because he was in the media virtually on a daily basis. And this media attention was not confined to Britain where he lived. but the entire global media was fixated on the novel idea of the Muslim Parliament. It was also a major challenge to the hypocrisy of Western political systems that claim to guarantee the rights of all citizens but discriminate against minorities, especially religious minorities like the Muslims.

Dr. Kalim’s political activism was underpinned by his intellectual work. It provided solid grounding for his experiment in social engineering where the Muslim Parliament idea generated power without territory. He described it as a “non-territorial Islamic State,” much to the chagrin of the British establishment. The British were not amused.

Many of his colleagues, among them ICIT Director Zafar Bangash and Imam Muhammad al-‘Asi, as well as his son Iqbal Siddiqui, and social and political activist, Dr. ‘Ali Mallah highlighted Dr. Kalim’s extensive contribution to Muslim political thought as well as activism. Sharing anecdotes from the late scholar’s life, they provided insights into his great personality both at the intellectual as well as political level and shared many examples of his courage and determination.

His death on April 18, 1996 in South Africa where he had just attended the highly successful international conference on “Creating a New Civilization of Islam” left a huge void in the Ummah. As an academic, visionary, and activist, Dr. Kalim had created a special place for himself in the field of Muslim political thought through his writings and speeches. Such clarity unfortunately is lacking among many Muslim writers today many of whom have become mired in narrow sectarian polemics.

Dr. Kalim was far above such sectarian considerations as Imam al-‘Asi, pointed out. He always spoke about and wrote in terms of the broader goals of Islam and the Prophet’s (pbuh) Sirah and Sunnah. He exuded confidence where others spread pessimism.

His understanding of Western political systems and thought was profound and deep and he directed Muslims to seek solutions to their problems in the Qur’an and the Sunnah and the Sirah of the noble Messenger (pbuh). He insisted that the Islamic civilization would emerge only from within the roots of Islam and not through ideas borrowed from the West. He exuded great confidence and inspired others around him.

ICIT Director Zafar Bangash who was a close colleague and associate of Dr. Kalim’s from the very beginning (the two were closely involved in setting up the Muslim Institute), highlighted his eventful life taking the conference participants on a journey into Dr. Kalim’s activities starting with the establishment of the Muslim Institute in London. The Institute, as it came to be called, was based in Bloomsbury, the intellectual heart of London close to University College London (UCL) where both Dr. Kalim and Zafar Bangash were students. Dr. Kalim had just obtained his PhD in International Relations from UCL in 1972 while Zafar Bangash was an undergraduate at the same institution.

Dr. Kalim was also the author of numerous papers and books starting with his hard-hitting book on Pakistan titled, Conflict, Crisis and War in Pakistan (1972). The book not only traced the origins of the Pakistan movement and how the British-created landed aristocracy hijacked it but how the dream of Pakistan was turned into a nightmare resulting in the humiliating defeat of the Pakistan Army in December 1971 and the loss of half the country.

Thereafter, he produced a number of highly analytical books including Towards a New Destiny (1974), Functions of International Conflict: the case study of Pakistan (1974), The Islamic movement: a Systems Approach (1976), and Beyond the Muslim Nation-states (1977). These years were also interspersed with holding seminars at the Muslim Institute in London where leading academics and political activists from all over the world were invited to speak.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran provided the Muslim Institute with a new and unique challenge: how to communicate the success of this most remarkable achievement by one part of the Ummah to the rest, who happen to be from a different school of thought. Dr. Kalim, the driving force behind the Muslim Institute’s work, was uniquely placed to perform this role and he devoted his full energies to doing just that.

Throughout the 1980s, the Muslim Institute became the hub of activities where international seminars were organized to discuss the burning issues of the day. These included such topics as the Hajj, integration and disintegration in the politics of Islam and kufr, Muslim political yhought under colonialism, impact of nationalism on the Muslim world, and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, among others.

Leading Islamic scholars, thinkers, activists and leaders of Islamic movements from different parts of the world participated in these seminars. The London seminars provided these scholars a platform as well as an opportunity to discuss the hot topics of the day. They also provided an opportunity for Muslims from different schools of thought to interact with each other and discover how much they had in common.

Since Dr. Kalim was a heart patient having suffered his first heart attack as early as February 1974, he knew he did not have too much time in life. In the latter part of his life, he concentrated his intellectual energies on two areas: a deeper study of the Qur’an and a different approach to the study of the Sirah of the noble Messenger (pbuh). Dr. Kalim invited Imam Muhammad al-‘Asi to embark on the tafsir of the noble Qur’an and his (Dr. Kalim’s) paper on the Sirah, Political Dimensions of the Sirah, that was published posthumously (1998), was taken up by the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) to produce a significant body of Sirah literature. Imam al-‘Asi’s monumental tafsir, The Ascendant Qur’an: Realigning Man to the Divine Power Culture, as well as a series of books on the Sirah of which Power Manifestations of the Sirah: Examining the Letters and Treaties of the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) by Zafar Bangash are the best known.

Dr. Kalim’s son, Iqbal Siddiqui who flew in especially from London to participate in the conference had worked closely with his father, especially on the Muslim Parliament project, as well as in the preparation of Dr. Kalim’s last book, Stages of Islamic Revolution, whose first edition was published a few day’s before Dr. Kalim’s untimely death. His writings have influenced people far and wide and have contributed to clarifying many aspects of Muslim political thought that was hitherto mired in some confusion under the influence of Western political thought.

The fact that so many people still remember Dr. Kalim 20 years after his passing away and given the fast-paced changes in the Muslim world is a tribute to his great intellectual contribution. Dr. Kalim’s thoughts and ideas need to be more widely circulated and studied. They are as relevant today — or perhaps even more so — than they were 20 years ago.

He was a great scholar as well as an activist who while in poor physical health, never rested for a day and continued to struggle for the upliftment of the Ummah. He would not have wanted it any other way.

May Allah (swt) rest his soul in peace, ameen.

Kalim Siddiqui