Our publishing this lecture is an attempt to make this newsworthy speech available, not an endorsement of Dr. Naik’s views–we make attempts to make speeches by prominent Muslims (and non-Muslims, when those speeches are somehow important to Muslims) available and many times we reproduce speeches that The Muslim Observer finds important or interesting, but that we may or may not agree with. We have not examined the entirety of this video.

5 Minute Video

The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a “new direction” without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come.

A selection from Bill Moyers’ address at the NYU Kimmel Center on December 12, 2006.

For America’s Sake

By Bill Moyers

01/22/07 “The Nation’ — –The following is an adaptation of remarks made by Bill Moyers to a December 12 gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation, Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice and the New Democracy Project. View a video excerpt here. –The Editors

You could not have chosen a better time to gather. Voters have provided a respite from a right-wing radicalism predicated on the philosophy that extremism in the pursuit of virtue is no vice. It seems only yesterday that the Trojan horse of conservatism was hauled into Washington to disgorge Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and their hearty band of ravenous predators masquerading as a political party of small government, fiscal restraint and moral piety and promising “to restore accountability to Congress…[and] make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.”

Well, the long night of the junta is over, and Democrats are ebullient as they prepare to take charge of the multitrillion-dollar influence racket that we used to call the US Congress. Let them rejoice while they can, as long as they remember that while they ran some good campaigns, they have arrived at this moment mainly because George W. Bush lost a war most people have come to believe should never have been fought in the first place. Let them remember, too, in this interim of sweet anticipation, that although they are reveling in the ruins of a Republican reign brought down by stupendous scandals, their own closet is stocked with skeletons from an era when they were routed from office following Abscam bribes and savings and loan swindles that plucked the pockets and purses of hard-working, tax-paying Americans.

As they rejoice, Democrats would be wise to be mindful of Shakespeare’s counsel, “‘Tis more by fortune…than by merit.” For they were delivered from the wilderness not by their own goodness and purity but by the grace of K Street corruption, DeLay Inc.’s duplicity, the pitiless exploitation of Terri Schiavo, the disgrace of Mark Foley and a shameful partisan cover-up, the shamelessness of Jack Abramoff and a partisan conspiracy, and neocon arrogance and amorality (yes, amoral: Apparently there is no end to the number of bodies Bill Kristol and Richard Perle are prepared to watch pile up on behalf of illusions that can’t stand the test of reality even one Beltway block from the think tanks where they are hatched). The Democrats couldn’t have been more favored by the gods if they had actually believed in one!

But whatever one might say about the election, the real story is one that our political and media elites are loath to acknowledge or address. I am not speaking of the lengthy list of priorities that progressives and liberals of every stripe are eager to put on the table now that Democrats hold the cards in Congress. Just the other day a message popped up on my computer from a progressive advocate whose work I greatly admire. Committed to movement-building from the ground up, he has results to show for his labors. His request was simple: “With changes in Congress and at our state capitol, we want your input on what top issues our lawmakers should tackle. Click here to submit your top priority.”

I clicked. Sure enough, up came a list of thirty-four issues–an impressive list that began with “African-American” and ran alphabetically through “energy” and “higher education” to “guns,” “transportation,” “women’s issues” and “workers’ rights.” It wasn’t a list to be dismissed, by any means, for it came from an unrequited thirst for action after a long season of malignant opposition to every item on the agenda. I understand the mindset. Here’s a fellow who values allies and appreciates what it takes to build coalitions; who knows that although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. This is an activist who knows political success is the sum of many parts.

But America needs something more right now than a “must-do” list from liberals and progressives. America needs a different story. The very morning I read the message from the progressive activist, the New York Times reported on Carol Ann Reyes. Carol Ann Reyes is 63. She lives in Los Angeles, suffers from dementia and is homeless. Somehow she made her way to a hospital with serious, untreated needs. No details were provided as to what happened to her there, except that the hospital–which is part of Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in the country–called a cab and sent her back to skid row. True, they phoned ahead to workers at a rescue shelter to let them know she was coming. But some hours later a surveillance camera picked her up “wandering around the streets in a hospital gown and slippers.” Dumped in America.

Here is the real political story, the one most politicians won’t even acknowledge: the reality of the anonymous, disquieting daily struggle of ordinary people, including the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans but also young workers and elders and parents, families and communities, searching for dignity and fairness against long odds in a cruel market world.

Everywhere you turn you’ll find people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there’s a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream. So let me say what I think up front: The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people.

There’s no mistaking that America is ready for change. One of our leading analysts of public opinion, Daniel Yankelovich, reports that a majority want social cohesion and common ground based on pragmatism and compromise, patriotism and diversity. But because of the great disparities in wealth, the “shining city on the hill” has become a gated community whose privileged occupants, surrounded by a moat of money and protected by a political system seduced with cash into subservience, are removed from the common life of the country. The wreckage of this abdication by elites is all around us.

Corporations are shredding the social compact, pensions are disappearing, median incomes are flattening and healthcare costs are soaring. In many ways, the average household is generally worse off today than it was thirty years ago, and the public sector that was a support system and safety net for millions of Americans across three generations is in tatters. For a time, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by more work and more personal debt. Both political parties craftily refashioned those major renovations of the average household as the new standard, shielding employers from responsibility for anything Wall Street didn’t care about. Now, however, the more acute major risks workers have been forced to bear as employers reduce their health and retirement costs–on orders from Wall Street–have made it clear that our fortunes are being reversed. Polls show that a majority of US workers now believe their children will be worse off than they are. In one recent survey, only 14 percent of workers said that they have obtained the American Dream.

It is hard to believe that less than four decades ago a key architect of the antipoverty program, Robert Lampman, could argue that the “recent history of Western nations reveals an increasingly widespread adoption of the idea that substantial equality of social and economic conditions among individuals is a good thing.” Economists call that postwar era “the Great Compression.” Poverty and inequality had declined dramatically for the first time in our history. Here, as Paul Krugman recently recounted, is how Time’s report on the national outlook in 1953 summed it up: “Even in the smallest towns and most isolated areas, the U.S. is wearing a very prosperous, middle-class suit of clothes, and an attitude of relaxation and confidence. People are not growing wealthy, but more of them than ever before are getting along.” African-Americans were still written out of the story, but that was changing, too, as heroic resistance emerged across the South to awaken our national conscience. Within a decade, thanks to the civil rights movement and President Johnson, the racial cast of federal policy–including some New Deal programs–was aggressively repudiated, and shared prosperity began to breach the color line.

To this day I remember John F. Kennedy’s landmark speech at the Yale commencement in 1962. Echoing Daniel Bell’s cold war classic The End of Ideology, JFK proclaimed the triumph of “practical management of a modern economy” over the “grand warfare of rival ideologies.” The problem with this–and still a major problem today–is that the purported ideological cease-fire ended only a few years later. But the Democrats never re-armed, and they kept pinning all their hopes on economic growth, which by its very nature is valueless and cannot alone provide answers to social and moral questions that arise in the face of resurgent crisis. While “practical management of a modern economy” had a kind of surrogate legitimacy as long as it worked, when it no longer worked, the nation faced a paralyzing moral void in deciding how the burdens should be borne. Well-organized conservative forces, firing on all ideological pistons, rushed to fill this void with a story corporate America wanted us to hear. Inspired by bumper-sticker abstractions of Milton Friedman’s ideas, propelled by cascades of cash from corporate chieftans like Coors and Koch and “Neutron” Jack Welch, fortified by the pious prescriptions of fundamentalist political preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the conservative armies marched on Washington. And they succeeded brilliantly.

When Ronald Reagan addressed the Republican National Convention in 1980, he a told a simple story, one that had great impact. “The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership–in the White House and in Congress–for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us.” He declared, “I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself.” It was a speech of bold contrasts, of good private interest versus bad government, of course. More important, it personified these two forces in a larger narrative of freedom, reaching back across the Great Depression, the Civil War and the American Revolution, all the way back to the Mayflower Compact. It so dazzled and demoralized Democrats they could not muster a response to the moral abandonment and social costs that came with the Reagan revolution.

We too have a story of freedom to tell, and it too reaches back across the Great Depression, the Civil War and the American Revolution, all the way back to the Mayflower Compact. It’s a story with clear and certain foundations, like Reagan’s, but also a tumultuous and sometimes violent history of betrayal that he and other conservatives consistently and conveniently ignore.

Reagan’s story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control–a Jeffersonian ideal at the root of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and the license to buy the political system right out from under everyone else, so that democracy no longer has the ability to hold capitalism accountable for the good of the whole.

And that is not how freedom was understood when our country was founded. At the heart of our experience as a nation is the proposition that each one of us has a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As flawed in its reach as it was brilliant in its inspiration for times to come, that proposition carries an inherent imperative: “inasmuch as the members of a liberal society have a right to basic requirements of human development such as education and a minimum standard of security, they have obligations to each other, mutually and through their government, to ensure that conditions exist enabling every person to have the opportunity for success in life.”

The quote comes directly from Paul Starr, one of our most formidable public thinkers, whose forthcoming book, Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism, is a profound and stirring call for liberals to reclaim the idea of America’s greatness as their own. Starr’s book is one of three new books that in a just world would be on every desk in the House and Senate when Congress convenes again.

John Schwarz, in Freedom Reclaimed: Rediscovering the American Vision, rescues the idea of freedom from market cultists whose “particular idea of freedom…has taken us down a terribly mistaken road” toward a political order where “government ends up servicing the powerful and taking from everyone else.” The free-market view “cannot provide us with a philosophy we find compelling or meaningful,” Schwarz writes. Nor does it assure the availability of economic opportunity “that is truly adequate to each individual and the status of full legal as well as political equality.” Yet since the late nineteenth century it has been used to shield private power from democratic accountability, in no small part because conservative rhetoric has succeeded in denigrating government even as conservative politicians plunder it.

But government, Schwarz reminds us, “is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions.” That is one reason the notion that every person has a right to meaningful opportunity “has assumed the position of a moral bottom line in the nation’s popular culture ever since the beginning.” Freedom, he says, is “considerably more than a private value.” It is essentially a social idea, which explains why the worship of the free market “fails as a compelling idea in terms of the moral reasoning of freedom itself.” Let’s get back to basics, is Schwarz’s message. Let’s recapture our story.

Norton Garfinkle picks up on both Schwarz and Starr in The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth, as he describes how America became the first nation on earth to offer an economic vision of opportunity for even the humblest beginner to advance, and then moved, in fits and starts–but always irrepressibly–to the invocation of positive government as the means to further that vision through politics. No one understood this more clearly, Garfinkle writes, than Abraham Lincoln, who called on the federal government to save the Union. He turned to large government expenditures for internal improvements–canals, bridges and railroads. He supported a strong national bank to stabilize the currency. He provided the first major federal funding for education, with the creation of land grant colleges. And he kept close to his heart an abiding concern for the fate of ordinary people, especially the ordinary worker but also the widow and orphan. Our greatest President kept his eye on the sparrow. He believed government should be not just “of the people” and “by the people” but “for the people.” Including, we can imagine, Carol Ann Reyes.

The great leaders of our tradition–Jefferson, Lincoln and the two Roosevelts–understood the power of our story. In my time it was FDR, who exposed the false freedom of the aristocratic narrative. He made the simple but obvious point that where once political royalists stalked the land, now economic royalists owned everything standing. Mindful of Plutarch’s warning that “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics,” Roosevelt famously told America, in 1936, that “the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.” He gathered together the remnants of the great reform movements of the Progressive Age–including those of his late-blooming cousin, Teddy–into a singular political cause that would be ratified again and again by people who categorically rejected the laissez-faire anarchy that had produced destructive, unfettered and ungovernable power. Now came collective bargaining and workplace rules, cash assistance for poor children, Social Security, the GI Bill, home mortgage subsidies, progressive taxation–democratic instruments that checked economic tyranny and helped secure America’s great middle class. And these were only the beginning. The Marshall Plan, the civil rights revolution, reaching the moon, a huge leap in life expectancy–every one of these great outward achievements of the last century grew from shared goals and collaboration in the public interest.

So it is that contrary to what we have heard rhetorically for a generation now, the individualist, greed-driven, free-market ideology is at odds with our history and with what most Americans really care about. More and more people agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics is corrupting democracy and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help when the market system fails to generate shared prosperity. Indeed, the American public is committed to a set of values that almost perfectly contradicts the conservative agenda that has dominated politics for a generation now.

The question, then, is not about changing people; it’s about reaching people. I’m not speaking simply of better information, a sharper and clearer factual presentation to disperse the thick fogs generated by today’s spin machines. Of course, we always need stronger empirical arguments to back up our case. It would certainly help if at least as many people who believe, say, in a “literal devil” or that God sent George W. Bush to the White House also knew that the top 1 percent of households now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Yes, people need more information than they get from the media conglomerates with their obsession for nonsense, violence and pap. And we need, as we keep hearing, “new ideas.” But we are at an extraordinary moment. The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a “new direction” without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come.

Some stories doom us. In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond tells of the Viking colony that disappeared in the fifteenth century. The settlers had scratched a living on the sparse coast of Greenland for years, until they encountered a series of harsh winters. Their livestock, the staple of their diet, began to die off. Although the nearby waters teemed with haddock and cod, the colony’s mythology prohibited the eating of fish. When their supply of hay ran out during a last terrible winter, the colony was finished. They had been doomed by their story.

Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America’s dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and hence our politics. In the searching of our souls demanded by this challenge, those of us in this room and kindred spirits across the nation must confront the most fundamental progressive failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility–the gift we have received and the legacy we must bequeath.

In our brief sojourn here we are on a great journey. For those who came before us and for those who follow, our moral, political and religious duty is to make sure that this nation, which was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal, is in good hands on our watch.

One story would return America to the days of radical laissez-faire, when there was no social contract and the strong took what they could and the weak were left to forage. The other story joins the memory of struggles that have been waged with the possibility of victories yet to be won, including healthcare for every American and a living wage for every worker. Like the mustard seed to which Jesus compared the Kingdom of God, nurtured from small beginnings in a soil thirsty for new roots, our story has been a long time unfolding. It reminds us that the freedoms and rights we treasure were not sent from heaven and did not grow on trees. They were, as John Powers has written, “born of centuries of struggle by untold millions who fought and bled and died to assure that the government can’t just walk into our bedrooms and read our mail, to protect ordinary people from being overrun by massive corporations, to win a safety net against the often-cruel workings of the market, to guarantee that businessmen couldn’t compel workers to work more than forty hours a week without extra compensation, to make us free to criticize our government without having our patriotism impugned, and to make sure that our leaders are answerable to the people when they choose to send our soldiers into war.” The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources, free trade unions, old-age pensions, clean air and water, safe food–all these began with citizens and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and bitter attacks. Democracy works when people claim it as their own.

It is only rarely remembered that the definition of democracy immortalized by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address had been inspired by Theodore Parker, the abolitionist prophet. Driven from his pulpit, Parker said, “I will go about and preach and lecture in the city and glen, by the roadside and field-side, and wherever men and women may be found.” He became the Hound of Freedom and helped to change America through the power of the word. We have a story of equal power. It is that the promise of America leaves no one out. Go now, and tell it on the mountains. From the rooftops, tell it. From your laptops, tell it. From the street corners and from Starbucks, from delis and from diners, tell it. From the workplace and the bookstore, tell it. On campus and at the mall, tell it. Tell it at the synagogue, sanctuary and mosque. Tell it where you can, when you can and while you can–to every candidate for office, to every talk-show host and pundit, to corporate executives and schoolchildren. Tell it–for America’s sake.

9-8

Awesome traditional Chechen zikr.

Reuters

Beijing, February 9: China has executed a Uighur activist in a far-northwestern city for attempting to “split the motherland” and possessing explosives, drawing condemnation from a human rights group, which said the evidence was insufficient.

Ismail Semed, who was deported to China from Pakistan in 2003, had told the court a confession had been coerced, but he was executed nevertheless on Thursday in Urumqi, capital of the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia on Friday quoted his widow, Buhejer, as saying.

“When the body was transferred to us at the cemetery I saw only one bullet hole in his heart,” Buhejer told the US government-funded radio.

The exile group, the World Uighur Congress, said the prosecution had presented no credible evidence for a conviction.

“His trial, like most Uighur political prisoners’ trials, was not fair,” it said in an emailed statement.

A spokeswoman for the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court said a group of people had been executed on Thursday but said she had no knowledge of specific cases. The Xinjiang regional government declined to comment.

Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs account for 8 million of the 19 million people in Xinjiang.

The radio said the charge of attempting to split the motherland stemmed from the allegation that Semed was a founding member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, outlawed by Beijing as a terrorist group.

But Nicholas Bequelin, Hong Kong-based China researcher of Human Rights Watch, said: “The death penalty was widely disproportionate to the alleged crimes … his trial did not meet minimum requirements of fairness and due process.”

“We don’t think there was sufficient evidence to condemn him,” Bequelin added.

China has waged a harsh campaign in recent years against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists struggling to set up an independent “East Turkestan” in Xinjiang, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia.

Buhejer met her husband briefly on Monday shortly after being informed of the decision to execute him, RFA said.

“(It was) only for 10 minutes” that they were allowed to meet, she was quoted as saying.

He told her to “take care of our children and let them get a good education”. The couple has a young son and daughter.

Semed had previously served two prison sentences for taking part in a violent uprising in 1990. He fled to Pakistan after a Chinese government crackdown in 1997.

Two other Uighurs who testified against Semed were also executed, RFA quoted unnamed sources in the region as saying.

In a reference to another case currently in court in Urumqi, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday Canadian diplomats had no right to be present at the hearing of Hussayin Celil, a Uighur accused by China of terrorism who was awarded Canadian citizenship two years ago.

Celil, also known as Yu Shanjiang, fled China in the 1990s and travelled last year to Uzbekistan, where he was detained and then extradited to China on terrorism charges.

He was cited in court documents related to Semed as a co-conspirator, Bequelin said. China has not recognised Celil’s Canadian citizenship, obtained in 2005.

9-8

By Mita Valina Liem

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Garbage trucks were out in force on Jakarta’s streets on Monday for a huge clean-up of the city after a devastating flood, while nearly 200,000 people were suffering from flood-related illnesses.

The vast majority of the ill were not hospitalized, the health ministry’s crisis center chief told Reuters.

“Most of the displaced suffer from diarrhea, dengue, severe respiratory problems. The number of out-patients is 190,000 and in-patients is 510,” Rustam Pakaya said.

Fears lingered that disease could spread as people stay in cramped emergency shelters or move back into houses often lacking clean water, plumbing and power.

However, emergency medical posts have been halved because most of the displaced have returned home.”

At the peak of the flooding — caused by more than a week of rains in Jakarta and surrounding areas, which eased off last Friday — officials reported over 400,000 people were displaced.

By Monday the figure had fallen to under 59,000 in Jakarta proper, the national agency for disaster management said.

Jakarta has nine million people within its city limits and another five million in the immediate area.

The flood killed 48 people within the city and 46 in adjacent West Java and Banten provinces.

Survivors face the monumental task of clearing their homes of debris and mud left behind by the receding water. In some neighborhoods the mud was as much as two meters deep.

“Jakarta has dispatched 150 garbage trucks to remove debris, mud, and garbage from the flooded areas. Nine-thousand personnel from the army and the police department have been deployed to help clear the areas,” said Suprawoto, spokesman of the national agency for disaster management.

“What we need is disinfectant, shovels, spades, hoes, school needs — uniforms, books and so forth — (and) wheelbarrows because garbage trucks cannot pass into small alleys,” he added.

Dead Animal Threat

The Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) warned of the danger rotting dead animals posed for spreading disease.

“The most dangerous waste is actually organic like animal carcasses because they could become places where flies hatch and communicable diseases go through,” said Arifin Muhammad Hadi, head of disaster management at PMI’s headquarters.

Although relatively dry weather over the last few days has improved conditions in flooded areas, Indonesia’s rainy season has several weeks to run and could bring fresh downpours.

Officials and green groups have blamed excessive construction in Jakarta’s water catchment areas for making the floods worse, while a deputy environment minister told Reuters last week that climate change contributed to the problem.

Above low-lying seaside Jakarta are foothills that have lost much of their vegetative cover to construction of weekend homes and golf courses, making it harder for the ground to retain water from the deluges common in the rainy season.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono played down concerns over long-term crop damage and said the country should be able to lift its key 2007 rice output target by up to 3 million tonnes.

“We are more concerned with the affect of drought which may cause a potential drop in output,” the minister told reporters.

Some economists and government officials have warned of an inflationary spike from the flooding, which also hit some retail and manufacturing operations.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told reporters regional governments in Jakarta and its satellite cities were still counting the cost of the damage.

Indonesia’s rupiah currency has held firm against the dollar, while at mid-morning on Monday the Jakarta Stock Exchange’s key index was down less than 0.2 percent.

9-8

By Nilofar Suhrawardy, Muslim Media News Service (MMNS)

NEW DELHI – Ahead of the 14th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit, to be hosted here in April, the first ever editors’ conference was held here last week (February 9-10). Addressing its concluding session, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee dismissed apprehensions held about India seeking an “exclusive sphere of influence” through SAARC. Laying stress on the importance of “regionalism” in South Asia, he said: “What we seek is not an exclusive sphere of influence–as is often misunderstood–but a shared sphere of regionalism. Our vision for the SAARC region is one of regionalism.” SAARC comprises India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

“India’s strong support to the entry into SAARC as observers, among others–China and Japan –underlines our commitment to open regionalism in the subcontinent,” Mukherjee said. “India is conscious that no South Asian nation can succeed on its own. Globalization and the advent of modern technology have endowed us with options that never existed before. We must create a stake for every nation in the economic success of the other,” he said.

Elaborating on India’s agenda for the SAARC summit in April, Mukherjee said: “We will play a positive role in the establishment of new trans-border transport networks and energy corridors so that the 14th Summit of SAARC countries gives a clear signal for improving the connectivity within the subcontinent by ensuring free flow of trade, commerce, goods, people and ideas.”

In view of the new importance assumed by such gatherings and media, Mukherjee said: “Given its immense reach, there is a need, perhaps more than ever before, for the media to be fully aware of its own power and the responsibility it bears for creating proper understanding between neighboring countries. In many ways, the media is the torch-bearer of better people-to-people contacts.” Holding such media-conferences regularly would contribute to realizing the “full potential of the media in helping create a peaceful and closely integrated neighborhood,” Mukherjee said.

During his inaugural address, expressing regret that such a meeting had not been held earlier, Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said: “After all, SAARC has been in existence for 20 years. So, it is a rather sad commentary that this is the first time that we have a meeting of editors at this level in SAARC.”

Highlighting the need for greater media interaction among South Asian countries, Menon said: “Whatever the result, the fact is that we today have a media in South Asia which is among the best in the world and can match anyone else in the world. Therefore, my question to you is, please tell us what could we be doing in SAARC to encourage free flow of ideas, of media persons, of media products.” Asserting that there was a “historic opportunity” at hand for countries of the region to realize the full potential of SAARC, Menon said: “We realize the extent of our inter-dependence, the extent to which we need each other, all of us. This has nothing to do with asymmetries of power, shape, size and whatever–we all need each other.”

The resolution adopted at the end of conference urged governments of SAARC countries to enable “freer movement of journalists by issuing multiple-entry long-term visas to all bona fide journalists.” The resolution also asked SAARC governments to “dismantle all border barriers to free flow and exchange of news media products in the region.”

The conference criticized “continuing intimidation” and “attacks” on journalists in the region by “agencies of the State, extra-constitutional authorities, self-appointed cultural custodians, religious and political press-gangs, and criminal elements acting in collusion with law enforcement agencies.” Voicing concern over harassment of media persons, the conference asked the governments to intervene “immediately and decisively” in every instance to protect journalists and the media from attacks and threats from any quarter. To make media freedom in the fullest sense an explicit, inalienable, fundamental right that cannot be tampered with in any manner, the SAARC countries were asked to bring in necessary legislation or amendments to national constitutions.

Regarding existing institutions as inadequate, SAARC editors viewed setting up self-regulatory bodies of journalists as “highly necessary.” “We need to make states not interfere with journalism but become more accountable in areas like public broadcasting,” the editors said. Pointing to recent attacks on the media, including the recent Broadcasting Bill sought to be initiated by the present Congress-led government in India giving rights to even a district magistrate to close channels and police journalism, the editors said: “We can think of forming a union to coordinate our news and the flow of information.”

Organized jointly, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and Media Development Foundation (Chennai), the two-day conference attracted around 45 senior representatives from SAARC countries. Though held as a build up to the SAARC conference, this media-meet was not a part of the “official calendar,” according to Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ spokesperson Navtej Sarna. The next SAARC editors’ conference will be held in Karachi in 2008.

9-8

By Dr. A.S. Nakadar, Muslim Media News Service (MMNS)

Last week I wrote about the people who are trying to create an artificial Shi’a Sunni divide and how it is becoming real. And how our government and other interested parties are trying to camouflage their failure in Iraq by playing a key role in exploiting the existing small differences between Shi’a and Sunni. Every day the divide is deepening and every hour brings in the gruesome news of sectarian mass killings.

Each time we hear of the gang-style mass murders in Iraq and of bombings in marketplaces our heads sink into our hands nodding in disbelief. This kind of news makes our spirit weary and despaired that paralyzes our thought process. It is draining the strength of the whole ummah.

What was once a war on WMDs, then a war against terrorism, then a war for democracy has been transformed into a sectarian war by the Iraqi people’s resistance. Continuous distortions of the news by the military spokespersons and further distortions by the media are instrumental in creating this monstrous divide in the ummah.

And it may sound silly at present but soon we will hear that America wants to line up Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni regimes to curtail the growing influence of a nuclear Shi’a Iran in the region. These regimes will follow their master’s voice–to confront Iran over the development of its nuclear plant, irrespective of whether it is for peaceful purposes or not. One day this will leave us scratching our heads in disbelief.

Once I was having a casual discussion with Imam Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America. The topic of sectarian strife came up and he rightly said: “Brother, our difference is only 5% while we agree on 95%, and it is unfortunate that people pay more attention to this 5% of our differences.” How true that is.

It reminded me of two incidences in my life, one based on sheer ignorance and another enlightened one. Both instances reflect the state of our religious scholars.

I was on my sojourn to India. After one of the functions, I asked my host to lead me to a masjid for Salatul Dhuhr. They lead me to a masjid across the street. One brother objected and insisted that I should pray in a masjid a block away. I ignored him.

When I entered the Masjid I realized why someone had wanted me to pray in another masjid. The masjid where my host took me belonged to Shi’a brothers. I offered my prayers there and when we came back, I gave another short lecture, the gist was: When we can pray on the road, or on the grass, or in buildings, or other such places irrespective of its cleanliness, what is wrong in praying in Allah’s (swt) house? Is it because a particular sect of people built it? My hosts were Shi’a’s, I didn’t know till then, and others (Sunni) in the function were pleased to hear the short sermon.

Another incidence occurred in America. People had gathered for a socio-political meeting in a Shi’a Masjid. The majority of participants were Sunnis. The organizers in a prior meeting, held a few days before, had decided a Sunni imam would lead the maghreb prayer. When people stood up for `iqama, a Sunni from the back row politely said, “The imam of this masjid should lead the prayer.” Hearing this, the Sunni Imam refused to lead. He insisted that the Shi’a imam lead. The Shi’a imam, after hesitation, led the prayer. He performed the salat, observing the Sunni way, including tying of his hands. Imagine the respect both imams gained from the congregation. What an example befitting the ummah.

Here in America, the media is now playing up a Shi’a-Sunni divide. About a month ago some miscreants vandalized Muslim businesses and a couple of masajid in Dearborn-Michigan. One belonged to Sunni and the rest belonged to Shi’a. The written statement read “Go home 9/11 murderers, you idol worshipers.” This doesn’t sound like a Sunni or Shi’a’s work, does it? But the media projected it as proof of growing sectarian divisions in the USA. Muslim intelligentsia labeled it as another attempt to increase the divide amongst ourselves and to further America’s Islamophobia. This is a classical example of what is happening in Iraq. Let someone do the job, and blame it on Shi’a or Sunni.

The mighty media controls our mind and we have no effective way to counter their bigotry. Shouldn’t we support all those who are making efforts in establishing our own media in this country to counter falsehood and stand for justice? It squarely places responsibility on our religious scholars, social leaders, political activists, think tanks and our various organizations in making our communities vigilant and educated on our issues that affect us, religious or otherwise, that will help in thwarting such nefarious designs.

9-8

By Bob Wood

The old stock market adage teaches that ‘’the trend is your friend.’’ But as I have previously explained in this column, not all trends are created equal. Some prove to be far more profitable than others. Only the longer-term, secular trends are worth investing in. And I never said that was easy to do!

The stock markets in China and India are two cases that illustrate this point. There is little argument that both countries are in the spotlight — offering the best short- and long-term growth rates as related to their economies. Both are growing at close to 10%/year and are projected to continue those strong gains for the foreseeable future.

Compare those gains to the comparatively slow-growing, established economies in the U.S. and Europe, both chugging along in low, single digits. And perhaps some of those rather small growth rates could even be questioned, since the expansion of the American economy may be arguably exaggerated by under-reporting of the true rate of inflation. Some, though, such as Economist John Williams, who writes the shadowstats.com web site, are sure that inflation is running much hotter than official figures suggest.

If he is correct, and I think he is, the growth rate of our domestic economy is zero, at best, and may already be in recession territory. One look at the housing market and the announced job layoffs among our largest employers suggests validity for this claim.

Of course, to be fair, we must also question the growth rates of other economies, and using similar inflation rates for other economies helps the comparison. Since economists in India are also concerned with inflation, they are taking steps to address what they admit are inflation rates climbing even higher than the very meager numbers that pass for fact in the U.S.

So now that we have established that much faster growing, healthier economies like China and India exist and invite investments, should we just load up on stocks and mutual funds dedicated to those markets and sit in the shade for the next 10 or 20 years? Oh, if it only were so easy!

Of course, if it were that easy, we’d all be rich from our investing activities. But as anyone who has been involved in the equities markets for any length of time well knows, it’s never easy! At least, it’s not easy for me, since I have to work very hard at this business.

The biggest problem with these investment markets is that the good news about them is already known and well “priced into” their stock markets. In fact, the word has traveled around the world and back home to local investors, many of whom are new to investing. And the signs of strain are becoming obvious.

Each week, I see articles relating how individual investors in China clamor for a piece of the action. Last year’s stunning 130% gain in stocks did not go unnoticed. And similar to what we saw in the U.S. in the late 1990s, when some people were leaving their jobs to become day traders while others were taking home equity loans to fund stock market accounts, those same activities are now apparent in what has been considered a more conservative populace.

Stories are popping up in international media about people in China who have been borrowing money to open stock market trading accounts. If you have ever been tempted to borrow money for stock market investing, allow me to remind you of one very good piece of advice: Don’t do it!

Borrowing money to invest in the stock market is as bad an idea now as it has ever been; in fact, it may be even worse than taking stock tips from CNBC. And this borrowing practice has found its way to China, where, reportedly, investors have been borrowing on credit cards to buy stocks. Obviously, no one has pointed out how significantly they will have to beat the market to justify paying such high rates of interest on their cash stakes.

The Financial Times reported this past week that this borrowing practice has gone beyond all measure of rationality. The manager of a pawn shop in central Shanghai talks about people who are ‘’putting their homes in hock.’’ Yes, it seems that people are borrowing as much money as possible against the value of their homes to invest in the stock market, and that market rose so much last year that a correction certainly can be expected.

‘’This place is kept alive by people pawning their homes,’’ says the manager of one pawn shop, so, apparently, these are not isolated cases. Now I ask you, have you ever seen a better contrarian indicator just screaming ‘’Sell!’’?

To a lesser extent, we see a similar sell signal in the Indian stock market. With the fantastic growth rate in that economy — quoted now as close to 10%, we can easily justify a higher average P/E for stocks. And with its market now quoted as selling at about 20 times earnings, India doesn’t seem all that richly priced.

After all, our Dow now sells at over 20 times trailing earnings, and our growth rate is close to zero. So by comparison, the Indian market looks like a great place to be. But, as reported last week, almost half of all money invested in the eight largest emerging markets went into Indian stocks. And mutual fund flows from American investors last year were sent almost exclusively into foreign stock funds, with over 90% of that money opting for those funds.

In 2005, that figure was over 80%, so for both the Chinese and Indian stock markets, the crowd has been rushing in. And those are reasons enough for my scaling out of both markets. Yet this strategy may be hard to accept if you agree with my philosophy of investing in places with the best long-term prospects for growth.

But my adherence to secular bull market investing isn’t set in stone, and it is not meant to be practiced while ignoring other factors. As Clausewitz pointed out in his book On War, friction occurs in any endeavor involving human impulses. And what stronger impulses are there than fear and greed?

And while I have no doubt that stock markets in China and India will go much higher in another 10 or 20 years and that both still offer better profit potential than our domestic markets, limits exist for any strategy. And those markets have hit my limits.

Of course, you may decide to hold onto your investments in those countries, but I am now opting out of China and scaling out of India, meaning that I still hold positions in that market, though they are getting smaller.

Even the best secular trends will endure periods of disappointing performance, since they often play out in three stages. Between each stage are periods of a few weeks or months when valuations stretch, and then euphoria sets in, clouding investor judgment. And these times appear to be when the two trends are due for a disappointing run.

My best advice is to scale out of these hot markets for now, let the crowd take the brunt of the rough patches — as they always seem to do, and keep your powder dry for a better opportunity to jump back in — when the crowd is bailing out en masse. There are better places to invest in Asia, and, of course, sitting on your cash, waiting for a better entry point, will not be discouraged here.

Another old adage says that our profits come from how much we pay when we buy, rather than how much we make when we sell. Buy at the right times, and prices and profits are much more likely to roll in. Yes, you could wait on the sidelines as long as it takes the crowd to catch on. But once it does, and in such big ways, the best thing you can do is position yourself on the far side of the table and near the doorway out.

Have a great week,
Bob

Bob Wood ChFC, CLU Yusuf Kadiwala. Registered Investment Advisors, KMA, Inc., invest@muslimobserver.com.

9-8

Hermain Khan makes it to finals of Intel Science Talent Search

Hermain Suhail Khan, 17, of Staten Island, has been named one of the 40 finalists for the Science Talent Search (Intel STS) 2007. The selected students came from a pool of 1705 contestants who took part in America’s oldest and most prestigious science competition–often called the “Junior Nobel Prize.”

For his project, Khan used electron spin resonance (ESR) techniques coupled with iron-uptake experiments to determine the age of fossilized crocodylian teeth from India for his earth and planetary science Intel Science Talent Search project.

ESR is difficult to use on fossilized teeth because they contain iron, which interferes with ESR data. Hermain found a way to date the teeth, using ESR, by subtracting a pure iron signal from the signal in the teeth. He believes the remaining signal provides reliable age information. His work has already generated two conference publications. Hermain, who hopes to enter Harvard, attends Staten Island Technical High School, where he enjoys running, birdwatching, playing the violin and tennis. The son of Shahid and Rehana Khan, he wrote a play, performed off-Broadway last June, based on his mother’s move to the U.S. and her struggle to raise five children and adapt to American life. Founder of a non-profit group, Muslims United, Hermain spearheaded fund-raising efforts in the school and community for earthquake relief in his native Pakistan, raising $6,000.

He will travel on March 8 to Washington D.C. for a weeklong event. At a black-tie gala at the end of the week, 10 students will be chosen for scholarships totaling $500,000 with the top winner receiving a $100,000 scholarship. All finalists will be awarded a laptop run with the Intel® CoreTM2 Duo processor, and have the opportunity to display their research for the general public at the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

Muslims, Prof. team up for lectures at Hollins University

Members of the Clarence Sabree Islamic Center in Roanoke have teamed up with Rev.Jan Fuller, the chaplain and religious studies professor at Hollins University, to lead a six-week lecture series on the Muslim faith.

Fuller, who attends Christ Episcopal Church, said she broached the lecture series as a way of fostering mutual understanding, conversation and respect.

Many of the forum participants said it has given them a broader context to news of religious clashes in Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Caroline Bloodworth of Roanoke said she has attended all of the lectures so far and plans to show up at the remaining two sessions.

“I came here not knowing anything about Islam and wanted to be better educated. My eyes have been opened,” Bloodworth said. “This series has given me a deeper respect for the Muslim community.”

Fuller draws from experiences in her own life, growing up in Lebanon and Jordan as the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries. The classes, which are open to the public, discuss the life of Prophet Muhammad (s), Islamic prayer, the role of women in Muslim society, and the Qur`an.

Fuller and Hamidullah explained the history and significance of the Muslim’s sacred text of the Qur`an, and drew comparisons with the Torah and the Bible. Many Muslims use the Qur`an for “guidance, inspiration and wisdom,” Fuller said.

Prof. Ihsan Bagy to speak on Islam and Violence

DANVILLE, KY—Centre College will host a public lecture by Ishan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky. The lecture, titled “Islam and Violence,” will take place Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in 101 Young Hall on campus.

Bagby’s lecture will focus on the disparate interpretations and the ramifications that arise in political and policy debates.

“In the popular imagination, Islam and violence are deeply related,” says Nayef Samhat, Frank B. and Virginia B. Hower Associate Professor of Government and International Studies at Centre. “Such misperceptions have a profound impact on foreign policy and serve to reinforce the idea, a false one, that the war on terror is in reality a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Professor Bagby’s work, and his talk, go far to dispel these notions and bring clarity to the issues at hand.”

A native of Cleveland, Bagby received a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. His research for the last 10 years has focused on Muslims in America.

In 2001, Bagby published The Mosque in America: A National Portrait, the results of the first comprehensive study of mosques in America. He has published numerous articles based on the 2001 study, and he is presently working on a book on African-American Muslims.

Bagby serves on the advisory board of Hartford Seminary’s The Hartford Institute for Religion Research and is active in other organizations including Interfaith Alliance, Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Discover Islam series at West Virginia University

The Muslim Students’ Association at West Virginia University organized a lecture by Jamal Daoudi as part of its Discover Islam series. Daoudi spoke on the topic of women in Islam. “In the Islamic culture, a woman is described to be the queen of the house,” said Daoudi, who is also the religious leader of the Muslim community of Charleston.

“It’s not 50-50 (between men and women) in Islam. It’s complementary. They complement each other,” he said.

Daoudi said Islam forbids women to perform jobs that it considers to be inappropriate and could damage their honor.

In general, Islam wants women “to be secured, protected, and preserved in their positions of highest values as mothers and wives,” Daoudi said. “For me, as a Muslim, the Qur`an gives me a lot of reflection, (on how) to adopt and conduct certain behavior toward women.”

In 2005, Daoudi earned the West Virginia Martin Luther King Jr. “Living The Dream” award as an “advocate of the peace.” He was also presented with the Islamic Community Service Award for political activism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

First Muslim head for Toronto’s York University

York University has made history by hiring the first Muslim university president in Canada.At a Board of Governors meeting on Feb. 6, it was ratified that Dr. Mamdouh Shoukri will become York’s seventh president as of July 1. Shoukri replaces Dr. Lorna Marsden, who has been York’s president and vice-chancellor for the past 10 years.

“I watched York grow to become Canada’s third largest university, and it is racing ahead. I consider myself to be very privileged to be given this opportunity at this important juncture in York’s history,” Shoukri said after his appointment.

Shoukri is currently the vice-president for research and international affairs at McMaster University in Hamilton, a position he has held since 2001. Shoukri is also a professor in the mechanical engineering department at McMaster. Originally born in Egypt, Shoukri did his undergraduate work in mechanical engineering at Cairo University in Giza. He went on to receive his masters in mechanical engineering at McMaster in 1974, and his PhD in the same program from McMaster in 1977. Shoukri continued on to work for Ontario Hydro in their research division until 1984, when he was hired as a professor in the mechanical engineering department of McMaster. He became chair of the department in 1990, and the dean of the faculty in 1994.

Jinnah statue at York University

York is the first university in Canada to erect a statue of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The statue, which stands about five feet tall, is made of bronze casting and is located north of the Curtis Lecture Halls on Campus Walk. It was created by David McDougall, a MFA candidate at York.

The Pakistani Students’ Association (PSA) has worked closely with a number of people both on and off campus in regards to the statue, which was unveiled in a ceremony on Jan. 30.

Babar Qureshi, president of the PSA, said the Pakistani community is the third largest international student group on campus. The PSA also had a scholarship created in 2004 called the “Jinnah, Founder of Pakistan Scholarship,” which is awarded to a York student who demonstrates a commitment to academic excellence and leadership. Qureshi said that these two things combined, as well as the PSA’s involvement on campus, was what instigated the idea that the statue should come to York.

“That’s how we came up with that we should be giving this to York,” Qureshi explained.

Qureshi said the PSA worked closely with Ghalib Iqbal, the Consul General of Pakistan, who helped to absorb 70 per cent of the statue’s cost. He was present at the ceremony on Tuesday when the statue was unveiled.

Glad to be Canadian, Muslims say

More than 80 per cent of Canada’s roughly 700,000 Muslims are broadly satisfied with their lives here and only a very small percentage — 17 per cent — feel that many or most Canadians are hostile toward their religion.

According to a new Environics poll conducted in association with the CBC, a much larger proportion of Canadian Muslims is satisfied with the way things are going today than is the case in Europe. The proportion is greater even than the 61 per cent of Canadians who generally feel their lives are on the right track.

At the same time, there are clearly different perceptions between the Muslim community and other Canadians over such flashpoint issues as integration, the role of women and the wearing of headscarves.

And despite intensive efforts by the Stephen Harper government to reach out and recruit prominent Muslims to its cause — witness the recent floor-crossing of former Liberal MP Wajid Khan — there is little sense that this is yet taking hold.

Asked whom they intend to vote for in the next federal election, 54 per cent of Muslim respondents said the Liberals, 13 per cent said NDP, and only seven per cent said the Conservatives, which is virtually the same way they voted in the last election.

These are some of the key findings of a wide-ranging new survey of Muslim attitudes in Canada as well as attitudes toward them.

The survey—conducted by Environics Research Group in conjunction with the CBC and other clients—interviewed 500 Canadian Muslims and 2,045 members of the general population between Nov. 30, 2006 and Jan. 5, 2007 and is said to be accurate within 4.4 percentage points and 2.2 percentage points respectively, 19 times out of a 20.

In general terms, the poll found that 73 per cent of Canadian Muslims describe themselves as “very proud” to be called Canadians, even if many of them see their religion as coming first in certain instances. As well, they have very little sympathy for extremists or terrorist groups and they aren’t crazy about the northern climate — it tops the list of things they like least.

Canada’s Muslims have different priorities, the poll suggests. Unemployment and immigration issues are more important to them than the health care and environmental concerns that are driving other Canadians.

There are also differences over how much and to what extent minority communities should “blend in” with the Canadian norm.

Almost half (49 per cent) of the general Canadian population feel new immigrants should blend in with the rest of the country, while 40 per cent feel they should be encouraged to maintain their religious and cultural practices. For Canadian Muslims, these numbers are 15 and 65 per cent respectively.

9-8

How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future

By Geoffrey Cook, Muslim Media News Service (MMNS)

Sacramento–February 10th–Vali Nasr is a Senior Adjunct Professor on Foreign Relations and South Asian Politics and the Associate Chair of Research at the Department of National Security at the Department of National Security at the (U.S.) Naval Postgraduate School.

In his talk on the Shi’a Revival, Vali offers the opinion that in the Shi’a/Sunni competition for power and collaboration between themselves will hold the outlook for the Islamic world and much of the non-Islamic world in general. Dr. Nasr opines that the West does not possess the opportunities for the Arab Lands, nor do the Sunni, but rather the Shi’a although we tend to view the Middle East from a Sunni perspective. We must now learn the motivation of the Shi’a as well!

Vali Nasr was born in Tehran; so, with his scholarly understanding of the subject he has personal experience of his culture.

Drastic secularism exists presently in Iraq, but also throughout the Middle East. Even more regional sections of the Fertile Crescent such as the Hezbollah (Lebanese) -Israeli War came out of the influence of the Mesopotamian War. For the first time, Arabs began to criticize other Arabs. It had less to do with the Arab/Israeli struggle than the Shi’a-Sunni divide. American foreign policy is growing ever more sectarian, too.

Most of the upper officers of the American government are ignorant, too, of the differences between the Shi’a and Sunni sectarian divide. This divide has grown further apart, also, due to this horrendous War. The differences between the Sunni and the Shi’a are a bit like the historical rift between the Protestants and Catholics (and Orthodox in Christianity in Europe and America although over the long centuries – barring Northern Ireland – we have learned to live with each other better, but it has broken shockingly the Balkans broke out in a religio-ethnic Wars.

The Iraqi conflict is moreover less over power than Iraqiness–or even religious practice. America did not introduce this divide, for it has been there for some time. “Iraq has always been a Sectarian State,” said Nasr.

During the Clinton Administration we took the Kurds out of that State by enforcing the “no fly zone” after the First Gulf War while the Shi’a uprising in the Central Land Between the Two Rivers” was brutally put down by Hussein government. In this second Iraq War, we liberated the Shi’a–not the Iraqis themselves, from the Saddam State. Under Saddam the Shi’a were willing to give democracy a chance, but were treated as second-class citizens.

Things began to go wrong in 2006. The Shi’a began to oppose the Sunni resistance. The two sides could not find reconciliation. They became committed to the collapse of the Baghdadi State. Furthermore, Shi’a rioters began to fire at American Marines. Historically, Iraq was the first Shi’a state. “The issue is not democracy; the issue is power over the religious divide!”

Ideologically Hezbollah is allied to the Iranians. The destruction of the shrine of the Golden Dome led to a tit-for-tat situation against the Americans since it was assumed we should have protected all the holy sites. In the US, the press began to put its sights on the Shi’a, we confused strategies as mere protests, and failed to comprehend the rise of militias were of the majority Shi’a sect while we continue to emphasize the minority Sunni.

We perceive “[Our policy to Iran]…[to be the same] as [our] policy to Iraq.” With the death of the Taliban and Iraq (both on the East and the West) of the Tehran State), Iran has arisen to find its regional hegemony as the second largest producer of oil and a generally a vibrant economy. 70% of its population is literate. Farsi (Persian) is the third largest language on the Internet – it is not insular, and for the time-being it is an up-and-coming 21st century state.

9-8