Habib Siddiqui

As the uprising in Libya turned into a full-scale civil war with the Libyan pro-regime forces regaining control of most of the towns lost earlier to the rebels, the UN has imposed a ‘no-fly zone’ over the Libyan airspace to protect civilians. To the anti-regime rebels and their supporters – home and abroad - the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is a much desired one although it seemed to have come so late. From the very start it was a foregone conclusion that the Libyan revolutionaries demanding the ouster of the strongman Gaddafi won’t be able to cakewalk -- slogans and the Internet won’t do what it had achieved for two of their neighboring states; it would require lots of sacrifice to topple the brutal regime. They also needed international support to neutralize the overwhelming lethal superiority of the regime. This resolution is, thus, a serious moral booster for them. As part of the phase 1 of the Operation Odyssey Dawn towards the implementation of the UNSC resolution, hundred...

In the post-9/11 era, bigotry and xenophobia against Islam and Muslims have become a rewarding profession for some people. Peter King, the New York Congressman who now chairs the powerful Homeland Security Committee, is a hawkish card-carrying member of that dastardly group of zealots, xenophobes, intellectually disadvantaged retards and low-lives who have been using the bogeyman of Islam to make a filthy living. He has been an anti-Islamic Christian crusader for quite some time. His book ‘Vale of Tears’, though presented as a work of fiction, is a sufficient testimony of how low he would sink in an attempt to attain publicity. As noted by many reviewers, it takes an enormous amount of evil in someone’s heart to write such a book. Fortunately, the book was a total flop with harsh reviews. Last Thursday, King opened the first of a series of committee hearings into the so-called threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism and the bogus allegation that American Muslims have failed to cooperate ...

September 1, 1969 marks the coming to power of Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi – the man who was destined to rule Libya for more than four decades. Aided by Army officers and conspirators he upended a feeble but tolerant monarchy. He was not the only one that grabbed power in what we call today as an unconventional way in the Arab world where by then military coups had become rather common. Egypt had already shown the path some seventeen years ago when in 1952 her corrupt but tolerant monarchy was overthrown by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup. Originally all of these political changes had noble goals like republicanism and getting rid of the vestiges of colonialism, which even allowed people to rally behind these new rulers. However, by the 1980s Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Yemen transformed themselves into repressive “national security states” with awesome means of control and terror. The new rulers were merciless. They re-ordered the political world, and killed abundantly to further ...