Author Archives: Arab America

The civil war in Syria will soon enter its fifth year, with no end in sight. On January 20, Foreign Affairs managing editor Jonathan Tepperman met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to discuss the conflict in an exclusive interview.

I would like to start by asking you about the war. It has now been going on for almost four years, and you know the statistics: more than 200,000 people have been killed, a million wounded, and more than three million Syrians have fled the country, according to the UN. Your forces have also suffered heavy casualties. The war cannot go on forever. How do you see the war ending?
All wars anywhere in the world have ended with a political solution, because war itself is not the solution; war is one of the instruments of politics. So you end with a political solution. That’s how we see it. That is the headline.

You don’t think that this war will end militarily?
No. Any war ends with a political solution.

Your country is increasingly divided into three ministates: one controlled by the government, one controlled by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and one controlled by the more secular Sunni and Kurdish opposition. How will 

you ever put Syria back together again?
First of all, this image is not accurate, because you cannot talk about ministates without talking about the people who live within those states. The Syrian people are still with the unity of Syria; they still support the government. The factions you refer to control some areas, but they move from one place to another—they are not stable, and there are no clear lines of separation between different forces. Sometimes they mingle with each other and they move. But the main issue is about the population. The population still supports the state regardless of whether they support it politically or not; I mean they support the state as the representative of the unity of Syria. So as long as you have the Syrian people believing in unity, any government and any official can unify Syria. If the people are divided into two, three, or four groups, no one can unify this country. That’s how we see it.

Source: www.foreignaffairs.com

A new Muslim comedy film, American Sharia could not have been released at a better time. But it wasn’t planned to be as filmmaker and star Omar Regan told us.

The film will only be shown in a special 22-city UK tour and won’t be available to view anywhere else, including cinema or online.

The movie tells the story of a Muslim detective who has his own prejudices against Islam, following constant exposure to Islamophobia.

We follow him on his journey, which results in ending rising Islamophobic tensions between the police and the community he serves.

Source: www.asianimage.co.uk

“There are aspects to Israeli policy and behaviour that do immense damage in the eyes of the international community”

One of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church in the UK, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols, recently met with major business leaders in London to discuss the reputation of business in Britain and its relationship with society. During the meeting, the chief executive of one of the biggest corporations in London commented to the Cardinal: “We’ve got to get out and wash some feet. Like your Pope.”

It was a reference to Pope Francis’ connection to people and how he epitomises the best of humanity, explains Nichols. “The people who are the heartbeat of the church are the people who are praying in the cathedral at the moment; they’re the people that work in the soup kitchen, or the food bank; they are the people who say the rosary quietly at home because their child is sick or who light a candle, who reach out to God in the concrete circumstances of their lives.”

“[Pope Francis] calls it the faith of the people; the faithful people. He keeps going back and back and back and saying this should be our focus, this is the true criteria in our faith. If you want to see faith, don’t look in the grand halls of the Archbishop’s house or in the Vatican: look at people as they live their lives, with what he calls popular devotion. Where the heart is full of faith and expresses itself — that’s where you see some real greatness. And you could say that of the community in Gaza as well.”

The community in Gaza and the human dignity they possess is a subject Nichols returns to a number of times during the interview. We meet in the Archbishop’s house, next to Westminster Cathedral (notoriously mistaken for a mosque by UKIP), three months after the Cardinal returns from his first visit to the Strip. He recalls a bombed city with families who are surviving in the wreckages of buildings, their washing strung between concrete pillars. Hospitals had been destroyed and half the mosques targeted:

“We know the reasons, and the reasons I can’t dispute, but the effect is that there is a Muslim community that’s had half of its gathering places for prayer destroyed,” he reflects. “There was very little evidence of continuing economic activity that could support that population. It seemed to me, therefore, that Gaza as a society is being impoverished at a very radical level.”

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

Israeli authorities have prevented Palestinian Housing Minister Mufid al-Hasayneh from leaving the blockaded Gaza Strip for the occupied West Bank, where he had been scheduled to meet with Jordanian counterpart Sami Halaseh and attend an energy conference.

“Israeli authorities continue to hamper the movement of government ministers from the Gaza Strip to ministry headquarters in the West Bank,” al-Hasayneh said in a Monday statement.

“This restricts communication between the different Palestinian ministries,” he added.

He said the Palestinian Engineers Association had invited him – along with the Jordanian minister – to attend the fifth International Energy Conference to be held in Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday.

Israeli authorities have not commented on the issue.

Israel refuses to recognize the Palestinian unity cabinet that was formed last summer after the signing of a reconciliation deal between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

Source: www.worldbulletin.net

Wardah Musa is a 23-year-old Palestinian girl from Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip faced all challenges after she lost her sight because of a rare disease nearly ten years ago.

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

Wardah Musa is a 23-year-old Palestinian girl from Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip faced all challenges after she lost her sight because of a rare disease nearly ten years ago.

Wardah was able to complete her education until the fourth grade before losing her sight which, despite all attempts, could not be saved or restored.

During an exclusive interview with Quds Net Wardah said that at the beginning it was all so hard but she was determined to challenge her circumstances, complete her schooling and get good grades that enable her to fulfil her dream of studying at the Faculty of Arts, at the Islamic University in Gaza.

“I was determined to be different and to study something new for people with my disability despite all attempts to discourage me,” she said, noting that she has already completed three years of the course and will graduate within less than a year.

Wardah plans to obtain a master’s degree in the same specialisation.

She added: “My motto in life is that things can be difficult but not impossible.”

Describing the first few days after she lost her sight, Wardah said she was reliant on her friends to move from one place to another, but later she became more and more independent and was able to move freely.

She now runs her own weekly radio programme and hosts a show on Al-Aqsa TV channel.

A fan of technology, Wardah taught herself how to use the computer and has a smart phone which she uses to communicate with the outside world.

Mona Hijazi, Wardah’s friend, described her as educated and ambitious. “Wardah has high ambitions and a very strong will. We need more people like her.”

Middle East Monitor 

“The word ‘Lebanon’ still reminds me of all the sad and turmoil that goes on in the Middle East,” a resident said.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Kevin Spacey mentors aspiring actors in Sharjah

Source: www.thenational.ae

Although air strikes by America and its Arab allies and the Assad regime’s recent raids have recently made life for ISIS more difficult, Raqqa has become a crucial power center in a territory that is now bigger than many countries and includes some six million to eight million people in Iraq and Syria.

Source: www.nybooks.com

News and business analysis for Professionals in International Education

Source: thepienews.com

Israeli forces have twice violently raided a Palestinian home in occupied Beit Ummar, once tying up a mother whose husband is in jail, and demanding of her son, Where are your brothers?

Source: mondoweiss.net

Director Clint Eastwood and lead actor Bradley Cooper have been asked to intervene.

Source: www.christiantoday.com