Category Archives: Middle East

Middle East related politics and current affairs

Observations on Kuwait Parliamentary Elections 2022

Kuwaitis voted to replace over half of their MPs in the country’s 50-member National Assembly and elected two women to the legislature last Thursday (29 September 2022); Kuwaitis voted to replace over half of their MPs in the country’s 50-member National Assembly and elected two women to the legislature last Thursday (29 September 2022); while only two women were elected. only two women were elected.

The new Kuwaiti National Assembly    will include 27 new members, around a dozen of whom were part of previous parliaments. Although twenty two women stood and many of whom received a high percentage of votes, only two were elected. The previous parliament, dissolved after a stand off with government over budget and mass protests led by women, were all male since December 2020 when the only female MP lost her seat in a byelection.

The country’s Shia sect strengthened its position in the new parliament increasing their share to 18 percent ( from six to nine seats). The ultra-conservative Islamic Constitutional Movement also made good gains while the tribes MPs share declined to 46 per cent after losing six of their 29 seats. Younger candidates are on the increase, according to local media observers continuing the trend of the last parliament elected two years ago.

However, many doubt whether the new parliament will change the awkward three way lock between the ruling Sabah family, their appointed executive cabinet ( 16 members. 15 of whom can also sit in the Assembly )  and the elected 50 MPs that has often played the role of opposition. This customary deadlock with the cabinet, which has delayed the approval of a state budget for the fiscal year 2022/2023 and other economic reforms, is unlikely to get any better. The budget, which has to be voted on before November, had set spending at 23.65 billion dinars ($77.2 billion) compared with 23.48 billion for the 2021/2022 budget. But observers are not too optimistic about ending the stand-off. Political analyst Naser al-Abdali, told Reuters news agency the rise of MPs from Islamist movements in these elections will have a great impact in the next National Assembly.

It is worth noting a few other observations I made during a four day to the oil rich OPEC member country, which had the first elected parliament in the Arabian Peninsula.  

Hardly any of the candidates during the campaign bothered with regional or security issues, since all were campaigning on local demands; which, apparently, is a healthy phenomenon; however, I noticed that Middle Eastern reporters saying candidates not taking grave regional, and international issues seriously. But it is worth bearing in mind the that the parliament, in general, has little say in foreign policy or defence under the current constitution.

The slogan, or the catchphrase of this election season, endlessly repeated in the state media and copied by the independent outlets, was ‘correcting [ or readjusting] the path’ : ” تصحيح المسار… This was a bold statement indicating that the previous  ( dissolved ) parliament and the way it was performing and the process of electing it had gone wrong somehow; although there has been no change in the electoral law, this is something up to the parliament itself to address. But with an assembly with a majority opposing the government reforms, little is likely to be corrected in order to push the process on the desired path.

At the international press centre, the TV tape put on loop on the election channel was about the resistance during the 1990-1991 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and the ‘martyrs’ especially women murdered by the Iraqis. This was a departure from the visual and TV message in previous elections, thus the emphasis was on regional threats and security.

Since it is government controlled press centre, this is likely to reflect government and state strategic thinking in forming the next government and sending this message out as what  should be the priority and what emphasise they should put.  on the list of priorities

 speaking with senior Kuwaiti politicians and diplomats ( both  in office and in experience of long serving in office ) , they emphasise that ‘ national security is a prime issue that has been ” neglected ” for two decades . Although they did not spell out directly where is the threat coming from; western diplomats I managed to meet suggest they see now threat from Iraq and Iran as ‘ one  threat with two heads’.

Furthermore, what I managed to glean, was a strong desire (some said ‘determination ‘ )  from the top, to go back to the traditional Kuwaiti doctrine of security through a bilateral defence pact with a superpower .  They prefer this superpower to be America (since UK , the traditional ally ,  can’t afford it any more, as one veteran Kuwaiti diplomat  put it ) but they are also weary and suspicious of the USA commitment during  the Biden democratic administration , thus they hope for a republican administration and a major British role  . Some senior Kuwaiti diplomats  were critical of the regional policy ( which they saw as inseparable from national security)  of  the late Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad (1929-2020) who ruled for fourteen years, who carried a deep Pan-Arabism sentiment  with some unrealistic expectations (, and being  too involved, some said) in  in Pan-Arab commitment,. Some said his obsession with the idea of collective Arab interest and security through collective Arab solidarity was neither realistic nor healthy. Veteran Kuwaiti politicians who were involved in the country’s  defence and foreign policy for decades, and some were active in the resistance during Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait thirty years ago, emphasised that ‘ Kuwait must prioritise its national interests, mostly security regionally and internally’.  Given that those officials and diplomats are still in office; I take it that this must have got some official approval from the top.  This explains that lack of multiple Arab flags at the entrance of the hotel where world media has been packed into a national press centre; and also the loop tape emphasising the dangers and  ” list of martyrs ( mostly women) ” and sacrifices during the Kuwait invasion by Iraq .  However, the question remains – how much this message is taken in by ministers and officials and fully understood, especially the message of ” correcting the path ” ?

Media and many officials still mouth the old clichés… even top officials briefing the foreign press where using clichés that only a new independent third world country would raise when they hold elections for the first time . Meanwhile the secretary general of Parliament (-

 I guess the equivalent to the  Clerk of  the House of Commons- )  was emphasising something different with his modernisation focusing on administrative and MPs services  issues. The Assembly set accommodations like the US congress, where the MPs can physically sleep in, and good space for each member’s staff and researchers. However the new MPs quarters’ design resembles portcullis House, but smaller and half a circle shape with the other half into another building  with large auditorium and modern digitalised reactive screens and other facilities including members library- and there is no traditional vote office like in Westminster. There was a talk about bringing  back a veteran parliamentarian, the  retired speaker Ahmad al-Sadoun ( speaker 1985-1999 and Feb-June 2012 ) who, in 2012,  resigned his post declaring that the elections were invalid. The hope was Sadoun would help reform the electoral law ( ie from each voter voting for a single candidate, they would give a list of preference  of four candidates ) , the idea was to combat tactical voting via bribing constituents with lavish gifts and grants Strangely there is no ceiling of how much a candidate could spend on their campaign.

Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, 1989 revisited

Just a reminder of how the Islamists are thirsting for Salman Rushdie’s blood ( and for anyone’s who dare to think ); and how did we get there. Here are some of what I remember from various reports and reviews I published in 1988 and 1989 .

Leave a Reply

Rushdie with his  book The Satanic Verses

 The 1988 (September) published The Satanic Verses , part historical , novel ( by Viking-Penguin) was contemporary to the 1980s and the decade’s social and political events and events. It was a satirical criticism of Thatcher’s Britain, strongly anti-racist, anti-colonial and dealt with the issues of  of migrants and how they lived in cultural ghettos. The book was specifically about Britain of the 1980s. The novel’s narrative is set by turns in the London of Conservative Government that came to power in 1979 led  by Margaret Thatcher (1925-1013) which Rushdie calls in the novel ‘ Mrs Torture ‘ – this is the conscious realism part- and the second ‘ location (if we can it as such) the imaginary   ancient desert city of Jahiliyah ( interpreted as Mecca), taken by Muslims as their  holiest site. The bits relating to the latter location is  an imaginary time and place ( many interpreted as Arabia in the seventh century during Muhammad’s conflict with the merchants Mecca who were resisting his teaching as they thought it was bad for their trade. The latter location’s events was part of a dream of the two main characters; the dream of Gibreel Farishta, a movie star in Bollywood. The other was the English educated very British Saladin Shamsha. Their hijacked plane explodes over the English Channel. They survive the blast and fall from the sky and re-emerge on an English beach and mix with immigrants in London, the story unfolding in surreal sequences reflecting Rushdie’s magic realism style. Saladin later grows horns metamorphosing into a Satan-like creature, and hides with a self-isolating Muslim family in Brick Lane. Sofian the former school teachers in India reduced to helping hand in his wife, Hind’s restaurant. Sofian and Hind, seventh century Mecca aristocratic couple, are prominent figures in Muslim history.

Salman Rushdi
Rushdie used a story from Early Islamic history to symbolise the leader’s dilemma in appeasing radicals and trying to be pragmatic

Rushdie’s narrative employs a story from Islamic faith early history ( the 7th century satanic verses from the Quran 53d Chapter the al-Najm/Nagm Surah ( or swrat) or The Star Chapter . The Quran is believed by Muslims to be words of their god, Allah, delivered, as revelation, to Muhammed by the archangel Gibreer ( Gebril) . Rushdie uses this story  to symbolise the Neil Kinnock ( the then leader of HM opposition) dilemma of choosing between the radical left in the 1980s labour party and the pragmatic centre to get elected . The story of Muslim historic references to the satanic verses as recorded by Muslim historians and scholars was interpreted as a compromise that Muhammed reached with the ruling elite in Mecca to elevate three of their goddesses ( Al-lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat ) to the status of ” Allah’s daughters”,  which achieved a temporary short lived peace in Mecca. But the radical wing of the movement, when the Mohammed followers got stronger rejected that compromise based on an earlier lesson he preached them that Allah was a monolithic deity  with no siblings, offspring or relatives. In response, Muhammed then said it was Satan that put those words on his tongue hence known as the “satanic verses” by historians . The whole section about Mecca and the prophet Mahound’s mission (Muslims interpreted as it was Mohammed ) was a dream in the head of Farishta ( the name means Angel, hence Gibreel Farishta) . So, the personae, and events were all symbolic and nothing really about Islam except in the terms of the patrician of India and the revolutionary radicals against the pragmatists . Ironically, the first nation to ban the Satanic Verses was his birthplace India by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991), immediately after Pretoria banned it and and cancelled Rushdie’s visa. He was supposed to be visiting apartheid South Africa to give some lectures on the subject of “racism as a legacy of colonialism.” The South African regime came up with the excuse that the novel disrespected Muslims (before Muslims thought of it ) and cancelled his visa and banned the book.

Gandhi banned the book in October 1988 to attract Muslim voters before elections

Indian politics also played a large part in this, when Prime Minster Gandhi  banned the book from India in October 1988, ahead of  elections . The reason was a it had become an issue in a by-election in Tamil Nadu who the congress party candidate used it successfully to win the constituency.

The others jumped on the bandwagon ; another 20 countries followed India in banning the book and declaring that Rushdie would be banned from entering their countries. It is worth noting that hardly any of protestors who burnt the book in public bothered to read it. The novel is a gigantic effort with a massive amount  of research    ( the satanic verses event of the 7th century AD was a subject of Rushdie’s essay for his master at Cambridge ). Although the novel itself, as a work of fiction and satirising contemporary politics by drawing on real events is quite remarkable literary work, you also need a vast knowledge of Indian culture, Bollywood industry as a national institution, the history of sectarian conflict and partition of India; also detailed knowledge of Islamic scholars’ studies of the early conflicts between the revolutionary Mohammed mission and his followers on one side, and with the establishment in Mecca on on the other, and of course a detailed knowledge of British politics in the 1980s, the split in the labour party and the decline of inner cities in UK.  It is in this context and the vast complex subjects the novel dealt with, some might find book and some might find it overbearing or uninteresting. Others, familiar with Rushdie magical world, his style of writing and interested in one or more of those issues, couldn’t put the book down.

The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989) only targeted Rushdie after  other countries competing for influence among British Muslims ( Pakistan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other lesser players ) funded groups started the protests .

In February 1989, thousands of Pakistanis attacked the US Information Centre in Islamabad, shouting “American dogs” and “hang Salman Rushdie”. Police opened fire, killing five. Radical Shia’s told Khomeini of the incident and that there was  a section in the Satanic Verses depicting an Imam exiled  in London who was plotting against the empress in his home country, which they interpreted as Rushdie’s ridiculing him. The Fatwa came in February 1989.

To understand how the protests started in UK, specifically in the towns with Muslim populations, one needs to put it in context of the time . There was a case of blasphemy tried in English courts 10 years earlier that was launched by Dame Mary Whitehouse CBE (1910-2001) . The Mary Whitehouse winning the blasphemy case ( 11 July 1977) against Gay News was ( and still is abroad) has been quoted at the time as precedent to incite agitation and protest .

Bradford Protest
In January 1989 Muslim protesters publicly burnt The Satanic Verses in Bradford , England UK

 The first burning of the book in Bradford was January 1989 (a month before Khomeini’s fatwa ) was, allegedly , in response to CPO  rejecting a petition from some self-styled Muslim committee ( later evolved into the Muslim Council of Great Britain) to ban the book and put Viking-Penguin books and Rushdie on trial for blasphemy citing Whitehouse V. Gay News ( blasphemy laws weren’t abolished in England & Wales until My 2008) .

Khomeini’s fatwa provoked horror around the Western world.

There were protests in Europe, and London and Tehran broke off diplomatic relations for nearly two years.

Although there were attempts to find a compromise with the Iranians and other Muslim countries, especially those having big trade deals, there were also many of us supporting Rushdie and urging for protecting Freedom of Speech.   

A few of us were warning about the long-term implications if we bowed to the mob calling for censorship . We organised a big event at the Conway Hall in spring 1989 when Radical Islamists had already flown abroad to Lebanon and some to Iran to meet with Hezbollah and Khamenei’s men . At the same time people like Kelim Sadiqi and the like were funded by Islamist institutions from abroad, and the six years Gulf war between Iran and Arabs and USA backed Iran that ended in summer, found a new cultural and social battle ground in UK as rivalry between Shia and Sunni heated up. Rich powerful Sunni Arab originations  & Iran’s proxies would fund and exploit the ( some true, some imaginary and some made up) grievances voiced by some British Muslims ( most of them were living in cultural ghettos isolated from mainstream British culture and society). The players included Egyptian, Turkish. Libyan and UAE intelligence too were funding Islamic centres and Islamic activists in UK . The Conway Hall event was significant as we had a long list of artists, musicians, writers and poets from various faiths ( at least five or may be six) and ethnic background. ( UK, USA, Australia, Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Iran, India etc) as well as reading from the Satanic Verses we also deliberately told blasphemous jokes and verses. The faiths that weren’t present on the stage, audience from other faiths participated with their blasphemy. It was successful; and largely ignored by BBC and other left-wing media which surprisingly were more sympathetic to  Muslims than backing the principles of free expression. There are complicated reasons for such bias but I will mention two main ones : The left wing media and BBC were anti-Tory seeing them as too pro-Saudi Arabia ( the main reason Thatcher Government was a bit hesitant ) ; and the left were pushing the idea of multicultural society ( I am very much against this concept which deepens division and prevents integration and assimilation since we are multiracial or multi-ethnics but we should be all under one culture called British culture ) . During the Conway hall event; there were loud protests (but verbal and largely non-abusive) from mostly younger Muslims . When I challenged them to discuss any specific passages in The Satanic Verses that upset them, it turned out that none of them has read the book. Back in 1988-1989,  there was very few of us who were thinking of the long-term implications if the protesters got away with it . I was right. Self-censorship ( also known as political correctness) , thought police ( the police forces now investigate more of alleged ‘ hate speech’ on twitter than they do robberies and car theft ) and the cancel culture.

Francophone Egyptian philosopher Taha Hussein whose book cast doubt on the authenticity of the Quran

The worst of all:  You cannot publish a book like The Satanic Verses today or like the 1926 Taha Hussein’s “fi-el-Sher El Gaheli ” ( on pre-Islamic Poetry) . in which the great francophone Egyptian thinker and writer argued that some pre-Islamic poetry was inauthentic, and cast doubt on the authenticity of the Quran. ( by the way the Azhar – which is the de-facto official Muslim church in Egypt) tried via the courts to ban the book and charge Dr Hussein with incitement of hatred against Islam. Egyptian Courts at the time threw out the case on the ground that ‘ courts aren’t the place nor the institution to rule on academic and literary works ‘. The outcome today will be different. Not only British publishers won’t touch a book like The Satanic Verses , they wont even dare to discuss  publishing a book that the courts in Egypt praised  100 years ago… Hence when you start on the slippery slope of censorship, the entire foundation of our civilisation could be washed away when the drip-drip- of being ‘ sensitive to cultural difference ‘ (another expression for intolerance generated self-censorship) turns into a flood, then turns into a tsunami. Just think now of un-platforming, banning speakers from universities campuses, the cancel culture, the Orwellian rewriting of history and BBC & CO blacklisting guest commentators who dare to question the prevailing orthodoxy ( as dictated by the loudest lynch-mobs favoured by MSM ) . Sorry to sound gloomy, in post 1984 Britain ,but, as the cliché goes ‘ we saw it coming 40 years ago but the captain placed the spyglass on his patched eye !’

A Palestinian’s take on the current Hamas operations

 An Open Letter to My Palestinian Brethren

by Bassem Eid
Special to IPT News,May 19, 2021

with misinformation, and unclear picture on what is going on in the tragic escalation between Israel and the extremest Islamist group Hamas, many people left with the impression that the conflicts is between Israel and the whole Palestinian people. This is far from the truth and doesn’t reflect reality. Hamas do not represent the Palestinian people. Fed up with the misinformation, Bassem Eid,   a Jerusalem-based Palestinian political analyst, human rights pioneer and expert commentator on Arab and Palestinian affairs, sends a open letter to his people to warn them about Hamas hijacking their cause and spreading fake news (Standfirts by InsideUkPolitics Blog)

Continue reading

Israel/Gaza Conflict: Facts left out by Media

There is more to the Israel/Hamas conflict and tragic loss of life than meets the eye. There is a  great deal of facts left out by the mainstream media. I was a foreign correspondent, covered that region from the time of the six-day war (1967) to the late 1990s. There is a great deal of misinformation by liberal/left groupthink locked media.

Continue reading

Egypt’s Mubarak left a mixed legacy, mostly negative.

Hosny Mubarak who was fourth president of Egypt for thirty years left a mixed legacy. He opened the door for changing the personality cult of a president and improved economy; regionally he played a major role in 1990 in building Egypt lead regional coalition forces to liberate Kuwait and was one of several architects who helped the Palestinians and Israelis to reach a peace agreement in 1993.

Interviewing President Mubarak, Qubbah Palace, Cairo 1988. But he was responsible for wide corruption and ending 160 years of modernity paving the way for the islamisation of Egypt and ending secular liberalism. I met him several times and this is my personal view as a historian .

Continue reading

Analysis in 2011 of Western attitude to Islamist Terroroism still valid; lessons weren’t learned.

Lessons of 9/10 Ten Years On Ten years passed since  the tragedy of 9/11, during which lesson learned have been learned and lessons missed. The same errors are repeated, especially in not understanding that trying to accommodate Muslims in western societies, various government – and leftist liberal organisations hell bent on political correctness, managed to reach the opposite effect by further alienating them.

Authorities, national and local, fail to understand that multiculturalism deepens division and help isolate Muslims – especially from the Indian subcontinent and the Horn of Africa- into cultural ghettos instead of assimilating into British society. Continue reading

The late Scribe of Cairo, remembered on his 12th Anniversary

On the 12th  anniversary of the Nobel Laureate “Scribe of Cairo” death – his obituary revisited, first penned as obituary on 30 August 2006 

The death on 29 August 2006  of Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz generated a quarrel between historians, literary critics and Egyptians on one side, and Arab journalists on the other. It was a re-run of the 1988 controversy, when Mafouz won the world’s most prestigious award–the Nobel Prize for literature–to the outrage of Arab nationalists who had condemned the author for his support of the late President Anwar Sadat’s peace initiative with Israel.

Continue reading

North Korea NEW Missile is A Game Changer…A Challenging Test For Trump

 Kate Burrows-Jones,  North America Editor for World Media

North Korea predictably set off yet another warning shot of its developing nuclear missile program.  President Donald Trump gave a simple response, “I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent.” Mr Trump was at his club, Mar-al-Lago, where he was hosting the visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when staff brought news to their dinner table from United States Strategic Command of  a “medium- or intermediate-range ballistic missile,”  tracked over North Korea and into the Sea of Japan. This was North Korea’s first missile test since the new President’s inauguration.
It was predicted by the Council of Foreign Relations that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un would test the new president with a missile launch within four weeks of taking office.  Unlike North Korea previous missiles, the Pukguksong-2, a road-mobile on tractor-erector-launcher units missile, is described by military analysts as a game-changers as it is powered by a solid-fuel engine – probably using ammonium perchlorate – is that the fuel is extremely stable, can be easily stored and the weapon is ready to be fired virtually immediately,  making it harder to detect and neutralised before launching like liquid fuel  missiles which  takes much longer to move mobile fuelling wagons to fill tanks making it easier to detect by satellites before launching. 

Continue reading

New American Sanctions on Iran for Testing Ballistic Missile

Kate Burrows-Jones, Worldmedia North America Editor

The United States Treasury Department today leveled  a New Set of Sanctions against Iran in response to to the Islamic Republic’s new medium-range ballistic missile testing. The American Administration says there is no impact on the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action JCPOA.

 

Continue reading

NO TEA FOR TRUMP? MPS DEBATE BANNING THE PRESIDENT. AGAIN.

Kate Burrows-Jones , North America Editor

A petition signed by over one million, among whom 800,000 are British, will require MPs to discuss whether US President Donald Trump should be banned from a state visit.  Any petition presented to parliament with over 100,000 signatures is automatically debated by MPs. The anti-Trump petition will be debated on Thursday, February 20th at Westminster Hall not in  the main Commons Chamber. The MPs will also debate another petition, signed by half a million people and put up on Monday night, welcoming Mr Trump to the UK.  The outcome of the debate only carries moral weight but has no effect on Government policy. A Sky News poll said 49% of Britons believe Trump should stay home.

Continue reading