British Muslims for Darfur Peace

By Dina Rabie, Mustafa Ajbaili, IOL Staff

CAIRO — Understanding the complexity of the Darfur crisis and demonstrating support for Arab and Muslim efforts to resolve the conflict are two main goals for a group of prominent British Muslims, now on a regional tour.

"We went there to see for ourselves," Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the former head of the umbrella Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), told IslamOnline.net.

"Seeing what is happening on the ground, we have a moral duty; first as human beings and second as Muslims."

The five-member delegation visited the troubled region of Darfur last week as part of a Middle East tour that ends on December 23.

They visited refugee camps in Darfur and met international and Sudanese civil society to discuss the challenges on the ground.

* Darfur in US Elections
* Darfur & Foreign Hands

"The reason that we all wanted to come out to this region and do this trip was primarily so that we can understand the situation in Sudan and specifically the situation in Darfur," said Fatim Kurji, a lawyer and Director of the CATCH charity project.

"What we wanted to do…was to go out to Darfur and see for ourselves what the situation was like to make it almost an assessment."

The conflict in Darfur erupted in February 2003 when rebel groups attacked government targets accusing Khartoum of discrimination and neglect.

The UN says that 250,000 have died as a result of war, disease and malnutrition, but the Sudanese government has put the number at nearly 10,000.

No independent field-research accounts are available to date.

Complicated

"What each of us is committed to doing in our individual capacities is to drive the process forward in whichever way we can," Kurji told IOL.
After seeing the situation on the ground, the British Muslim delegates have become more aware of the gravity and complexity of the Darfur conflict.

"Many of our colleagues saw Darfur for the first time and witnessed firsthand with their own eyes," said Jehangir Malik, the fundraising manager for UK-registered Islamic Relief charity.

Malik, who has been to Darfur several times, noted that the conflict was becoming more complex and dire.

"Two fractions become four, four become eight, eight become sixteen…etc," he explained.

"At a time you don’t know who is killing who and for what purpose."

Kurji said the first-hand experience gave her a picture different from what she has long heard from the media.

"The situation in Darfur is very complex and the concerned parties are not just the Sudanese government and the opposition parties," she maintained.

"The issue has many parties involved and as people keep telling us these are increasing day by day."

Now after meeting representatives of the main players, Kurji believes it would not be correct to describe Darfur as "Arab vs. African" problem.

"It is very dangerous to break the conflict down into such simplistic judgment," she insisted.

"There have always been tribes in Darfur and they have always coexisted. Actually the problems are much more complex than that and we can’t allow that to steer us off."

Momentum

The delegation hopes their tour, which includes stops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and talks with the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), would demonstrate British Muslim support for efforts to resolve the Darfur conflict.

"We are going to talk to the OIC and governments to use their influence to bring all concerned parties together," said Sir Sacranie, the former MCB leader.

Malik, the Islamic relief official, believes there has been a "greater momentum" for peace in Darfur lately.

He cites the Sudanese Peace initiative (SPI), a document produced by Khartoum and opposition parties last November, and the Qatari initiative, which will see a peace conference held in Doha by the end of 2008.

"We as British Muslims want to signify and lend our support to show that we all need to participate in keeping this momentum going."

The delegation members agree their mission starts with meetings with officials from Arab and Muslim governments and organizations during the tour, but won't end there.

"What each of us is committed to doing in our individual capacities is to drive the process forward in whichever way we can," said Kurji, the community activist.

"Once we return back to UK, we hope that we will be able to convey the views of our members individually and collectively and bring support to this very deserving cause," agrees Sacranie.

Source : Islam Online

Kuwait's Dar says studying offers for Aston Martin

By Rania El Gamal
Kuwait's Investment Dar (TIDK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Sunday it was considering offers to sell up to 20 percent of British carmaker Aston Martin and is seeking to borrow up to 300 million dinars ($1 billion) to refinance debt.

The Islamic investment firm, which bought half of Aston Martin in 2007, is studying offers to sell a 10 to 20 percent stake in the carmaker on behalf of itself and some of its partners, executive vice-president Amr Abou El-Seoud said.

"We have offers ... we are in talks but the (sale) should be value-added whether financially or technically," Seoud told Reuters. "We are not considering selling and exiting."

"It (could) be a maximum 10 to 20 percent of the company to be taken out of all investors, in other words, Dar's dilution might be in 5 to 10 percent," he said.

"There is a 60 to 70 percent chance that we will reach a deal soon."

Seoud declined to identify possible buyers or give a reason for the sale but said Dar could also sell shares in the luxury carmaker to the public within three to five years.

Aston Martin, famously associated with fictional British secret agent James Bond, was bought from Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) last year by a consortium including Formula 1 specialist David Richards and Investment Dar for 479 million pounds.

Aston Martin said earlier this month it would cut up to 600 jobs in Britain as car sales continue to be hit by the downturn in the world economy.

The world's largest carmakers have reported billions of dollars in loss and announced thousands of job cuts.

Despite the crisis, Seoud sees it as the right time to bring a strategic technical partner into the British car maker.

"Yes, I might sacrifice today some of my future profit but I'll get today a better benefit and support from a technical partner," he said.

REFINANCING DEBT

Seoud also denied an al-Qabas newspaper report on Sunday that Dar had mortgaged banking and real estate assets, including its 19.2 percent stake in Boubyan Bank (BOUK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), with Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBKK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (CBK) to secure financing.
Investment Dar was in talks with several banks, including CBK, for loans to help it refinance short-term debt, he said.

"Ideally we should be seeking around 200 million dinars to 300 million dinars from banks," Seoud said. "There is nothing finalised yet."

Last month Kuwait's government reached a deal with banks to provide loans to investment firms hit by the financial crisis.

Kuwait is also setting up a bailout fund for investment firms to help them cope with the crisis after the Gulf Arab state was forced to step in and rescue Gulf Bank (GBKK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) after it lost 375 million dinars on derivatives dealings.

Dar's stock, which has lost about 77 percent of its value this year, closed up 5.81 percent on Sunday. (For Reuters content on Islamic finance, click on ISLAMIC) (Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
Source : Reuters

European takes closer look at Islamic financing

PARIS: With commercial bank financing tight, Europeans have been taking a closer look at Islamic banking.
"The potential is there," Ahmad Jachi, the first deputy governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, said at a conference this past week in Paris. "It's a matter of really enabling and creating the market."
Islamic banking has already been integrated into the British and German banking systems, and banking executives at the conference said efforts were under way to allow Muslims in France to bank and invest under regulations that conform to Shariah, the legal code of Islam.
Estimates of the Islamic banking market's current size vary from $500 billion to $1 trillion. It has only about 5 percent of the overall banking market, but attendees at the conference, which was sponsored by The Economist, said Islamic banking has a huge potential for growth, since one-sixth of the world's population is Muslim.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that the Islamic banking sector has grown 10 percent to 15 percent a year over the past decade.

Interview by Andrea Bistrich: Karen Armstrong (4)

So why aren't religious people compassionate? What does that say about them? Compassion is not a popular virtue. Many religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They don't want to give up their egos. They want religion to give them a little mild uplift once a week so that they can return to their ordinary selfish lives, unscathed by the demands of their tradition. Religion is hard work; not many people do it well. But are secularists any better? Many secularists would subscribe to the compassionate ideal but are just as selfish as religious people. The failure of religious people to be compassionate doesn't tell us something about religion, but about human nature. Religion is a method: you have to put it into practice to discover its truth. But, unfortunately, not many people do.

Islam and the West

Discussing Western ideas of justice and democracy in the Middle East, British foreign correspondent of The Independent, Robert Fisk, says: "We keep on saying that Arabs ... would like some of our shiny, brittle democracy, that they'd like freedom from the secret police and freedom from the dictators-who we largely put there. But they would also like freedom from us. And they want justice, which is sometimes more important than 'democracy'". Does the West need to realize that Muslims can run a modern state, but it is perhaps not the kind of democracy we want to see?

As Muslim intellectuals made clear, Islam is quite compatible with democracy, but unfortunately democracy has acquired a bad name in many Muslim countries. It seems that the West has said consistently: we believe in freedom and democracy, but you have to be ruled by dictators like the shahs or Saddam Hussein. There seems to have been a double standard. Robert Fisk is right: when I was in Pakistan recently and quoted Mr Bush-"They hate our freedom!"-the whole audience roared with laughter.

Democracy cannot be imposed by armies and tanks and coercion. The modern spirit has two essential ingredients; if these are not present, no matter how many fighter jets, computers or sky scrapers you have, your country is not really "modern".

The first of these is independence. The modernization of Europe from 16th to the 20th century was punctuated by declarations of independence on all fronts: religious, intellectual, political, economic. People demanded freedom to think, invent, and create as they chose.

The second quality is innovation as we modernized in the West: we were always creating something new; there was a dynamism and excitement to the process, even though it was often traumatic.

But in the Muslim world, modernity did not come with independence but with colonial subjugation; and still Muslims are not free, because the Western powers are often controlling their politics behind the scenes to secure the oil supply etc. Instead of independence there has been an unhealthy dependence and loss of freedom. Unless people feel free, any "democracy" is going to be superficial and flawed. And modernity did not come with innovation to the Muslims: because we were so far ahead, they could only copy us. So instead of innovation you have imitation.

We also know in our own lives that it is difficult-even impossible-to be creative when we feel under attack. Muslims often feel on the defensive and that makes it difficult to modernize and democratize creatively-especially when there are troops, tanks and occupying forces on the streets.

Do you see any common ground between Western world and Islam?

This will only be possible if the political issues are resolved. There is great common ground between the ideals of Islam and the modern Western ideal, and many Muslims have long realized this. At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was in love with the West and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. Some even said that the West was more "Islamic" than the unmodernized Muslim countries, because in their modern economies they were able to come closer to the essential teaching of the Koran, which preaches the importance of social justice and equity. At this time, Muslims recognized the modern, democratic West as deeply congenial. In 1906, Muslim clerics campaigned alongside secularist intellectuals in Iran for representational government and constitutional rule. When they achieved their goal, the grand ayatollah said that the new constitution was the next best thing to the coming of the Shiite Messiah, because it would limit the tyranny of the shah and that was a project worthy of every Muslim. Unfortunately the British then discovered oil in Iran and never let the new parliament function freely. Muslims became disenchanted with the West as a result of Western foreign policy: Suez, Israel/Palestine, Western support of corrupt regimes, and so on.

What is needed from a very practical point of view to bridge the gap? What would you advise our leaders-our politicians and governments?

A revised foreign policy. A solution in Israel/Palestine that gives security to the Israelis and justice and autonomy to the Palestinians. No more support of corrupt, dictatorial regimes. A just solution to the unfolding horror in Iraq, which has been a "wonderful" help to groups like Al-Qaeda, playing right into their hands. No more situations like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. Money poured into Afghanistan and Palestine. A solution to Kashmir. No more short-term solutions for cheap oil. In Iraq and in Lebanon last summer we saw that our big armies are no longer viable against guerrilla and terror attacks. Diplomacy is essential. But suspicion of the West is now so entrenched that it may be too late.