By James M. Dorsey
Iranian security officials have shut down the local office of European cosmetics firm Oriflame in a move likely to scare away foreign investors at a time that Western companies are leaving Iran or scaling back operations because of international sanctions that restrict trade with the Islamic Republic. (more…)
By James M. Dorsey
A spate of recent religious opinions and court rulings ranging from the bizarre to endorsement of mutilation issued by prominent Saudi sheikhs and judges highlight the difficulties King Abdullah is encountering in clamping down on fatwas and his efforts to reform and codify the kingdom’s largely unwritten Islamic legal regulations that govern the kingdom’s criminal, civil and family courts. To be fair, few, if any, of the more outrageous Saudi legal opinions and rulings have recently been put into practice. (more…)
By James M. Dorsey
Last month’s French-Mauritanian attack on Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa failed to liberate a 78-year old French hostage, but in an unexpected twist, has driven a wedge between the jihadists and their Tuareg tribal allies in the region and is fomenting tension between Al Qaeda commanders, according to Western and West African intelligence sources. (more…)
Hichem Karoui
The Gulf Today, August 14, 2010
The closer the date of the US military withdrawal from Iraq (August 31), the greater people’s nervousness. They keep an eye on the death toll and say: it is going to be worse when the Americans leave. Who can blame them? But it is too late anyway. The invasion was an American decision, but the pullout was an Iraqi requirement.
Even former Saddam deputy, Tarik Aziz, is now wishing America to stay in Iraq. Unbelievable! Just like Lieut. General Babaker Zebari: the Iraqi army would not be able to ensure the country’s security until 2020, he said. Both are high-ranking officials of two antithetic regimes in the same country, and both seem worried. (more…)
| By Hichem Karoui The Gulf Today | July 31, 2010 |
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Since the release by WikiLeaks of a batch of 91,000 classified reports on the Afghan war, comment about it made headlines throughout the world, although likely nobody had had enough time to read them. Like many people, I browsed through the material, sorted out by: type, category, region, affiliation, date, and severity. The first impression I had is that even for the US Congress, it would take some time before investigators could understand the scope and the gravity of some released items. Indeed, not all of them are interesting and some seem even trivial, albeit the events they describe went unreported by the media. But as it is the case in any war, the military documents would normally not be unveiled before 40 or 50 years: that is a period of security. (more…)
LORENZ LANGER, Yale Law School
Email: Lorenz.Langer@gmx.net 
On November 29, 2009, Swiss voters adopted a ballot initiative introducing a constitutional ban on the construction of minarets. The supporters of the initiative had argued that minarets were not a religious symbol, but a token of power and conquest: banning them would halt the creeping Islamisation of Switzerland. The ban’s opponents had warned that the ballot initiative violated national and international provisions on non-discrimination and the free exercise of religion.
This article provides a thick description of the context in which the minaret vote took place. First, a legal analysis addresses the implications of the ban under national, regional and international normative frameworks. It is argued that the ban is irreconcilable with the constitutional bill of rights and several international human right provisions. However, in contrast to state ballots in the United States, there is no judicial review of initiatives in Switzerland; respect for the vox populi trumps any concern over conflicting international obligations. A historical analysis will help to explain how, through its excessive emphasis on popular sovereignty, the peculiar myth-system underlying modern-time Switzerland has facilitated the banning of minarets. (more…)
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