Over the course of this month 5Pillarz will be recapping the biggest Muslim news stories at home and abroad as well as providing comment and analysis on them. Today we start with the stories that made the headlines in January 2014.
In the UK the year kicked off with a number of British Muslims being honoured by the Queen in her annual New Year’s Honours List.
The list included Muslim police officers, a politician, education and charitable workers, an imam in the armed forces, as well as those working in the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism counter-terrorism programme.
Meanwhile, in a prelude to a spate of Syria-related terrorism arrests and convictions throughout 2014 two women from London were charged on January 24 with “terrorism offences”.
The police alleged that Amal Elwahabi, 27, and Nawal Msaad, 26, sought to make money available for “terrorist activity” in Syria.
Ms Elwahabi was arrested as she tried to board a flight to Istanbul in Turkey from Heathrow. Ms Msaad was arrested later on the same day at an address in north-west London.
Also in January, over 20,000 people signed a petition to get Maajid Nawaz kicked out of the Liberal Democrats.
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The petition on Change.org was started in response to Nawaz’s activity on Twitter where he posted pictures of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) and Prophet Isa (as) which many Muslims found offensive.
Nawaz, who runs the anti-extremism think-tank the Quilliam Foundation, is a parliamentary candidate for the Hampstead and Kilburn parliamentary seat.
Nawaz’s Quilliam Foundation used to get millions in funding from the government which was keen to put the onus on the Muslim community to “clean up its own house” after the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. Although that funding has now been withdrawn Nawaz still promotes his message of “Muslim reform” on mainstream TV stations and in the right-wing media.
World news
Internationally, Bangladesh’s Awami League won a bloody and violent general election after a boycott by the main opposition party.
The Awami League won a two-thirds majority but less than half the 300 parliamentary seats were contested.
At least 18 people died during the January 6 vote and many more were killed in the run-up. Voter attendance appeared to have been very poor, with an estimated 20% reportedly participating.
Officials said that the turnout was low due to the fear of violence and the boycott, which kept many voters away this time.
In Egypt, a senior judge claimed that more than 7,000 civilians had been killed in the country since the coup in July 2013 which overthrew President Mohamed Morsi.
Judge Mohamed Gharib said that most of the dead were killed by security forces and that he has filed complaints against named army and police officers who carried out the killings for Egyptian courts to investigate.
The judge, who is a member of the legal defence team for the ousted president, made his comments on Al-Jazeera’s evening show Hadith Al-Thawra. He offered harsh criticism of the Egyptian judiciary and accused it of being biased against those citizens who are against the coup.
And on January 25 the UN called on Myanmar to investigate reports that scores of Rohingya Muslims had been killed in attacks by Buddhists in Rakhine state.
UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay said a “full, prompt and impartial investigation” was needed. The UN said it had “credible information” that 48 Rohingya Muslims had been killed in violence in early January.
The Burmese government rejected the claims as groundless.
Analysis
Meanwhile, in a prophetic article in January Arab journalist Abdel Bari Atwan predicted the increasing dominance of radical elements among the Syrian rebels.
He wrote “the situation in Syria has been completely transformed by the unanticipated vigour with which al-Qaeda has entered the fray and turned everything upside down.
“Now, anything might happen and the only thing that is certain is the escalation of bloodletting on all sides and the continued misery of the victims of this horrific war.
“From one perspective, only a miracle will salvage the situation. That miracle would be the unification of all the other factions and brigades in Syria (even temporarily) to declare war on the Islamic State of Iraq and Shams (ISIS) and other al-Qaeda-linked groups in order to weed them out, without mercy or pity, as soon as possible.”
Finally, in one of our most popular articles of the year 5Pillarz editor Roshan Muhammed Salih accurately likened Maajid Nawaz to a donkey.
Roshan wrote: “Maajid Nawaz is obviously trying to portray himself as some kind of free speech martyr. But it is simply grotesque to compare Maajid Nawaz to any martyr who has ever lived, and far more accurate to liken him to an annoying horse-like creature which makes irritating noises…
“Down the years Nawaz has served the establishment’s agenda faithfully – that of diverting attention away from Britain’s murderous foreign policy and putting the onus on the Muslim community to “clean its own house up.”
“He has done what all minority communities find despicable – he has sided with the rich and powerful against the weak and downtrodden. He is a brown face doing the white man’s bidding. If anyone ever merited the epithets ‘sell-out’ and ‘coconut’ it is him.”
