Monday, October 29, 2007
Campus Watch: The Pro-Israel Lobby in Action
A website dedicated to spreading intolerance and stifling freedom of speech across US campuses and beyond. Set up by self-imposed experts who cannot tolerate dissent from their well orchestrated symphony of hate against Arabs and Muslims. These are not your usual fanatics but well-motivated, properly organised and funded brotherhood of men in suits with a pro-Zionist agenda. They are unashamedly anti-Arab and find any suggestion that these should have a say in their own future as an aberration, especially when this is done in US classrooms and Ivy League universities. Unable to provide us with a real debate, they decide instead to launch a systematic campaign of denigration against any academic or professor who dares to challenge the Right wing Neo-con propaganda on the Middle East or verbalise an alternative view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We present to you Campus Watch! The rest is self-explanatory on:
http://www.campus-watch.org/
Also for more insight watch this video report entitled 'campus-conflict USA'.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YCVzbGEoAzU
the image is taken from www.rockabillytree.org
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Iran’s circle of power
By Nasrin Alavi
The replacement of Iran's chief nuclear negotiator is part of a Tehran power-play that is more troubling for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than it appears, says Nasrin Alavi.
published on www.opendemocracy.net
A surprise announcement on 20 October 2007 is generating fresh questions about Iran's strategic policy and ambitions. The resignation of Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani from this position is both a signal of tensions inside Iran's complex, multi-layered power-network, and the withdrawal of a figure who acted as a rational interlocutor with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and western governments. In a jittery climate where Washington is heightening its rhetoric in a manner reminiscent of the pre-Iraq-war period, Larijani's move is more likely to reinforce than to moderate current dangers.
The news has been met with some dismay even by conservative figures inside Iran; on 22 October, 183 mostly conservative members of the majlis (parliament) affirmed their support for Larijani. Ali Akbar Velayati, former foreign minister and international-affairs adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, commented that "it was best if this hadn't happened."
The first deputy speaker of the majlis (parliament) Mohammad Reza Bahonar told reporters on 21 October that there were "deep-rooted problems" between Larijani and Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that "could not be solved". Such differences were exposed in the varying reactions to Vladimir Putin's proposal on the nuclear stand-off made on 16 October, during the Russian president's visit to Iran; while Larijani acknowledged that Tehran was considering Putin's offer to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (who himself said it was "ponderable"), the spokesman for Ahmadinejad's government denied the existence of any such proposal or the possibility of a compromise deal.
Bahonar, a hardline conservative, also raised questions about the credentials of Larijani's replacement, Saeed Jalili; "can someone who is not even a member of the supreme national security council be appointed as its secretary?" The 42-year-old Jalili is one of Ahmadinejad's chief advisors, one of a growing number of Ahmadinejad clones that seem to have appeared from the Iranian political wilderness since the president's election in 2005; his decade of uninspiring service in the foreign office had culminated in the post of deputy foreign minister for European and American affairs, where he is credited with orchestrating Iran's closer "south-south" relationship with Latin American states (particularly Hugo Chávez's Venezuela).
In the west, Larijani is often described as a pragmatic conservative. He had long been critical of the government's handling of Iranian nuclear negotiations under the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and his appointment in 2005 to head the supreme national security council was at the time generally seen as a toughening of Iran's stand on the nuclear issue. Yet with the election of Ahmadinejad, figures such as Larijani - who had stood against Ahmadinejad in the election - came increasingly to be viewed as doves. Ali Abtahi, Iran's deputy president under Khatami, described Larijani's resignation as "dangerous" and recalled his description of Iran's agreed suspension of its uranium-enrichment programme in 2004 as akin to "a precious pearl in return for a sweet". Why cannot Larijani "carry on with his work", Abtahi asked.
Saeed Jalili's welcome
President Ahmadinejad's posse was in full view during his visit to New York in September 2007 for the opening of the United Nations general assembly (and his speech at Columbia University). In addition to Jalili himself were the government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham (whose wife has penned a book calling Ahmadinejad "the miracle of the third millennium") and another powerful presidential advisor, Mojtaba Hashemi-Samareh. In a political system where sycophancy is equated with good manners, the camera invariably spies Samareh's habit of physically fawning at the end of each presidential utterance. All the president's men are tightly bonded by their allegiance to Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi.
Saeed Jalili was asked in March 2007 by a Fars news-agency journalist whether he was Ahmadinejad's "direct representative in the foreign ministry" and whether he has "provided the president with many of his foreign-policy ideas". Jalili responded that he was merely one of many advisors to the president. He denied having masterminded Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Nazi holocaust or his spasm of letter-writing to President Bush (he elaborated: "perhaps as we think alike and we go back a long way, some may be under this impression".
But resistance to Jalili's appointment is widely shared; several prominent conservatives regard the new chief nuclear negotiator as lacking pedigree and experience. Ahmad Tavakkoli, director of the influential "parliamentary strategic research centre" has previously backed some of the presidents' policies; this time, he expressed disappointment at the resignation of Larijani, whose political stature is far greater than the "inexperienced ex-foreign minister" who replaces him.
Tehran's power-games
These critical murmurings are part of a rising chorus of antagonism from powerful conservatives and reformists alike towards the president and his coterie for their bungling economic policies at home and aggressive policies abroad. In 2005, Jalili may well have been Ahmadinejad's initial choice for foreign minister; but the opposition the new president soon faced in installing candidates for his cabinet (an oil minister was sworn in after a three-month parliamentary deadlock, including three failed attempts to secure a vote of confidence) was always likely to touch the inexperienced Jalili. The post-election confusion ended with a political bargain when Manouchehr Mottaki (who had campaigned for Ali Larijani in the presidential race) was appointed foreign minister.
Larijani, even after his resignation, still holds the important position of Ayatollah Khamenei's representative in the national security council; in this capacity, he is accompanying Jalili to scheduled talks with the European Union's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, in Rome on 23 October; his deputy and right-hand man Javad Vaeedi will also be there, and Larijani's close alliance with Mottaki survives. It remains to be seen whether these personnel shifts will be reflected in a policy reversal, or whether Iran will continue to follow the "work plan" proposed by the IAEA to settle the unresolved questions over its Iran's nuclear activities.
Saeed Jalili responded sharply to the Fars journalist who questioned the possible "costs" of Iran's foreign policy by asking "what costs? Today even westerners say that Iran is more powerful than ever before". In reality, any "success" that Ahmadinejad has enjoyed owes less to his government's cunning foreign strategies and more to the United States's strategic ineptitude in the region. Yet Ahmadinejad is adept on a rhetorical level: he has used an aggressive US stance to his advantage by portraying his government and its Revolutionary Guard partners as the only entity inside Iran willing and able to stand up to an America bent on the regime's destruction, and for which the nuclear issue is only a pretext.
At the same time, it cannot be said that Larijani's departure means that Ahmadinejad has taken over the nuclear programme and Iran's nuclear-related dealings with the west; for other powerful figures within Iran's circles of power, including Larijani himself and his foreign-office allies, are still in the picture. What can be said with certainty is that Ahmadinejad is doing his best to consolidate his power within the system. Whether he succeeds depends partly on the internal dynamics inside Iran and partly on the mounting external pressures that to date have helped only to empower him.
Nasrin Alavi is the author of We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (Portobello Books, 2005).
She spent her formative years in Iran, attended university in Britain and worked in London, and then returned to her birthplace to work for an NGO for a number of years. Today she lives in Britain.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Syria: more victims of Internet repression ."a tribute to Karim"
By Andre
On June 7, the Mantaqa Branch of Military Intelligence detained Karim ‘Arbaji, 29, allegedly for moderating www.akhawia.net, a popular online forum for Syrian youth covering social and political issues. Persons familiar with the case told Human Rights Watch that the Mantaqa Branch may have transferred him to the Palestine Branch in Damascus, but the authorities have provided no official notification of ‘Arbaji’s whereabouts.
taken from Sami Bin Ghariba report for Global voices advocacy, please read the whole report for more information on Karim and other activists who were detained as well.
thanks to Golaniya for providing the link
i used to blog about freedom of expression detainees in Syria, but this post has an entire different meaning since I knew Karim in person, his family and his friends. It is interesting how some unfortunate familiar events take a whole different meaning once they involve someone whom we know, and not just a name.
This post is not a tribute to Karim himself, but to every “Karim” who was kidnapped by “them” because he dared to dream of a better future.
this is Karim's "will" that he wrote in his forum 8 months before the detention:
هلأ وصيتي الكم (تقرأ في حال تعبّينا)
للملحدين...
يا ملحدين
يا كفرة
يللي ما تعرفوش ربنا
اذكرونا بالخير كل ما تسمعوا فيروز و مارسيل خليفة
للمؤمنين...
ادعولنا شباب و صبايا
ادعولنا الله يشيل عنا و عنكم و عن حبابكم
ادعولنا الله يتوه طريقهم و ما يعرفولنا طريق
لجماعة المعارضة
عباية يا شباب عباية
و خصوصي بنوتة عيونا زرقا ... خراس و سد بوزك هالكام يوم، الشغلة مو عنترة ... لازم حدا يضل برا مشان يتابع الاخبار
لجماعة الموالاة
لك نيالكم ما اهنا بالكم
للمشرفين:
انتوا احلى عيلة ممكن حدا يتعرف عليها
خليكم ايد وحدة متل ما بعرفكم
للحكيم:
لا تواخزنا خيو ... وجعنالك راسك
شكرا جزيلا على مساحة الحرية يللي وفرتها للشباب و الصبايا
و سامحني على اخطائي و ازا خيبت املك
لك دخيل رب سوريا ما احلاها
amarta
و دمتم للحرية
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Sheikha Moza wins Chatham House Prize
Sheika Moza takes her well deserved place in the line-up of charming wives of Arab rulers with a portfolio of charities and educational activities under their belt, even beating Al Gore in the run-up. The State of Qatar is determined to show its modern face and who best to market it than the first lady herself. As always British institutions are at the forefront when it comes to honoring enlightened monarchs and their relatives. We should be rejoicing but the effects on women emancipation at street level are still to be seen.
JEK
Announcement of the Chatham House Prize 2007
Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned has been awarded the Chatham House Prize for her commitment to progressive education and community welfare in Qatar and for her advocacy at home and internationally in favour of closer relations between Islam and the West. Her work as a UNESCO Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education is widely recognized and she actively promotes projects that improve the quality and accessibilty of education worldwide.
HH Sheikha Mozah is chairperson of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a private non-profit organization founded in 1995 on the personal initiative of His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar. She has been actively engaged in education and social reforms in Qatar and has played a major role in spearheading a number of key national and international development projects.
About the Chatham House Prize
The Chatham House Prize is awarded each year to a leading international statesperson who has made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year.
The selection process for the prize draws on the expertise of Chatham House's research teams and its three presidents - Lord Hurd, Lord Robertson and Lord Ashdown - with Chatham House members voting for the winner.
Victor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine, won the inaugural award in 2005 (Chatham House Prize 2005) and Joaquim Chissano, former President of Mozambique won the 2006 Prize (Chatham House Prize 2006).
Sponsors
Sponsors of the 2007 event included:
Shell (lead sponsor)
Bloomberg
British Airways
British American Tobacco
Chartwell Education Group
Consolidated Contractors International
DLA Piper
Haymarket Management Services
Lehman Brothers
South Hook LNG Terminal Company Ltd
Standard Chartered
For further information check out:
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/events/special_events/chatham_house_prize/
http://www.mozahbintnasser.qa/
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Lebanon without the Shiites
This myth is not new. The Shiites of today are the Palestinians of yesterday, who incidentally still play an important role as a scapegoat for all Lebanese whatever their allegiance. A Lebanon free of a section of the Lebanese; the troublemakers, the poor, the radicals, the unfashionable, in brief the ones who have no place in our idealized constructs was dreamt by many in the pre-independence era and developed into a strategic plan by a few during the Civil War. These would still speak of a Lebanon of 10452km ….not of a Lebanon of 4 millions or so, as if the land was more important than the people. The chosen ones to make the decision were clearly identified as self-styled ‘Real Lebanese’. The issue of who deserved to inhabit and shape this Lebanon was more contentious. Unfortunately today the empty rhetoric continues. Would an Iranian styled Islamic Republic of Lebanon still be worthy of our patriotic enthusiasm? Or would a federal state make us a lesser country? These questions are rarely debated in serious forums and are drowned in the sea of nationalist propaganda and counter-propaganda promising us no less than the impossible: A country and a society that looks, feels and talks like us and only us. Not the neighbour down the road or the compatriot with whom we share only our stubbornness and determination not to pack and leave. There is no agreement on what type of Lebanon we want if we want one at all, and there shouldn’t be. There is nothing uglier than a homogeneous and content society free of debates, discussions and disagreements. Do all French, Americans and Brits share one vision for their respective countries. Surely not! What they all agree on are the democratic rules of the political game and the limitations they impose on themselves in promoting their views. A similar pact could bring back Lebanon from the brink of disaster.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Guevara...from Gaza
On the 40th Anniversary of his death Ernesto Che Guevara still inspires Arab youths just as he does for millions around the world. While some in Islamists and Arab Nationalists circles claim that he has been replaced in the hearts of many by home-grown 'revolutionaries' such as Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of the Lebanese Hezbollah, or even Osama Ben Laden, it is likely their appeal will remain bound by the limits of their sectarian, religious or nationalist message. The Comandante for his part is accessible to anyone from hardcore nostalgic leftists to unawaring fashion victims.Whether he wished for himself this diluted mythical status is another story.
J.E.
Che Guevara, for some an Intifada hero (Monday, July 02, 2001)
By Christine Hauser
GAZA (Reuters) - Every revolution has its role models and for some Palestinians fighting an uprising against Israeli occupation theirs is spray-painted on Gaza City streets.
With his beard and black beret, the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara is an unlikely image beside the street art of Palestinians hurling grenades at Israeli tanks or blowing up Israeli buses, the usual fare of the Intifada, or uprising.
Like the graffiti praising the work of militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad or extolling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Guevara's face gets larger-than-life treatment.
There it is on the corner of Bassateen Street. Or on the wall circling the United Nations refugee agency in Gaza City.
"He was a revolutionary, and that is what we are doing now," said Akram Abu Nada, a middle-aged Palestinian, as he walked past the Guevara painting on Bassateen Street, a road where ambulances screech by on their way to the hospital from the flashpoint Karni Crossing.
Argentinian-born Guevara saw peasant-based revolutionary movements as a remedy for social inequities and was a major figure in Cuba's communist revolution before his murder in 1967. He was a tactician of guerrilla warfare.
While much Guevara street art predated the Palestinian uprising which erupted last September, some see him as embodying the spirit of their struggle to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they want their own state.
"He is not a model for all Palestinians, mostly the leftists. But we as Moslems fighting in the Intifada relate to him. He was a man of struggle and so are we," Abu Nada said.
Osama Abu-Middain, a deputy hotel manager in Gaza, has been a leftist since he was a teenager and says Arab leaders could benefit from Che-style politics. He wears a black Che T-shirt.
"Arab leaders and presidents sit in their chairs until they die and then they sign it over to their kids," Abu-Middain said, his office decked with framed photographs of his hero. "We need somebody like this man."
One Palestinian journalist has a Che Guevara icon programmed into his mobile phone. Shirts and wallets with Che's face can be purchased in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abu-Middain said.
Palestinians have been named after him. One of them is Palestinian journalist Jivara Budeiri.
"Many Palestinians see him as a symbol so they can change things," she said. "And the revolution will yield a real state which everyone knows as Palestine."
Budeiri, who was born in 1976, said the spelling of her name was Arabised when she was a student to more closely resemble Arabic sounds. "But sometimes in personal correspondence I sign it Guevara," she said.
PALESTINIAN LEFTISTS INSPIRED BY CHE
Ali al-Qatawi, general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said Guevara has inspired Palestinian leftist movements such as his own.
"We try to benefit from his experiment," said Qatawi, sitting in a fifth-floor office in Gaza, his cigarette smoke wafting up towards a picture of Che Guevara pinned to a cabinet. An old photograph of the revolutionary adorns the window.
The opposition PFLP leaned toward transforming Arab society along Marxist-Leninist lines after it was established in 1967.
Its armed "Guevara of Gaza Brigade" claimed responsibility for an attack by a Palestinian driver who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israelis at a bus stop during the current uprising, killing eight. He was arrested by police.
"The Cuban revolution was made up of workers, the poor and farmers. We in the PFLP say the liberation movement of our land from occupation cannot but end to the benefit of those people. Otherwise it has no meaning," Qatawi said. "If the land goes from one group to another it does not help."
Throughout the uprising, Palestinian youths in poor refugee camps clash with the Israeli army, which has razed farmland in what it calls security steps for the 6,000 Jewish settlers living among more than one million Palestinians in Gaza Strip.
Agriculture revenues drained away for Palestinians and thousands lost jobs because of closures on Palestinian areas.
About 600 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in the uprising.
"All the Palestinians who have died so far in the Intifada are the Che Guevaras of Gaza," Qatawi said.
WILL THE REAL GUEVARA PLEASE STAND UP?
Ask Qatawi for a meeting to discuss Guevara, and he will ask you which one you mean.
"There is the Che Guevara of Argentina and the 'Guevara of Gaza'," said Qatawi.
Mohammad al-Aswad, the "Guevara of Gaza", was born in 1946 in the Mediterranean coastal city of Haifa, in what is now Israel. The humble beginnings of the Palestinian activist are enough to make any socialist proud.
According to the PFLP's three-page leaflet of his biography, the boy and his family were displaced after the 1948 birth of the Jewish state, and ended up in the poverty of a Gaza refugee camp, where he grew up. He studied in Egypt but returned after a year, his family unable to support him.
He became a resistance activist against Israel, was jailed for two years and then on his release in 1970 joined the ranks of the Popular Front in military and training operations.
Aswad was killed in a Gaza battle in 1973.
"Don't forget your martyr comrades, your detained comrades, or our duty to provide for the needy," he was quoted as saying.
"Our people place every hope in the revolution."
His widow, Wedad, works in the Ministry of Social Affairs. She has married again, to another leftist.
"He was a martyr," she said of her late husband. "If he was alive today he would still be working for the revolution."
This Article was taken from wwww.mafhoum.com
The Picture was taken by Justin McIntosh in August 2004 and can be found on
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Palestinians_wearing_Che_Guevara_tshirts.jpg
Friday, October 5, 2007
TAQWACORES: Muslim Punks
I first heard of the Taqwacores from a report on the Newsnight program (BBC) following a collective of American Muslim Punk bands based in NY who were touring various venues in the North Eastern US. The phenomenon is to say the least novel and probably unique .I did not read the book, which was apparently released in a auto-censored version in the UK to avoid offending local Muslim sensitivities. From the report, between the cursing and the deafening guitar riffs, I could also not really get what these young men and women stood for except their determination to have their identity crisis in full public view. Anyway, whether you are Muslim or not, punk is not really about what you stand for but what you stand against. In their case bigotry, racism and war are on the list. If it was only for the sight of young women in full Islamic garb head banging with great refreshing smiles across their faces these guys have made their point and deserve exposure.
Good Luck to them!
J.E
Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores, Telegram Books, 2007
We live in very dangerous times. The War on Terror is being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, with more destinations probably to follow. The US and UK ignored every plea from the international community and relied on spin to begin a war that has no end in sight and is disproportionably killing civilians.
This has all happened because of a theological conflict between two opposing ideologies: Christianity and Islam with the people on both sides who are making this war being fuckwits while the 90% that make up everyone else hopes for a solution. Nobody understands each other, and people are afraid to stand up to lies peddled as truth. If things don’t change, we are fucked.
Michael Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores is a step in the right direction. Ostensibly a story about Muslim Punks sharing a house in Buffalo, New York, The Taqwacores is about questioning the values of a society or culture when they appear, on a personal level, to be wrong or outdated.
The Taqwacores is narrated by Yusuf Ali who studies engineering between praying and partying. He lives with Jehangir, the wisest of the group who’s travelled West and seen the origins of Taqwacore; Umat, who aims to follow every literal command of Qur’an; ‘Amazing’ Ayyub who is living as fast as he can and Rabeya, who rejects the thought that women are inferior yet chooses to still wear the niqab.
Yusuf, as a straight-edger, becomes the conductor for the debates that fill the house. His blankness and naivety make him the blank slate for the voiced and varied thoughts of his housemates, and his character arc within the book is his journey towards a sounder sense of self.
If Rabeya is the most interesting character and ‘Amazing’ Ayyub the court jester, it is Jehangir who is the most iconic: the nominal hero of a new wave yet modest of his own growing part within it. The novel climaxes with a Taqwacore concert organised by Jehangir and held in Buffalo at which everything changes for all the housemates.
Knight invented the term taqwacore. It’s a combination of taqwa (the Islamic concept of being continually aware of God) and hardcore. It’s no longer a term, but a movement. Taqwacore bands (the Kominas, Vote Hezbollah) and websites have begun to appear, and Knight has become a reluctant spokesman for Progressive Islam. That’s a label he doesn’t like applied to himself: “My problem with these guys,” he said in an interview, “is that some of them are so desperate to be good Muslims that they’ll stretch their arguments to stay in line with the Qur’an, and it just comes off as weak.”
But Taqwacore is, at its core, the continuation of the punk ethos of wanting to start everything again by cutting away the bullshit around a culture that no longer applies. Or more specifically, Taqwacore, according to Sabina England means: “being true to myself, having my own faith, and interpreting Islam the way I want to, without feeling guilty or looked down at by other Muslims.”
Knight’s follow-up, Blue-Eyed Devil, an account of his journey across the states looking for an American Islam, was hailed by Andrei Codrescu as “today’s… On the Road.” It’s an astute observation that applied to The Taqwacores and the Taqwacore movement. Kerouac’s Beat Generation was, according to his friend John Clellon Holmes, “basically a religious generation” who were “on a quest, and that the specific object of their quest was spiritual.”
The housemates of The Taqwacores and the people they draw to their non-orthodox Islam are, in comparison, explicitly a religious generation, rejecting the influences around them that they feel to be false or irrelevant to their own values. Like Kerouac, Yusuf, Jehangir, ‘Amazing’ Ayyub and Umar are searching for a set of values that they give to the world, rather than the world give to them.
It’s a statement when a government decides on and implements a ban on a book. It says that the ideas contained within its pages are a threat to a status quo and that that idea is something that someone in power would rather a larger population did not think. The Taqwacores was banned in Malaysia, and a kneejerk reaction to its publication around Europe is almost certainly predictable.
But people should read The Taqwacores for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s very good. Secondly, as a global population, people need to start mending bridges and understanding one another. And lastly, the housemates question everything around themselves, and that’s a skill which has become dulled nearly everywhere through fear and propaganda.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER Pete Carvill is Senior Editor at 3:AM.
This Article was first published in 3:AM Magazine: Wednesday, May 16th, 2007.
http://www.myspace.com/michaelmuhammadknight
http://www.taqwacores.org/blog/
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
وتصادم الشرعيات
سبق للممثل السوري تيم حسن أن أظهر براعة شديدة في تجسيد طبائع وقسمات الدهاء السياسي لشخصية تاريخية ضمن مسلسل تلفزيوني. كان ذلك في أكثر من محطّة أبرزها تألقه في أداء دور محمد بن أبي عامر في «ربيع قرطبة».ابن عامر هذا هو الشاب العربي الأندلسي الطموح الذي يواجه نفوذ زعامات الموالي ورؤساء الفتيان الصقالبة، ليصعد بسرعة البرق ويتبوأ منصب «الحاجب» أو كبير الوزراء لدى الخليفة الأموي، إلا أنه سرعان ما يحجب سلطة الخليفة، ويقعد أمير المؤمنين الهشام بن الحكم سجيناً في قصره، فيما يتخذ لنفسه هو لقب الملك المنصور. ما حلّ بالخليفة الأموي في قرطبة جاء ليتطابق زمنياً واعتبارياً مع ما حلّ بالخليفة العباسي في بغداد على يد أمير الأمراء البويهي، ثم على يد السلطان السلجوقي.
اذ يمكن للملك المنصور أو للسلطان أن يفعلا بالخليفة الأموي في قرطبة أو العباسي في بغداد ما
أرادا، إلا أنهما لا يستطيعان، لا إلغاء الخلافة ولا اتخاذها صفة لهما. معطى تاريخي كهذا لم يتأخر الجويني والماوردي حتى صقلاه بفقه سياسي يسنده الى أبد الآبدين
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يتقاطع لأجل ذلك الدور الذي لعبه الممثل الشاب تيم حسن في «ربيع قرطبة» مع الدور الذي لعبه لهذا الموسم الرمضاني، وبإتقان فائق في مسلسل «الملك فاروق»، للكاتبة لميس جابر. وهو مسلسل لا تخفى صفته الريادية في الدراما المصرية التي تعالج شأناً تاريخياً معاصراً. فإذ يؤدي تيم حسن دور الملك فاروق، فإنه يذكّر أول ما يذكر، بأن هذا الفرع من سلالة محمد علي قد دغدغته أكثر من سواه أحلام إحياء الخلافة. فالسلطان أحمد فؤاد والد فاروق والابن الأصغر للخديوي اسماعيل الذي رافق أباه في رحلة المنفى الإيطالي وأسس لعلاقة تاريخية مع ايطاليا ستتجدد مع ابنه الذي اتخذه لنفسه صفة «صاحب الجلالة ملك مصر» في اثر التصريح البريطاني ليوم 28 فبراير 1922 الذي يمنح استقلالاً لمصر، انما دغدغته قبل سواه أحلام استئناف الخلافة، ما أن أُعلن عن إلغائها في تركيا.هذا الرجل الذي يصفه المؤرخ الكبير يونان لبيب رزق بأنه «كان أول حاكم لدولة مصر المستقلة في التاريخ الحديث» افتتح مشكلة لا آخر لها بنشدانه الخلافة الاسلامية، بحيث اختلط الحابل بالنابل في سنوات حرجة من تاريخ مصر، ما بين وجهة نظر ترى أن القاهرة هي أنسب مكان لدار الخلافة وبين وجهة ترتئي عكس ذلك، ولم يتم النظر الى كتابي علي عبد الرازق «الاسلام وأصول الحكم» وطه حسين «في الشعر الجاهلي» إلا في ضوء طرح مسألة الخلافة، وباعتبارهما طعنتين تسدّدان ضدها فكرة من طرف حزب الأحرار الدستوريين، حزب الأقلية، الملتحق حول أفكار أحمد لطفي السيد القومية الليبرالية الموالية للنموذج البريطاني، في حين كان حزب الوفد، حزب الأغلبية والوحدة الوطنية الاسلامية القبطية، أميل الى الدفاع عن فكرة الخلافة مع رفضه أن تعطى للملك فؤاد
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