Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

The new Hamas-led Palestinian government encourages meaningful movies, but will stand up firmly against pornography and obscene entertainment like belly-dancing, the new Palestinian minister of culture has said.

"I would open cinemas. It could be an education and help people live better. Hollywood is not all bad. Titanic was a good film, a human film," Atallah Abu Al-Subbah told Britain..

In all my years as a student of the theory, conventions and practice of foreign relations, and as a journalist, I have yet to encounter a foreign policy as confused and contradictory as that of the Bush administration. It is as if the world’s foremost superpower, which one might expect to engage in farsighted strategic planning, has succumbed to a state of constructive chaos, forcing it to cont..

Steps toward democracy in the Arab world, a crucial American goal that just months ago was cause for optimism — with elections held in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian areas — are slowing, blocked by legal maneuvers and official changes of heart throughout the Middle East.

Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq wit..

I laughed when Hamas swept the Palestinian elections. After all, President Bush and his gang of neoconservative ideologues have been preaching that democracy in the Middle East will lead to peace.

Oops. Now the president will once more have to expose himself as the hypocrite he is. Democracy is good, in Mr. Bush’s view, only if it elects the people he wants in office. The choice of the ..

All kinds of fanaticism, terrorism, and militancy have been associated with Islamic movements around the world. However, no one agrees that bombs and guns are needed for Islamic revival or that the enforcement of Islamic code of punishments would turn an un-Islamic country into an Islamic one. The prerequisite for Islamic revival is to change the basic politico-socio-economic structure ..

France has denied requests for visas from two Hamas members of the Palestinian legislature invited for talks at the headquarters of Europe’s leading human rights organization, the Council of Europe said Monday.

The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly last month invited members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including two Hamas deputies, for talks at the assembly’s April..

It seems like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been around forever. His 25-year reign as the Egyptian leader is far from over. Last year, he announced he would step aside, only to change his mind shortly after. He realized the job market would be limited for a 78-year-old former president of Egypt.

Mubarak has been the number one asset in the Middle East for various U.S. administrat..

An ambitious strategy of democracy promotion is poised to be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy for many years after 9/11, just as Cold War containment, trade liberalization, and development assistance were pillars of American policy in the decades after 1945. The strategy of democratization must begin with the moral proposition that “the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul,” ..

When a delegation from Human Rights Watch scheduled a meeting last week with Egyptian judges who have been pressing for an independent judiciary, neither side foresaw the ferocious campaign of vilification that would erupt in the state-owned Egyptian press.

The judges - who have been defying the government for a year by calling publicly for a new law guaranteeing their independence and ..

Fed up with unmet promises of aid for the cash-starved Palestinian Authority, Hamas is organizing protests across the Arab and Islamic world to pressure governments to send money, a Hamas leader said Tuesday.

Hamas’ refusal to renounce its violent, anti-Israel ideology after its victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections in January has led Israel, the United States and the European ..

Consider the changes in the Middle East since the attack of 9/11 on the United States:

1. Afghanistan. The ultraconservative government of the Taliban has been overthrown, but the prevailing opinion in the country remains so ultraconservative that a Muslim who converted to Christianity was threatened with execution.
2. Iraq. Saddam Hussein, who was the US target, has been overthrown ..

Every month, Fatma Nofal cashed a $500 check from a brother who works abroad to support their family here. But on Monday the debit note from the US’s Chevy Chase Bank was rejected.

"This is the first time that I’ve gotten that answer," says Ms. Nofal, as she walked out of a central Ramallah money changer with no place to redeem the check. "I don’t know what to do."
Nofal is one of ma..

In line with the speedy evolution in three nearby countries, Islam as a political force is moving to center stage in Jordan, where the government is a cooperative U.S. ally but where Muslim activists are cool both to Washington and Israel.

The path to greater influence and perhaps dominant political power may be through municipal elections that are supposed to take place this year and b..

The weakest point in the political life is the absence of the conservative trend. Several parties in the Arab arena belong, in all, to liberal or leftist trend. Yet, the conservative trend is not expressed as a political party. In case we consider the Arab arena , including Egypt, we will discover that most of the people are governed by conservative trend; a religious or life trend. This means ..

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has broken a taboo by declaring that Palestinians who kill Israeli soldiers are not terrorists.
Her comments provoked fierce criticism in Israel and a Right-wing member of parliament demanded that she should be sacked.

The row began when Israeli radio broadcast an interview in which 48-year-old Mrs Livni said that attacks on Israeli soldiers we..

Egyptian authorities announced the release of about 950 political detainees affiliated with Jamaa Islamya (The Islamic Group) who had renounced violence, in a step that human rights organizations and analysts have regarded as a cosmetic decision intended to alleviate pressures that the government faces, which aim at prompting it to carry out democratic reforms.

 The Ministry of the..

President George W. Bush has told us time and again that we do not negotiate with terrorists. Rarely do we consider the inverse: that it is the terrorists who refuse to negotiate with us. Admitting such a possibility would grant the terrorists agency, and thus, some measure of legitimacy as political actors. And in an arena where the word "terrorist"
itself is laden with policy implica..

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak sparked a political storm when he cast doubt on the loyalty of the Shiaa community in Iraq in an interview with the Arabic channel Al Arabiya. “The loyalty of those Shiaa is to Iran, most of them are loyal to Iran,” he said.

His remarks drew varied reactions. In Iraq, leaders from across the political spectrum swiftly condemned the Egyptian President and ..