Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (r) meets with Iranian parliament speaker, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, at the Presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, on January 30.

Recent months have brought signs of a growing rapprochement between Iran and Egypt. There have been exchanges of diplomatic visits and last Thursday saw President Hosni Mubarak for the first time speaking with the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by telephone.
Late last week Iran’s Majlis (Parliament) Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel paid a three-day visit to Cairo to participate in the two-day meeting of parliamentary speakers of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC).
The gathering, the fifth of its kind, included delegations from 37 Muslim countries. Adel is the first senior Iranian parliamentary official to visit Egypt since the 1979 Revolution.
Iran broke ties with Egypt following the Camp David Peace Treaty and relations worsened after President Anwar El-Sadat granted refuge to the deposed Shah of Iran.
Adel told Iranian TV that he is optimistic that diplomatic relations between the two countries will soon be restored.
“My optimism stems from positive developments in months,“ he said, noting that both countries share concerns over the future development of the Islamic world and that the Palestinian problem could strengthen bonds between Cairo and Tehran.
Addressing the meeting of parliamentarians Adel enumerated the six major problems facing the Islamic world, in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan. Kazem Jalali, of the Majlis’ National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, points out that though “Adel’s visit comes within the framework of Iran’s wider foreign policy and is not directly concerned with mutual ties with Egypt it has included meetings with a number of high-ranking Egyptian officials“.
Adel’s visit was preceded by the arrival on Sunday in Cairo of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s director-general for Middle East and North African affairs. Ali Asghar Mohamedi met with Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit to discuss the crisis resulting from the inflow of Palestinians into Sinai. The following day Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced that Iran and Egypt are on the verge of restoring full diplomatic relations after a three decade-long hiatus.
Even more significant, perhaps, was the visit of Iranian National Security Council Chief Ali Larijani to Cairo last December.
Larijani, a close aide to Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, met President Mubarak and a number of high-ranking Egyptian officials including Abul-Gheit, Chief of General Intelligence Omar Suleiman and the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohamed Sayed Tantawi. Larijani said Iran is ready to sell wheat to Egypt and help it in implementing its proposed nuclear power programme.
Despite the recent flurry of visits local analysts believe that Cairo remains reluctant to restore full diplomatic ties with Tehran. Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, points out that Iran has been very keen in recent months to promote relations with major Islamic powers such as Saudi Arabia, keenness that bore fruit in President Ahmadinejad being invited to the latest summit of Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha. Ahmadinejad was also invited by Saudi Arabia to Mecca.
“Iranian officials believe this rapprochement with Persian Gulf Arab countries is a step in the right direction but not enough,“ says Rashwan. “Iranian officials recognise that without Egypt their attempts to consolidate their growing influence in the Arab world vis-ˆ-vis America will not be complete.“
Washington, he continued, is fully aware that Iran is keen to improve its relations with Egypt which is why US President George Bush added Egypt to his tour of the region earlier this month.
Whatever reservations official Cairo retains, Rashwan argues, could easily be outweighed by the benefits that might ensue should the two countries, both powerful players in the region, restore ties. Iran, he believes, could then use its friendly relations with Egypt to dispel fears in the Sunni world over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and reassure Egyptian thinkers and policymakers, as well as the Arab street, that it is not seeking to export its Islamic revolution to Sunni countries.
“The reception at the moment,“ says Rashwan, “is that Iran uses its two proxies--Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon -- to thwart Egyptian and Saudi Arabian efforts to settle conditions in the Arab world.“
In return, Egypt could use friendly relations with Iran to restore its influence in some countries. “One of the main reasons Egypt, unlike Saudi Arabia and Syria, lacks influence in Arab countries like Lebanon and Iraq is because it does not have relations with Iran.“
Hala Mustafa, editor of the Al-Ahram’s quarterly Al-Dimoqratiya, agrees that Egypt’s strategic relations with the US are an obstacle to restoring full ties with Iran. Egypt, Mustafa told the Internet website Media Line, cannot afford to ignore its reliance on US aid.
Yet US attempts to pressure Egypt, such as the Congress decision last month to withhold $100 million of military assistance to Egypt until Cairo acts to prevent the smuggling of weapons across the borders with Gaza, could well backfire, and lead Cairo to embrace Tehran more closely.
Indeed, Al-Ahram analyst Mohamed El-Sayed Said believes the Congress decision has given impetus to the recent rapprochement between Egypt and Iran. The US, argued Said, must realise that cooling its relations with Egypt will play into the hands of Iran.
Gamal Essam El-Din
WEEKLY.AHRAM.ORG.EG

Muslim women greet each other after taking part in a special prayer to start Eid-al-Adha celebrations in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The influence of the western media, especially the US, can be gauged from its success in creating the image of Muslim men as gun-toting religious fanatics and that of Muslim women as veiled ignorant cows. From Australia to the United States this image is now permanently engraved on the minds of the majority of westerners, and on many others’ who would like to see Muslims in that light because of their countries’ disputes with neighboring Muslim countries. And yet there are others who would equate Muslim sympathy for the suffering of Palestine, Iraq, or Afghanistan, as “terrorism.“
There are terrorists in all communities, including Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. On the other hand, like other religious communities, Islam also has artists, intellectuals, athletes, entertainers, and rebels.
If a terrorist incident happens in Sri Lanka (where the majority is Buddhist), which the electronic media finds it worthy to display, then Sri Lanka will be in the news once only--unless the US is planning to wage a war against that nation, in which case the coverage will be 24/7.
There are over fifty countries where the majority of the population is Muslim. If the above criterion is applied to Muslim countries, than over fifty times those countries will be in the news.
Now add the past animosities of the Crusades; the late 1940s creation of Israel on Palestinian land; Western greed for the Middle Eastern oil--which is the US “national interest;“ the total US control of Middle East oil in order to cut off its allies Europe and Japan’s oil supplies, in case they show any trace of independent policies; its support of China’s oil-rich neighbors (the Central Asian nations) with the aim of locking China’s energy requirements when present relations deteriorate; its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; its planning of war against Iran; and its dragging of Pakistan into the “war on terror.“
Reader can now imagine how many times the Muslim countries will be in the news?
After 2001’s ghastly act on the US soil, no other terroristic incident has happened and yet the government and the news media never shy away from creating a fear mania.
Paranoia makes people, as well as nations, do all sorts of crazy things. However, the US has gone pathologically crazy. Two news items of last year will make it clear: The FBI went through the grocery stores’ customers’ data for the year 2005 and 2006 for the San Francisco area.
Its aim was to check any rise in the sales of Middle Eastern food such as falafel, together with other information, and thus get to the Iranian agents in the area. However, it was discontinued after the operation’s legality was questioned.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Deputy Chief, Michael P. Downing, ordered general mapping of Muslim areas “seeking to identify at-risk communities,“ because he is “looking for communities and enclaves based on risk factors that are likely to become isolated.“ The LAPD wants to “reach out to these communities,“ and for that it’s necessary “to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are.“
Five words sums up the LAPD plan: Keep an eye on Muslims. Under heavy criticism the plan was shelved.
There are three million Muslims in the United States. Let’s say that 1 per cent, or 30,000 of them, are terrorists and on average four of them join hands to carry on their nefarious activities. So now we have 7,500 terrorist groups and they all plan to destroy this country.
However, out of those 7,500, only 1 per cent or 75 groups (or 300 “terrorists“) succeed in their plan. Imagine the scale of devastation! If they attack the major highways, airports, sea ports, bridges, down towns, and rail tracks the US economy would come to a standstill and China would be at its doorstep asking back for its loaned money. (Not that the US is going to pay back. It would probably declare a war on China-a final nail in the coffin of US imperialism.)
Like many non-Muslims, Muslims may feel hurt by the deaths and devastation visited upon Iraq and Afghanistan by the US. There may be many who would feel outraged and will think about avenging. But basically it is limited to that feeling only. Next day they may be going (as students, employees, or owners) to their offices, educational institutions, courts, liquor stores, gas stations, motels, hotels, and other working and business places.
But the image persists because the ordinary people are not given any respite from constant hateful bombardments from the mad media.
Another familiar sight on the TV news is the introductory footage to items about Muslim countries, which invariably shows Muslim men in various postures of prayer, as if they don’t do anything else in life. One can only wonder as to how the Muslim population is on the rise (besides the new converts), or how the economy runs, or how the underpaid adults and children produce goods for the Western countries, or so many other things.
Not every Muslim man is brandishing a gun nor is every woman clad in a burka.
Many Muslims are not only proficient in their fields but several of them also create history.
B. R. Gowani
COUNTERPUNCH.COM

Germany’s elections signal a rise of the left, and a shift from anti-immigrant to economic populism.
It was the battle of the populists. On the right: a firebrand incumbent governor known for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, campaigning against “criminal foreigners“ on a law-and-order ticket. On the left: a challenger from the socialist fringe promising goodies for everyone--higher wages, fatter pension checks, bigger unemployment handouts.
The contest between Roland Koch, Christian Democratic (CDU) governor of the German state of Hesse, and Social Democratic (SPD) challenger Andrea Ypsilanti, was the most closely watched regional election in years--both for the drama of the campaign itself, and for what it suggests for the future of German politics. The outcome signals a shift in voter sentiment from Koch-style anti-immigrant populism to the left-wing variant, economic populism.
When the results came in on Jan. 27, the SPD had made dramatic gains. Though Koch managed to squeeze ahead of Ypsilanti by a mere 3,000 votes, his share of the vote plummeted from 49 percent in the previous election to just 37 percent. The SPD gained 8 percent over the last election with a candidate who was once considered to be from the left’s fringe.
Further evidence of a shift to the left in German politics: last week was also the first time the far-left party Die Linke, successor to the East German communists, won the minimum 5 percent required to enter Parliament in any major western state. Winning a foothold in populous and prosperous Hesse--as well as in Lower Saxony, another big western state that held an election last week--means that the communists have emerged from their status as an eastern regional party and arrived as a national political force.
It’s not just the communists who’ve been successfully rabble-rousing against the evils of the liberal capitalist model--an easy target these days, as capitalism seems to be on the verge of entering one of its periodic crises.
The more mainstream SPD has also railed against the free market, gaining popularity as it campaigned against the labor-market and welfare reforms it instituted under its own former chancellor, Gerhard Schroder. At the center of the SPD’s new platform is the enormously popular call for a nation-al minimum wage, similar to the Û10-per-hour minimum the Bundestag just legislated for Germany’s postal sector. Even if that wage destroys thousands of delivery jobs for unskilled workers, it appeals to Germans’ deep longing for “social justice.“
Oddly, the result of the vote seems to have strengthened center-right CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel. For one, it cut down to size Koch, her strongest intra-party rival. But more than that, her strategy has been to move the CDU toward the center-left.
This softer approach seems to have been vindicated last week in the state election in Lower Saxony, where CDU Gov. Christian Wolff ran a Merkel-style campaign--bowing to the left on minimum wages and avoiding Koch-style confrontation--and held on to his majority. Merkel has also been trying to make the CDU more attractive for young people, women, minorities and urbanites, and moved integrating immigrants to the top of Germany’s political agenda. That leaves little room for beer-hall rhetoric of the kind Koch specializes in delivering.
German business leaders and economists have responded to the sharp left turn by arguing that this kind of economic demagoguery is dangerous and destructive. But so far, the left has been unable to translate its gains into real power.
Although the left-leaning parties have a clear majority in Hesse, mutual animosities among the Social Democrats, Greens and communists have stopped them from joining in a coalition to govern. (That’s reminiscent of France in the 1980s, when left-wing parties together had a clear majority but their internecine hatreds kept them out of the Elysee.)
Ypsilanti has vowed not to join with the communists, and if she keeps her word the most likely outcome in Hesse seems to be a grand coalition, much like Merkel’s in Berlin. That would probably keep Koch in power, leaving the Parliament in Hesse gridlocked like the Bundestag.
Perhaps that’s not all bad. If the new economic populism keeps gaining ground, then any legislative movement is likely only to roll back necessary reforms, not push Germany forward. So gridlock may be an odd blessing for now.
Stefan Theil
NEWSWEEK.COM