Kyrgyz designers show Muslim fashion

A fashion show in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan featured a collection of colorful dresses for a unique spring 2013 collection targeted to Muslim women, who want beautiful clothes that still protect their modesty.

“I think that a woman, whether she is Muslim or Christian, has to follow fashion and her appearance should be decent, and she has to look beautiful, womanly,” said ‘Fashion Muslim Kyrgyzstan’ attendee Ruhina Kozhambekova.

Like Kozhambekova, hundreds of Kyrgyz women attended the fashion show, clapping to the pulsing beat of the music while the models flowed along the runway in long-sleeved, high-necked gowns paired with veils framing their faces.

Delicate chiffons to cotton blends to intricately-designed silks were featured in the show, which presented fashions for a range of tastes – from dressy to sporty.

Fashion designer Mavluda Usupova even showed a line of wedding dresses.

“Not only fashionable women but all Muslims too could look beautiful, even in Islam. Once in her lifetime a girl gets married. Therefore you have to look beautiful to please your husband and his family,” Usupova said.

Her creations featured full skirts, bordered by lace edging and pearl details, as well as empire-waisted and full A-line forms. Some of the dresses were paired with jackets, and all of the models wore intricately decorated veils.

Organiser Aijan Akilbekova said the show was a huge success and showed that fashion could be compatible with life in Kyrgyzstan and modesty.

“Actually, it’s simply a trend for our sisters about how you can dress up according to our customs, traditions and without forgetting about the geographical conditions of our country. For example, we have a severe winter, we have a slushy autumn, we have spring, we have summer. In our country we can’t be like Arabs who wear one dress all year long,” Akilbekova said.

Kyrgyzstan, a poor Central Asian country of 5.5 million, is about 75 percent Muslim.

Muslim-Buddhist clash in Burma leaves many dead

Security forces have been deployed in western Burma, near the border with Bangladesh, to restore peace after an outbreak of ethnic violence that left at least seven people dead.

Police and military units restored calm and established a curfew in Rakhine state on the weekend, after overnight rioting between ethnic Rohingya, who are Muslims, and local Buddhists.

State media said at least seven people died in the fighting and hundreds of buildings were set ablaze.

The United States has expressed concern about reports of ongoing violence in Rakhine State. A spokeswoman for the State Department, Victoria Nuland, said Washington is monitoring the situation and urges an immediate halt to violent attacks.

The statement issued Saturday also encourages the government to pursue an investigation in accordance with the rule of law.

Tensions have been high in Rakhine since last Sunday, when a Buddhist mob attacked a bus and killed 10 Rohingya, mistakenly believing they were responsible for the recent gang-rape and murder of a Buddhist woman.

Burma does not consider the Rohingya to be Burmese citizens, despite the presence of as many as 800,000 of them in its western region, according to the United Nations.

Burma’s government has recently begun implementing political reforms, sparking approval among Western nations who had long called for change. State media have released an uncharacteristically large amount of information about this week’s violent incidents.

Hardline Buddhists target Muslims in Sri Lanka

Sectarian violence on the island nation of Sri Lanka again threatens to tear the country’s fragile fabric apart.

Government commando forces have stepped up security around Muslim-owned businesses and homes around the nation after a mob of hundreds of Buddhist extremists set fire to a clothing store and warehouse in Pepiliyana, a suburb of the capital of Colombo, on Thursday.

The crowd also smashed vehicles and pelted stones before an army unit was called in to disperse the rioters. No arrests were made, however.

The attack injured at least five people, including journalists seeking to cover the event, and appears to reflect the continuing hostility directed at minority Muslims from hard-line members of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

Muslims account for about 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population.

“We are deploying more mobile patrols in vulnerable [Muslim] areas [across Sri Lanka],” a senior police officer told the Agence France- Presse news agency.

The Muslim Council of Sri Lanka warned that Thursday’s disturbances pushed religious and ethnic tensions to the island to a new high.

“It has created a fear psychosis among the Muslims,” N.M. Ameen, the council president, told AFP. “[But] we know a majority of the [Buddhist] people do not support this type of activity.”

Indeed, one of Sri Lanka’s most vocal and prominent Buddhist nationalist group, the Bodhu Bala Sena, or BBS, which means “Buddhist Force,” denied they were involved in the latest altercations.

“We condemn this attack in the strongest terms,” BBS spokesman Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara told reporters in Colombo.

But BBS has a history of making inflammatory remarks against Muslims, having already forced Islamic clerics to withdraw halal certification on local foods, citing that it “offends” non-Muslims.

BBS officials have also claimed that Muslim students receive favorable treatment in schools and are carrying out illegal practices related to the slaughter of livestock. Some nationalist Buddhist monks also accuse Muslims of constructing too many mosques, seeking to forcibly convert Buddhists to Islam and of having too many children in order to increase their influence in society.

Akmeemana Dayarathana, founder of another ultra-nationalist Buddhist group, Sinhala Echo, said that Muslims have a history of destroying Buddhist communities and cultures across South and East Asia.

“[Sri Lanka] is the only country for the Sinhalese,” he told BBC. ”Look around the world — Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and others — they were all Buddhist countries, but the Muslims destroyed the culture and then took over the country. We worry they’re planning it here too.”

The violence in Pepiliyana echoed an incident from January, when another Buddhist mob threw stones at a Muslim-owned clothing store outside Colombo, while other Buddhists have called for a boycott of Muslim businesses.

Over the past year, a number of mosques have been attacked, vandalized and defaced.

An extraordinary facet of these attacks is that they are often led by robe-wearing Buddhist monks.

Sri Lanka has already endured a devastating multidecade civil war that pitted the majority Sinhalese Buddhists against a group of separatist ethnic Tamils, who are Hindu. The Tamils were brutally crushed by the army in the final stages of that civil war.

Muslims generally stayed out of that conflict, maintaining a low profile, although they suffered many casualties.

Now, fearing a renewed wave of violence, the government’s Minister for Justice Rauff Hakeem (a Muslim) has asked Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne to call a cabinet meeting to discuss security issues and the vulnerability of Muslims in the country.

Colombo police have also established a phone hotline for people to complain about anyone seeking to “incite religious or racial hatred.”

Some analysts believe that extremist Sinhalese Buddhists, fresh off their defeat and demoralization of Tamil Hindus, are now targeting another visible minority — the Muslims.

“The country is seen today as Sinhala Buddhist,” said Sanjana Hattotuwa, editor of groundviews.org, a journalism website.

“The end of the [Sinhalese vs. Tamil civil] war ironically has given the space for new social fault lines to occur.”

Hattotuwa’s organization has cited that in the early 1980s Buddhists committed a type of pogrom against Hindu Tamils, which eventually precipitated a multidecade civil war. Now they fear the government (dominated by Sinhalese Buddhists) is not doing enough to prevent another potential conflagration.

“The vandalism of mosques around the country are ominous signs,” an editorial in Groundviews states. “The inaction by the authorities, and in some case the support of the organization by members of the government, is paving the way for further racism.

“For a nation that prides itself on being ‘multinational,’ such racist sentiment will only serve to damage its future. Nationalistic ideals fueled by racism cost the country 30 years [in the civil war]; unfortunately, four years on from the end of the last conflict, Sri Lanka appears to be headed down the same path.”

Egyptians in Muslim-Christian unity march

Tens of thousands of Egyptians swarmed the Tahrir Square in down town Cairo on Friday, in a march aimed at solidifying national unity between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. Several other gatherings, similar to that at Tahrir, were also seen across many governorates in Egypt on Friday, as the nation tries to get past its latest test of solidarity, following the latest dreaded sectarian incidents triggered by a rumour of an illegal affair between a Christian merchant and a poor Muslim woman in a largely conservative neighbourhood. The participants, holding banners portraying crescents and crosses, chanted long live the crescent with the cross, insisting that the great 25th of January Revolution that toppled the corrupt regime of President Hosni Mubarak was only possible due to the everlasting love between Muslims and Christians who have always been and will always remain brothers .

This came as thousands of Egyptian Christians continued their sit-in in front of the state television headquarters in Maspero, for the eighth consecutive day, demanding the immediate capture of those responsible for the burning of a Church in Helwan province, some 100 Kms south of the Capital Cairo.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, running the affairs of the country since the forced step down of Mubarak 11 February, has promised to bring the perpetrators still at large to justice, and to rebuild the Church in a few days’ time.

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayeb, has asked Muslims in the village of Sol-Atfeeh in Helwan, to rebuild the Church themselves with their own personal money, stressing that Islam dictates that it is the duty of Muslims to protect places of worship of Heavenly Religions.

Christians in Egypt, who represent nearly 10 per cent of the 85 million population, are also asking for a unified law governing the construction of places of worship, away from state security and police interference when building new Churches.

Egyptians had put on a show of love and solidarity after the New Year’s terrorist bombing attack on an Alexandria Church that killed tens of worshippers. Muslims as well as Christians condemned the bombing and Muslim civilians have gone further to say they will bear the responsibility to protect Churches from now on.

People have accused remnants of the state security apparatus, and the defunct party of the ousted Mubarak, of orchestrating a counter revolution in Egypt, that led to the latest sectarian incidents in which both Muslims and Christians have died.

Thousands march for unity in Tahrir Square

Holding crosses and Qur’an holy books, tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir square on Friday, May 13, calling for national unity and solidarity with the Palestinians on the memory of Nakba Day.

“If you attack a Christian, you’re attacking all Egyptians,” said one man giving a speech at a podium, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

“The churches attacked in Imbaba are not less than the mosques attacked in Jerusalem,” he said, linking the two themes of Friday’s protest.

The rallies were called by Egyptian activists as a mass show of unity following Imbaba events last Sunday.

At least twelve people were killed and over 200 injured late Saturday in deadly clashes between Muslims and Christian Copts in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba.

The clashes erupted after rumor that a female Muslim convert was being held inside a church in the area. Another church in the same area was on fire and had been severely damaged.

Denouncing Imbaba attacks, activists confirmed the unity of Egypt’s Muslims and Christians, blaming the remnants of the toppled regime for inciting such incidents.

“National unity was there during the revolt but the remnants of the old regime want to destroy the country,” said Ahmed Muhanna.

Scenes from Tahrir today recalled signs of Muslim-Christian unity during the anti-Mubarak 18-day evolution.

Photos taken during the prayers showed Christians forming a ring around their fellow Muslims to protect them during prayers.

A Sunday mass was also held in Tahrir square during revolution days that gathered both Muslims and Christians.

A report of a fact-finding commission has blamed the deadly clashes on the remnants of toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

The report said that the violence was part of counter-‎revolutionary attempts to discredit the January 25 Revolution.‎

Nakba Remembered

Along with national unity, protesters in Tahrir confirmed their support for right of return of Palestinian refugees, calling for solidarity marches towards Gaza strip.

“We are demonstrating to show that the Palestinian cause is in the heart of all Muslims,” Sameh Abu Bakr, an agriculture engineer in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, told Reuters on Friday.

Flooding to Tahrir from pre-dawn to perform Fajr prayers, the square, which was the epicenter of the revolution that toppled former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, was decked with red, white, black and green Palestinian flags.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty in 1979 with Israel which has always relied on Mubarak as a partner in maintaining peace in the Middle East.

Under Mubarak, Egypt played a big role in stopping the smuggling of goods into Gaza, and in helping Israel in its blockade policy aimed at pressuring Hamas.

Egypt has said it plans to open the crossing into Gaza permanently, but has yet to do so.

One sign read: “The people want the opening of the Rafah crossing, fully and permanently.”

“We want to show the world the inhumane way Israel treats Palestinians,” said demonstrator Hassan Yusri, standing next to the Rafah sign.

Hundreds marched in El-Arish in Sinai after Friday prayers, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans.

In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, thousands marched to the Israeli consulate after dawn prayers at one of the city’s main mosques, chanting: “With our souls, with our blood, we redeem you Palestine.”

“We are here today to show our support for the Palestinian cause,” said Mohammed Abdel-Salam, a 22-year-old activist.

“The victory of our revolution will not be complete without the liberation of Palestine,” he added.

The interior ministry has urged them to cancel the march.

Nakba Day, marking the creation of Israel on the rubbles of Palestine, is commemorated every year by Palestinian refugees worldwide.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that there are now 5 million Palestinian refugees, including 1.4 million living in refugee camps inside the Palestinian territories.

Calls for a second Egyptian revolution after violent clashes in Tahrir Square

Egypt’s revolution entered a dangerous phase of confrontation on Sunday after the army attacked thousands of anti-junta protesters in Cairo, putting the viability of imminent parliamentary elections in serious doubt.

Several political parties and individual candidates said they were suspending their electoral campaigns after a weekend in which at least five people were killed and almost a thousand injured in some of the fiercest clashes seen since the heady days of February when Hosni Mubarak was ejected from power.

Protesters later retook Tahrir Square, in central Cairo, and vowed to stay put until the military authorities are removed. Many said they were ready to die for the revolution, which began in late January as an anti-Mubarak movement, but is now targeting the army generals of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (Scaf) who replaced him.

Amid calls for a national government of salvation to be set up to face down the junta, the opposition figurehead, Mohamed ElBaradei, said he was ready to do “whatever it takes” to save Egypt from deepening crisis.

“I think what we’ve seen today is an excessive use of force, bordering on a slaughterhouse, against innocent civilians exercising their inalienable right to demonstrate,” ElBaradei told the Guardian.

But the interim authorities merely stated that the elections, due to start on 28 November, would go ahead as planned – and thanked officers for “self-restraint in dealing with the events”.

ElBaradei said: “It’s yet another indication that Scaf and the current government are failing to govern and I fully sympathise with the increasing calls coming from different quarters, including Tahrir, for a new government of national salvation that represents all shades of Egyptian society, one with full power.

“I will do anything to save the country from falling apart and what we are seeing right now is the country going down. People are calling on me to present this government, and I will do whatever it takes to save our country from falling apart.”

As Egypt’s interim cabinet gathered for an emergency meeting, several political parties and individual candidates announced they were suspending their electoral campaigns.

Critics say the elections will be meaningless if they are not accompanied by the retreat of Scaf and a return to civilian rule. So far the generals have refused to set a date for presidential elections, and say they will continue ruling until after a new constitution is created.

Street fighting continued in central Cairo on Sunday night, transforming parts of the city into a war zone. Protesters used rocks and molotov cocktails to repel attacks by armed riot police and built barricades to defend Tahrir. The Guardian saw volleys of teargas and rubber-coated steel bullets fired into the crowds by security forces, as well as “birdshot” pellet cartridges which appeared to be aimed at head height.

Major unrest spread beyond Cairo to the large cities of Suez and Alexandria, where at least one leading activist was killed. Mass demonstrations and attacks on police stations were reported in several other towns throughout the Nile Delta and southern Egypt.

Among those believed to have been arrested during the clashes was Bothaina Kamel, the country’s only female presidential candidate and an outspoken opponent of military rule. Speaking just before her detention, Kamel told the Guardian that the violence exposed “the ugly face of Mubarak that has been lurking behind Scaf all along”, and that she backed ElBaradei, who is also running for the presidency, to lead a transitional civilian government that would wrest control of the country back from the generals.

Such a move would throw Egypt into unprecedented confusion, with two rival political entities potentially declaring themselves to be the country’s legitimate government, and would almost certainly lead to a postponement of the poll.

But to have any chance of succeeding, any self-declared civilian authority would require support from a broad consensus of the political landscape, including the Muslim Brotherhood whose Freedom and Justice party are predicted to be the biggest single winners in the new parliament.

“What happens next is anyone’s guess because everything is up in the air right now,” said Issandr el-Amrani, a prominent blogger and analyst on Egyptian affairs. “The Islamists are relatively invested in elections taking place as planned, and we are still waiting for the political elite to put forward concrete alternative proposals. But the fact is that events on the ground are moving so fast that they are overtaking all these political considerations.”

Throughout Saturday protesters fought running battles with the central security forces, who were a hated symbol of brutality under the Mubarak dictatorship. Motorbikes ferried hundreds of wounded civilians to a makeshift field hospital on the edge of Tahrir Square, where a handful of doctors, aided by volunteers, struggled to deal with the influx.

“We are seeing many patients suffering from severe gas inhalation and flesh wounds from different types of ammunition,” explained Amr Wageeh, a 21-year-old medical student.

“I’ve been here four hours and helped treat over a hundred in that time; it’s hard because the teargas that’s being used is stronger than what we’ve dealt with in the past, and appears resistant to [the normal remedies of] vinegar and soda.”

“The elections can go to hell; Tahrir comes first, and we must complete our half-finished revolution before starting to organise a vote,” he continued.

“If Scaf think they can do to us what Assad has done to the Syrians and Saleh has done to Yemenis, they are in for a surprise. The Egyptians will do to Scaf what Nato did to Libya: the generals are a remnant of Mubarak,

Was the Egyptian Revolution really a military coup

Egypt’s interim military leaders appear determined to cling to power long after promised democratic elections, renewing concerns that the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year was really a coup that the military rode into power on the coattails of the popular uprising.

Pro-democracy activists as well as outside observers are concerned that the military leaders are retreating from commitments for a rapid transfer of power to an elected civilian government.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to begin November 28 and continue into January, but the generals are taking steps to keep themselves in power as de facto rulers at least until after presidential elections, which may not be until 2013, and possibly longer, according to published reports.

“They want to protect their own power and privileges. They have no notion of what democracy is about,” said Hani Shukrallah, editor of the English-language al-Ahram Online Web site. “They want a stable political system where they can keep their privileges, where they can exercise some power over the future of Egyptian policy as a whole,” according to the Washington Post.

Hopes and expectations soared around the region with Mubarak’s departure last February after 30 years in power. But students, political activists, workers, doctors, lawyers and even police who had been calling for better wages and working conditions were soon told by the interim military leaders to shut up and go home.

The council promulgated a new law to criminalize the kind of protests and strikes that drove Mubarak from office; it banned any protests or strikes which the military feels might interfere with public or private institutions.

The Egyptian army is a full-blown military-industrial complex which controls a third of the nation’s economy. It runs daycare centers and beach resorts, and even makes “television sets, jeeps, washing machines, wooden furniture and olive oil, as well as bottled water under a brand reportedly named after a general’s daughter, Safi,” according to the New York Times.

And it employs conscripted labor, pays no taxes and discloses nothing to either the public or parliament. At the moment it also openly runs the government. It is hard to imagine the army will be willing to sacrifice all that for the sake of democracy. WikiLeaked cables from the American embassy in Cairo show that Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Military Council, strongly believes in government control of prices and production, rejects any move to a market-based economy, and opposes political reform – convinced that such moves erode a central government’s power and lead to social instability.

The Obama administration is concerned that the delays in making the transition to democracy will spark new unrest, and it has urged military leaders not to block the transition to an elected civilian government.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week, “If, over time, the most powerful political force in Egypt remains a roomful of unelected officials, they will have planted the seeds for future unrest, and Egyptians will have missed a historic opportunity…. When unelected authorities say they want to be out of the business of governing, [the U.S. government expects them] to lay out a clear road map [and] abide by it.”

The New York Times quoted Clinton aides saying that was “a deliberate warning to the military council.”

But it is a delicate balancing act because Washington does not want to fray its ties to the Egyptian military, which it sees as critical not only to American strategic interests but also to protecting the peace between Egypt and Israel. Nor do Washington and Jerusalem want to see the Islamists play a dominant role in any new government.

Several developments are generating growing pessimism about the promised transition to democracy.

• The SMC has gone back on its promise to repeal the Mubarak-era emergency laws that allowed arrests without trial. An estimated 12,000 civilians have been arrested and sent to military courts.

• It decreed that only 20 of the 100 members of the committee to draft Egypt’s new constitution will come from Parliament and the remaining 80 will be appointed by the generals and the interim prime minister’s cabinet.

• The generals are demanding that the new constitution establish the military as guardian of “constitutional legitimacy,” giving it broad political powers, including exemption from civilian oversight.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians, including a very large Islamist presence, rallied in Cairo’s Tahrir square Friday to express opposition to the military’s plans to hold on to power.

The State Department met this month with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood’s new Freedom and Justice Party, which is expected to do well in the parliamentary elections and play a major role in the new parliament.

Hopes for democracy run high, but how much Egyptians actually get will depend on how much control the army is willing to surrender – and how much the people will let it get away with.