liberation – Hybrid Learning

PARTNI UNITED LIBERATION ORGANIZATION

Batoota — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 17:05:51 +0000

PARTNI UNITED LIBERATION ORGANIZATION. A Muslim separatist organization in Thailand, the Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO) was established in 1968 by Tenku Bira Kotanila, who claimed to speak on behalf of Malay Muslims living in the four southern Thai provinces of Pattani (spelled Patani in Malay), Narathiwat, Yala, and Satun. Its goal is to detach these provinces from Thailand and combine them into an independent state based on Islamic principles. The creation of such a state is considered essential in order to preserve the “Malayness” and Islamic way of life of the local Malay Muslims, which are perceived to be threatened by the assimilationist policies of successive Thai governments. PULO also considers Thailand to be an occupying power from whom independence can be wrested only through the use of armed force.
PULO’s emphasis on protecting the Malay and Islamic character of these Malay Muslims through achieving independence for the area serves as the basis for its political mobilization efforts, since the wide appeal of the agenda cuts across social classes and secular and religious boundaries; it has proved particularly attractive to younger, more militant Malay Muslims. It has also attracted moral, financial, and other support from Malaysian individuals and organizations associated either directly or indirectly with the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS), which draws most of its political support from Muslims in Malaysian states bordering Thailand. Another source of external support is the Middle East, where financial contributions are made to PULO, usually in the name of charity, by some governments, by organizations such as the Islamic Call Society in Libya, and by a few wealthy individuals. Furthermore, one faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization has provided training in Syria for small groups of PULO guerrillas.
PULO has a fairly sophisticated organizational structure with a central committee, headed by a chairman, at the top. Under the central committee is a secretariat with political, economic, military, and foreign sections. Policy-making headquarters are in Mecca, and operational headquarters are in Kelantan, Malaysia. Within Thailand, PULO guerrillas conduct both military and political activities.
In 1981 PULO claimed twenty thousand members, a figure that probably was exaggerated. Independent estimates of PULO guerrillas operating in three of the provinces (no separatist guerrilla activity has been noted in Satun) have previously ranged from around two hundred to six hundred. In the early 1990s, however, PULO’s membership was smaller than before, and the number of guerrillas was thought to be fewer than a hundred. This is largely owing to the fact that in the mid-1980s Saudi authorities became disturbed by PULO activities such as openly issuing citizen identification cards, in the name of the Patani Republic, to Malay Muslim workers from Thailand in Saudi Arabia. PULO headquarters in Mecca were raided, some of the staff were arrested, about seven hundred PULO members were deported, and Tenku Bira Kotanila was replaced as chairman by Dr. Ar-rong Moorang. These developments left the organization in disarray, and it is still trying to regroup.
[See also Thailand.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Che Man, W. K. Muslim Separatism: The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand. Singapore and New York, 1990), Includes the most detailed information available to the public as regards the organization and activities of the Patani United Liberation Organization and other Muslim separatist groups in South Thailand.
Dulyakasem, Uthai. “The Emergence and Escalation of Ethnic Nationalism: The Case of the Muslim Malays in Southern Siam.” In Islam and Society in Southeast Asia, edited by Taufik Abdullah and Sharon Siddique, pp. 208-249. Singapore, 1986. Perceptive examination of the factors explaining the emergence and development of ethnic nationalism and separatist organizations among the Malay Muslims of South Thailand.
Satha-Anand, Chaiwat. Islam and Violence: A Case Study of Violent Events in the Four Southern Provinces, Thailand, 1976-1981. Tampa, 1986. Discusses in some depth acts of violence in South Thailand involving Malay Muslim separatist organizations, including the Patani United Liberation Organization, and shows how Islam is used to rationalize political violence.

LADD THOMAS

PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION

Batoota — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 02:51:09 +0000

PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION. The recognized representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 in Jerusalem. Its first leader, the lawyer Ahmad Shuqayri, was a close ally of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the PLO was very much under the influence of Egypt during its earliest years. The PLO was founded in response to a number of factors, including the growing salience of the Palestine question in inter-Arab politics, the increasing friction between the Arab states and Israel over water diversion projects and other issues, and the growth of underground, independent Palestinian nationalist activity, which Arab governments, notably that of Egypt, wanted to preempt.
Very soon after its foundation, the PLO became the arena for much of this nationalist activity, which was increasingly directed at achieving independence of political action from the Arab regimes, in addition to the basic aim of liberating Palestine and securing the return of the approximately 700,000 Palestinians who had been made refugees in 1948. In the wake of the June 1967 war, and the attendant shattering of the prestige of these regimes, independent Palestinian political formations with a more radical program than that of the original founders of the PLO, most notably Fatah, took over the organization, and have dominated it ever since.
This change was signaled by the choice in 1969 of Fatah’s leader, Yasir Arafat, as chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, the organization’s guiding body. He has continued to hold this position since that time. In 1968, the PLO’s charter was amended to reflect the ideology of militant groups like Fatah, which advocated “armed struggle” against Israel, initiated by the Palestinians themselves, as the main vehicle for the liberation of Palestine. This was in contrast to the original approach of Shuqayri and others of his generation, who had accepted that the leading role in dealing with Israel must be played by the Arab states.
The new leaders of the PLO were younger, more radical, and generally of more modest social backgrounds than the old-line politicians from upper-class families who had dominated the organization, and Palestinian politics, until this point. They also came from disparate political backgrounds. Arafat and his closest colleagues in Fatah, such as Salah Khalaf (Abu `Iyad) and Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), were deeply influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood during their student days in Egypt. Others, such as Faruq al-Qaddfimi (Abu Lutf) of Fatah, or George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were closer to Ba`thist or other Arab nationalist ideologies. They agreed, however, on the principle of Palestinian agency, that Palestinians themselves must initiate political action and other forms of struggle, and shared a profound skepticism regarding the professed commitment of Arab governments to act in support of the Palestinians.
In the wake of the 1967 war, the PLO rapidly became the central focus of Palestinian political activity, and by 1974 was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Palestinians themselves, by the Arab and Islamic worlds, and by much of the rest of the world. As the “armed struggle” against Israel from within the Occupied Territories and across the frontiers flagged after 1970, the PLO scored more diplomatic and media successes, all the while developing into a “para-state,” particularly in Lebanon.
At the same time, beginning in 1974 with the twelfth meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the highest representative body of the PLO, the organization began to move away from its original maximalist policy calling for the liberation of Palestine in its entirety, and toward a two-state solution that called for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This evolution was
completed with the resolutions of the nineteenth PNC meeting in 1988 and the Palestinian declaration of independence by the PNC in the same year, which firmly established the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem (to be achieved via negotiations with Israel in an international forum) as the PLO’s political objective.
This political evolution, while representative of majority Palestinian sentiment and welcome to most Arab states and much of the international community, met with the resistance of an important minority among Palestinians. Initially, the main advocates of this resistance were the so-called rejectionist groups of the PLO, backed by Arab regimes that claimed to be opposed to a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict or to the recognition of Israel. As these states waned in their opposition or their importance, and as the rejectionist trend within the PLO weakened, Islamic radical groups increasingly came to lead the Palestinian opposition to the PLO’s policy of a negotiated, compromise settlement that would result in a West Bank/Gaza Strip state alongside Israel.
The most important of these Islamic groups, Hamas, founded in 1988 in the Gaza Strip, was an outgrowth of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, which had long been a political force among Palestinians. Ham-as soon spread to the West Bank and other areas inhabited by Palestinians. Hamas was established in a response to several factors, including the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories in December 1987, the growth of militant, independent Islamic formations such as Islamic Jihad, which strongly criticized the moderate line of the Muslim Brotherhood vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation, and the PLO’s political shift toward a compromise solution with Israel. The PLO in turn responded to the formidable challenge posed by Hamas by on occasion attempting to cooperate with it, while at the same time pushing ahead with its own program, a strategy resulting in Palestinian acceptance of the U.S.sponsored peace negotiations with Israel, begun in 1991.
Hamas rapidly became the main focus of the internal opposition to the participation in these negotiations by a Palestinian delegation operating under the leadership of the PLO, and the main challenger to the PLO for leadership of the Palestinian people. Beset by financial problems, many of them rooted in a withdrawal of funds by the Arab Gulf states (who resented the PLO’s failure to support them during the Gulf War of 19901991), in September 1993 the PLO signed a Declaration of Principles with Israel in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. This surprise development appeared to rescue the PLO from a critical situation, while at the same time opening up prospects of a change in the status quo in the Occupied Territories and sparking new Palestinian opposition.
[See also Arab-Israeli Conflict; Hamas; Israel; West Bank and Gaza.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abu `Iyad [Salah Khalafl, with Eric Rouleau. My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle. New York, 1981. A frank, first-person account by one of the founders of Fatah.
Brand, Laurie A. Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution Building and the Search for State. New York, 1988. Careful examination of some of the major constitutive organizations of the PLO.
Brynen, Rex. Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon. Boulder, 1990. Study of the PLO’s “Lebanese era,” from 1969 to 1982. Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power, and Politics. Cambridge, 1984. Standard work on the history of the PLO during its first two decades.
Gresh, Alain. The PLO: The Struggle Within; Towards an Independent Palestinian State. London, 1985. Detailed and knowledgeable examination of the evolution of PLO policies.
Khalidi, Rashid. Under Siege: P.L.O. Decisionmaking during the 1982 War. Case study of how the PLO functioned during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, based on primary sources.
Mishal, Shaul. The PLO under ‘Arafat: Between Gun and Olive Branch. New Haven, 1986. Critical analysis of shifts in PLO strategy through the mid-1980s.
Quandt, William B., Fuad Jabber, and Ann Mosely Lesch. The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism. Berkeley, 1973. Valuable study of different facets of Palestinian nationalism.
Rouleau, Eric. Les Palestinians: D’une guerre a l’autre. Paris, 1984. Acute analysis of the PLO and its leadership by a journalist who has closely followed its development.
Sahliyeh, Emile F. The PLO after the Lebanon War. Boulder, 1986. Assessment of the impact of the 1982 Lebanese war on the PLO and its strategy.
Shemesh, Moshe. The Palestinian Entity, 19S9-197¢: Arab Politics and the PLO. London, 1988. Examines the development of the idea of a Palestinian state up to 1974.
RASHID KHALIDI

MORO NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT

Batoota — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 16:05:28 +0000

MORO NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT. To safeguard Moro (Philippine Muslim) interests and cultural identity, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was formed in 1969 by a group of young, progressive Moros headed by Nur Misuari, a former student activist at the University of the Philippines. The formation of the MNLF was in response to the historical manifestation of religious and political animosity between the Christian majority and Muslim minority in the Philippines. In addition, the acceleration of national integration and development programs during the 1950s and 1 960s resulted in an influx of Christian settlers into Moroland (Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan). The Moros suspected the government’s motives behind integration and feared that it intended to destroy their Muslim community (ummah).

When President Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law in the Philippines in 1972, the conflict between Christians and Muslims intensified. The MNLF was able to obtain the support of Muslim leaders such as President Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi of Libya and Tun Mustapha Harun, Chief Minister of Sabah, Malaysia. In 1974, the Central Committee of the MNLF issued a manifesto declaring its intention to establish an independent Bangsa Moro Republik. With the support of Libya and other member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the MNLF was able to escalate the war during 1973-1976, which forced the Philippine government to sign the Tripoli Agreement conceding full autonomy to Moroland.
The rapid ascendancy of the MNLF, however, can be attributed not so much to effective organization as to a fortuitous combination of circumstances, including the prior existence of various Moro armed groups fighting against the government and the support of several Muslim countries in response to the plight of the Moros. The MNLF was a loosely knit organization and had been unable to establish a clear chain of command. The thirteen-member Central Committee contented itself with setting broad policy outlines.
The toll of the armed conflict was tremendous, and the MNLF’s success was short-lived. The Philippine government failed to abide by the Tripoli Agreement, the ceasefire collapsed, and fighting resumed in late 1977. In the same year, Misuari’s leadership was challenged and other factions-the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and MNLF-Reformist Group (MNLFRG)–emerged. Although the divisions within the movement reflected underlying ideological and ethnic differences, the various factions were founded on the basis of a common ideology, Islam. The MNLF is more socially progressive, with strong support from the ethnic Tausug, while the MNLF-RG draws its support from the more conservative Maranao, and the MILF from religious and conservative elements of the Maguindanao.
Under President Corazon Aquino, the Philippine government again failed to proceed with a negotiated settlement on the basis of the Tripoli Agreement but was committed to a constitutional provision granting limited autonomy to the Muslims in the south. The MNLF, however, dissociated itself from the institution of the autonomy provisions. Rather, it called on the different Moro factions to unite in a renewed armed struggle for an independent Moro state.
The MNLF-led movement must be credited with some success in terms of the recognition achieved for Muslims. For example, Muslims have been able to extract concessions from successive Philippine governments under Marcos and Aquino. These include the official recognition of Islam and Moro culture, the establishment of shari`ah courts, and the granting of limited autonomy. The Muslims have also received educational and economic assistance from Muslim countries, and the MNLF itself has been given observer status in the OIC.
[See also Philippines.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Che Man, W. K. Muslim Separatism: The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand. Singapore and New York, 1990. Comparative study of the Moro and the Malay separatist struggle.
Gowing, Peter G. Muslim Filipinos: Heritage and Horizon. Quezon City, 1979. Comprehensive overview of the contemporary Moro community and its problems within the larger Philippine society. Majul, Cesar Adib. Muslims in the Philippines. Quezon City, 1973. Excellent account of the history of Muslims in the Philippines.
W. K. CHE MAN

LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF IRAN

Batoota — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:35:27 +0000

LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF IRAN. A political party whose program is based on a modernist interpretation of Islam, the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI) was founded in May 1961 by leaders of the former National Resistance Movement (NRM). A few days after the ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (Muhammad Musaddiq) in August 1953, with his close collaborators either under arrest or surveillance, some of Mossadegh’s less politically prominent followers founded the NRM as a secret organization to uphold the nationalist cause under the repressive conditions of the new dictatorship. Among its leaders were the cleric Sayyid Riza Zanjani, Mehdi Bazargan, the lawyer Hasan Nazih, and Muhammad Rahim `Ata’i. The NRM had two social bases: the bazaar and students. Key NRM. leaders came from a bazaar background, which facilitated contacts with Mossadeghist merchants who financed the movement; students, for their part, demonstrated. Based in Tehran, the NRM was also present in a few provincial centers, most notably Mashhad, where ‘Ali Shari ati was active.

The NRM organized protest demonstrations against the regime on the occasions of Mossadegh’s trial (fall 1953) Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit to Iran (December 1953), sham parliamentary elections (winter 1954) and the new oil agreement that resolved Iran’s dispute with Great Britain (spring 1954). Internal disagreements-between secular and Islamist activists, between opponents and proponents of collaboration with the communists-weakened the movement, and after 1954 the increasing efficiency of the shah’s security apparatus caused NRM activity to decline, until the organization was crushed in 1957 when all top activists were arrested and held prisoner for eight months.
When in 1960 Mossadeghists became active again in the course of the shah’s liberalization policies, carried out in response to President John F. Kennedy’s election, conflict arose between erstwhile NRM. Leaders and the National Front’s old guard of former cabinet members. Two issues were at stake. First, NRM veterans and their young sympathizers in the National Front wanted to target the shah personally, whereas the more moderate National Front leaders tried to spare him, hoping that he would become a constitutional monarch. Second, the core members of the former NRM, most of whom were also active in Islamic circles, wanted to mobilize Iranians by appealing to their religious values, a policy the National Front’s secular leadership rejected. The dispute came to a head in May 1961 when Mehdi Bazargan, Sayyid Mahmud Taleqani, Hasan Nazih, Yad Allah Sahabi, and eight other men formed a separate party, the LMI. The party was defined as Muslim, Iranian, constitutionalist, and Mossadeghist.
During the nineteen months of its activity, the LMI opposed the shah’s regime and its policies, calling on the ruler to respect the constitution. When the shah named the independent politician ‘Ali Amini prime minister, the LMI tried to accommodate him so as to weaken the shah, unlike the National Front, which considered Amini too pro-American. Amini’s resignation in July 1962 heralded the end of liberalization in Iran. In January 1963 the shah had the entire leadership of the LMI and the National Front arrested, after both had sharply criticized his planned referendum on what would become the “White Revolution.” Although the secular politicians were soon released, the LMI leaders were sentenced to several years imprisonment.
After the violent repression of the June 1963 riots, which propelled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini into the political limelight and in which certain lower level LMI activists participated, the shah’s rule became increasingly autocratic. This made any oppositional party activity in Iran impossible. Several young LMI militants concluded that the legal constitutional methods of their elders having failed, armed struggle was now called for: they formed the Mujahidin-i Khalq [see Mujahidin, article on Mujahidin-i Khalq]. Others decided to continue the struggle against the shah abroad and formed an LMI-in-exile. The chief initiators of this move were ‘Ali Shari`ati, Ibrahim Yazdi, and Mustafa Chamran. The first was active in Paris until his return to Iran in 1964. Yazdi’s base was Houston, Texas, but he was also in close contact with Khomeini in Iraq. Chamran first worked in the United States but then moved to Lebanon, where he had a leading role in the formation of the Amal movement [see Amal].
The LMI reconstituted itself in 1977 with Bazargan as chairman. In 1978 the party would have preferred to accept the shah’s offer of free elections, but recognizing Khomeini’s hold on Iranian public opinion, it went along with Bazargan’s rejection of elections. In the last weeks of the shah’s regime, LMI figures played a leading role in negotiating with striking oil workers, military leaders, and U.S. diplomats to smooth the transfer of power to the revolutionaries. In 1979 most LMI leaders held key positions in the provisional government. After its ouster in the wake of the seizure of the U.S. hostages in November, the LMI gradually became an oppositional force. It was represented in the first parliament of the Islamic Republic but barred from presenting candidates in subsequent elections. After 1982 it sharply criticized Khomeini’s unwillingness to end the Iran-Iraq War. Since then its activities have been sharply restricted, and many of its leaders have been in and out of prison.
Remarkable continuity characterizes the LMI in its two periods of activity. The party’s program derives from a liberal interpretation of Shi’i Islam that rejects both royal and clerical dictatorship in favor of political and economic liberalism, which are both considered more conducive to the flowering of Islamic values than coercion. Based on a relatively narrow constituency of religiously inclined professionals, the party’s major weakness has been its inability to engender mass support.
[See also Iran; Iranian Revolution of 1979; and the biographies of Bdzargan, Khomeini, Pahlavi, Shari ati, and Taleqani.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chehabi, H. E. Iranian, Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini. Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1990. In-depth study of the history and ideology of the party.
H. E. CHEHABI