Media Monitors Network (MMN)

"While Malcolm X was in Mecca performing his pilgrimage, he wrote to his assistants: "They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, 'The brotherhood! The people of all races, colors, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God.' . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the oneness of man under one God."

"The local participatory approach to development is an alternative to the terribly wasteful and even harmful top-down approach to international aid used previously in Pakistan. With world peace increasingly at stake because of the Pakistani situation, bottom-up aid is the urgent alternative to the current approach."

"The first step toward a smarter policy in the region is to recognize that the United States is part of the problem. In Afghanistan, the United States still could do what it should have done after 9/11; withdrawing its forces would extinguish the fire of the Taliban resurgence. In Pakistan, Musharraf is likely to fall, but such a close U.S. hug for him makes it more likely that Islamists could eventually win power. So the U.S. should use Musharraf’s declaration of martial law as a reason to terminate all aid to his regime. The United States is so unpopular in the region that supporting a governing alliance between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would probably delegitimize even the middle ground in Pakistan. For moderate forces to have the best chance in that nuclear-armed nation, the United States, paradoxically, should refrain from supporting them, and stay out of Pakistani politics."