Rai [Archives:2004/755/Press Review]

6 July 2004
Main headlines
– YR 5.7 billion, embezzlements of both ministries of agriculture and fish wealth
– 166 the death toll, a new government statistics for the victims of war in Saada

Columnist Faisal al-Soufi says Arab regimes have kept manipulating then religious question in their attempt to get rid of secular forces influence. So they sometimes work for strengthening the Muslim Brotherhood and when they feel that the movement got strong and posing a threat they move to encourage the Salafi movement and so on. So when the regimes try to get rid of this or that of such movements they do that via creating a new problem leading to annoying results. Always the use of the religious card in the political game was a means for effecting political balance or political stability or to curbing the role of their opponents and that policy was always a source of catastrophes.
The political system in any Arab country has to guarantee for the people the freedom of practicing their ideologies and calling for them as long as those ideologies and sects are fait accompli and do not interfere but in the area of organisation of this practice according to constitutional principles and legal texts.
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