MRN

The aspiration of the Media Review Network is to dispel the myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and to foster bridges of understanding among the diverse people of our country. The Media Review Network believes that Muslim perspectives on issues impacting on South Africans are a prerequisite to a better appreciation of Islam.

Ethiopian students affair shows prevalent racism in Isarael

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

When the children of Petah Tikva have all found schools to attend, society will not stop being racist

By Gideon Levy

(source: Businesswire.com)

All of a sudden, we can say "racism." A shock wave has struck complacent Israeli society. A few dozen Ethiopian children were not accepted to religious schools in Petah Tikva. That is truly terrible, everyone tsked-tsked at the heart-rending picture of Aschalo Sama, a boy without a school. Even President Shimon Peres expressed shock. Everyone is permitted to be shocked; it is politically correct.

Oh, how beautiful we are, how enlightened we seem to ourselves. Look how we fight racism, undaunted and uncompromising. And yet, in a twinkling, this shame will be forgotten, and we will be left with the many other manifestations of society’s racism, to which we remain sleepily indifferent.

Religious racism in Isaraeli schools

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

(sourc: Jerusalem Post)

There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court with women from “Ahoti ”, a Sephardic feminist organization waiting for a ruling on the religious girls’ school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim-Crow-like separations in place.

What is happening in the Beit Yakov school is nothing less than the formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardic girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or “Hasidic” girls, and they have different teachers, different classes, and even different recess times and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups of girls do not heaven forbid mingle during the breaks. It’s not just Emanuel, but in other religious girls’ schools around the country, such as Elad, where parents protested to ensure that a Sephardic girl would not be allowed in to the class.

Open letter

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

Poisoning The Tunnels

The Ambassador,
Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt – Pretoria

The Media Review Network condemns in the strongest possible terms the latest actions by the Egyptian government to further tighten the strangle hold on the beleaguered population of the Gaza. Despite the denials by the Egyptian Government of the use of poisonous gases pumped into the tunnels, the bombing of the entrances to these tunnels continues and is equally reprehensible.

This unexplained indifference of the Egyptian government to the Palestinian peoples’ suffering is a source of eternal shame on the Government and people of Egypt. Egypt’s insistence to keep the Rafah crossing point sealed off despite the catastrophic and disastrous consequences for the Gazans is further testimony to the inhuman treatment of the Palestinians by the Egyptian government.

Barack Obama george bush the right to life

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Zackie Achmat

(source: Writing Rights)

What is President Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel and his brother Zeke Emanuel up to in Africa and South Africa? When people in the United States elected Barack Obama their President, it symbolised historic change in the US and elsewhere. The most important global expectations placed on the Obama administration included starting to mend the imperial legacy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and to help save lives. Obama inherited a destroyed local and global economy, an environmental crisis, the deepest social inequalities in US society, the largest recorded budget deficit, global disgust and fear based on the Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He cannot fix these in a day or a decade.

These wars were not simply neo-conservative over-reach that destroyed the US image abroad; increased its public debt to hasten the collapse of banks; lined the pockets of the Bush-Cheney war and oil companies; undermined international law; they were all these and more. The Bush Wars attacked the most fundamental right of all — the right to a dignified life. Foremost among its victims are the countless households in Iraq and Afghanistan that were destroyed through bullets, disease, sectarian strife, bombs, torture, imprisonment and neglect. He also blighted the lives of US soldiers and their families.