Restoring the Balance
What role could a major religion play in tackling the environmental crisis? In Restoring the Balance, earthrise explores how a groundbreaking Islamic environmental charter – Al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth – is inspiring action across continents. From its high-profile launch at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya, to grassroots projects in the United Kingdom and water-stressed communities in Jordan, presenter Amanda Burrell follows its journey over the course of a year. Along the way, she meets ecotheologians, farmers, faith leaders, and youth activists all drawing on Islamic principles of stewardship, justice, and balance ('mizan') to protect the planet. As climate and nature breakdown intensifies, could Islam help restore harmony between humanity and the natural world?
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Al Jazeera
7 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Australia confident AUKUS security pact will proceed despite US review
Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles said he is 'very confident' that the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom will continue to move forward despite news that the Pentagon is reviewing the 2021 deal between the three nations. News of the review was first reported on Thursday as US defence officials said re-assessing the pact was necessary to ensure that the military deal, agreed to with much fanfare under former US President Joe Biden, was in line with US President Donald Trump's 'America First' agenda. The pact includes a deal worth hundreds of billions of dollars to provide Australia with closely-guarded nuclear propulsion technology. Only five other countries besides the US can build nuclear submarines: the UK, China, Russia, France and India. 'The meetings that we've had with the United States have been very positive in respect of AUKUS,' Defence Minister Marles told the ABC network. A review of the deal is 'something that it's perfectly natural for an incoming administration to do … It's exactly what we did', Marles said. 'There is a plan here. We are sticking to it, and we're going to deliver it,' he said. Under the terms of the AUKUS deal, Australia and the UK will work with the US to design nuclear-class submarines ready for delivery to Australia in the 2040s, according to the US Naval Institute. The three countries are already close military allies and share intelligence, but AUKUS focuses on key strategic areas, such as countering the rise of China and its expansion into the Pacific. Due to the long lead time in building the submarines under the AUKUS deal, Australia also agreed to buy up to three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines during the 2030s. The US and UK also plan to start the rotational deployment of their submarines out of Australia in 2027. But some Trump administration officials, such as Pentagon policy adviser Elbridge Colby, say the submarine deal puts foreign governments ahead of US national security. 'My concern is why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it?' Colby said last year. Other officials, including US Representative Joe Courtney from Connecticut – a US state which has an industry focused on building submarines for the US Navy – say the deal is in the 'best interest of all three AUKUS nations, as well as the Indo-Pacific region as a whole'. 'To abandon AUKUS – which is already well under way – would cause lasting harm to our nation's standing with close allies and certainly be met with great rejoicing in Beijing,' Courtney said. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to discuss the deal when he meets Trump next week during a meeting of the G7 leaders in Canada. Earlier this year, Australia made a $500m payment towards AUKUS and plans to spend $2bn this year to speed up the production process in the US of the Virginia-class submarines. The UK, like Australia, has downplayed concerns that the Trump administration could renege on the pact. A UK official told the Reuters news agency that the deal is 'one of the most strategically important partnerships in decades' that will also produce 'jobs and economic growth in communities across all three nations'. 'It is understandable that a new administration would want to review its approach to such a major partnership, just as the UK did last year,' the official said.
Al Jazeera
19 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
UK crime agency freezes assets of disgraced Sheikh Hasina ally
The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) has frozen properties in the United Kingdom owned by Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, Bangladesh's former Minister of Land, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit (I-Unit) can reveal. The move follows legal requests from Bangladesh authorities to take action against assets owned by Chowdhury, a political ally of deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of the now-banned Awami League party. Chowdhury is under investigation by Bangladesh authorities for money laundering. Last night, in a statement to the I-Unit, an NCA spokesperson confirmed the freezing order: 'We can confirm that the NCA has secured freezing orders against a number of properties as part of an on-going civil investigation.' The property freeze means, in effect, that the assets cannot be sold by Chowdhury. The action by the police agency, often dubbed 'Britain's FBI', coincided with this week's visit to London by Bangladesh's interim leader, Professor Muhammad Yunus. Last year, Al Jazeera revealed Chowdhury, 56, owns more than 350 properties in the UK. While the full extent of the NCA's action is not yet understood, the I-Unit can disclose that Chowdhury's luxury home in St John's Wood, London, is part of the asset freeze. The home, bought for 11 million pounds ($14.8m), was the scene of secret filming by undercover reporters from Al Jazeera's I-Unit. Reporters met Chowdhury during a long-running investigation into wealth that he had accumulated while he was still a government minister. During the meeting, Chowdhury talked expansively to reporters about his global property portfolio and revealed his taste for expensive suits and designer 'baby croc' leather shoes. He described his close ties to the now deposed Sheikh Hasina, telling Al Jazeera's journalists, 'I am like her son, actually.' 'She knows I have a business here,' he also told them. The I-Unit revealed that Chowdhury, from a powerful family in the port city of Chittagong, amassed a property empire despite a $12,000 annual limit as part of the nation's currency laws on the amount a citizen can take out of Bangladesh. The investigation uncovered that Chowdhury spent more than $500m on real estate in London, Dubai, and New York but did not declare his overseas assets on his Bangladesh tax returns. The undercover meeting was part of the Al Jazeera documentary The Minister's Millions, broadcast last October. Chowdhury had been a close ally of deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled Bangladesh in August 2024 after hundreds were killed as security forces cracked down on student protests. After Hasina's departure, Bangladesh authorities launched an investigation into allegations of widespread corruption in her government. Following the uprising and street violence in Bangladesh, the I-Unit tracked down Chowdhury to his London home, where he could be observed taking leisurely walks around his exclusive neighbourhood, which includes Lord's Cricket Ground. In earlier statements to Al Jazeera, Chowdhury said the funds used to buy his overseas properties came from legitimate businesses outside Bangladesh, which he had owned for years. The former minister claimed he was the subject of a politically motivated 'witch-hunt' against him.
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Al Jazeera
UK MPs react to report alleging David Cameron ‘threatened' ICC withdrawal
Several United Kingdom lawmakers have criticised the previous government over allegations in a recent media report that former Foreign Secretary David Cameron 'privately threatened' to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza. The report, published on Monday by the UK-based outlet Middle East Eye (MEE), cited sources with knowledge of a phone call Cameron allegedly made to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan on April 23, 2024, after he had given advance notice of his intention to apply for the warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. MEE's report cited unnamed sources, including former staff in Khan's office, and had seen minutes of the conversation, claiming that Cameron warned the arrest warrants, which were issued in November that year, would be – in quotes reported by the sources – tantamount to 'dropping a hydrogen bomb', warning that if the ICC went ahead, the UK would 'defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute'. Khan reportedly stood his ground, with sources telling MEE that he said afterwards that he did not like 'being pressurised'. 'I won't say if it rises to blackmail – I don't like being threatened,' he reportedly said, adding that the government was 'debasing' the UK with its clear attack on the independence of the court and the rule of international law. Neither Khan nor Cameron, who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016, and now sits in the House of Lords as a life peer, has commented on the report. Following the report's publication, Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said on X that Cameron 'and every UK minister complicit in arming and enabling Israel's genocide in Gaza' should be National Party MP Chris Law said the allegations were 'shocking', but added the country was 'not seeing much better under Labour'.Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Labour MP, called for an 'independent inquiry into the UK's role in the Gaza genocide'.Zack Polanski, the deputy leader of the Green Party, was cited by MEE as saying: 'It's been clear for all to see that both the former and current government have stood with the oppressors, not the marginalised.' When the ICC applied for the arrest warrants in May last year, the previous Conservative Party government, a strong backer of Israel, decried the move as 'not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in'. In July, the new Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, dropped the previous Rishi Sunak-led government's bid to challenge the ICC's power to seek the warrants, which were issued for Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders in November.
