I am very pleased to announce that we at Eteraz.Org: States of Islam have decided to partner/affililate with the newly launched activist website, Avaaz.Org: The World In Action. Please check out the sidebar button.

Avaaz, which is Urdu for Voice, is a project of Res Publica, and has affiliations with Moveon.Org, leading international magazine OpenDemocracy, and down under campaigner Getup.org.au. 

Avaaz will be integrating the highest level of technological sophistication with their global initiatives and will attempt to counter the undue influence of Western governments and the corporate world by empowering the world's "second superpower" (the global citizenry). You can learn more about them at their about page. Their site is currently in beta and soon will be available in a pilot program in the languages: English, French, Spanish, Portugese, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic -- and in phase two, expansion to Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, among others.

Working with Avaaz.Org helps us at Eteraz.Org by allowing us to have reliable inroads at the universalist level -- in the world's major issues -- while providing us an umbrella under which to operate and focus on our specific, more focused issues. Avaaz provides us a trustworthy group who can execute large scale plans on the world's biggest issues (Iraq, Poverty, Climate, and Genocide) where our singular voice would be too easily lost.

I have been able to meet with key staffers from Avaaz. They are multi-ethnic, intelligent, and authentic people. I questioned them aggressively about their intentions -- probing them on any latent orientalist or imperialist tendencies. I didn't find any. Just the fact that they have so warmly embraced an Urdu word as their name spoke volumes to me. It shows a certain sensitivity. There is also a very warm willingness to work with the already established activists on the ground, as opposed to a desire to promote an alien Western NGO norm (which has been such a dismal failure).

Ultimately, Avaaz is an umbrella group for global activism rooted in the ideas of Justice (as opposed to Intervention), peace (as opposed to war), and Equality (as opposed to imposed democracy), has been necessary since about 2001.

I therefore encourage you to go to their website and participate in their first call to action called Block The Escalation In Iraq -- for which they are running an ingenuous little ad and looking for 25,000 signatories.

I especially beseech Muslims worldwide to take Avaaz very seriously. There is finally have a mainstream organization that will stand up for most of our internationalist concerns, and will help usget mobilized from our computer and cell phones. 

Finally, I am working with Avaaz to help spread the word in the blogosphere. Yursil has made a badge (the one you see on our sidebar). If you are interested in putting it on your site, I've put the html in a reader diary here).