CAIRO: In today’s hyper-competitive business and financial world, Islamic financial systems are witnessing an unprecedented growth. However, many scholars, researchers and academics are currently accusing the system of creating confusion. Issues like participation of Islamic banking in the stock exchange markets, mortgage and the overall operation of Islamic financial systems, particularly in western societies, tend …

The timing of the execution of Saddam Hussein on the first morning of Eid al-Adha, the video clips officially released by the Iraqi government and those from the cell phones documenting the execution, triggered a wave of anger and provoked anti-Shia and anti-Iranian sentiment in Jordan. Jordanians interpreted the event as an act of Iranian-Shia …

Just as it was half a century ago, Lebanon is once again a pioneer and pace-setter in the Arab world, though this time the direction of movement may be toward destruction and incomprehensible violence. For years Beirut and Lebanon were known as the Paris and Switzerland of the Middle East, reflecting their freewheeling leisure activities, …

What’s America’s strategy in the Middle East? US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week sketched a new framework based on what she calls the “realignment of states that want to contain Iran and its radical Muslim proxies. In an interview Tuesday, Rice summarized the new strategy that has been coming together over the last …

You could see it in Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s eyes, sitting atop the rostrum behind George W Bush as he gave this week’s State of the Union address. The vacant stare. The idle scratching of her cheek. Even Dick Cheney spent most of the time looking at his feet. They had heard …

Tunisian President Zein al-Abedin ben Ali has on official occasions often referred to the legacy of the great Arab writer Ibn Khaldoun, born in Tunis in 1332. The last time he did so was nearly two months ago on the 19th anniversary of his coup against President Habib Bourguiba. This frequent mention of Ibn Khaldoun …

Less than a week before Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated, his compatriot Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, was made editor-in-chief for a day at Radikal, a small but influential newspaper. In a front-page article, Pamuk drew attention to the throngs of security personnel needed to ensure that Greek Orthodox …

Can politics learn from history? Or is it subject to a fatal compulsion to repeat the same mistakes, despite the disastrous lessons of the past? President George W. Bush’s new strategy for Iraq has posed anew this age – old philosophical and historical question. Ostensibly, Bush has embarked on a new political and military strategy …

JEZREEL VALLEY, Israel: When my grandfather was on his deathbed, began one of my Palestinian-Israeli students, he took the key from the house from which he was exiled in 1948 and went for a last visit. The Jewish woman in the house was alarmed when we knocked on the door and asked us to leave. …

When the end of ideology was celebrated first in the 1950s and then, more emphatically still, in the 1990s no one foresaw that religion, the bane of politics in the first half of the 20th century, would return to that role with a vengeance. Daniel Bell and Raymond Aron wrote about the end of fascist …

For a nation bitterly divided over Iraq, the one point of agreement seems to be that Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is the right commander for American forces in Baghdad. That gives Petraeus a surge of the most important strategic asset in this war- which is time. But it also locks him into an awkward role …

I spent two days in Beirut in late 2002. And the tension I sensed simmering between people there even during this short stay has come to my recollection in light of recent events. One could not escape the fear that as soon as the last generation that experienced the civil war was replaced by a …

Sometimes we live in a hall of mirrors. The last time I saw burning tires on Lebanon’s streets was in May 1992, when the incompetent government of Prime Minister Omar Karami could only watch as the Lebanese pound went into freefall. Karami was compelled to tender his resignation, and after the interim government of Rashid …

The good news for Ban Ki-Moon is that he has become secretary general of the United Nations at a time when the prospects for conflict between or among the world’s great powers – the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Europe, and India – are remote. The bad news is that the prospects for just about …

The Bush administration’s Middle East policy has been a failure. Not only has the promised “new Middle East not seen the light of day but, Iraq, the country Washington had designated as the fulcrum of democratic change in the region, has instead become a chaotic battleground costing thousands of Iraqi and tens of American lives …

Lebanon and Palestine are the most dramatic examples of the new ideological battle that now defines much of the Middle East, where local players and medium-strength regional powers often interact with one another in parallel with foreign powers’ interests and goals. While tensions were increasing in Beirut last weekend in anticipation of Tuesday’s nationwide strike …

A controversial TV channel that is the voice of Iraq’s anti-American insurgents looks set to launch another front in the propaganda war against the U.S. The head of al-Zawraa, which airs footage produced by the Islamic Army of Iraq, says he has finalized a deal for the channel to be distributed on three European satellites, …

In the post-Sept. 11, 2001 world it is thoroughly understandable that the United States should reorganize its military, diplomatic, and military resources to engage, understand, and, if required, contest militant Islam. Since those tragic events in 2001, Washington has initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; it has seized “enemy combatants, and has detained and interrogated …

Is there a curse hanging over Turkey? Each time the country achieves sustained development, something trips it up. This time it is the assassination on Friday of Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor, peacemaker and one of Turkey’s most prominent Armenians. Turkey is trying to rise to the challenge. Denunciations of the murder fill the airwaves, …

It is often claimed in the West that Muslims are too sensitive to criticism and that they react emotionally to those who dare to challenge their Islamic dogmas or medieval traditions and norms. To support this argument, critics point out that Muslims have always committed violence, threatened and murdered opponents, and burned the embassies and …

The death watch for Fidel Castro is something that only Gabriel Garcia Marquez could get right. His novel “Autumn of the Patriarch captures perfectly the moral squalor, political paralysis, and savage ennui that enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long-term dictator. Commandante Fidel’s departure from power, of course, will be solely a matter …

It has been argued that wars create opportunities for security and political changes. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 proved this saying in the negative sense. In fact, Lebanon was plunged into a period of chaos that was later exploited by Syria, which gained full control over the country for over two decades. After …

President George W. Bush has presented a new strategy for the war in Iraq that may be able to defeat the insurgency and reverse Iraq’s drift towards large-scale civil war. His speeches to date, however, raise many questions as to both the risks it will create over the coming months and the real-world ability to …

A dictator s sudden death almost always triggers political instability. But it is doubly dangerous when it poses a risk of region-wide destabilization and a scramble for influence among the world s greatest military powers – the United States, Russia, and China. The sudden death in late December of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan s authoritarian president-for-life …

With the start of the new congressional session, the Democratic exile has officially ended. So begins the hard part: governing. Over the past few years, many commentators have criticized the party s failure to put forward a coherent vision for national security. Now with control in the House and Senate, Democrats have an opportunity to …

With political polarization reaching alarming levels in Lebanon, one of the most pressing questions is whether or not the country will return to the gruesome chapters of its past and degenerate into civil war. It is difficult to predict when or how Lebanon will emerge from its present mess. The impression I got when I …

Reuters CAIRO: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a deal with Arab leaders this week: Washington will show an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Arabs will say they support the new US strategy for Iraq. But the actions on both sides of the deal are largely cosmetic or rhetorical, because the parties are …

The real impact of globalization on Muslim-Western relations has been mixed, but as the adage reminds us, “bad news travels fast. Ironically, the speed of globalization’s negative press can be attributed primarily to globalization itself. Empirically, it seems credible that income levels and life-expectancy in Muslim-majority countries have improved in the last half-century, as have …

It is a common perception that Americans do not pay enough attention to foreign policy. US policy makers and experts, as well as the American public, espouse the opinion that Americans are not well-informed about international relations. The midterm congressional election campaigns, following the passing of September 11 s fifth anniversary, have generated a renewed …

It was axiomatic during the Cold War that presidents should not gamble with matters of national security. The stakes were too high. The Bush administration’s Iraq policy has long suffered from a lack of that prudence – and the misplaced gambler’s instinct is especially evident now in the administration’s plan to send more troops to …