PARIS: “It is reasonable to believe in miracles, David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, once said. Today’s Israelis do not seem to believe in miracles. Instead, more than ever before they are obsessed by nightmares, foremost among them, the prospect of a nuclear Iran. To prevent a regime imbued with an absolute ideology …

CAIRO: It isn’t true that oriental dancing, which we have known for a long time, dates back to the Pharaonic times when murals depicted oriental dancers wearing the same costumes they wear today. It is also untrue that this dancing is a genuine art form ingrained in us and expressing the innate qualities of this …

LAHORE, Pakistan: In an attempt to restore peace in the restive Swat Valley, the Pakistani government signed a controversial peace deal in March with the Taliban-backed group Movement for the Enforcement of Sharia (TNSM). In the following month, the Taliban extended its grasp beyond Swat to within 60 miles of Islamabad, the nation s capital, …

CAMBRIDGE: The largest election in history, involving more than 700 million voters, has resulted in the victory of India’s ruling alliance, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the Indian National Congress. The verdict disproved gloomy predictions of a hung parliament and the further strengthening of regional parties. The new government will be far more …

PARIS: The European Union’s Lisbon treaty was initially greeted with enthusiasm, pride, and even hubris. It promised a more realistic and reasonable way forward than the ill-fated constitutional treaty that it replaced, and many of its supporters also hoped that a central feature of its predecessor – the notion of “constitutional patriotism – was still …

BEIRUT: In April, US President Barack Obama appointed a Muslim woman who wears the hijab (headscarf) to his White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The move has become a hot topic in Europe, where it has generated both questions and hope over whether European Muslim women could experience greater political participation. Of …

JERUSALEM: Bringing religion into the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be avoided. It is already part of the conflict and has been from its inception. But in public discourse the deeper cultural and religious roots of the conflict are usually omitted. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a function of a parallel renewal by both Jews and Arabs of …

LONDON: Thirty years ago this month, Margaret Thatcher came to power. Although precipitated by local conditions, the Thatcher (or more broadly the Thatcher-Reagan) revolution became an instantly recognizable global brand for a set of ideas that inspired policies to free markets from government interference. Three decades later, the world is in a slump, and many …

STRASBOURG: The European Union recently embarked on a policy of “constructive engagement with Belarus. None too soon. Previously, EU policy was to isolate Belarus, which itself was seeking isolation. That policy achieved almost nothing, save for bolstering the country’s authoritarian leader, President Aleksander Lukashenko. Belatedly and somewhat reluctantly, EU leaders have now accepted that they …

In their first White House meeting, former US President Jimmy Carter told former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat: “I can see the possibility that 10 years from now our ties to you in the economic, military and political spheres will be just as strong as the ties we now have with Israel. Carter’s prophecy has not …

NEW YORK: Perhaps no country on earth – not even Iraq, Afghanistan, or Sudan – has suffered more gravely from armed conflict in the past decade and a half than the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Several million people have died either directly in armed struggle or from forced displacement and the resulting health consequences. …

JERUSALEM: I was requested to officially greet His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, on May 11 at an interfaith meeting in Notre Dame, Jerusalem. This meeting was to celebrate the significant work that religious leaders of the Abrahamic faiths, and Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations, are undertaking to achieve peace in the Holy Land. I spoke …

LOS ANGELES: Tackling global warming, we are often told, is the defining task of our age. An army of pundits tells us that we need to cut emissions, and cut them immediately and drastically. But this argument is clearly losing the battle for hearts and minds. Global warming has now become the lowest-priority policy problem …

A major new report from doctors at University College, London, and medical journal The Lancet claims that climate change “is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Their solution means permanent recession, more famine and more disease. Killer heatwaves, insect-borne tropical diseases, flooding and hurricanes will affect billions over the next 100 years …

CAMBRIDGE: It may take a few months or a couple of years, but one way or another the United States and other advanced economies will eventually recover from today’s crisis. The world economy, however, is unlikely to look the same. Even with the worst of the crisis over, we are likely to find ourselves in …

TEL AVIV: The news is in: Israel’s press status has now been downgraded to “partly free by Freedom House, the organization dedicated to promoting democracy and civil liberties around the world. It is a disheartening reminder that we are not necessarily getting a clear-eyed look at the world in which we live. But it is …

HEBRON: Go to Hebron. Observe how several hundreds of ultra-national Israeli settlers, a minority in a Palestinian town of 160,000, have turned the lives of its Palestinian residents into a living hell. Go to Hebron. Look at how a small Jewish minority rules over an oppressed Arab majority and you will see why Israel needs …

BERKELEY: Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, made a splash prior to the recent G-20 summit by arguing that the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights should replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. His reflections elicited nothing if not mixed reactions. Sympathizers acknowledged the contradictions of a system in …

MELBOURNE: The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: “Two things fill the heart with ever renewed and increasing awe and reverence, the more often and more steadily we meditate upon them: the starry firmament above and the moral law within. This year, the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope, has been declared …

BERKELEY: Are the world’s governments capable of keeping the world economy out of a deep and long depression? Three months ago, I would have said yes, without question. Now, I am not so certain. The problem is not that governments are unsure about what to do. The standard checklist of what to do in a …

Pope Benedict’s visit to the Middle East this week has accentuated the need to improve relations between Muslims and Christians at multiple levels. Despite sharing a common Abrahamic lineage, both faith communities have a checkered history of relations going back to the Crusades. While the Quran recognizes Christians and Jews as “people of the book, …

WASHINGTON, DC: Reporters are always asking me if I think President Barack Obama would prevail in the oft-predicted “knock down, drag out fight with the Israeli government (and lobby) over the peace process. That question is especially relevant following the latest AIPAC conference. Vice President Joe Biden made it abundantly clear that the administration intends …

CAIRO: In 1964, Nico Jacobellis, manager of an Ohio film arts theater, was convicted and fined $2,500 for showing Louis Malle’s controversial film “The Lovers. After extensive deliberations, the US Supreme Court upturned the verdict, ruling that the film is not a product of obscenity. When it came to defining obscenity in solid terms though, …

NICOSIA: It is tempting to see the results of the recent parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus as a blow for the peace process. Voters in the Turkish Cypriot north rejected the party of their leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, who has been meeting almost weekly for eight months with his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Demetris Christofias, to …

JAKARTA: Looking at the percentage of women who competed for national parliamentary seats in Indonesia s April 2009 election – 35.25 percent of 11,301 candidates – one can conclude that the right of women to actively participate in Indonesia s political life is guaranteed. When it comes to voting and running for public office this …

NEW YORK: As spring comes to America, optimists are seeing “green sprouts of recovery from the financial crisis and recession. The world is far different from what it was last spring, when the Bush administration was once again claiming to see “light at the end of the tunnel. The metaphors and the administrations have changed, …

LONDON: European Union policy toward its neighbors to the east is in trouble, despite the launch of its new Eastern Partnership. European public opinion is increasingly introspective and sporadically protectionist. So what is to be done about the “grey zone to Europe’s east – the six countries that now lie between the EU and Russia? …

WASHINGTON, DC: On 18 April, the Somali parliament unanimously passed a bill to adopt Islamic law as national legislation. The real issue is not the adoption of Islamic law alone, but how it interpreted and implemented, and whether there can be national consensus on exactly what constitutes Islamic law in Somalia. This move, initiated by …

CAMBRIDGE: President George W. Bush was famous for proclaiming the promotion of democracy a central focus of American foreign policy. He was not alone in this rhetoric. Most American presidents since Woodrow Wilson have made similar statements. So it was striking when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified to Congress earlier this year about the …

KARACHI, Pakistan: People with a hammer only see nails. This well-worn maxim aptly describes the United States relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past several decades. As early as 1954, the United States identified the country as a bulwark against regional encroachment by the Soviet Union when Pakistan received its first substantial tranche of …