On Nov. 5, my office sent an email to tens of thousands of our members and contacts congratulating President-elect Barack Obama. In our message, we noted the historic transformation his victory represented and commended the thousands of Arab Americans who participated in this winning campaign. The initial and near universal response was heartwarming, with many …
CAIRO: The main concern of all countries around the world was to be immune from the effects of the mortgage crisis that erupted in the United States and threatened its financial accounts with bankruptcy. This required the injection of $700 billion dollars from the American taxpayers’ funds to avoid that fate. Of course we have …
SATURDAY Dancers Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen. Starring: Anders W.Berthelsen, Trine Dyrholm and Sofia Cukic. Synopsis: Attractive Annika and her mother run a dance school that her grandfather founded during the Second World War. One day she meets a tight-lipped electrician named Lasse. The reserved man soon confides in her that he was convicted and jailed …
Daily News Egypt apologizes for not running Chief Editor Rania Al Malky’s weekly editorial this week. It will resume next Saturday.
NEW YORK: Weapons of mass destruction and disarmament form one of the gravest challenges facing the world. One of my priorities as United Nations Secretary-General is to promote global public goods and remedies to challenges that do not respect borders. A world free of nuclear weapons is a global public good of the highest order. …
NEW YORK: Bahrain, the little Persian Gulf nation where pluralism has been the exception to the regional hegemonic rule, is learning that the best way for democracy to survive is to replicate it. Without explicitly saying so, Bahrain is softly encouraging the US-led push for democratization in the Middle East as the means toward stabilization. …
LONDON: President-elect Barack Obama has already achieved a rhetorical break with the arrogant, pompous and rather totalitarian language of the outgoing Bush administration. Thus, a new grammar is being presented in which the United States is re-invented as a particularly inclusive and exceptional place where “everything is possible. The credo “yes we can, already turned …
MOSCOW: Most people who know of me think of me as an information-technology expert, someone who probably lives in California and invests in edgy Internet start-ups. In fact, my formal residence is in New York City, but I am about to spend most of the next five months in Russia, training to be a cosmonaut …
WASHINGTON, DC: Sept. 11, 2001: the United States is attacked by terrorists. In the blink of an eye, 3,000 Americans are killed; my husband of six years and the father of our three young children is among them. Americans wanted retribution. I wanted retribution. But from whom? We are just now coming to terms with …
NEW YORK: After eight years of misguided policy by the Bush administration in the Middle East, the time is overdue for an enlightened strategy to tackle the region’s woes. This must include an approach that will bring hope to a region shattered by violence, consumed by conflict and division and filled with disdain toward the …
NEW YORK: After eight years of misguided policy by the Bush administration in the Middle East, the time is overdue for an enlightened strategy to tackle the region’s woes. This must include an approach that will bring hope to a region shattered by violence, consumed by conflict and division and filled with disdain toward the …
Two far-right parties, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Movement for Austria’s Future, won 29 percent of the vote in the latest Austrian general election, double their total in the 2006 election. Both parties share the same attitudes toward immigrants, especially Muslims, and the European Union: a mixture of fear and loathing. Since the two …
CAIRO: To many Egyptians, juxtaposing the drawbacks of their nation with the advances of other nations is very tempting. I join the trend using three recent examples. The first incident took place in the Islamic Republic of Iran whose parliament impeached Ali Kordan, the country’s interior minister and the strong ally of Iranian President Mahmoud …
BERLIN: Homegrown terrorism stands high on the security agenda almost everywhere in Europe. Its links to international extremist Islamic groups require that governments review and re-think how they respond to it. International security cooperation, border controls, and transport sector monitoring are all important, but they don’t go far enough. Governments must also identify radical tendencies …
JERUSALEM: Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) veterans, conducts tours in the West Bank city of Hebron, the only Palestinian city with a settlement in its midst. In this second largest Palestinian city of 165,000 Palestinians live some 800 Jewish settlers – heavily guarded by Israeli military, and bent on out-populating …
LAYYAH, Pakistan: Living in a village in southern Punjab, 13-year-old “Naila graduated from her sixth grade class and received a marriage proposal from a neighboring boy from a well-to-do family. Her father, a poor vender at a local bus stop, rejected the proposal on grounds that the boy was from a different clan and was …
Four weeks ago, the Arabs were cursing the American model and gleefully anticipated its fall. It has fallen already because of the financial crisis that hit the global economy. But two weeks ago, everyone suddenly turned to hail the same model that gave Barack Obama the opportunity to become the first black president in American …
I do not understand the reason for this current state of euphoria that has taken over the world because President George W. Bush is going to leave the White House and because his successor is the polar opposite when it comes to Bush’s policies, domestic and foreign, which have alienated both enemies and friends. George …
AMMAN: As the endless negotiations between Israeli government and Palestinian Authority officials regurgitate old arguments while making no progress, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians are paying attention to other solutions than the supposed “two-state outcome. They focus on the “one-democratic-state solution – a proposal to establish a single, democratic and secular state in …
NEW DELHI: Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama’s stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries? Could a member of a beleaguered minority transcend the circumstances of his birth to lead his or …
LAHORE: The “Great Game is no fun anymore. Nineteenth-century British imperialists used that term to describe the British-Russian struggle for mastery in Afghanistan and Central Asia. More than a century later, the game continues. But now, the number of players has exploded, those living on the chessboard have become players, and the intensity of the …
When President Hosni Mubarak asked the parliament to amend the Egyptian constitution in February 2005 to allow multi-candidate presidential elections rather than holding a referendum on one candidate, it appeared that the winds of democratic change had reached the Arab world. It was not a strictly-Egyptian dream because many in the Arab world still believe …
DHAKA: Food prices in Bangladesh have doubled over the last few months, as they have elsewhere in the world. The country already suffers from food shortages and financial difficulties regularly caused by cyclones and other natural disasters. And Bangladesh is currently sitting at number 70 (out of 88) on the Global Hunger Index. When such …
RAMALLAH: President-elect Barack Obama’s defiantly positive campaign for change has inspired hope not only in the millions of Americans who voted for him, but also in the billions of others worldwide who could not. Across the Middle East, as elsewhere, expectations are building that his presidency will herald a new era for America’s role in …
KABUL: We began a journey in Afghanistan seven years ago with the war that ousted the Taliban from power. Much has been accomplished along the way, for Afghanistan and for the world. In less than 45 days in 2001, we Afghans were freed from the menace of terrorism and the Taliban. Back then, Afghanistan’s people …
RAWALPINDI: With backing from the United States, the Pakistani government started military operations to chase out terrorists following 9/11, thereby increasing civilian resentment first against their own government, and subsequently against the United States, for all the civilian casualties during operations. This resentment resulted in domestic acts of insurgency against Western and security targets – …
COPENHAGEN: With a worldwide recession advancing, strong action on global warming has been thrown into jeopardy. This matters, because in little more than a year, the world will sit down in Copenhagen to negotiate the follow-on treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol. Yet, with people losing jobs and income, immediate economic help seems to matter …
LONDON: The great thing about globalization is that it forces us to get to know each other. On this hyper-connected information superhighway you discover that someone you’ve been MSN chatting with for the past six months actually lives next door or that a person you bumped into online who is continents away is good friends …
ISTANBUL/ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Turkey stand at a crossroads in their political evolutions. The democratically elected Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Pakistan control both the presidencies and parliaments of their countries, ostensibly making them amongst the strongest elected governments in each of their respective histories. Both the PPP …
BEIRUT: Technology has taken many otherwise confined Muslim societies by storm, and there is little anyone can do to stop it. Saudi Arabia is one such place. Though it is known for its traditional and conservative approach towards the interaction between sexes, its norms are being challenged by the current wave of technology. A decade …
