You have not read this in the news before. Three months ago, an American citizen was kidnapped in Northwest Pakistan. He was murdered. His body was just recently recovered by his bereaved family. I learned about the kidnapping shortly after it happened, when my dear friend Ayesha wrote to tell me that her brother, Imran, …
The best that can be said about Geert Wilders’ production, Fitna, is that it is aptly named. Fitna, which translates as strife or unrest, is exactly what Wilders seems to want to instigate with his montage of mayhem. If, as Wilders asserts, he is trying to protect the western civiliszation from the ravages of Islam, …
Two dangerous signals were sent from NATO’s Bucharest summit. The first was that Russia has reestablished a “sphere of interest in Europe, where countries are no longer allowed to pursue their own goals without Moscow accepting them. The other was that all NATO member states are free to blackmail their partners into supporting their own …
The League of Arab States has re-adopted its six-year-old peace initiative, offering comprehensive peace and normal relations with Israel by all its members in return for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, and a resolution of all outstanding issues between Israel and the Palestinians. This initiative is to be commended, but it has a …
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has many positive attributes, including great charm. He will need all his skills to address the bewildering range of global tasks that he has taken on since being shoehorned out of office by his dour successor, Gordon Brown. His initial daytime job, after running Britain, was to bring peace …
Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what a once-great culture? That sad fate is looking more and more likely, and the Olympic year already has been soured by the Chinese government’s efforts to suppress …
My life in the West Bank during the summer of 2006 was a lot less dramatic than some might imagine. I wasn t kidnapped and I didn t see any gun battles in the street. I went to university every day, ate delicious food, and traveled throughout various cities in the area. This is not …
Why did the Muslim Brotherhood not participate in the April 6 Strike? This question still begs a clear answer. It has also disclosed the size of the mistakes the group is constantly committing and has undermined its popularity and the trust the people have placed in it. The group has refused to participate in the …
Getting to know people from other faith communities goes a long way to breaking down barriers, said Yousef Daneshvar, a Shia Muslim completing his doctoral studies in Canada under a student exchange program with Iran organized by the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a relief, development and peace agency. Let s stop looking at each other …
Some say there are two issues in the coming American elections: the Iraq war and the economy. On days when the war seems to be going better than expected, and the economy worse, the economy eclipses the war; but neither is faring well. In some sense, there is only one issue, and that is the …
Zimbabwe’s election appears, once again, to confirm a truism: Africa only seems to make international headlines when disasters strike – a drought, a coup, a war, a genocide, or, as in the case of Robert Mugabe, grossly incompetent government. But, over the past several years, a number of sub-Saharan countries have attracted unprecedented inflows of …
A good offence is the best defense, as we all learnt yesterday. As I drove through Talaat Harb square at around 9 am, the scene looked all too familiar: at least a dozen state security trucks, hundreds of riot police equipped to the tee with helmets, batons and related riot paraphernalia; not to mention the …
I was eating breakfast one morning when my father slapped down the New York Times Magazine in front of me. You might want to check out this article. I believe this is the town you will be studying Arabic in, he said, pointing to an article that chronicled the visit of a Times reporter to …
It appears that Israel is taking a page from the George W. Bush book of public diplomacy: attempting to influence coverage by Arab media by boycotting the most influential television station in the Arab world. In the latest news from Jerusalem, it seems the Ehud Olmert government has decided Al-Jazeera favors Hamas over Israel in …
President George W. Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished in Iraq five years ago was as hubristic as his current assessment that the “surge has “delivered a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror is a fantasy. The Iraq adventure is not only the longest and most expensive war in America’s history – the …
A friend of mine from France sent me an article by Bernard Langlois where he lists the ten magic rules in the Western media’s Middle East coverage and thanks to which the Arab-Israeli conflict becomes perfectly clear to Western public opinion. Rule 1: Any act of aggression between the Arabs and the Israelis was always …
Ayman is a soft-spoken 14-year-old boy in Jabalia City, Gaza. His family is poor, and his parents have already sold almost all their furniture to pay for food and schooling for their children. Recently, after collecting a government food handout, Ayman’s father, who has been unemployed since March 2006, had to sell the milk to …
The full repercussions of the financial crisis triggered by bad mortgages in the United States are still unclear, but the unforeseen effects already include an unstoppable demand for greater transparency in financial markets, and better regulation. One part of the financial markets not subject to the transparency and disclosure rules that apply to, say, banks …
Last week in Europe we waited with bated breath for reactions to the controversial public showing of a film attacking the Quran produced by the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders. This comes on top of trouble already brewing over the re-publication in several Danish newspapers of the notorious cartoons. Over two years after the original …
As soon as I heard that right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam film had been uploaded onto an internet site, I did what any self-respecting Muslim would do: I clicked on the link and prepared to be offended. Talk about anti-climax! What happened, Geert? Like a magpie stringing cheap trinkets together, “Fitna is a …
Hunger has slipped from the rich world’s consciousness. Televised images of Third World children with distended bellies no longer shock viewers. Polls show that developed nations now believe that the world’s biggest problems are terrorism and climate change. Yet malnutrition in mothers and their young children will claim 3.5 million lives this year. Global food …
Egyptian Copts, once again have decided to align themselves with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in the upcoming local council elections, appearing as a major source of voters for the regime. According to the top church clergymen, Copts base their unconditional support to the NDP on the premise that the party is moderate in …
The Arabian desert and the area around it gave birth to a number of tribes and civilizations -Phoenicians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Arameans, Hebrews, Canaanites, Nabateans, etc. These tribes continuously drifted out of the desert into the fertile areas of the Levant and the Nile valley. Their languages were very similar, one could even call them dialects …
Last week, Dutch MP Geert Wilders released his movie Fitna, attacking Muslims and the Quran, amidst wide international worries that airing the movie would only lead to further cross-cultural tensions, and perhaps violence. Influential Muslim figures, including some Salafi Saudi scholars, had threatened to boycott the Netherlands while official figures in Iran threatened to review …
Many Egyptians have a firm conviction that their country is moving towards change, regardless of the nature and content of this change, and that a bill is being paid to accomplish this change. Everyone, however, is dubious and befuddled about the proposed models for such a change. Over the past four years four models for …
In an increasingly globalized world, few places symbolize state power and security challenges more than the border zone between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. Whether this border will blossom with commerce and cultural exchange, or become a transit point for tanks and militants, has great implications for the future of the Middle East and the relationship …
India’s new budget for 2008-2009 says less about the country’s current financial health than it does about the irresistible tendency of Indian governments to use the national budget as a pre-election cudgel. Every year, India struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable: stimulate economic growth and investment, alleviate endemic poverty, and feed a ravenous military appetite. The …
” History is a set of agreed-upon lies (Napoleon) A few weeks ago I received by email an article by a Dr. Walid Phares titled “Arab Christians who are they? Initially I brushed it off as rather inconsequential, but it subsequently came to my attention that Dr. Phares is promoting some rather bizarre ideas about …
Who would have possibly imagined at the beginning of President Mubarak’s reign that after more that 25 years we would reach the stage we are in now. The beginning was promising in a way that is completely different from the picture of Egypt we have today. Ten people were killed in the struggle for bread …
The US Federal Reserve’s desperate attempts to keep America’s economy from sinking are remarkable for at least two reasons. First, until just a few months ago, the conventional wisdom was that the US would avoid recession. Now recession looks certain. Second, the Fed’s actions do not seem to be effective. Although interest rates have been …
