CAIRO: Is it possible for the Muslim and Western worlds to converge and cooperate, despite their cultural dissimilarities? The answer to this question is an emphatic yes , but only if we stop judging others by our own norms. When a Muslim youth criticizes a Western peer for drinking alcohol because it is prohibited by …

BAGHDAD: American officials report that the number of sectarian and other killings in Iraq has declined since the onset of the military “surge . But, while the number of killings may, indeed, have fallen, does that mean Iraq is really safer? Insecurity in Iraq is most strikingly illustrated by the number of people fleeing their …

JERUSALEM: For 60 years, Palestinian and Arab leaders have been lying to their people. Creating and sustaining the lie that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 would return to their original homes and lands makes it almost impossible for President Mahmoud Abbas to reach an agreement with Israel on the right of return, the most central …

When Nicolas Sarkozy became President of France, he declared that his country was back in mainstream Europe. Since then, Sarkozy has thrown himself into the European political fray. His energy – combined with the negotiating talents of German Chancellor Angela Merkel – overcame antagonism toward the new reform treaty that EU leaders just ratified in …

On the eve of his state visit to the United Kingdom the Saudi monarch, King Abdallah, called for the creation of an international intelligence agency that would pool the knowledge of all member states. In a rare interview the king said many of the national intelligence agencies and their governments were simply not doing a …

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations Climate Change Panel (the IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change. The other award winner, former US Vice President Al Gore, has spent much more time telling …

AMMAN: In many societies, religious festivals and set periods of spiritual reflection have been commandeered by commercial interests and misrepresented by ideologues. Their message of spiritual reflection and communion with God has lost out to the temporal imperatives of greed, acquisition and triumphalism. In our region, this process has been accelerated by very worldly conflicts …

WASHINGTON: It s still looking like the international Middle East conference will take place in November at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It s a good venue, providing Camp David-like security and easy access to Washington, DC. Should peace break out, Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert could get to the White House within an …

WASHINGTON DC: One of the great fears that parents and church leaders have about their youth engaging in interfaith dialogue is that they will lose their connection to their own religion and will end up rejecting and leaving their faith, maybe even converting to another religion as a result. My experience as a Christian pastor …

A key lesson that the next American president will take away from the experiences of the Bush administration is certain to be that multilateralism matters. Notions of American hegemony and unilateral responses make little sense when most of the serious challenges that countries face today – problems like climate change, pandemics, financial stability, and terrorism …

BEIT BERL, Israel: Next month the US president George W. Bush proposes to host an international conference in Annapolis, near Washington, in the hope of advancing a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. The failures of previous attempts-in Madrid in 1991, in Oslo in 1993 and at Camp David in 2000-highlight the difficulties. What …

I telephoned US President George Bush last week, but he was in a foul mood. “I don’t want to speak to anyone now, he told me. “I just heard the bad news that Al Gore, who mercilessly contested the presidency against me in 2000, has received the Nobel Prize for Peace. “What’s wrong with that? …

We wrote this article on September 11, 2007-an anniversary with particular meaning for us. We are Father Khader El-Yateem and Marcia Kannry, board members of the Dialogue Project, an organization that works with multi-ethnic and religiously diverse communities in the New York City area. In particular, we bring dialogue to communities where new Arab and …

During his one-month visit to Indonesia between July and August 2007, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na im, a Sudanese Muslim intellectual who now teaches at Emory School of Law in the United States, campaigned for Muslim countries to adopt a secular system of governance. In this system, the state is not based on specific religious teachings, …

Just when the smoke from Turkey’s domestic political conflicts of the past year had begun to clear, another deadly attack by Kurdish separatists on Turkish soldiers has the government threatening military attacks inside northern Iraq. That prospect raises risks for Turkey, Iraq, and the United States. But there are reasons to doubt that the situation …

Since President Bush declared his intention a few months ago to convene a Middle East peace conference, experts on the region and government officials have proposed specific agenda items that should be addressed to insure its success. Key suggestions include a declaration of principle, the creation of an ongoing negotiation process, broad-based regional representation, and …

When I wrote about the “end of history almost 20 years ago, one thing that I did not anticipate was the degree to which American behavior and misjudgments would make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault-lines of global politics. And yet, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that is precisely what has …

Muslims in Canada have already made celebrated contributions to Canadian wealth, literature, art, medicine, architecture, science, business and engineering. Where else, for instance, except in Canada, will you find North America s oldest mosque still standing, preserved as a national heritage site in Edmonton, Alberta? It is also in Canada that you will find the …

I was already 17 when the 1952 Revolution took place so I am in a position to compare the role played by religion in the life of Egyptians before the revolution with the role religion plays today. The story is a rather sad one but it has to be told, and an explanation has to …

Karl Marx predicted that states would wither away in anticipation of an idyllic communist society capable of auto-regulating economic imbalances and empowering the masses. So he would have been flabbergasted to see his prophecy realized, not by communism, but by the globalization of Anglo-American economic liberalism. Opening up markets to the free flow of capital, …

TEL AVIV: Lately, a new epidemic has been threatening to attack Israel´s public discourse: a peace conference, an agreement with the Palestinians, ceremonies with the US president – diseases from the past we thought we had already overcome. We got used to the comfortable life of no partner, no negotiations, and no hope, and suddenly, …

The Honorable George W. BushPresident of the United StatesThe White HouseWashington, DC 20500Via facsimile: 202-456-2461 Dear Mr. President: We are writing to share with you a statement on the forthcoming Middle East peace conference adopted by the above-named organizations, whose contents we strongly endorse: The Israeli-Palestinian peace conference announced by President Bush and scheduled for …

The world has been horrified by graphic images of the latest crackdown by Myanmar’s military junta. But the bullets and clubs unleashed on Buddhist monks have worked. The monks have retreated, and an eerie normalcy has returned to Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar’s principal city and former capital. That crackdown continues under cover of darkness. When the …

In the past, ousted tyrants would expect to spend the rest of their waning years in comfortable exile, oblivious to the insidious reach of international law, tribunals and justice. Living comfortably in posh villas with lavish lifestyles or quietly existing in far off, hard to find slums amongst a hand full of sympathizers, they expect …

The importance of public opinion stems from the fact that in democratic regimes it can play a determining role in the shift of power between the different political forces. Political leaders and parties must always bear in mind that, come election day, it is the voters who will be judging their performance and deciding whether …

The last time I saw Rami we were at the beach near Gaza City. A group of us were playing in the water and I was trying to force Rami under. Rami was a big man, weighing at least twice what I do, and-needless to say, I did not manage to get him to budge. …

“Ripeness is all, concludes Edgar in King Lear. I will leave it to Shakespeare scholars to decipher what he had in mind. But for diplomats and historians, understanding the concept of ripeness is central to their jobs: it refers to how ready a negotiation or conflict is to be resolved. This may sound academic, but …

After the adoption of the resolution 106 on Armenian Genocide at the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives there is much talk about the value or danger of third parties engaging in what are said to be old historic issues. The article Lacking moral tenet to right the wrong by Alon …

In a globalized world of increased communication and information exchange, men and women from the third world live in the complicated intersection of colonization, Western hegemony, traditional expectations and religious customs. As a Pakistani-American woman, I stand at the crux of racial and ethnic difference, and I have spent much time considering how Muslim men …

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad may be gaining support across the Muslim world for his fervent criticism of the United States, but inside Iran, he is losing strength. His political rivals are gaining new positions of power, and the population is increasingly unhappy with the economy’s continuing decline. Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has had …