WASHINGTON, DC: As the world watches the terrible eruption of violence between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq and is subjected to sporadic communiqués by vigilantes calling for violence against their opponents both within the Muslim community and without, many who are unfamiliar with Islam and Muslims may be forgiven for thinking the worst of both …

PRAGUE: In the coming days – perhaps even hours – the destiny of Burma (also known as Myanmar), and the fates of over fifty million Burmese, will be decided. Today’s crisis has been brewing for many years. But nobody knew with any precision just when open revolt against Burma’s military dictatorship would erupt. I fear …

In 2004 I went to Qom, Iran to participate in a conference called Revelation and Authority , a dialogue between North American Christian Mennonite scholars and local Muslim Shiite scholars. A few months ago, we met again – this time in Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. It was a joyful, collegial reunion and, in addition, a …

Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai recently came out swinging at the West again, this time on the topic of opium eradication. Responding to the latest UN report showing an opium production increase of 17 percent in 2007, Karzai accused the international community of failing to implement a coherent counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. Opium production has indeed …

Having lived in Egypt for a few months now, nothing about Ramadan seems particularly surprising. Not the lamps, not the iftar tables set up along every street, and certainly not the massive gridlock that grinds our metropolis to a halt at around 3 pm. There is, however, something rather unique in the Egyptian reaction to …

LONDON: Racism is, among many things, convenient. It provides simplified, definite and ready-to-serve answers to complex and compounded questions. Racists, in turn, come from all walks of life; their motivation and the root causes behind their contemptible views of others may differ, but the outcome of these views is predictably the same – racial discrimination, …

The security environment since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States has clearly demonstrated the limits of the United Nations, or even the US as the world’s sole military superpower, to maintain international security. However, like-minded mid-level powers with similar intentions could complement what the UN or the US lacks, effectively generating …

An American with a French passport , Bush s new poodle , a populist neo-conservative : neither Nicolas Sarkozy s recent statements nor his behavior has substantiated these accusations hurled at him before his election as president of the French republic. True, the candidate did not attempt to contradict his enemies or conceal his admiration …

Nicholas Sarkozy s oft repeated and blunt statements throughout his presidential campaign brought the Turkish issue into the center of French politics and reinforced it as one of the predominant concerns of European integration. Both the Turkish public and leadership have become accustomed to voices raised against Turkey s membership of the EU by, for …

BEIRUT: I had two articles due, a term paper to write and a fever when I chose to forget about everything and fill out six official-looking papers that had been sitting on my desk for a week. Those papers were life changing. They were a ticket to a whole new world where I built life-long …

Lebanon is poised to hold a presidential election that none of its contending factions – indeed, none of the rival factions in the region – can afford to lose. Let’s start with Syria. In 2005, President Bashar Assad’s regime was forced to withdraw its army from Lebanon, following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister …

Every day brings new evidence. Climate change has become a personal reality, for each and every one of us on this planet. Just a few days ago, to cite but the latest example, scientists in the United States reported that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than ever thought possible. By their calculations, 40 …

Every financial crisis is inherently unknowable – before it occurs, and as it occurs. By contrast, we understand past crises very well. Accountants go over the books, the participants tell their tales to the newspapers (or sometimes before a judge), politicians explain why they are sorting out a mess, and in the end historians put …

The world got so used to Jacques Chirac s 12-year reign over France s Middle East policy that Nicolas Sarkozy s entry en scene inevitably caused a stir. Even before taking office, in May 2007, Sarkozy was announcing new arrangements for the Mediterranean. By shaking new life into the European Union s 10-year old Barcelona …

CAIRO: If you visit the home of prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader Essam El Erian you will be met with decorations in the reception area and a big sign saying “Welcome Home . But that’s not how El Erian usually welcomes his guests. His family had put up the sign to celebrate his return from a …

I don’t know how Morocco accepted having international monitors observing its legislative elections that took place earlier this month; a far cry from our great National Democratic Party (NDP) which has rejected any such monitoring as a form of blatant interference in our internal affairs. The fact is that many countries invite international observers to …

Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. That includes the right of individuals to practice, preach and proselytise without fear of persecution or retribution. Over the centuries, thousands of missionaries have braved persecution, discrimination, wars, revolutions, inclement weather and tropical diseases to bring the word of their God to others, convinced that their actions …

Throughout the summer months, the drums of war have been banging on both sides of the Golan Heights. Military experts assert that neither Israel nor Syria have any real interest in beginning a war at this time. The main fear has been that some kind of provocation could make war unavoidable. The recent Israeli fly-over …

A fundamental global trend nowadays is growing natural resource scarcity. Oil and natural gas prices have soared in recent years. This past year, food prices have also skyrocketed, causing hardships among the poor and large shifts in income between countries and between rural and urban areas. The most basic reason for the rise in natural …

Morocco is making a conspicuous effort to curb religious extremism by giving women access to mosques, not only as believers who would like to pray, but also as religious guides whose duties include counseling and religious instruction. This phenomenon is part of what has become known in Morocco as the restructuring of the religious sector …

I’m embarrassed to say that after reading Newsweek’s recent cover story on Facebook.I joined. The majority of the social networking site’s new members are people over 35: oldies like me. Still, it’s uncool – and supposedly “old school – to join because of pieces in “old media like Newsweek. And what’s the point of joining …

In the most massive racial profiling since Japanese-Americans were herded into detention camps in World War II, the Bush administration after 9/11 required 80,000 Arab and Muslim foreign nationals living here to be photographed, fingerprinted and subjected to “special registration, The Nation magazine said. The publication reports an additional 8,000 foreign nationals were sought out …

A week ago I was invited to a Jewish wedding. As a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, this would have been my first, and I was ambivalent about attending the ceremony. So many questions flooded my mind: how would they react if they knew that I was a Muslim? Would I be the black sheep? Would …

At least for purposes of public consumption, southern Africa’s political leaders continue to stand by Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, despite his country’s ever-deepening economic crisis, which is directly attributable to his tyrannical rule. Indeed, years of economic mismanagement have produced an unemployment rate of 80 percent, with annual inflation nearing 5,000 percent. Though Zimbabwe was …

It is important to emphasize at the outset that the wars and conflicts of our time that happen to involve Christians and Muslims have very little to do with their respective religious doctrines or practices. The underlying causes are more often than not rooted in power and politics or wealth and the economy or both. …

Al-Qaeda is generally viewed as a global threat bent on changing the world order at any cost. This hybrid movement has its distant and various roots in the Muslim Brotherhood movement that the late Hassan Al-Bana founded in Egypt more than half a century ago and in Wahabism and perhaps Sufism. It will be recalled …

Yesterday we commemorated the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol, a groundbreaking international agreement that curbed and eventually reversed the thinning of the ozone layer, and ushered in a new era of environmental responsibility. By any measure, the Protocol has been a resounding success. Its 191 signatories have together phased out more …

Joseph Estrada, the disgraced former president of the Philippines, faces the prospect of spending his remaining years in prison after a special court in Manila found him guilty of amassing around $15 million in bribes and kickbacks. During the 30 months he ruled his country, from mid-1998 to the start of 2001, Estrada accepted payoffs …

On the first day of Camp Coexistence, kids tended to stick with the friends whom they already knew (Jews with Jews and Arabs with Arabs). But new friendships were already forming by day two, and the kids began to interact in mixed groups. Soccer for Peace (SFP) recently completed its most successful camp to date, …

We speak often and easily about Darfur. But what can we say with surety? By conventional short-hand, it is a society at war with itself. Rebels battle the government, the government battles the rebels. Yet the reality is more complicated, and sides are not always clear. Lately, the fighting often as not pits tribe against …