Former IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei saw it as part of his mission to keep the West from Iran’s throat. Does new Director-General Amano share his agenda?
What Effect Will Resignation of Iran Hard-Liner Have on IAEA?
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Islam
Poking a Stick Into the Honor Killing v. Domestic Violence Debate
Is it wise to sweep honor killings under the general heading of domestic violence? Does something get lost in translation?
Krauthammer: Gaza Flotilla a Threat to Israel’s Existence
Monitoring Charles Krauthammer on Islam — a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.
New Power Brokers in the Middle East
America’s failure to talk peace is undercutting its influence in the Middle East. It has cleared the way for proactive nations like Turkey and Qatar, who want a quieter neighborhood to push their economic growth, to step in and broker deals such as the recent Iranian nuclear fuel swap and the Lebanese accord of 2008. Continued U.S. intransigence may lead them to try and sort out issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well.
Readers’ Challenge: Why Ahmadis Now?
Yesterday was almost equally violent for both India, where suspected sabotage of train by Maoists left at least 74 dead in West Bengal, and Pakistan. In Lahore, an equivalent number were killed in the attacks on the two Ahmadi mosques. According to the New York Times: “Geo TV, a leading news channel in Pakistan, reported that members of the Punjab branch of the Pakistani Taliban were claiming responsibility for the attacks.”
Muslim Blowback?
It is hard to overstate just how deeply unpopular the United States is in the Muslim world.
A 2008 poll of six majority Muslim countries found that overwhelmingly large portions of the population, ranging from 71 percent in Morocco to 87 percent in Egypt, held unfavorable opinions of the United States. A 2009 poll in Pakistan revealed that 64 percent of the public views the United States as an outright enemy.
The Really Really Long War
Let’s imagine that the Cold War was a detour. The entire 20th century, in fact, was a detour. Since conflicts among the 20th-century ideologies (liberalism, communism, fascism) cost humanity so dearly, it’s hard to conceive of World War II and the clashes that followed as sideshows. And yet many people have begun to do just that. They view the period we find ourselves in right now — the so-called post-Cold War era — as a return to a much earlier time and a much earlier confrontation. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t discrete battles against a tyrant (Saddam Hussein) or a tyrannical group (the Taliban). They fit together with Turkey’s resurgence, the swell of Muslim immigration to Europe, and Israel’s settlement policy to form part of a much larger struggle.
Muslims in America
In his Cairo address, President Obama boldly asserted a broad commonality between the United States and a quarter of humanity: “America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
Europe’s Islamophobia
When the Swiss voted last year to prohibit future construction of minarets on their soil, political commentators in neighboring European countries were quick to express their moral outrage. “The vote of shame,” headlined Liberation in France. Belgium’s Le Soir deemed targeting the towers in order to aim at the population below them to be “hypocritical and fallacious.” The London Times predicted “international embarrassment” for Switzerland.
Muslim Voices
A chaikhana is a Central Asian teahouse where poets and performers — men and (unveiled) women — sing verses and recite prose in a conversational atmosphere with fellow patrons. In New York, last month’s Muslim Voices festival recreated a chaikhana to showcase Urdu writers from Pakistan, performances of Lebanese zajal (dueling poetry with audience response and affirmation), and West African jaliya, an hereditary bardic tradition from Mali that has produced many world music stars.