Americans are baffled: why oh why are Muslims up in arms over a YouTube video, one which no one in America even knew about prior to the attack on our Libyan consulate and the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens? Having abandoned their own religion sometime in the last century or so, they just don’t understand …
Continue reading “Blasphemy and Empire”
Everybody knows by now why we are stuck in Palestine. When God instructed Moses to plead with pharaoh to let his people go, Moses told him that he was unfit for the job because “I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10). Actually, in the Hebrew original, Moses told God that …
Continue reading “Our Muslim Brothers”
The Barack Obama administration’s new interest in the 2004 religious verdict, or “fatwa,” by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning the possession of nuclear weapons, long dismissed by national security officials, has prompted The New York Times to review the significance of the fatwa for the first time in several years. Senior Obama administration …
Continue reading “Report on Iran’s Nuclear Fatwa Distorts Its History”
The United States definitely sends mixed messages to the Muslim world. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama went to Cairo to “seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive …
Continue reading “America’s Image Problem”
If Islamist movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bête noire, Israel. Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams. That is true in Gaza, in Beirut, in Cairo, and even in Tehran. …
Continue reading “Shukran, Israel”
The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, for all its flaws, is a genuine expression of the growing recognition in the United States that the government no longer serves the interests of the people. It has been described as an American version of the “Arab Spring,” driven by a sense of popular alienation from the elites …
Continue reading “Neocons Preoccupied With Islamic Conspiracy Theories”
During the 2010 midterm election campaign, virtually every hard-charging candidate on the far right took a moment to trash a Muslim, a mosque, or Islamic pieties. In the wake of those elections, with 85 new Republican House members and a surging Tea Party movement, the political virtues of anti-Muslim rhetoric as a means of rousing …
Continue reading “Islam-Baiting Doesn’t Work”
From his weekly perch at CNN, Fareed Zakaria speculated recently whether George Bush could take credit for the events that were unfolding in Tunisia, whether this was the late fruit of the neoconservative project to bring “democracy” to the Middle East. It is quite extraordinary watching Zakaria – a Muslim born and raised in India, …
Continue reading “A Surge of People Power in the Middle East”
The anti-Muslim radicalism bar just got raised, says Junaid Alam
It’s nationalism, says Junaid Levesque-Alam
