The United States went through a near-miss terrorist attack during the Christmas holidays. A Muslim, this time a Nigerian Muslim, was involved. Consequently, the country is going through another silly season whereby a number of “experts” with diarrhea of the mouth are eagerly expressing their idiotic views. At the government level, there [...]

President Barack H. Obama spoke to the Muslim world from Cairo on June 4, 2009.  Symbolically, that day will always be remembered every time someone raises the issue of the United States’ relations toward the world of Islam.  The following statement he made that day will go down in history as a memorable one:  The [...]

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Samuel P. Huntington died on Christmas Eve at the ripe age of 81.  I never met the man.  But I read most of his work.  I had the occasion of hearing his presentation as a Ph.D. candidate, when he was invited by our Political Science Department at Southern Illinois University around 1974 or 1975.  All [...]

As the international community is witnessing the debate over the use of torture during the presidency of George W. Bush, another radical change has taken place over naming the United States’ campaign against terrorism.  It used to be called the “global war on terrorism” (GWOT).  President Barack H. Obama has quietly changed that name to [...]

Looking at the tepid global reaction to the massacre of the civilians in Gaza, one wonders whether the conscience of the international community is half asleep or is suffering from something called sympathy fatigue.  Hundreds of civilian casualties, incessantly escalating human misery, and with no end in the Israeli military action in sight, even God [...]

ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, RESTART THE BARMY ARMS RACE!
 
The Cold War in its old form disappeared when the Soviet Union imploded.  But the U.S.-Russian competition did not.  The United States continued a strange policy of expanding the NATO membership and bringing that Alliance all the way to the Russian borders, despite strong and continued [...]

As India has become a target of terrorism once again, it is time to be introspective.  Indian officials habitually blame Muslims every time there is violence in India. More often than not, they are known to be playing fast and loose with the facts.  They are not constrained by the absence of evidence, and no [...]

American Muslims are overjoyed at the election of Barack Obama.  Knowing that there was so much malicious discussion during the election campaign about Obama’s faith—that he is “secretly a Muslim,” as if that made him “evil”—and the fact that he went before the Jewish lobby in Washington during the campaign and spelled out his very [...]

Reading about Indonesia from the United States in the post-9/11 era creates a picture of that country that has little to do with realities inside its borders.  One of the reasons is the obsession of the American media and even OpEd writing intellectuals with Jemah Islamiya (JI) at the expense of everything else.  As much [...]

Assuming that General David Petraeus, the new Combat Commander of CENTO, was victorious over al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), the question of the hour is whether he can replicate that success in Afghanistan.  However, before answering that question, it should be clearly understood that, despite a marked reduction in violence in the  Sunni-dominated region of Iraq, [...]