In The News

Should the US Sell Nuclear Technology to India? – Part I

Robert Einhorn November 8, 2005
When India voted alongside the US in a recent IAEA Board resolution targeting Iran’s nuclear policies, governments around the world were stunned. It signaled that India had overturned its history of “non-alignment” and closed ranks with US foreign policy interests. The July 18 agreement between the US and India for the transfer of US nuclear technology and equipment – that preceded India’s policy...

A Gender Jihad for Islam’s Future

Asra Q. Nomani November 7, 2005
To conservative Muslims, Islamic feminism is an insult to Islam. To a growing group of moderates, however, it’s a return to fundamental Islamic theology, a reaffirmation of rights granted to women at the foundation of Islam but stripped by “manmade rules and tribal traditions masquerading as divine law”. Asra Q. Nomani, an American activist, was among twelve women to lead a conference on...

European Luxury Brands Challenge Chinese Pirates

Jonathan Watts November 4, 2005
Centuries ago, China exported its luxurious silks out to the world on camel caravans over the meandering Silk Road. Now, Chinese venues like the Silk Market in Beijing offer counterfeit luxury goods to tourists at a fraction of their legal cost. In the past decade, the Asian giant has become the source of seventy percent of the world’s counterfeit products, frustrating foreign businesses and...

Defiant Turkish Writer Says "Genocide" Taboo an Obstacle to EU Entry

Ramsay Short October 19, 2005
In a development that recalls the Iranian theocracy's 1989 fatwa forcing author Salman Rushdie into exile, Turkish officials have criminally charged novelist Orhan Pamuk for his comments condemning the country's slaughter of Armenian residents at the beginning of the 20th century. Pamuk, a native Turk whose work has received numerous accolades, has made no bones about his stance on the...

Why Did We Say Nay?

Prem Shankar Jha October 4, 2005
India, once the champion of the Cold War Non-Aligned Movement, has long valued its diplomatic independence and domestic self-sufficiency. Unsurprisingly, then, the world's largest democracy's recent vote – alongside the United States – to censure Iran under the edicts of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty triggered a public uproar. From across the Indian political spectrum, critics...

Seeking Justice Abroad

Khaled Amayreh September 30, 2005
For years, Palestinians and human rights activists have protested the unequal treatment non-Jews receive from Israel's justice system. Now, frustrated Palestinians are seeking redress for their grievances against Israel in international courts. "If a state doesn't or is not capable of giving justice to a segment of its own citizens, those citizens have every right to seek justice...

Time For a Saudi "New Deal"

Fahad Nazer September 27, 2005
The ascent of King Abdullah to the Saudi throne represents a great opportunity for domestic political reform, writes Fahad Nazer. As an absolute monarchy with almost no accountability to its citizens, the Saudi government will prove increasingly vulnerable to the demands of internal reformers – as well as growing global criticism over the radical Islam preached by its Wahhabist clerics. Any...