In The News

Shared Pasts, Different Futures

Abdel-Moneim Said August 19, 2005
Often, examining the past sheds light on events of the present. It is in this vein that Abdel-Moneim Said, in Al-Ahram Weekly, explores a crucial issue: "Is jihad a reaction to colonial oppression?" Using China's turbulent history as a basis for comparison, Said finds that violence is not always the only viable response to such oppression. Indeed, from the Opium Wars to forced...

Tehran Is Using Iraq to Steadily Penetrate the Arab World

Kamran Taremi August 18, 2005
Relations between Iran and Iraq have been marked for decades by hostility, erupting most drastically in the infamous and bloody war following the success of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. Now, with a Shiite victory in the Iraqi elections, the two countries have found common ideological ground and have taken steps towards cooperation. An alliance with Iraq would provide Iran with...

An Islamic Alienation

David Rieff August 15, 2005
The London bombings perpetrated by native-born Muslims have forced Europeans to take a serious look at the status of the Continent’s Muslim minority. Suggestions that the Muslim alienation is due to anger in Muslim communities over the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do not provide an adequate answer. Rieff argues that the reasons of alienation run much deeper than this. Europe’...

Muslims Unite! A New Reformation Will Bring Your Faith into the Modern Era

Salman Rushdie August 11, 2005
The British government's strategy of relying on traditional, but essentially orthodox, Muslims to help eradicate Islamist radicalism is ineffective, writes Salman Rushdie. Traditional Islam is a broad church that includes millions of tolerant, moderate believers – as well as those at odds with the cultures among which they live. What is truly needed to combat terrorism, says Rushdie, is a...

Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq

Olivier Roy July 22, 2005
In response to the recent bombings in London and Madrid, many have speculated that Al-Qaida is punishing the supporters of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This theory seems reasonable, based on the assumption that the roots of Islamic terrorism lie in Middle Eastern conflicts. Scholar Olivier Roy, however, argues that Al-Qaida's references to Iraq are merely a bid for legitimacy among...

Nothing Will Change Until Musharraf Closes Pakistan's Militant Madrassas

Ahmed Rashid July 22, 2005
After the terrorist attacks on London two weeks ago, British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to fight Muslim extremism directly. But as Ahmed Rashid writes, until Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf shuts down his country's extremist madrassas – schools of Islam – all promises of resolve like Blair's will prove fruitless. Particularly because the militant education is not limited to South...

The Other War Against Terror…at $8 a Day

Matthew Thompson July 20, 2005
An unpublicized front in the "war on terror," the island nation of the Philippines is a frequent target for jihadist attacks, and a training site for extremist groups. Tragic bombings, such as those in London, have been mirrored in the Philippines. The country must often take a backseat to news from other areas of the globe, when, in reality, it is Southeast Asia's frontline in the...