In The News

Poverty Doesn't Create Terrorists

Alan B. Krueger May 29, 2003
In his National Security Strategy issued in November 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush asserted that poverty was one of the factors leading to increased terrorist activities. This article in the New York Times, however, argues that civil liberty is the main factor and that wealth has little to do with terrorist activities. The author cites a study which found that many suicide bombers were from...

An Exodus Grows in Brooklyn

Michael Powell May 28, 2003
By all accounts, life as one knew it is over in New York City's Little Pakistan. Little Pakistan formed as an ethnic residential and business neighborhood of Pakistani immigrants in the early 1960s. In the decades that followed, the neighborhood transformed into a bustling center of Pakistani-ness, adding to the vitality of multicultural New York. As reported in this Washington Post...

Malay-Muslims Have a Role in Remaking Singapore

Lee Hsien Loong May 27, 2003
In the contemporary moment, no country is immune from the possibility of religious and sectarian violence, and the threat of global terrorism. In this speech to a Malay-Muslim youth organization, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, emphasizes the importance of cultural and religious pluralism, and the critical role of Malay-Muslims in Singapore's continued growth and...

Powell Says Attacks Bear Hallmark of Al-Qaeda

Judy Dempsey May 13, 2003
Three suicide attacks on compounds where foreigners live in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed at least seven Americans and injured over 100 more on Monday night. US Secretary of State Colin Powell says the attacks appear to be the work of Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for attacks in the US on Sept. 11, 2001. Officials in Jordan, however, worry that the attacks are more directly related to the...

A Trusteeship for Palestine?

Martin Indyk May 12, 2003
Worrying that US President Bush’s "road map" agenda for the end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will fall through, Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, and other members of the Saban Center's Israeli-Palestinian Workshop have proposed an alternative solution. They suggest a three-year international governing force in Palestine, headed by the UN, IMF, WTO, and various...

Truck Bomb in Chechnya Kills at Least 36 and Wounds Scores

Steven Lee Myers May 12, 2003
The continuing separatist movement in the southern region of Russian territory certainly suggests that the breakup of the Soviet Union over 10 years ago is not quite over. Chechen rebels, fighting for independence from the Russian state, claim that the Russians are denying their right to sovereignty over their own nation, while Russian officials consider the rebels to be a fringe terrorist...

Ya Hussein

Omayma Abdel-Latif April 24, 2003
While the US envisions a secular government for reconstructed Iraq, Iraq’s two Islamic sects – Shi’a and Sunni – have called for an 'Islamic state'. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of Shi’a Muslims assembled in Karbala recently to demonstrate their faith and condemn the American presence in Iraq. Tension between the Iraqi religious establishment and the occupation forces is high; Sunni...