Oil producing nations were long warned to diversify economies. The abrupt fall of oil prices from more than $110 to less than $30 per barrel in the space of a few years is influencing politics and foreign policy. Fareed Zakaria points out that Iran entered serious negotiations for an agreement on...
Read the article from The Washington Post.
Throughout Indonesian history, Islam emerged with a unique eclecticism differing from that of Arab lands. In recent years, however, political Islam has been on the march, with violent consequences for the world's most populous Muslim country. Indonesia's largest Islamic organization,...
The convention (Muktamar) of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) which will be held from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 in Donohudan, Surakarta is a focal point for the future of progressive Islam in Indonesia. The very fact that Indonesia is the...
Far from being anathema to Islamic societies of the Middle East, globalization has strengthened Islamic fundamentalism in the region by facilitating extensive networks of formerly dissociated Muslims - so says Yale Islamic Studies professor Frank Griffel, in the second half of this series on...
Globalization has boosted the number of hajj pilgrims to Mecca from 79,000 in 1929 to 2 million by the 1980s.
Islamic fundamentalism is often understood as a straight return into a distant past. Its ideology of a revival of the Prophet Muhammad'...
Since the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States and its allies have led in building multiple international institutions that promote trade, security and diplomacy – including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and NATO. Yet too many Americans do not understand the...
Cost of zero-sum policy: Donald Trump as US president aims to disrupt trade deals with narrow nationalist slogans; his policy called for abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
WASHINGTON: During almost three decades as a member of the US...
The wealthiest countries spend lavishly on health care. The growing expenditures create entrenched health-care systems that provide an increasing share of employment in those nations. Technological innovation – from development of new drugs to life-saving equipment – in the health-care sector,...
Click here to read the article in The Guardian.
Middle-class families increasingly depend on domestic help for cooking and cleaning services, eldercare and childcare. Almost 70 million domestic workers, most women, toil around the globe. The global supply of labor for work deemed unskilled is huge. Wages are low, and private homes are the...
Maid to work: A foreign domestic helper multi-tasks in Singapore, and domestic workers in Hong Kong protest work conditions and regulations that favor employers over workers
NEW HAVEN: The 67 million domestic workers worldwide are the unsung...
Putian, China, with its sneaker manufactures, is a global counterfeiting center, sometimes beating the real sneakers to market and shipping everywhere from Italy to New York. Major footwear companies loathe discussing the problem for fear of upsetting Chinese authorities or losing consumer trust...
Click here for the article in The New York Times.
One out of five people in the world are Muslim, and many Europeans express fear about growing numbers of Muslim migrants. “Islam in Europe tends to be viewed as not only a recent, but also a foreign and threatening presence,” explains Nayef Al-Rodhan, University of Oxford philosopher,...
Wisdom from the East: The House of Wisdom – the royal library in Abbasid Baghdad (top); the world map by Al-Idrisi, looking southward
OXFORD: Recent years have seen much talk of the dangers of Islam in the West and its perceived incompatibility with...
