An Arab influence continues to transform secessionist efforts in Chechnya into a drive for an Islamic state. Islam, long part of the region’s identity, however, was not the impetus for nationalistic movement to separate from Russia, underway since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Al Qaeda has...
Certain dramatic developments in Chechnya have given rise to a perception that radical Islamist organisations have steered the secessionist movement toward creating an Islamic imamat in North Eastern Caucasus, similar...
War on the Korean Peninsula would be catastrophic. North Korea has nuclear capability while South Korea depends on an alliance with the United States, the world’s largest military. Even hardliners on North Korea like former US national security official Victor Cha – no longer under consideration...
War Olympics? The head of the North Korean delegation on the Winter Olympics shakes hands with his South Korean counterpart, and an unhappy US President Donald Trump meets a group of North Korean defectors
SEOUL: North Korea’s decision to...
North Korea launched a satellite into orbit around the earth. The UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting and condemned the launch. “U.S. officials have said the same type of rocket used to launch today's satellite could deliver a nuclear warhead,” reports CNN. “China, the Soviet...
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Today, languages are becoming extinct faster than species. One estimate predicts 90% of the 6,000 languages will cease to be spoken in the next century. Though lamenting such a loss, linguist and Columbia University Professor John McWhorter challenges the notion that language death equates to...
Click here for the article in TThe World Affairs Journal.
The blockbuster "Kill Bill" films exemplify the increasingly global nature of Hollywood, and not solely because of director Quentin Tarantino's heavy incorporation of foreign stylistic elements, writes media scholar Christina Klein. Like a growing number of Hollywood productions,...
"Kill Bill: Vol. 2" is a money-maker for Miramax, but also for the production team that helped produce it outside the US. (Photo: Miramax films)
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" opened strong...
Indonesia has a secular constitution, but in 2003 gave a nod to the Aceh province adopting partial sharia law, supposedly an attempt to stem recruiting by a rebel movement. This separate set of laws, often targeting the poor and women, discourages tourism and economic development. Hard-line groups...
Banda Aceh. Agnes Monica, the famous Indonesian actress and singer, is a given to wearing sexy clothes, whether on stage, TV or advertising billboards. But not here, in the provincial capital of Aceh province. Just across from the 19th-century...
The US-China trade clash centers on intellectual property theft. “An underlying factor is the Chinese government’s rigorous censorship of imported cultural products,” explains Ge Chen, professor of law. The US Constitution protects speech as a check against excessive government power with the First...
Market without freedom: China’s authoritarian government incarcerated Nobel laureate and democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo who died in Chinese custody in 2017; Chinese citizens enjoyed a brief moment of freedom in 1979 when the government allowed...
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...
