Muslims and Liberals

The Philadelphia InquirerOctober 5, 2007 PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A cartoon circulating in Pakistan depicts a scowling Gen. Pervez Musharraf marrying a cowering former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice look on, worried. “Dear God,” prays Rice, as the bride’s mother, “please make him treat my child kindly.” Tomorrow, Musharraf...

The Columbus DispatchJuly 27, 2007 Is Iran luring America into a deal that would concede domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf? The speculation has been fueled around the gulf by the recent U.S.-Iranian talks on Iraq. “The Iranians are carpet sellers,” said Mustafa Alani, program director at the Gulf Research Center during my recent visit...

San Francisco ChronicleJuly 13, 2007 Is Iran luring the United States into a deal that would concede its domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf? This speculation has been fueled by the recent U.S.-Iranian talks on Iraq. “The Iranians are carpet sellers,” said Mustafa Alani, program director at the Gulf Research Center, told me during a...

The Daily Star – LebanonNovember 23, 2006 The Democrats in the United States declared the recent congressional elections a “referendum” on the Republican President George W. Bush’s stewardship of the Iraq war. On the campaign trail, they savaged Bush and the Republican-majority Congress for the disastrous war and demanded its speedy end. Now that they...

The MastheadSummer 2006 HeadnoteUntil American reporters get up to speed, op-ed pages need to offer insights into Islam I think it’s time our op-ed pages be a bit more hospitable to Muslim perspectives on Muslim issues. The news and editorial pages will, I hope, follow suit. I attended several seminars on Iraq in which the...

Middle East PolicyWinter 2005 After the July 2005 bombings in London, Frances Stead Sellers wrote a piece in The Washington Post (August 22, 2005) arguing that “multiculturalism as a political ideology” wasn’t working in her native Britain. She expressed happiness over seeing that Britons had “overcome the racism of their colonial past and learned to...

The Daily StarNovember 14, 2005 Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, is facing charges in connection with the leak of a CIA officer’s identity and has become a popular target of Americans scared by the human, moral and economic toll of the Iraq war. Valerie Plame’s identity was...

The Daily Star – LebanonOctober 7, 2005 Human rights groups around the world are concerned that the UN resolution calling on governments to punish “incitement to terrorist acts” will further stifle the voices of the oppressed, especially because the world body has failed to define what terrorism is. This resolution has, says Human Rights Watch...

Dawn – EditorialAugust 26, 2005 IN HIS Independence Day message President Pervez Musharraf reiterated his vow to defeat terrorists and extremists. He took that vow after the United States began its war against “Islamic terrorism.” On July 18 Benazir Bhutto accused him again of not “doing enough to combat terrorism.” The message: She can do...

The Daily Star – LebanonAugust 26, 2005 My wife was griping about having to pay $2.58 a gallon to fill up her gas tank. The significance of her complaint began to sink in when I heard about the rocket attack against U.S. warships at Jordan’s Aqaba port and then received a phone call from a...