Muslims and Liberals

Myriad East-West interactions renewing religious and secular values

Terrorism feeding on U.S. amnesia

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

WHILE AMERICA MOURNS the slaughter of 49 innocent people in Orlando, Florida, by an ISIS-inspired Muslim man, the CIA director warns that more of this kind of tragedy may be in store for the West. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams and other terrorist groups are throwing evermore killers into the West, John Brennan...

Iran deal: Break it and you own it

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

America can start a conflict with Iran and throw a “Mission Accomplished” party after a likely initial victory. But only Iran could end the war. With its network of activists and militias across the “Shiite Crescent,” the Islamic Republic could set the Middle East on fire, which probably wouldn’t stop before consuming many of America’s interests and endangering its hegemony in Muslim west Asia.

ISIS war beckons kurdish state

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

ON SUNDAY NIGHT President Obama called on Turkey, again, “to seal its border with Syria.” He was giving a status report on America’s war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Last week Defense Secretary Ashton Carter demanded, somewhat impatiently: “Turkey must do more to control its often porous border” with Syria. Other...

‘Islamic bomb’ scare, again!

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

“Persuading Pakistan to rein in its nuclear weapons program should be an international priority. “The major world powers spent two years negotiating an agreement to restrain the nuclear ambitions of Iran, which doesn’t have a single nuclear weapon. Yet there has been no comparable investment of effort in Pakistan.” – The New York Times Editorial Board...

God help Israel

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

I SUSPECT that you can still make a buck selling snake oil to folks at the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper laments that John Kerry’s plan to install cameras on Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in East Jerusalem wasn’t working. Palestinians and Israelis were still fighting and dying. Surprise! Surprise! Apparently Rory Jones, the writer, and his...

Fighting phantom terror

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

THE ISLAMIC STATE has sent new shock waves through the world by capturing more than 200 Syrian and Egyptian Christians. The terrorist group’s gruesome killing of other hostages has heightened concerns among many about the fate of these hostages. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and the Iraqi government reportedly have shelved their long-publicized plans to try...

ISIS could trigger Arab revolution

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

On the darker upper strip of my computer screen I saw my eyebrows rising, as I read, for the first time, President Obama’s mission in Iraq and Syria. Now, as his aides and spokespersons drone on and on about that mission, I get ticked off or, alternately, amused. Can the United States and its allies...

Surviving 70 years of nuclear jingoism

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

As Hiroshima Day dawns, why are we still tempting nuclear fate? It is a wonder we have survived all these decades, given US policies on nuclear armament since Hiroshima Noam Chomsky for TomDispatch, part of the Guardian Comment Network Wednesday 6 August 2014 05.19 EDT Seventy-years ago today the Harry Truman administration launched the scariest...

Manufacturing an ‘existential threat’

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

Here’s a searing expose of the ominous U.S.-Israeli narrative about Iran’s nuclear program. It shows how American neocons and the Israeli right wing made Iran’s peaceful nuclear program into an “existential threat” to Israel and sold it to the world. It reminds me of the “mushroom cloud” invented and propagated by the neocons during the...

Is Hindu nationalism mellowing?

Posted on by Mustafa Malik

NEW DELHI – India’s Hindu nationalists gloated as Nancy Powell, the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi, went to meet Norendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of their Bharatya Janata Party. Indian media described the meeting as America’s “cave-in” and “about face” to the chief minister of Gujarat state. Nine years ago Modi was banned from...