Abdolhamid Masoumi-Tehrani is an Iranian Ayatollah based in Tehran, Iran. He is also a calligrapher and painter, who uses his art works to challenge openly Iran’s ruling clergy and power elite to adopt a more tolerant social and political order. A recent calligraphic art work by Ayatollah Masoumi-Tehrani sent shock waves through Iran’s ruling […]
Beijing is going all out in its efforts to rein in terrorism, following the latest attack at a morning street market in Urumqi, which killed at least 43 people and wounded dozens. The bombing in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, has been blamed on five suspects, all Uighurs, the region’s most populous Muslim minority. Police said that […]
Recently, over 300 Turkish citizens were killed after a mine exploded and caught on fire. In the wake of this disaster, there have been massive protests in Turkey calling upon Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to resign. They view him to be personally responsible for the disaster. As a result, Erdogan’s government has begun […]
As the fighting continues in the Central African Republic, many of those following the crisis are portraying it as primarily a clash between the country’s Muslim minority and Christian militiamen, which to date has resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 people since December and the displacement of nearly a quarter of the country’s population […]
Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Public Attitudes at the Pew Research Center in Washington D.C., published an article titled, “Americans Simply Don’t Care About Peace in the Middle East” in Foreign Policy on May 9, which shows how Americans are skeptical about and uninterested in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The following are some important excerpts from his article: […]
A persistent question has emerged among pundits of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past few weeks: Now that the Kerry-driven peace process has come to an end with no tangible results, what will the United States do? What does the Obama Administration intend to do in the next two and a half years vis-a-vis the […]
People have been praising the strategy of Russian president Vladimir Putin toward eastern Ukraine and the successes that it has brought him there. Yet the more I think about it, the more I wonder how much strategy there is behind his actions and whether Putin is beginning to have second thoughts about those successes. Both […]
As Iran and the United States, a key member of the P5+1 world powers, inch toward deicing their 35-year-old frosty and at times traumatic relations, jockeying from all sides of political spectrum target the direction of this process and whether the icy relations should ever start to melt. Regional opponents of improved ties between Iran […]
Years ago I was able to tour through Seville and found an interesting museum dedicated to the three cultures of medieval Andalucía. These three communities have had major conflicts before and after the late 1400s, but The Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities of Seville lived in relative acceptance of one another until the Reconquista […]
In 2009, Benyamin Netanyahu regained the Israeli Prime Ministry, a position he had held previously from 1996–99. His party, Likud, took 27 seats out of the Knesset’s 120. Kadima, a centrist party started by Ariel Sharon, had won 28 seats, but Israeli President Shimon Peres determined that Likud stood the greatest chance to form a […]
Freedom House has recently noted that the Turkish press has entered into the not free category and that there has been a gradual decline in freedom of the press within the Turkish republic. Erdogan and his government are outraged, yet offer no counter proof. Hurriyet Daily News reported this week that Turkish Prime Minister Recep […]
The [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is comprised of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. According to the GCC’s Charter, what unites these countries are their “special relations, common characteristics and similar systems founded on the creed of Islam.” “Their […]
At a Washington Institute for Near East Policy conference on Thursday, May 8, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Martin Indyk delivered his most recent account of what derailed the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. “One problem that revealed itself in these past nine months is that the parties, although showing some flexibility in the negotiations, […]
While the world focuses on the calls for partition by pro-Russian citizens in the south and east of Ukraine, similar calls from a small African nation are drawing less attention — despite horrific human rights abuses occurring on its territory. In what the U.N. human rights body and Amnesty International have called “ethnic-religious cleansing” between the […]
As Israelis celebrate sixty-six years of independence, they recall that they still have not managed to make peace with the Muslim world. However, despite the difficult situation, they continue to seek peace with their Muslim neighbors. Israelis are celebrating sixty-six years of being an independent country. As a state, they have thrived economically, scientifically, educationally, […]