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Nowadays, a very interesting question about the relationship between Islam and democracy arises: Is Islam compatible with democracy and democratic values or any form of government that empowers the people and limits the power of leaders to hold merely representative offices with limited terms of public service? Can Islam be modernized? Can the West and Islam coexist? Can the West defeat fundamentalism and stop terrorism? Can the West be successful in selling its version of democracy to Muslims? The answer to these questions has a huge impact on the lives of 1.4 billion Muslims around the world. The impact results from the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of Muslim populations are governed by either non-democratic nations or unstable democracies. In Islam the state is intended to be inseparable from religious rule. Islamic law, or Sharia–regulation that is complete and not designed to coexist with or to be subordinate to other legal systems. Continue reading →

The book tells us that we shall know them by their fruits. It is rather ironic that many mainstream media publish so many opinion articles about Donald Trump’s being the world’s most dangerous man, a racist, a bigot, and a Nazi, and the United Kingdom has even tried to ban him from entering the UK when he is not even in power. I am not a Donald Trump supporter, but I do not think Trump is a racist or an extremist, nor are the people who support him a bunch of haters, racists, or bigots. Americans are angry because their politicians have promised much and delivered little. My choice of candidates was Ben Carson, and he is already out of race, strangely endorsing Donald Trump. But what I have seen here is an example of superficial bias in journalism influenced by political ideology. I think that Donald Trump is playing to the crowd because he speaks to their language; he understands people are angry. Donald Trump’s rhetoric is like what George Orwell in his seminal “Essay Politics and the English Language” referred to as language for concealing and not expressing thought rather than as an instrument of expressing thought. Orwell argues that our language has become, “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” While Trump’s language, and perhaps thought, is slovenly, his push for power is concerted. Continue reading →

Muslims around the world have been deceived by the idea that the West and America are the enemies of Islam, and that they are modern day Crusaders who want to destroy Islam and to subjugate them. But what Muslims have failed to understand all along is that the real enemies of Islam are within Islam. I would argue that the real enemy of Islam is not the West, not the United States, not the Jews, not Donald Trump, but Islam’s worst enemies are Muslims themselves. They are the ones using religion for their own gain. When someone points out these facts of truth, they conveniently condemn them as an enemy of Islam or call them Islamaphobic.Muslims should look in the mirror and face the inescapable facts. They should do some soul searching and ask themselves why Muslims fail to be united against the tyranny of Bashir Al- Assad. It is time to ask how, in the modern world of the twenty-first century, the Muslim world has produced ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Osama Bin Laden, and many other of the world’s most brutal demagogues. Why do most of the terrorist groups call themselves Muslims? It is true that religion should not sanction the killing of innocent people, especially women and children, least of all Islam. Continue reading →

Russia’s military action in Syria has no exit plan. Pundits and experts have argued about whether Russia is trying to rescue Assad or whether it is fighting ISIS. What is Russia‘s Putin really trying to do in the Middle East? Another question is will Putin’s foreign policy in the Middle East succeed? These questions are often politically significant; however, the Western perception that Putin is there to fight against ISIS is wrong. The international system is in crisis and urgently needs a new system of governance. Turkey’s President Recep Tayip Erdogan rightly argues that our world is bigger than five, which means that more than 193 countries’ peace and security depend on five countries in the United Nations’ Security Council, a ratio that must change. I do not understand why the international community is not pressuring the United Nations’ Security Council to change. Continue reading →

Turkey is shelling Kurdish forces across the border in northern Syria. As Kurdish forces move forward, village after village is falling under the control of these Kurdish forces as they are trying to gain access to Azaz, Syria and to the surrounding areas, which are very important to Turkey. Turkey does not want the Kurds to have access to the Mediterranean corridor just as it does not want the Kurds to have an independent Kurdish canton as its neighbor like Kurdistan in Northern Iraq. Turkey has long insisted that Syria’s Kurds pose a greater threat to its security than ISIS and is upset that the United States is helping the Kurds. Therefore, Turkey wants to portray the Kurds in Syria as a terror group and as a threat to the US and to the international coalition, characterizing their territory as a place where they also can act against the Islamic State group. However, the Kurds never killed any Turks, and for decades the Kurds in Syria have lived in their homeland without citizenship. The Kurds in Syria could not work, could not travel, and could not get the proper jobs because they did not have any proper documents or citizenships. The Kurds have been oppressed by the regime for decades, so this is a great opportunity for them to get their freedom. Kurds are like any other nation in that they would like to live in their homeland free and equal. No one has a right to take away God-given right from the Kurds. Continue reading →

The twenty-first century carries a lot of baggage from the past. The Cold War may be over, but just as the two global struggles of the first half of the twentieth century left a legacy of trouble, not peace, the current conflict and violence in the post-Cold War world taps into and perpetuates that legacy. That is why today we see that the Cold War has turned hot where Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to bring the spirit of the Soviet Union back. President Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. The confrontation between the West and the East, however, did not ignite this conflict. Each region has a history that goes back to long before the wall was built in Berlin. Most of them, in fact, are not products of the Cold War so much as they are the legacy of the European imperial order of the last centuries. Continue reading →

Respect is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships. In the United States today, as in all Western countries, there is a growing Muslim population. Increasingly many of us have Muslim neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and doctors. Moreover, radicalism is on the move around the globe as well. Islam is currently the world’s second fastest growing religion and is gaining ground worldwide, including in Asia, Africa, America, Central Asia, and Europe. As I was writing this column, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (PEGIDA), an anti-Islam movement, had a meeting. They met with representatives of like-minded groups from fourteen different European countries in the Czech city of Roztoky to plan a European wide demonstration for Feb 6 to rally against the Islamization of Europe. The U.S. has been witnessing the same sentiment as well, a phenomenon that has been becoming more apparent since U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a temporary ban on all Muslims who want to come to the United States. Since then, a large numbers of state governors have also threatened to bar Syrian refugees from their states following the deadly attacks in the US and Paris. We all know that Christians cannot convert all Muslims and that Muslims cannot convert all Christians. So the solutions is to learn how to live together and to respect one another, given that only God can change the hearts and minds of people. Continue reading →

The international community has been battling an ever-elusive enemy: terrorism. It is a force with many names, masks, agendas and yet with no clear definitions. Perhaps this problem is more severe in the Muslim world. Many Muslim countries are presently racked with violence unleashed by groups that claim to represent Islam. The need for Muslims to engage in dialogue with others for resolving conflicts and for mutual enrichment is urgent today as it has always been. The problem is who speaks for Muslims? Which Islam is the true Islam and which one speaks the truth about Islam? Is it the Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, the founder of the Gulen missionary schools around the world, including the ones in Zamboanga and in Manila, or is it the leader of ISIS Abu Bakr Al Bagdadi? Is it Jema’ah Islamiyah in Indonesia? Is it Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is it the leader of Iran Hiummeyni? Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Saudi Arabia with its funding? Which one of these represents the true Islam and speaks for Islam? Continue reading →

The Middle East will never be the same. The Kurds are the greatest beneficiary of the current upheaval in the Middle East especially in Iraq and Syria in addition to the political momentum in and the crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Kurds have been part of Middle Eastern history for a long time, yet the Turks, Persians, and Arabs have denied Kurdish history. An independent Kurdistan is something that all Kurdish people dream of; all of them have fought with their lives and waited so long to see it come about. Now is the time. The Kurds in Northern Iraq are independent in all but name. When I was walking around the streets of Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, I felt like I was in Istanbul or Dubai. Continue reading →

The Middle East is on the verge of an explosion. Rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are not new; this has been going on for centuries dating back to the death of Prophet Mohammed. A tenuous relationship between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, regional competitors who support opposing sides in the regional conflict and who are involved in a proxy war in Yemen, was broken up by Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr last week. Before his arrest in July 2012, Sheikh Nimr led mass protests against the Saudi government. He was among 47 executed last week over terrorism charges. As a response, Iranians attacked the Saudi embassy and set fire to the Saudi ministry in Tehran and in other parts of the area. Saudi Arabia ended all diplomatic ties with Iran following the attack on its embassy in Tehran. Continue reading →