Recently my close friend, who emigrated from Iran when she was 10, told me what she has learned about the uprisings in that country from speaking with relatives and listening to Persian radio. She says brave women in particular are playing a major role:
“Not sure if you’re read anything on the role women are …
My thoughts tonight are with the courageous Iranian demonstrators who are showing more courage than the leaders of the free world in fighting for their freedom, and against a regime that threatens the civilized world.
Demonstrators in Iran today continue to demand a recount of what they charge was a fixed vote that handed Iran’s election to Ahmadinejad. The mullahs have begun drastically restricting press coverage, but citizen journalists in Iran are doing their best to communicate with the outside world, mostly via Twitter.
It is inspiring to see so many …
From the Middle East Quarterly
By HEATHER ROBINSON
Spring 2009
Amid growing conservatism and ethnic and sectarian populism in Iraq, parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni Arab, has become the country’s chief advocate for liberal values including a free market, free press, religious pluralism, cooperation among democracies in fighting terror, …
It has been less than five years since the founding of the LibforAll Foundation, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization dedicated to supporting moderate Muslims and promoting a nonviolent, pluralistic interpretation of Islam. But already this foundation has been credited with actually stemming the spread of extremist, militant Islam in Indonesia, home to 240 million people - …
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi journalist who has labored to build bridges between Israel and his country, was beaten this morning in the Dhaka offices of his newspaper, The Weekly Blitz, by thugs he believes to be members of the Bangladeshi government’s ruling party, the Awami League.
Choudhury suffered eye, …
Hopeful news out of Iraq this morning as an Iraqi court has voted to acquit Mithal al-Alusi, a great Iraqi champion of human rights, of prosecution for visiting Israel.
Alusi is a member of the Iraqi Parliament and founder of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation (DPIN), a grassroots Iraqi political party advancing human–including …
In today’s American Spectator online, I have a piece about the Iraqi Parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi, whose sons were murdered in February 2005 following his visit to Israel to attend a counterterrorism conference there. Over the weekend, I received an alarming e-mail from al-Alusi’s friend Esther Kandel, who alerted me …
On Tuesday, members of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion, a paramilitary wing of the government, stormed the offices of Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, arrested and interrogated him. In 2003, Mr. Choudhury, editor of the newspaper The Weekly Blitz, was arrested and tortured for seventeen months. His “crimes” included trying to visit Israel, investigating the …
Tonight I was proud of New York University, my grad school alma mater. Irshad Manji, the gutsy and eloquent author of “The Trouble With Islam Today,” is getting behind something new - The Moral Courage Project at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
Her mission? To demonstrate moral courage, and to encourage future …