By Gary Gerofsky

As Iran races to the nuclear finish line, showing off its capabilities with long-range nuclear-tip-ready missiles and every other kind of system that we thought in years past was beyond their capability, we must ask ourselves what will change when next year Iran rules the Middle East by dint of their regional technological nuclear advantage.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Earlier we saw Egyptian preacher Huwaini and Kuwaiti political activist Mutairi call for the reinstitution of sex-slavery. Before dismissing their position as aberrant, that is “radical,” for the record, here are respected Muslim scholar Majid Khadduri’s thoughts on the matter:

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by Phyllis Chesler

There they all stand, guilty as sin, Afghan Taliban terrorists disguised in women’s burqas — but exposed when they were captured by the Afghan Border Police. Their photo (or rather photos) were taken by an Afghan photographer somewhere near Jalalabad and have just been seen worldwide.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The troubled academic study of the Middle East and Islam by Americans is changing in fundamental ways. I offer some thoughts based on 42 years of personal observation:

From Western offence to Islamic offence: Muslim relations with Christians divide into four long periods: from Muhammad’s hijra to the First Crusade, 622-1099, during which time Muslims expanded at Christian expense; to the 2^nd siege of Vienna, 1099-1683, which saw a mix of Muslim advances (e.g., Anatolia) and retreats (Iberia); to the Arab oil boycott, 1683-1973, with Christians on the offense; and since 1973, with Muslims on the offense.

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We live in ominous times. Our government embraces false “allies” while betraying true ones; our right to be armed is threatened; our religious freedoms are threatened by unethical political dogmas and nefarious foreign funding; our entertainment is dominated by a depraved group of money-hungry, unethical anthopomorphs; our primary and secondary schools are poisoned with political correctness that teaches that no one is responsible for his/her own actions; our academia is dominated by anti-Semitic, Islamo-philic bigots; and, our government is filled with self-serving, lying, unethical thieves. It is time to remember the sacred words penned by this great nation’s Founding Fathers, the American Declaration of Independence:

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by Stephen Schwartz*

John L. Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) at Georgetown University, is the leading defender of radical Islam in U.S. higher education — if not in the entire Western academy. He and his enterprise have returned to the public eye with the exposure that, in 2006-07, they were offered $325,000 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to hold a conference on Islamophobia at the university.

A 57-member international body headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC was founded in Morocco in 1969 to “protect” the Islamic sites in Jerusalem from Israel. It defines “Islamophobia” with considerable and questionable latitude, as any criticism of Muslim individual, institutional, ideological, legal, or cultural behavior. Combating Islamophobia as it conceives it, OIC seeks to prevent free discussion about Islam or the lives of Muslims under, for example, the radical Islamists dominating Saudi Arabia and ruling Iran.

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By David North, CIS.org

There have been a series of interesting developments in the usually ignored nonimmigrant worker programs which continue to flood America’s already over-staffed labor markets:

• Our embassy in India is giving some major H-1B operators fits;
• An Asian financial organization has downgraded the economic prospects of some big users of the H-1B visa program;
• An H-1B school teacher in California, denied renewal of her visa, has taken her employers to court;
• The J-1 program has received some (well-deserved) negative press.

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by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman*

Where does Tunisia, the unlikely igniter of the Middle Eastern upheavals, stand on the democratic transition scale three months after the overthrow of the long reigning autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali? And can the country, which stood (mostly by choice) at the margins of Arab political life since achieving independence in 1956, serve as a democratizing exemplar for other Arab states?

Blazing the Democratic Path

The answer to the second question seems fairly clear. As early as 1991, Samuel Huntington identified what he termed one of the most important global political developments of the late twentieth century — a third wave of democratization among thirty previously nondemocratic states.[1] There was no Arab state on his list, yet he identified Tunisia as a prime candidate for future democratization owing to its pace of economic growth, educated middle class, and concurrent liberalization measures undertaken by the country’s new president, Ben Ali.

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