Ricciardone’s Copt-Out, a response to Egypt Ambassador
Since the unexpectedly strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s parliamentary elections in late 2005—and other rough seas that President Bush’s policies encountered in Iraq and Palestine—the administration has pulled in its horns on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East. Tactical retreats are not tantamount to an abandonment of policy, but apparently no one has told this to the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Frances Ricciardone. In recent public comments Ricciardone has gone out of his way to excuse and cover up some of the most serious violations of democracy and human rights in Egypt.
The current disarray among Canada's refugee officials may be causing drastic slip-ups, if two cases of Coptic Christians seeking asylum here are any indication.
Recent work on ancient manuscripts examines the stages of this extraordinary language shift
The picture shows:At a public lecture in Coptic studies at UCLA on 23 February: From left, front row: Mr Hany Takla, president of St Shenouda Society; Dr Arietta Papaconstantinou, the lecturer; and Dr Claudia Rapp, professor of history at UCLA. Back row: Dr Gawdat Gabra, visiting professor of Coptic studies at ClaremontGraduateUniversity; and Dr Jacco Dieleman, assistant professor of Egyptology at UCLA.
Ed Hussain, once a proponent of radical Islam in London, tells how his time as a teacher in Saudi Arabia led him to turn against extremismDuring our first two months in Jeddah, Faye and I relished our new and luxurious lifestyle: a shiny jeep, two swimming pools, domestic help, and a tax-free salary. The luxury of living in a modern city with a developed infrastructure cocooned me from the frightful reality of life in Saudi Arabia.
Last December I had met Mustafa al-Fiqi, who heads the foreign relations committee of the People’s Assembly, several times. The meetings came within the framework of a group effort to condense a vision of the then aspired Constitutional amendments and, by mere coincidence, followed a Watani editorial printed on 17 December.
MI5 says UK turning blind eye to crisis in universities
By Gordon Thomas
LONDON — In his firstreport to Downing Street, Jonathan Evans, the new MI5 chief, has strongly denied claims by Higher Education Minister Bill Ramell that “the problem of Islamic extremism in UK universities is not widespread.”
Attitudes about how to deal with radical Islam are now shifting so quickly within Whitehall that it is hard to keep up.
The detailed announcement from Ruth Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, on how she will spend £5m on grass-roots hearts and minds projects is a genuine break with the recent past, when ministers preferred to fund self-appointed national representatives of Islam such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) rather than those working on the ground with young people.
"Peace in our time." Neville Chamberlain's umbrella. The British prime minister's appeasement of evil at Munich in 1938. It all came rushing back this past week, but before Iran and Great Britain worked up the return of British sailors and marines taken hostage and humiliated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government. No, the appeasement in the service of peaceful relations is happening on the home front in Great Britain.
US Needs New Approach in Dealing with Saudis, Says Lee Hamilton '52
April 10, 2007, Greencastle, Ind. - "At a time when America's standing in the Middle East is shaken, it is not surprising that the Saudis are defining their interests as they see them, not as we do," writes Lee Hamilton in the Indianapolis Star.
Over the last few weeks Dutch media have published information gleaned from Dutch intelligence files regarding the Muslim Brotherhood. One report indicated that Samir Azzouz and Noureddine el Fatmi, two top members of the Hofstad group (and, later, of the so-called “Piranha network”) had had close financial dealings with members of the Brotherhood based in the Netherlands. Another indicated that the Brotherhood, through the European Trust (its powerful financial arm in Europe), controlled two of the country’s largest mosques.
The War You're Not Reading About By John McCain Sunday, April 8, 2007
I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003 -- and my first since Gen. David Petraeus's new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad.
A report that Iran may have been involved in the 2005 kidnapping and murder of Egypt’s top diplomat in Iraq has raised fresh questions about his disappearance. It has also given new energy to his daughter’s quest to keep her father’s memory alive By Manal el-Jesri
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.
BY TAWFIK HAMID Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.
Egypt, much like Pakistan, is becoming a real problem for the Bush administration. Despite the rhetoric concerning spreading democracy in the Middle East'one of the alleged justifications for the illegal invasion of Iraq'the Bush administration has been more than content to support dictatorships that serve its objectives.
Terrorists – coming to a school near you Police ill-equipped to defend against an American Beslan
WorldNetDaily.com
Authorities fear the school massacre that shook Russia a few years ago may be a dress rehearsal for what al-Qaida plans to do in America – only on a grander scale, launching multiple school attacks simultaneously across the country.
Iraq’s Assyrian Christians face extinction four years after the toppling of Saddam, says Ed West
“When they cook a dish in the Middle East, it is traditional to put the meat on top of the rice when they serve it. They kidnapped a woman’s baby in Baghdad, a toddler, and because the mother was unable to pay the ransom, they returned her child– beheaded, roasted and served on a mound of rice.”
Her warm smile, white-haired ponytail and gentle demeanor make Egyptian novelist Nawal El Saadawi seem more like a grandma than a condemned political activist.
Until she speaks -- and she's not afraid to speak.At least not when talking about oppression to a crowd at University of Michigan-Flint on Friday in a discussion that included her views on why she's a notorious thorn in the side of religious fundamentalists.
“Those willing to trawl through Ramadan’s written and recorded output will find no shortage of material calling into question his supposedly liberal intent. It’s clear that what Ramadan wants isn’t a modernised, secular Islam, but an Islamised modernity.”
Liberals, of Arab and/or Muslim background, living either in the West or in the Arab Muslim world, please… wake up!
I do know you are there, I do read your articles, I do appreciate your ideas, your love and respect for freedom and life, but I feel really disappointed and embarrassed each time I am asked: “Where are they?”, “Don’t you think they are not organised?”, “Why do they hide?”
Washington D. C., Asharq Al-Awsat- "Fear" is a key word when considering the future of the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the US. This multifaceted fear can be explained for a number of reasons.
Watani Elhamy Khalil
Attitudes about how to deal with radical Islam are now shifting so quickly within 
"Peace in our time." Neville Chamberlain's umbrella. The British prime minister's appeasement of evil at Munich in 1938. It all came rushing back this past week, but before Iran and Great Britain worked up the return of British sailors and marines taken hostage and humiliated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government. No, the appeasement in the service of peaceful relations is happening on the home front in Great Britain. 
April 10, 2007, Greencastle, Ind. - "At a time when America's standing in the Middle East is shaken, it is not surprising that the Saudis are defining their interests as they see them, not as we do," writes Lee Hamilton in the Indianapolis Star
