Change in relations between the US and Iran may be characterised by a supertanker on the high seas. Changing its direction takes a long time and it needs a lot of space.
When the first Russian troops landed in Afghanistan 18 years ago, few would have imagined that the rag-tag bands of Afghan mujahideen would last too long.
In a five-hour marathon speech to the African National Congress (ANC) annual meeting in Mafikeng on December 16, president Nelson Mandela of South Africa lashed out at the white minority for its continued stranglehold of the economy.
Reacting to a calculated snub by the European Union (EU), prime minister Mesut Yilmaz has threatened to withdraw Turkey’s application for full membership if it is not formally accepted as a candidate before June...
Anti-Islam animus is not confined to the US or Europe even if it is most pronounced in these lands. The virus appears to be permanently lodged in the genes of most non-Muslim westerners.
A wave of xenophobia is sweeping Denmark, but its nice Nordic people reject any charges of racism - arguing, without any trace of irony, that as ‘nationalists and Christians’ they merely object to having ‘Muslims and Arabs’ in their midst.
Two Kosovar activists died at the hands of Serb police last month, shortly before they were due to go on trial charged with terrorism and other offences against state security. Adrian Krasniqi was gunned down in the street on October 16, and Jonuz Zeneli died two days later in a prison hospital in Belgrade...
If the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) summit (held in Tehran from December 9 to 11) had only brought together heads of State and senior representatives from 55 Muslim countries, and achieved nothing else, it would be considered a major success.
Prime minister Nawaz Sharif won the gladiatorial contest with the country’s president and the chief justice, banishing both into the political wilderness, but it was a gruelling experience for him.
New revelations, from the horse’s mouth, linking the Pope to the CIA and US foreign policy during the cold war confirm allegations, first made in a 1996 book but dismissed as wild by commentators, that ‘his holiness’ was locked in an anti-communist alliance with American intelligence...
More than 18 months after the fiery crash of the TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island in New York, US investigators have come up with nothing to prove that the jumbo jet was downed as a result of any terrorist activity.
The failure of the fourth Middle East-North Africa (MENA) Economic Conference in Doha, Qatar (November 16-18), boycotted by most Arab countries despite strong US pressure to attend, has triggered guarded optimism that the summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC)...
In fighting off a ruthless superpower bully, at a colossal cost, the Chechens have established that they have a tremendous sense of purpose. And now they prove that lurking behind that sense of purpose is great sense of humour and originality as well.
As Bangladesh aid donors met in Dhaka on November 4, they got a glimpse of the problems confronting the country. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) held a noisy rally in the capital condemning the regime’s performance.
If they are not pre-occupied with the length of people’s beards, the Taliban are busy thinking up exotic names for their war-ravaged country.
Heralded as Europe’s first collective response to Islamophobia, the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain’s European conference, aptly entitled ‘Islamophobia - the oldest hatred’, brought together an impressive line up of speakers, activists and scholars from across Europe.
The rebel attack on the presidential guard’s barracks in Dushanbe on October 16 served notice that peace is not round the corner in Tajikistan. At least 14 soldiers and four rebels were killed in what was a major embarrassment for the regime of president Imomali Rakhmanov.
Two senior Islamic activists in Turkey were given long jail sentences by an Ankara state security court on October 15, on trumped up charges. Nuruddin Sirin, editor of the Islamic daily Selam, was jailed for 17-and-a-half years, and Bekir Yildiz, a former mayor of Ankara’s Sincan district...
In a bizarre twist even by Nigerian military regime’s standards, four visitors of imprisoned Muslim leader, Mu’allim Ibrahim Zakzaky, were arrested and imprisoned after going on a routine visit to the alim and his three co-defendants known as the Zaria Four.
Even the most ardent admirers of Benazir Bhutto do not deny that the former first family plundered the country’s wealth. Their defence of Benazir and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, an even bigger crook, is that it is nothing uncommon.
