ISLAM
MUSLIM IN AMERICA: PART ONE
Showtime’s Homeland offers something unusual this season. The CIA employs a young woman savvy in technology and banking to entrap a senior member of Iran’s intelligence service. The character Fara Sherazi (Nazanin Boniadi, born in Tehran, raised in London) is a Persian-American Muslim who wears a hijab—a headscarf. This Hollywood tale about Muslim bad guys…
Read MoreTRUE BELIEF IN TEHRAN
In 1951, Eric Hoffer’s book The True Believer presented a chilling subject. Political and religious mass movements form when leaders promise ultimate truth. Those leaders remain in power by defining truth, no matter how much they have to lie. See: Iran, Islamic Republic of. In the September/October issue of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Akbar Ganji profiles Iran’s…
Read MoreTHE 4TH AND ISAAC NEWTON
Yesterday, July 4th, brought to mind Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This thought emanated from reasons historical, personal and contemporary. On July 4, 1776—or close to that date depending on which historian you read—the American Colonies reacted in equal and opposite measure to…
Read MoreRED LINES
It used to be called drawing a line in the sand. You can go this far someone would say, and no farther. Political negotiations for territory produced maps and lines in red to mark borders. This is mine. That is yours. Today, establishing a red line equates to warning other nations or groups not to…
Read MoreLONDON NOTEBOOK
Carolyn and I spent ten days in London. It’s interesting to gather perspectives from someplace else, even if London is familiar. My thoughts: On the day we arrived and met up with our middle son Yosi, who’d completed a three-week tour of Ireland and the UK with the band Hurray for the Riff Raff, two…
Read MoreTHE SUN ALSO RISES
Only four years ago, a friend echoed a common sentiment as the stock market plummeted. “We’ll never see the Dow back at fourteen thousand in our lifetimes.” On May 7, the Dow closed at 15,056. Yesterday it closed at 15,233. I’m not touting the stock market, although my portfolio—conservative at this stage in my life—maintains…
Read MoreBLACK IS WHITE—AND BLACK
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, Big Brother, the symbol of tyranny, declares that “Black is white, and white is black.” This marks just one example of “doublethink,” which twists truth and falsehood. But doublespeak is more than fiction, as we learned in Gaza last week. On Saturday, Palestinians celebrated Hamas’ twenty-fifth anniversary marked by the…
Read MoreFLASH AND MALALA
As a kid, the televised run of the 1936 Flash Gordon sci-fi serial with Buster Crabbe fascinated me—particularly the contrast of technology (rocket ships, two-way TV) and medieval environments. Today’s world maintains that contrast—including here in America. When I was growing up, the U.S. had TV, satellites, manned space flights and, yes, hydrogen bombs. At…
Read MoreMR. MORSI
Egypt as a nation predates the United States by millennia. But when Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi lectures the U.S., he conveniently forgets that Egypt as a democracy is an infant. A week ago, Morsi told The New York Times that the U.S. should show greater respect for Arab values. “If you want to judge the…
Read MoreA MISLEADING QUESTION
Yesterday’s Opinion Pages in The New York Times asked, “Can the United States stay engaged with modern democratic Middle Eastern countries that have sizable anti-Western populations?” The answers by the chosen debaters were reasonable. The question was misleading. Modern democratic Middle Eastern countries don’t exist—with the exception of Israel. Now let’s be clear: Millions of…
Read MoreYOU’RE WELCOME
Periodically, a Muslim shares in the media a particularly wonderful bit of wisdom. So it was last week. Yet the speaker or writer always seems to remain unaware of that wisdom’s source. It’s borrowed from Judaism. Such recognition might help to eliminate the hatred that many Muslims exhibit towards Jews. The Quran (Sura 5:32) states:…
Read MoreINSULT TO HUMANITY
David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, offers fascinating insights into the workings of the human mind in his book, The Social Animal. Brooks points to how we often judge people in milliseconds based on stimuli recognized only the subconscious. I had that experienced with a recent photo in the San Francisco Chronicle. I immediately…
Read MoreA TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES
Some people believe that outrage in the name of religion—or religious hatred—only happens “there.” Not quite. But along with the bad news, there’s also good news. In Cologne, Germany, a regional court banned circumcision for children stating that the procedure does bodily harm without consent. German Jews and Muslims—along with co-religionists worldwide—protested vociferously. For Jews,…
Read MoreCHANGE
I just spent four weeks out of the country, most of the time in Israel plus three days in Jordan and a long weekend in London. Based on that, I offer a few observations about this week’s Egyptian presidential first-round election, which produced two finalists—Mohamed Morsi of the Islamic Brotherhood and former Air Force General…
Read MorePURIM AGAIN… AND AGAIN
Yesterday (beginning Wednesday evening) Jews celebrated Purim. We read the Book of Esther, which presents a great threat to the Jews of ancient Persia. So what’s changed? According to the megillah (scroll/story), Haman, King Ahasuerus’s top counselor, responds negatively to the Jewish Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him. “Accordingly, written instructions were dispatched by couriers…
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