In 2007, Barack Obama attracted controversy during his campaign by declaring that if elected, he would be willing to go into Pakistan if there is "actionable intelligence about high-value targets" in the country, and if the Pakistani government "won't act" against them.

During her three-day visit to Pakistan this...

The turning point occurred on June 16, 2008 at 4:40 pm, when David Littman took the floor at a UN Human Rights Council meeting to speak on behalf of the Association for World Education (AWE) and the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).

"Mr. President," he said, "In the...

In the next 200 years, wars will come and go, the economy will recover and crash and recover again, and the geopolitical landscape will morph repeatedly, as it always has. But people will still remember Barack Obama as a legendary historical figure worldwide, centuries from now, because of his single...

Could Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who again reaffirmed his belief last week that the Holocaust was a myth, land his own show on Fox News? Going by Richard Dawkins' new book The Greatest Show on Earth, out now in the US and Canada, it may not be such a long...

In 2007, Pervez Kambaksh was sentenced to death in Afghanistan for distributing documents online criticizing the status and treatment of women in Islam. Following a massive international campaign, President Hamid Karzai granted him amnesty, and he was freed last month.

Today, UK asylum seeker Hussain Muradi faces a...

This year, 1.2 million male babies in the United States will have between 35 and 50% of healthy, functioning penile skin -- containing over 20,000 nerve endings and the five most sensitive areas of the penis -- removed in a procedure that all of the major medical associations in...

Could the traditional burqa-clad woman and the modern Western exotic dancer be two sides of the same coin?

Think about it:

The tradition of the burqa/headscarf is the product of a patriarchal system that is geared towards and tailored to pleasing men by placing the responsibility of curbing male lust...

I lived in Lahore, Pakistan for a few years during high school. It was during that time that I met Hasan (name altered for anonymity). Hasan lives in Qom, Iran, and is training at the Islamic seminary in the city, the largest institution for the study of Shiite Islamic theology...

There has never been any reliable polling data that has come out of Iran. Even when opinion polls have been conducted, restrictions on what the Iranian people can and cannot say have made it practically impossible to figure out what they really think.

Are they more pro-theocracy or pro-secular? Pro-US...

When I was in fifth grade at the American International School in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, our teacher had us make paper snowflakes as an art assignment. Brimming with excitement, we all folded up our pieces of paper, cut into them, opened them up, used glue and glitter to decorate them,...

In the same week that Hindu fundamentalists obliterated plans to build a Charlie Chaplin statue, on the grounds that Chaplin was a Christian who made no contribution to India, video clips of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Varun Gandhi surfaced online, showing him glorifyingly speaking of "cutting the...

It's a constant struggle.

Fat's no good. Neither are carbs. Red meat's got cholesterol. White meat's full of hormones. Dairy's got too much lactose. Fish has some good cholesterol, but causes mercury poisoning. Vegetables give you gas and require vitamin supplementation. Cannibalism is illegal. And I'm too self-conscious to...

Four days after 9/11, Pakistani-British writer and political activist Tariq Ali wrote about an encounter he had with a Pakistani army general whom he asked about Islamist militants in the region.

Why had they been so receptive to American financing and weapon support during the Cold War, only...

First off, I have to admit that initially, the idea of an "Atheist Bus Campaign" made me cringe a bit.

I thought that the campaign, which has already been launched in Britain and Spain and is now coming to my hometown of Toronto, blurred one of the distinctions that I...

In a part of the world not far from the Middle East, there is a war-ravaged country whose government is supporting a brutal military offensive against a population of Muslims living on territory under its control.

According to UN estimates, 300,000 people have died in the conflict so far;...

Forty four percent of America is a large voting bloc.

That is the percentage of Americans - 44% - who, according to a 2003 Pew Research poll, said they believed that the land of Israel was given to the Jews by God.

According to the same poll, 36% believed...

Things had been going well for Islamic jihadist militant groups after 9/11.

Moderate and liberal Muslims worldwide - most of whom abhor the idea of terrorism - have long had legitimate grievances about the situations in Palestine, Iraq, and Kashmir. By successfully exploiting these issues while taking advantage of alienated...

The 'Bradley Effect' is named after Tom Bradley, an African-American candidate in California's 1982 gubernatorial race who, despite consistently polling well, lost the election. Ever since, the term has been used to describe the phenomenon of people who say to pollsters that they will vote for a non-white candidate, but...

Frank Luntz and Bill O'Reilly predicted it wrong. There has been no poll bump for John McCain as a consequence of the VP debate.

Barack Obama's lead has actually widened in the first national polls conducted entirely after Sarah Palin and Joe Biden's vice presidential debate on Thursday, October...

Phyllis Schlafly was probably the most prominent poster woman for patriarchal conservatives in the 1970s -- a conservative anti-feminist activist who, despite being a successful lawyer, newsletter editor and all-round career woman, maintained avidly that women should be full-time wives and mothers. She was perceived by many progressive women and...