Co-authored also by Bassem Bouguerra, André Glucksmann, Abdelwahab Meddeb and Mohammad al-Abdallah

Published regularly since 2002, the UN-sponsored Arab Human Development Reports make for some pretty disheartening reading. Just a few of the statistics they contain suffice to understand what depths the international community and Arab leaders have let Arab...

NEW YORK - If Tunisia kicked down the door of the Arab imagination by showing it was possible to topple a dictator, Egypt drew a blueprint of non-violence for the house of revolution that detailed how to demolish a stubbornly entrenched dictator; and now in Libya a mad man is...

Take one comedian, mix in a beauty queen, throw in some bigots and an exploding crow and you'll open an unorthodox window into the past year for Muslims in America.

It's been a tough year, so let's start with the crow.

One of the stupendously stupid protagonists of the

NEW YORK - When a young Egyptian died from what his family, activists and witnesses say was a savage police beating, many of his peers - the generation of Egyptians who have known no other leader than President Hosni Mubarak - protested and mourned in the way they...

Imagine if 3 million boys had their penises cut off every year.

Imagine that despite accounts of the unfathomable pain boys endure to ensure chastity and passage into manhood, religious leaders for decades taught their communities that God had decreed such mutilation.

A world tongue-tied by cultural relativism...

Authenticity has never been Barbie's strong suit. It's estimated that if the doll were life sized, she would tip over because of the size of her breasts.

So I shouldn't be surprised that as part of the 500 international outfits designed to mark Barbie's 50th birthday - yes, she's that...

My one and only visit to Libya was exactly 13 years ago to cover the 27th anniversary of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's coup. There were no flights into or out of the country, still under UN sanctions. Attending the celebrations were heads of African states Gaddafi had turned to in frustration...

NEW YORK - Pity the Uighurs -- the wrong kind of minority, the wrong kind of Muslims, fighting the wrong kind of enemy.

For years, Uighurs -- a Turkic people who are largely Muslim -- complained of economic, cultural and religious discrimination under the harsh fist of Beijing. The latter...

NEW YORK - If Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadhafi was visiting your country and asked to meet 700 women, apparently as part of his mission to "save European women," what would you do?

Instead of telling him to save women at home first, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- Gadhafi's...

NEW YORK -- When President Barack Obama said he wanted to address women's rights during his speech to Muslims last week, I said a prayer to the God of the Torah, the Bible and the Quran: please don't let him fall into the trap of headscarves and hymens.

The...