Mustafa Akyol

SOUTH CAROLINA -- More than a decade has passed since 9/11, but the stain put on the American perception of Islam by that tragic event has not faded. The crime of a few fanatic Islamists still shape the image of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. Quite a few Americans, in...

Last week's news from France was most atrocious. Three small children and their teacher at Ozar Hatorah, a Jewish school in Toulouse, were killed by an unidentified gunman. Soon, the identity of the murderer became apparent: Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian origin, who claimed to be member...

As Islamist parties emerge victorious from Arab ballots, some are having second thoughts about the Arab Spring. The widespread concern is that post-dictatorial Middle Eastern states will turn into illiberal democracies rather than liberal ones. And while the threat of illiberal democracy is valid for any late-democratizing country -- just...

Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine, recently became much more famous than it ever was. Early this month, it came out with a provocative issue whose cover presented a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, and the headline, "100 lashes if you don't die laughing." Shortly afterwards, the offices of the...

The Iranian authorities are busy these days with committing a terrible attack on religious freedom: They have just given a death sentence given to Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, a former Muslim, whose only "crime" is to choose Christianity as his faith.

Although the Iranian court that has tried the long-imprisoned Mr....

"There is no god but Allah, and Gaddafi is his enemy!" So reads one of the popular mottos used by the Libyan rebels, who just put an end to Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year-long tyranny after a chaotic civil war. Similarly, most rebel fighters who captured Tripoli this...

Since it became clear that the culprit of the horror in Norway was not a Muslim jihadist, but a self-proclaimed "Christian Knight," the popular perceptions of terrorism are being questioned -- as they should be.

First of all, as a Muslim, I should note that I agree with the Christian...

Today, in most minds, the words "liberalism" and "Islam" can come together only to form an oxymoron. However, this was not the case a century ago. The Islamic world was still much less open and democratic then the West, but most intellectuals and statesmen of that world were self-declared liberals....