Pakistan goes to the polls on May 11, 2013. The promise and the potential of a fresh beginning -- for the moment -- feels heady. The Afghan war has taken its toll on Pakistan. Can the country reinvent itself with a clear eye on the challenges and opportunities it faces...

As high-spirited Americans and the Boston Marathon crowds were blindsided by surreal pressure cooker bombs, and even as we reel from the senseless deaths and the plight of heroic runners-turned-victims, the key questions are: Why do these tragedies keep recurring and what, if anything, can we -- the people and...

Egyptian Women's Rights vs. Rape and Violence Against Women

Egypt's withdrawal of police from the streets has resulted in an explosion of sexual assaults against women over the last couple of years. According to The New York Times, when "women were sexually abused and gang raped in a...

Visiting urbanized Shabath Muradpur, a hamlet just behind the spanking New Delhi airport and Chainsa in rural Haryana state -- three striking similarities emerged. First, both villages have long histories of Hindu-Muslim amity over 150 years: Harmonious relationships dominate these religiously mixed communities, and their Muslims did not flee to...

A revolution averted: as we prepared to fly to Pakistan, we realized that the country was being held hostage by a charismatic Canada-based cleric, Dr. Tahirul Qadri, chief of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran. He held a march with 40-50,000 of his supporters in Islamabad with the singular objective...

"There are two steps in a revolution: You break it and then you build something new. That's the hardest,"says Mabrouka M'barek, a newly elected member of the Tunisian National Constituent Assembly.

M'barek, a "founding mother" birthed in the Arab Spring, is engaged in drafting the country's new...

Let's all pay tribute to Malala Yousafzai.

Given that the Quran starts with the word "read," I am stunned to witness the Taliban in Pakistan, who consider themselves good Muslims, open fire on Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old girl in Mingora, Swat. As she rode her...

Imam Feisal Rauf, Founder of the Cordoba Initiative believes that "moderates of all faith traditions must coalesce, build coalitions ... to combat ... the extremists of all faith traditions. This is the most powerful way to go forward."

Why are the Arab streets inflamed? Is it the...

On Aug. 5, Wade Michael Page, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, randomly shot and killed six people in 10 minutes in a Sikh Gurdwara (temple) in Milwaukee, Wis.

The crime was probably based on mistaken identities in the mind of the killer because Sikhs (some of whom wear turbans like...

In Syria:

Syrian soap operas (musalsals) that once united a country now are a "casualty of war." Soaps likeDamascene Days (Ayam Shamiya) were popular, even if closely allied with Assad's Baathist regime and ideology in the '90s. One soap harked back to Sultan Saladin, a 12th century...

As the Olympian winners savor their gold, silver and bronze medals and the London party winds down, I think much of the world is still perplexed by the intersection between Islam, women and sports.

The global Muslim mosaic is multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic -- as are the women. In Bishkek,...

Saudi Arabia has a first as it entered the 2012 Olympics in London with women athletes -- even though it is the last Muslim country to do so. The first two Saudi women Olympians are Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani and Sarah Attar, in judo and track and...

Tunisia, Libya and Egypt: Three robust Arab revolutions erupted in three countries with common Mediterranean histories, geographies and culture. In the aftermath of three dictators --- Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Hussein Mubarak of Egypt -- these countries now have a shot at democracy. However, it...

"Democratic elections did not result in democratic actors who upheld women's rights," said Lina Abou-Habib, President of The Association for Women Rights in Development (AWID), encapsulating the Arab revolutions at the opening plenary of their 2012 conference. Two thousand women development activists participated in the Istanbul conference of AWID. The...

Currently checking out interesting NGOs empowering Muslim women in my home country. The world's largest democracy remains a paradox. Take Lucknow, the capitol of the largest state in the world, Uttar Pradesh, teeming with 200 million people. This state is part of the northern Indian swathe derisively referred to as...

9/11 killed 3,497 people, unalterably impacting their families. It created a paradigm shift in the world. It put terrorism on the world map -- whether one lives in Karachi, Mumbai, London or New York.

Since 9/11, Afghanistan and Pakistan have become dominated by war, with precarious futures at best. Ahmed...

What do Congressman Peter King, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have in common with British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France?

Playing with Islamophobia!

In 2005, when David Cameron led the Tory Party, he was a moderate on immigration. But...

The Syria I visited with my husband five years ago was a politically complicated place, where the streets were tamped down. As tourists, we were a bit suspect, subjected to a two-hour baggage search at 2 a.m. as we drove across the immigration border.

Today Syria -- with escalating repression...

Pakistan -- the Road to Abbottabad

"So what did they know?" I asked a dear Pakistani friend in Washington DC, who a few years ago had been able to meet with senior Taliban officials in Karachi easily, if he also knew about Osama living in Abbottabad or knew somebody who...

"Bare Chests vs. Bullets," says Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni journalist and activist.

Last week, a friend from Jeddah emailed me about one of her heroines: Tawakul Karman, a firebrand journalist, founder and chair of Women Journalists Without Chains. Karman is an activist and a leader on the front...