"Why don't moderate Muslims stand up and say something?" I've been asked frequently on my book tour in the last year. My response is, "We are, but not everyone is listening." Our media, for example, prefers to feature oppressed Muslim women, rather than the thousands of Muslim women advocating social...

This past week, my kids and I have been preparing for Ramadan and watching old Star Trek re-runs. So it's probably unsurprising that, as I rummaged through my garage in search of my collection of Ramadan lanterns, it struck me how strikingly similar the core values in Star Trek are...

A review of the new movie, The Stoning of Soraya M, reminded me of a story I read in junior-high school. "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, described an American small town in which one person was selected by lottery each year to be stoned to death. The victim in the...

President Obama, judging from his inaugural address, knows the difference between terrorists and Muslims, but apparently CNN's Wolf Blitzer still hasn't figured it out.

In his somewhat solemn inaugural speech, President Obama issued a strong statement to terrorists: "...for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and...

Aside from the wanton and indiscriminate destruction of life and property, last week's shocking Mumbai terrorist attacks were sickening in their random senselessness. Media and governments still scramble to categorize the attacks into boxes: al-Qaeda? Indian-Pakistani hatred? Anti-Western hatred? Or, as Paul Cornish (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7755684.stm) suggests, "celebrity terrorism" without a real...

I love to vote. I love standing in line and feasting my eyes on the strange juxtaposition of voting machines and official paperwork with multicolored posters and children's artwork in the elementary school cafeteria in which voting is held in my precinct. I love chatting with those standing ahead and...

A friend of a friend - a physician - declared categorically almost 18 months ago that she could never vote for anyone whose middle name was "Hussein." In stark contrast, a Jewish friend of mine recently joined a Facebook group of over a thousand participants who have all adopted the...

In Ohio, early voting began yesterday. In a seemingly unrelated event, four days ago in Ohio two men sprayed a noxious chemical into the babysitting room at a mosque in Dayton, causing babies and children to suffer burning eyes and throats, and forcing panicked evacuation of the mosque. Two apparently...

I was recently conversing with a local schoolteacher, a thoughtful woman I admire, when she exclaimed, "I would love to talk to you more when we have time! I mean, I'd love to know what you think about Obama, since he's black and, oh, well, Muslim."

I'm afraid my face...