About six months after the inauguration of the Biden administration nearly 90% of the US fighting troops are pulled out of Afghanistan. The vacuum was filled immediately by Taliban forces who claimed that they now control 85% of the country. After having spent nearly three trillion dollars on the invasion…

Abstract: Social labels and categories are exercise in control. They help us learn and compartmentalize information. However, labels also describe opponents, create boundaries, exclude social groups, justify discrimination, and promote persecution. They are imbued with sociopolitical power. Muslims used labels, internally for the first time, during the formative period of…

Since the start of this century alone, and since the Israeli government withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has fought four wars involving Gaza, with the most recent one culminating in an apparent ceasefire on May 21, 2021. The Oslo Accord, the U.S.-backed peace deal brokered more than…

Abstract: In nearly three decades, the Internet has evolved from being an innovation in communication technologies into an economic addon then into a instrument of radical social and economic transformation. By the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the Internet, now dominated by social media platforms, wielded…

Abstract: With the war on Yemen going against Saudi stated goals, three years ago, (5 June 2017), Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and imposed isolating sanctions. Three years later, none of their conditions, which included, primarily, shutting down Aljazeera, ending Qatar’s…

Abstract: Echoing the ideals of many Enlightenment thinkers and their struggle against the encroachment of the Crown and the Cross on individual rights, John Locke penned that the proper function of government is to ensure men’s rights to “life, liberty, and property.” In 1776, the drafters of the U.S. Declaration…

The Unintended Consequences of Saudi rulers’ recklessness: a True GCC called PGC During the last of week of November, the Emir of Kuwait sent out formal invitations to all leaders of member states of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, originally and still commonly known as…

To assume that Trump, and Trump alone, to the exclusion of all other politicians, has authoritarian tendencies is as naïve as believing that a progressive president will pursue a human rights centered agenda to the exclusion of all that stand against that agenda. All politicians, once they experience the power…

Trump said many things that offended many people. Muslim Americans were among those offended by many of his comments. Now that he is elected to be the 45th president of the United States, should Muslims freak out? To answer this question, I will include this essay I drafted in June of this year, when some of my colleagues approached me to apologize for the offensive comments then candidate Trump had made. I said that this is not a passing moment: Trump will be president. Here he is…