I will comment this note next week in shâa Allah in Arabic language: Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again. The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this…

Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force. And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that…

Chapter  5 Unity : The God of Islam Extract: Muhammad was a man of exceptional  genius. When he died in 632, he had managed to bring nearly all the tribes of Arabia into a new united community, or ummah. He had brought the Arabs a spirituality that was uniquely suited to their own traditions and which unlocked such reserves of power that within a hundred years they had established their own great empire, which stretched from the Himalayas to the Pyrenees, and founded a unique civilization. Yet as Muhammad sat in prayer in the tiny cave at the summit of Mount…

  Extract from the book "Storm from the East"   Chapter II Revolt 1901-1918 Sharif Hussein opened the correspondence with the questionable claim that he spoke in the name of "the Arab nation.” He demanded that Britain agree to the establishment of an Arab state roughly within the boundaries of the Arabic-speaking world and to”the proclamation of an Arab caliphate for Islam.” To satisfy British colonial interests, he offered to concede Britain’s preeminence among foreign powers within the anticipated Arab state. McMahon, whose instructions were to maintain Britain’s freedom of action, was so evasive in his reply that Hussein chided…

Chapter 6 The Mongol  Aftermath Extract : In the Ottoman state the Islamic religious institution reached its maturity, and achieved its final integration into the Sunni polity, Islam was now represented by a real institutional structure- a graded hierarchy of professional and academically trained men of religion, with territorial jurisdictions and defined functions and powers, under the headship of a supreme religious authority recognized as the highest instance of the Holy Law. The Ottomans made what was perhaps the only really serious attempt, in a Muslim state of high material civilization, to establish the Holy Law of Islam as the…