Articles

A week from today, a federal judge in San Diego has an opportunity to right a grievous wrong - to reverse last year's decision by the Department of Homeland Security to deny political asylum to a young Palestinian man who, over the course of a decade, prevented the deaths of potentially thousands of innocent people in Israel and the territories.

His name is Mosab Hassan Yousef and his life story, as recounted in his autobiographical Son of Hamas, reads like the best in historical fiction - though his extraordinary tale is true, confirmed by Israeli intelligence.

At the mouth of the sprawling plaza that houses Casablanca's magnificent Hassan II mosque overlooking the Atlantic Ocean lie two squat, ornate buildings. In these structures, flanked by neatly manicured gardens and largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Kingdom of Morocco is forging what could become one of the world's most potent weapons against Islamic extremism.

The buildings are the future site of a new Quranic school, which--once formally inaugurated in the coming year--will serve as a magnet educational institution for the country's religious students, as well as those from the rest of the region. Its objective, my guide told me, will be singular and unequivocal: "To promote Moroccan Islam. Tolerant Islam."

Whatever happened to the Green Movement? A year after the fraudulent reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad galvanized a groundswell of popular outrage, protesters in the Islamic Republic are growing silent. This has led some observers to conclude that the country's counterrevolution has run its course. But a closer reading of events shows a movement that is still viable, if beleaguered.

North Korea's brazen, unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean warship last month has refocused international attention - and criticism - on the Stalinist regime situated above the 38th Parallel. Beyond the public outrage now coming from Washington, however, it's painfully clear that the White House doesn't possess much by way of a coherent approach toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) or its "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il.

What a difference a few years can make. A little more than a decade ago, regional rivals Turkey and Syria nearly went to war over the latter's sponsorship of the radical Kurdish Workers Party in its struggle against the Turkish state. Today, however, cooperation rather than competition is the order of the day, as highlighted by recent news that the two have kicked off joint military drills for the second time in less than a year.

The thaw in Turkish-Syrian ties is a microcosm of the changes that have taken place in Ankara over the past decade. Since November of 2002, when the Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party, or AKP, swept Bulent Ecevit's troubled secular nationalist coalition from power, Turkey has undergone a major political and ideological metamorphosis. Under the direction of its charismatic leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP has redirected the Turkish ship of state, increasingly abandoning Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's ideas of a secular republic in favor of a more religious and ideologically driven polity.