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A Courageous Voice Silenced In the Middle East
Remembering Egypt's "Grand Sheikh" Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi

March 11, 2010  •  Fox News

One of Islam's most influential and moderate voices has been silenced with the death of Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi.

The 81year-old sheikh who was not only Egypt's leading official religious authority but the head of one of its largest universities, Al Azhar, was visiting Saudi Arabia when he suffered a fatal heart attack on Wednesday.

Appointed by President Hosni Mubarak as "Grand Sheikh" of the state supported Al-Azhar Mosque and University in 1996, Tantawi had been Egypt's chief state sheikh, the so-called mufti, since 1986.

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Against All Odds - In Iraq and Hollywood

March 8, 2010  •  Fox News

Yesterday was a good day for Iraq, and for imitation Iraq, or Hollywood. For both the Green Zone and the Red Carpet, the odds were defied, the critics upended.

In Iraq, over 70 percent of Iraqis eligible to vote turned out – compared to a 63 percent turnout during last year's hotly contested American presidential election -- despite a spasm of morning violence designed to keep voters home. Defying attacks which killed at least 36 people, Iraqis of all religions and ethnicities filled more than 50,000 voting booths in over 8,000 polling stations to cast ballots for hundreds of candidates.

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Saudi Bloggers Shatter the Kingdom's Silence and Censorship

March 4, 2010  •  Fox News

For Ahmed Al-Omran, a 25-year-old Saudi blogger, this has been a particularly frustrating week.

To begin with, an ultra-conservative cleric issued a fatwa concluding that people who oppose segregating Saudi men and women should be killed. Then Al-Omran was forced by death threats to remove pictures he had posted on his Web site of university women clad from head to toe in their black abayas, the shrouds they are required to wear in public.

And finally, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Sultan not only banned women and men from mixing together at the Riyadh book fair but also the display of books deemed "incompatible with religion and values."

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Assassination Tango

February 22, 2010  •  Tablet Magazine

During the heat of this past summer in Dubai, when the beaches were too hot for sunbathing and the city hummed with air conditioners working overtime, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior member of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza, quietly checked into a hospital for unspecified "treatment." In fact, he was recovering from an attempt by the Mossad, Israel's legendary spy agency, to poison his food during an earlier visit to Lebanon, an Israeli source said.

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Four Lessons Learned Help U.S. Military In Afghanistan

February 18, 2010  •  Fox News

Who says you can't teach an old, well, older dog new tricks? The U.S. military seems to have mastered a few, or at least learned a few lessons from previous encounters in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, too, have the Taliban, but so far, it seems to be doing them little good.

In five days of fighting, the Marines are avoiding earlier mistakes and making impressive advances. The consensus among some of my military friends and sources is that the Marjah offensive has been meticulously planned, starting with the decision to broadcast the news that the U.S. military was coming.

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