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The twenty-first century carries a lot of baggage from the past. The Cold War may be over, but just as the two global struggles of the first half of the twentieth century left a legacy of trouble, not peace, the current conflict and violence in the post-Cold War world taps into and perpetuates that legacy. That is why today we see that the Cold War has turned hot where Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to bring the spirit of the Soviet Union back. President Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. The confrontation between the West and the East, however, did not ignite this conflict. Each region has a history that goes back to long before the wall was built in Berlin. Most of them, in fact, are not products of the Cold War so much as they are the legacy of the European imperial order of the last centuries. Continue reading →

Respect is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships. In the United States today, as in all Western countries, there is a growing Muslim population. Increasingly many of us have Muslim neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and doctors. Moreover, radicalism is on the move around the globe as well. Islam is currently the world’s second fastest growing religion and is gaining ground worldwide, including in Asia, Africa, America, Central Asia, and Europe. As I was writing this column, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (PEGIDA), an anti-Islam movement, had a meeting. They met with representatives of like-minded groups from fourteen different European countries in the Czech city of Roztoky to plan a European wide demonstration for Feb 6 to rally against the Islamization of Europe. The U.S. has been witnessing the same sentiment as well, a phenomenon that has been becoming more apparent since U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a temporary ban on all Muslims who want to come to the United States. Since then, a large numbers of state governors have also threatened to bar Syrian refugees from their states following the deadly attacks in the US and Paris. We all know that Christians cannot convert all Muslims and that Muslims cannot convert all Christians. So the solutions is to learn how to live together and to respect one another, given that only God can change the hearts and minds of people. Continue reading →

The international community has been battling an ever-elusive enemy: terrorism. It is a force with many names, masks, agendas and yet with no clear definitions. Perhaps this problem is more severe in the Muslim world. Many Muslim countries are presently racked with violence unleashed by groups that claim to represent Islam. The need for Muslims to engage in dialogue with others for resolving conflicts and for mutual enrichment is urgent today as it has always been. The problem is who speaks for Muslims? Which Islam is the true Islam and which one speaks the truth about Islam? Is it the Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, the founder of the Gulen missionary schools around the world, including the ones in Zamboanga and in Manila, or is it the leader of ISIS Abu Bakr Al Bagdadi? Is it Jema’ah Islamiyah in Indonesia? Is it Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is it the leader of Iran Hiummeyni? Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Saudi Arabia with its funding? Which one of these represents the true Islam and speaks for Islam? Continue reading →

The Middle East will never be the same. The Kurds are the greatest beneficiary of the current upheaval in the Middle East especially in Iraq and Syria in addition to the political momentum in and the crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Kurds have been part of Middle Eastern history for a long time, yet the Turks, Persians, and Arabs have denied Kurdish history. An independent Kurdistan is something that all Kurdish people dream of; all of them have fought with their lives and waited so long to see it come about. Now is the time. The Kurds in Northern Iraq are independent in all but name. When I was walking around the streets of Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, I felt like I was in Istanbul or Dubai. Continue reading →

The Middle East is on the verge of an explosion. Rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are not new; this has been going on for centuries dating back to the death of Prophet Mohammed. A tenuous relationship between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, regional competitors who support opposing sides in the regional conflict and who are involved in a proxy war in Yemen, was broken up by Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr last week. Before his arrest in July 2012, Sheikh Nimr led mass protests against the Saudi government. He was among 47 executed last week over terrorism charges. As a response, Iranians attacked the Saudi embassy and set fire to the Saudi ministry in Tehran and in other parts of the area. Saudi Arabia ended all diplomatic ties with Iran following the attack on its embassy in Tehran. Continue reading →

I have been writing about Gulen’s cult in this journal and in other newspapers for some years. I have emphasized that Gulen’s cult is a threat to the national security of Turkey, to the United States, or to any country they are operating in, because their goal is to rule the world. I am glad to see this has finally come out in major media especially about those academicians who were paid to write about Gulen and his scam empire and who refused to publish anything negative about the cult. Turkey is at war with Gulen and his organization; the movement is an information-control cult. Gulen is a man who created a culture of enmity that polarized the nation. Erdogan had allowed Gulen to take control of the police, the judiciary, and large parts of the state apparatus. In turn the Gulen cult established a republic of dirty tricks with illegal wiretappings, fabricated evidence, slander, blackmailing of innocent people, and disinformation. Since Gulen did not want to take orders from anyone except directly from Allah, he eventually turned against Erdogan and the AK party. He ordered some of his MP followers to resign so that the AKP would be weak and Erdogan would be ousted with a vote of no confidence, but he proved to be wrong. Continue reading →

Since the end of World War II the world order has favored sovereign states. It has been easier for the most powerful states to keep order and to exploit ones with lesser economic power. President Obama has put America on sale in the Middle East. Obama’s foreign policy assumptions are utter nonsense. The President tried to persuade Americans that the way to beat ISIS was by fixing Syria through a peace process that would bring Turkey, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the EU, and just about every major player together, but the problem is that nobody on that list wants to help to solve the Syrian problem, but instead they want to control the country. The Civil War in Syria happened because the Turks, the Americans, the Iranians, the Russians, members of the EU, Saudis, and the rest of the major power have been exploiting these same divisions and rivalries. The reason that ISIS exists is the same reason that Syria cannot have a long-term peace settlement. Iran hates Sunni Arabs, and Sunni Arabs hate Shiite Muslims. Turks have a problem with the Kurds, and the Kurds have a problem with the Turks. The Russians are telling the world that they are bombing ISIS, but they are bombing the opposite groups who fight against ISIS and against the Assad regime. Obama wants ISIS is go because it has made him look bad. Shiites want to be dominant in Syria post-Assad, and Sunnis want to be the dominant power. President Obama‘s biggest mistake was pulling out of Iraq and letting Iran, its Shiite devotees, and Russians have their way with the country, not having the US help the Kurds in Iraq. Continue reading →

The Paris, Ankara, Beirut, and the Bamako attacks, all carried out supposedly by ISIS and Al Mourabitoun, show that terror continues in the name of Islam. The Islamic terror network is trying to change the world system, and no country feels safe anymore. It is because there is an absence of strong leadership that is determined to take a stand against this wicked ideology and to go after it with all means. The terrorists in Mali released the Muslims among their hostages if they could cite passages from the Quran, clearly showing that there is a direct link between Islam and terrorism. The clash between Islam and the West will continue and will not end anytime soon. Islam is, in fact, the only civilization that ever calls into question the survival of the West. Today the war is not just against the land of infidels, but also within Islam. When the founder of Islam, Prophet Mohammed died, Islam died with it. Because after the death of Mohammed, leaders who were interested in power implemented a series of policies including Jihad, utilizing oppressive and violent methods to get the power they wanted. Since then there has been no peace not even within Islam. Continue reading →

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned back the momentum that he lost in the June 7th election and again won a majority of seats in Parliament in the first of November elections in Turkey. This election was very important in that the victory for the AKP and President Erdogan will have profound implications for the future of Turkey. He conducted a silent revolution socially, economically, and politically with the AKP reining in 49.4% of the votes in the election, meaning he won 317 out of 550 seats. For several decades the military class was always present to insure that democracy remained strong. Erdogan has whittled down that balance and has broken down the military class. The military in Turkey is under civilian rule now and no longer is independent. After more than a decade as the Turkish Prime Minister and now as the President of Turkey, Erdogan has challenged the ideological basis of the Turkish Republic. Since its founding in 1923, Kemalism and secularism, two pillars instituted by the first Turkish president, Kemal Ataturk, have undergirded the state. In a reversal, Erdogan has won the approval of millions of conservative and religious voters with subtle and overt appeals to Islamic identity, from increasing restrictions on abortions and on alcohol use to the lifting of restrictions on the Islamic headscarf and suggesting an increase in family size. He has unprecedented levels of electoral support, aided also by perceptions of good economic management. Continue reading →

The War in Syria is getting out of hand. Russia’s militarily involvement in the Syrians’ war in the name of fighting the ISIS has changed the new balance of power in the conflict. The U.S government has failed to achieve its objectives in Syria. Until recently the Obama administration pursued a policy of degrading, restraining, and containing, but not seriously defeating the ISIS. According to some reports, Syria might have large deposits of natural gas off its coastline and in its Economic Exclusive Zone, the adjacent territorial marine area next to a seaward edge. If this is true, then this is another reason that Russia is trying to bolster Assad and to make sure that in a post-Assad regime Alawites participate in whatever government eventually emerges in Syria, so that Russia can expand its naval and air base. Russia is a primary natural gas supplier to European countries, and, as such, would like to protect its sale of natural gas to the EU and to limit the EU countries’ access to other sources. Continue reading →