By Bruce T. Boccardy, for Commondreams.org Last March, I wrote an essay providing evidence of the inherent exploitation and undemocratic constructs in our economic model burdening working people. This essay complements that work and will show a fundamental reason why our economic model is structurally limited by attempts to reform it. H...
By Shabana Ayaz Every year, conversations about the hijab return to Muslim communities around the world. World Hijab Day, founded by Bangladeshi-American activist Nazma Khan in 2013, is observed globally on Feb. 1, while in Pakistan the religious political party Jamaat-e-Islami and some other religious and civil-society groups have traditional...
By Iftikhar Gilani When eminent constitutional lawyer and author late A.G. Noorani called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a “menace to India” seven years ago, his warning was directed primarily at the future of the Indian republic. Today, that warning appears to have travelled well beyond India’s borders. The issue is no longer simply wh...
By Dr. Ansar Jamil When Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August, the instinct across newsrooms was to reach for a label. “Islamic NATO,” some called it. Others insisted it was aimed at no one in particular. Both readings miss the point. The pact’s strength lies precisely in [...
By Meg Bostrom, Michael Chameides, Elaine Mejia Two hundred fifty years ago, Americans rejected monarchy. They rejected the idea that power should rest in the hands of one person, one family, or a distant ruling class. Instead, they enshrined an American promise: Legitimate power comes from the people. Our Constitution opens with three words: ...
By Gloria Swindler Boutte, first published at Commondreams.org Juneteenth celebrations in my town were lit. There were so many events I had a difficult time choosing which ones to attend. As a grandmother, I ended up at the event on the grounds of the Historic Harriet Barber house (circa 1875) in Hopkins, South Carolina, where my daughter and ...
*Shabana Ayaz The scenes witnessed in London earlier this month were disturbing not merely because of what happened on stage, but because of the atmosphere surrounding it. During Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally on May 16, activists associated with the French far-right group Collectif Némésis publicly removed niqabs from Muslim women...
By Ramzy Baroud U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to have little patience for questions that do not conform to his preferred style of declaring unsubstantiated victories, whether against South Americans or in the Middle East. In a charged press conference on March 13, Hegseth did more than attack journalists for questioning his unve...
By Shabana Ayaz The Middle East is no longer merely “dangerously close” to a wider conflict — it is increasingly moving toward one. Following the unprecedented joint U.S.–Israeli air strikes on Iranian strategic facilities and leadership infrastructure, the region has entered a period of heightened uncertainty. In the days since the strikes, m...
By Shabana Ayaz A quiet but potentially consequential shift is underway in the security politics of the Muslim world. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Türkiye are edging toward a structured trilateral defense arrangement that, if concluded, would mark one of the most serious attempts in decades to translate shared strategic concerns into an institu...
