In its July 2010 issue, Christianity Today, the masthead publication of Evangelical Protestantism, reported the merger of two Evangelical organizations engaged in missionary work in the Muslim world: Pioneers USA and Arab World Ministries.  These have a combined total of 2,300 missionaries.  The report does not make clear how many of these are actually trying to […]

The news from Pakistan remains dire.  The flood waters now sweeping toward the Arabian Gulf have been far more devastating and the destruction more widespread than anyone predicted.  They have cruelly exposed many of Pakistan’s glaring weaknesses: its corrupt feudal elite, its corrupt and ineffective bureaucracy, its lack of infrastructure, its weak civil society, and […]

On his excellent blog for our magazine, Peter Berger has clearly laid out the impassioned moral argument for why we ought to think twice about pulling out of Afghanistan. He starts by highlighting a brutal stoning of an adulterous couple recently sanctioned by the Taliban in the north. He admits that it may very well […]

The ongoing debate about the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” is a test for the real foundations of our country, and the maturity of our political debate. This issue has the danger of sliding further into political immaturity at best, and ugly xenophobia and discrimination at its worst. But it also has the opportunity for us […]

On August 17, 2010 The New York Times carried on its first page a story about the stoning for adultery of a couple in a Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan. (The Times deserves credit—the story hardly supports the anti-war position of the newspaper). The man (Khayyam, aged 25) was married, the woman (Siddiqa, aged 19) was […]

Rajendra Pachauri, the formerly outspoken head of the IPCC, was yanked firmly off the global stage last January after his blustering and insulting attacks on well-founded criticisms of exaggerations and false predictions in the UN’s high profile climate report turned him into an embarrassing liability to the global environmental movement.  “Voodoo science,” he said dismissively […]

On my recent lecture tour in Pakistan, I was lucky enough to spend some time in Karachi with Dr. Elizabeth Colton, a 65-year-old ex-journalist who has made her second career in the State Department working on public diplomacy for the United States.This wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered Dr. Colton.  Over the last eight years […]

I suppose that producing a blog makes little sense unless it provides an opportunity to vent personal complaints about the universe and peeves concerning the behavior of people. My list of complaints about the universe gets longer every morning after perusal of The New York Times. I also have a number of very idiosyncratic peeves […]

A study by a group led by one Dr. Darrell Francis of Britain’s National Heart and Lung Institute recently made headlines with its recommendation that fast-food joints hand out cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins to any patron who wants them, free of charge. Popping a statin with one’s Whopper and shake, the study’s authors claim, […]

“The GWOT is dead, long live the COFKATGWOT,” Walter Russell Mead likes to joke. It’s spot-on damning, really—a hamfisted rebranding could not change the essence of two wars well underway as President Obama took the reins of power. It was an early PR mistake by an Administration eager to distance itself from its predecessor, a […]