Determining what more than 1 billion people think is an ambitious project by any standard. But Georgetown University Prof. John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, helped organize just such a survey and managed to condense their findings into a mere 204 pages. Their new book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, is based on a Gallup Poll, the largest of its kind, which surveyed some 50,000 Muslims in more than 35 countries. It asked questions about gender, race, terrorism, the separation of church and state, and the prospects of peace with the West. U.S. News spoke with Mogahed about the findings. Read the rest of this entry »

Click here

BAGHDAD–The Abu Ghraib hospital was lucky, through government reconstruction funds, to receive a stereoscopic lens to enable the doctors there to perform surgeries on patients with injured eyes. And there are many, given all the shrapnel that’s flown around the neighborhood in the past five years. But the device sits unused on a small surgical cart in a dusty operating room because it lacks a mount needed to operate the lens. Brig. Gen. James Milano scowls at the all-too-familiar conundrum. “The sad thing about this,” he tells a doctor, “is that we’re five years into war and the reconstruction, and this hospital is still back at ground zero; if only it was just in Abu Ghraib.” Read the rest of this entry »

Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq? The short answer, according to a pair of Harvard economists, is yes. Read the rest of this entry »