By Abdul El-Sayed & Aasim I. Padela, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Abdul El-Sayed is an epidemiologist at Columbia University and a fellow at Demos. Aasim I. Padela is assistant professor and director of the Initiative on Islam and Medicine at the University of Chicago and a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. The views expressed are their own.
More than a decade after September 11, 2001 and we are only now really beginning to comprehend the health fallout from the terrorist attacks. The effects suffered by first-responders and those who lived in downtown New York City have become increasingly clear, and have rightly been the subject of much attention. Indeed, only yesterday it was announced that 58 cancers had been added to the list of illnesses covered in the wake of 9/11. Yet, the health fallout of 9/11 was not limited to those who were near the World Trade Center or the Pentagon that day.
Health researchers have been compiling a list of health problems that they believe are directly and indirectly connected to 9/11. There are, of course, the more obvious problems – physicians and epidemiologists have, for example, noted unusually high rates of uncommon cancers among 9/11 survivors and rescue personnel, while the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have unsurprisingly been high since the tragedy, even among those who did not directly experience the trauma of those events.
Editor’s note: Geneive Abdo is director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute in Washington. The views in this article are solely those of Geneive Abdo.
By Geneive Abdo, Special to CNN
Ever since Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah proposed forming a political federation among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the pros and cons have been fiercely debated across the Middle East.
For many Arabs in the region, particularly Shia communities in Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and particularly Bahrain, such a proposal suggests an attempt to form a dominant Sunni bloc that would tip the balance of power at a time when tensions are escalating between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the wake of the Arab uprisings.
Five countries in the GCC — Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — are Sunni-dominated societies. Only Bahrain, the sixth GCC country, has a Shia majority. With the sectarian conflict in Syria escalating and spilling over into Lebanon, the violent clashes between the two sects in Iraq, and the uprising in Bahrain by a predominantly Shia opposition, the proposed political federation is likely to enflame the regional conflict.
Fareed Zakaria looks at how the immigration systems work – and don't work – in Japan, Europe, Canada and the U.S. in the TV special: "Global Lessons: The GPS Roadmap for Making Immigration Work" on CNN at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday, June 10. Watch on CNN International on Saturday, June 16, at 4 a.m. and 9 p.m. ET
Editor's note: Jonathan Laurence is associate professor of political science at Boston College and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of "The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jonathan Laurence.
By Jonathan Laurence, Special to CNN
Last month saw a series of riots in Europe, not over the wobbly Euro, but instead over the integration of Muslim Europeans and immigrants. In Bonn, hundreds of German Muslims clashed with police in a violent reaction to a far-right political party’s anti-Muslim gathering. The angry young men who chanted “God is Great” while battling police in the streets have reignited the ongoing debate over Islam’s place in Europe, a debate which has risen to the top of many politicians’ concerns. The German president said in a newspaper interview that while German Muslims clearly “belong” to the country, it is less clear whether or not Islam does.
But something arguably much more meaningful, if less newsworthy, took place days later. Groups representing hundreds of thousands of German Muslims condemned the violence and called on constituents to fulfill the civic duty of voting in regional elections that month. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Throughout the week, Ruchir Sharma will be posting thought-provoking questions with answers and explanations on CNN.com/GPS. Be sure to check out his excellent new book Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles.
By Ruchir Sharma - Special to CNN
Question: There are 15 members in the club of trillion-dollar economies. What are the next two countries that will join the club?
Editor's Note: Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a GPS contributor. You can find all his blog posts here. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Soner Cagaptay.
By Soner Cagaptay - Special to CNN
Could Turkey really go to war against Syria? If it were to do so, Ankara would need to find a way to deal with the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict in Syria and its potential ramifications inside Turkey.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad has enjoyed overwhelming support among Syria’s minority Alawite population. The country’s Sunni majority, on the other hand, is leading the anti-Assad rebellion. Turkey’s push-back against al-Assad has drawn attention to a possible risk for Ankara: A sectarian Sunni-versus-Alawite conflict in Syria could potentially spill over into neighboring Turkey, causing tensions between Turkey’s Alevis and the government in Ankara.
This is especially surprising since the Alevis are not Alawite. Despite semantically similar names - -both Alawites and Alevis derive their names from their reverence for Ali, a close relative of the Muslim prophet Mohammed - Alevis and Alawites represent different strains of Islam. Alevis are not Alawites, just as Protestants are not protestors.
Furthermore, the Alawites are Arabs and the Alevis are Turks. Even Alevi populations among the Kurds and Balkan Muslims pray in Turkish, testifying to the essentially Turkish nature of Alevism. FULL POST
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Egypt is in the news these days because of the nomination of two new candidates for president - one from the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater, and the other from the more radical Salafi movement, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail.
Many Egypt watchers are understandably concerned. There have been attacks on Christians, Western aid workers and women. So where is Egypt headed? Is democracy in Egypt being captured by highly illiberal forces? Can tolerance and pluralism win out?
We should continue to monitor the situation very closely, but as of right now, we should not panic. Al-Shater and Abu Ismail both insist that they are fully committed to democracy and to the rights of minorities.
Yes, they have very reactionary social views, but such views are allowed within democratic systems. There are plenty of parties in the West with arguably reactionary or illiberal views. Nevertheless, these parties run and, in some places, win elections. For example, ultra-right-wing, nationalist parties have won elections in countries across northern Europe. FULL POST
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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
As Egypt's election campaign gathers pace, we are seeing the rise of candidates from Islamic parties, one more radical than the next. Across the Arab world, the promise of a new birth of freedom has been followed by a much messier reality.
It raises the question in many people's minds: Why does it seem that democracy has such a hard time taking root in the Arab world?
As it happens, a Harvard economics professor, Eric Chaney, recently presented a rigorous paper that helps unravel that knot. Chaney asks why there is a "democracy deficit" in the Arab world and systematically tests various hypotheses against the data. He notes that such majority-Muslim nations as Turkey, Indonesia, Albania, Bangladesh and Malaysia have functioning democratic systems, so the mere presence of Islam or Islamic culture cannot be to blame. FULL POST
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Editor's Note: Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a GPS contributor. You can find all his blog posts here. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Soner Cagaptay.
By Soner Cagaptay - Special to CNN
A new argument against intervention in Syria is that since the opposition consists of radical Islamist elements, the United States and other countries should shy away from supporting the rebellion against the Bashar al-Assad regime for fear that they might empower Islamists.
I recently visited Turkey, stopping in cities near the Syrian border such as Antakya and Gaziantep. During this trip, I talked to people who are in daily contact with Syrians, including professors at Zirve University in Gaziantep, an international school that has Syrian students, and American journalists who had just returned from Syria. I did not find any evidence that Islamists run the uprising, yet I left Turkey thinking that delayed intervention against the al-Assad regime could surely lead to building Islamist resentment towards al-Assad to the point of empowering radicals in Syria. FULL POST
Editor's Note: The following is an edited transcript of Ed Husain's remarks in the video below. Ed Husain is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Author of "The Islamist," he can be followed on Twitter via @Ed_Husain.
The protests sweeping Afghanistan in relation to the allegations of copies of the Quran being burned by NATO forces are protests that thus far have been contained within Afghanistan. But unless this risk is managed, there is a real chance that these could spread beyond Afghanistan.
Now, the background to this is simple. The Bagram Air Base thought that in its detainee libraries there were excessive collections of what they called "extremist material." In an attempt to clear out that library they also included other literature and, as it happened, among this collection there were copies of the Quran. Those were burnt alongside other literature and copies of the burning were then somehow disseminated on the Afghan media and on the Internet.
Soon afterwards, the Taliban and others got involved in this whole incident and made it part of a wider narrative that America is here to humiliate Afghanis, Islam, and Muslims. They said that this incident was not just a standalone incident but last month American soldiers had urinated on the dead bodies of Taliban soldiers, that Americans earlier in February had killed eight Afghan soldiers, which was by all reports an accident but that was played out as part of a greater American conspiracy to humiliate Muslims, Afghanistan, and Islam. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Shahid Javed Burki, former Finance Minister of Pakistan and Vice President of the World Bank, is currently Chairman of the Institute of Public Policy in Lahore.
By Shahid Javed Burki, Project Syndicate
Can Muslim governments free themselves from their countries’ powerful militaries and establish civilian control comparable to that found in liberal democracies? This question is now paramount in countries as disparate as Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey.
To predict how this struggle will play out, it helps to understand the region’s past. Since Islam’s founding in the seventh century, it has maintained a tradition of deep military engagement in politics and governance. Indeed, Islam’s increasing military prowess helped it to spread rapidly around the world. FULL POST
As 2011 was coming to a close, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a remarkable speech to his parliament. Assessing the Arab Spring barely a year after it had begun, Netanyahu announced triumphantly that it had failed, that events had confirmed his extreme suspicion about the pro-democracy movements in the region. The Arab Spring was moving the Middle East "not forward, but backward."
Netanyahu seems to endorse the Syrian regime's approach to political protest. During the uprising in Egypt, he wanted the U.S. to stubbornly cling to Hosni Mubarak–who had cooperated with Israel on mutual security issues–as millions of Egyptians gathered in public squares across the country to demand democracy. But leaving that aside, the evidence for Netanyahu's pessimism now is that parties advocating an Islamic approach to politics have won pluralities in Egypt's first post-Mubarak elections. FULL POST
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Editor's Note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation.
By Barak Barfi - Special to CNN
Egyptians go to the polls this week for the country’s final round of voting, but the results are a foregone conclusion. Islamists, who captured around 71% of the ballots cast in the first two phases of voting, have secured a majority in parliament.
The results have perplexed Western liberals, who are baffled at why voters have chosen parties advocating restricted freedoms. But the Islamists' adherence to religious values only partially explains their allure. The key to the Islamists’ success lies equally in their effective grass-roots campaigning, which gives voice to peoples' wide-spread grievances. FULL POST
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