Once a paratrooper, always a paratrooper. That’s how Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf could be described in the wake of his decision over th… - Amir Taheri

Since Islam cannot abdicate from its mission to bring the whole of humanity to its own path - the 'Right Path' - relations between the City of Faith and the City of War cannot but be hostile. As long as Islam is not strong enough to impose its will on the inhabitants of the City of War by force, it may observe a period of truce. But there can never be peace between the two. A state of truce could be tolerated as long as the two warring camps touched one another only at their physical frontiers. The real danger came when the City of War started to conquer the land of Islam from within.

The French Riviera is the one spot in Europe that comes closest to the image of an earthly paradise. At its heart is the Franco-Italian city of Nice, now France’s No. 2 tourist attraction after Paris... To a committed Islamist, Nice was the very symbol of a sinful “deviation from the Right Path.”

Turkmens claim that they have the lowest life expectancy in Iran and that they are denied fair access to higher education. Those who manage to apply for university places are often turned away because they fail religious tests based on Shiism; their inadequate mastery of Persian reduces their chances further. Tehran authorities blame the Turkmen revolt on “secessionists” and “counterrevolutionaries,” allegedly supported by the United States. In fact, the revolt highlights the failure of a narrowly based ideological regime to understand the pluralist nature of Iranian society and the legitimate aspirations of its diverse component parts for dignity, equal opportunity and a fair share in decision-making.