LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
May 01/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Turkey Calls on Europe to Criminalize "Islamophobia"
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/April 30/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12226/turkey-criminalize-islamophobia
Given Turkey's inhospitable treatment of non-Muslims throughout the ages, it is the height of hypocrisy for its foreign minister to complain about Europe's attitude towards Muslims, which has been the opposite of Islamophobic.
To refresh Çavuşoğlu's memory, a review of Turkey's record is in order.
By proposing to block all criticism of Islam on the grounds that it is "extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and Islamophobic," Çavuşoğlu is revealing that he would welcome banning free speech to protect a religious ideology.
At an event held in on April 11 to unveil the 2017 European Islamophobia Report -- released by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu called on EU governments to criminalize Islamophobia.
"There is no ideology or terminology called 'Islamism'; There is only one Islam and it means 'peace,'" he declared -- incorrectly: salaam means peace; Islam means submission. He also claimed that populist politicians are "increasingly engaging in extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and Islamophobic rhetoric to get a few more votes," and that "centrist politicians are... using a similar rhetoric to get back the votes they have lost."
Urging all politicians to recognize Islamophobia as "a hate crime and a form of racism" in their constitutions, Çavuşoğlu accused European judiciaries of applying a double standard by not paying as much attention to Islamophobia as they do to anti-Semitism. Using the Holocaust as an analogy, he continued: "There is no need to relive Auschwitz or wait for Muslims to be burned in gas chambers like Jewish people."
Çavuşoğlu's view is not new, but it is a gross distortion of past and contemporary history; it seems shaped by a notion that Islam is superior to other religions, as well as from surah 9:33 of the Quran:
"It is He who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion..." (Sahih Translation)
Çavuşoğlu's views also echo those of the Turkish government, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Non-Muslims, as we all have been seeing, are persecuted throughout the Islamic world. Muslims in Europe, on the other hand, enjoy equal rights and religious liberty. Unfortunately, many radical imams use the freedoms granted to them by European democracies to preach Jew-hatred and violent jihad, to recruit fighters and to establish sharia (Islamic) law courts in their neighborhoods.
Some Muslims, inspired by the teachings of and atmosphere created by these imams, engage in gruesome, religiously motivated crimes against non-Muslims. A disabled 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, for instance, was recently raped, tortured and murdered in her Paris apartment by an extremist Muslim.
Çavuşoğlu, in his talk against Islamophobia, did not mention the atrocities committed by radical Islamists in Europe. Those abuses are at the root of the debate about how to tackle the calls to violence in Islam without hampering the civil liberties of law-abiding Muslims. By proposing to block all criticism of Islam on the grounds that it is "extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and Islamophobic," Çavuşoğlu is revealing that he would welcome banning free speech to protect a religious ideology.
Given Turkey's inhospitable treatment of non-Muslims throughout the ages, it is the height of hypocrisy for its foreign minister to complain about Europe's attitude towards Muslims, which has been the opposite of Islamophobic. To refresh Çavuşoğlu's memory, a review of Turkey's record is in order.
Non-Muslims in Turkey have been exposed to severe persecution and attempts at annihilation, such as the 1914-1923 Christian genocide; the 1941-1942 conscription of the "twenty classes," of all male Christians and Jews, including the elderly and mentally ill; and the 1942 Wealth Tax, which aimed to impoverish non-Muslims and transfer their wealth to Muslims.
Today, only 0.2 percent of Turkey's population of nearly 80 million is Christian or Jewish. The following is a brief account of how Turkish governments have rid the country of its non-Muslim citizens:
Greeks: There are fewer than 2,000 Greeks left in Istanbul, which, until the 15th century Ottoman Turkish invasion, was the Greek city of Constantinople. Even despite its tiny size, the community still suffers from violations of its rights. Among these was the forced closure in 1971 of the Orthodox Halki Seminary, the only school for training the leadership of Orthodox Christianity. Since that time, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the spiritual center of Orthodox Christianity, based in Turkey, has been unable to train clergy and potential successors for the position of patriarch.
It is also important to note that the cities in Asia Minor or Anatolia, which were established by Greeks during the 9th and 8th centuries B.C., no longer have any Greeks. They were either murdered, deported or forced to flee severe persecution, including the anti-Greek pogrom of September 1955 in Istanbul, and the 1964 expulsion of Greeks from all over Turkey.
Armenians: Even after the 1915 genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians perished, the persecution of Armenians in Turkey did not end. Since then, the remaining Armenians have witnessed the continued seizure of their property and other assets. In addition, verbal and physical attacks against Armenian community members, schools and the only Armenian newspaper in the country by the Turkish public and the media are still common.
Jews: Since 1923, when the Turkish Republic was established, Jews have been exposed to systematic discrimination and various pressures. The laws that excluded Jews and other non-Muslim citizens from certain occupations in the 1920s and blocked the Jews' freedom of movement; the 1934 anti-Jewish pogrom in eastern Thrace, and the continued anti-Jewish hate speech in the Turkish media and certain political circles are among the forms of persecution and discrimination against Jewish citizens of Turkey.
Assyrians: According to the Minority Rights Group International, Assyrian Christians in Turkey
"suffered forced evictions, mass displacement and the burning down of their homes and villages, abductions (including of priests,) forced conversions to Islam through rape and forced marriage, and murder. These pressures, and other insidious forms of persecution and discrimination, have decimated the community."
Today, there are only around 20,000 Assyrians left in the country. And they are still struggling to open an elementary school in Istanbul, as the government refuses to grant them any financial support. Meanwhile, both the government and some Muslim Kurdish locals in southeast Turkey continue to seize their lands and property illegally.
Protestants: The Turkish government does not recognize the Protestant community as a "legal entity." Hence, according to a 2017 human rights violations report by Turkey's Association of Protestant Churches, Protestants are still devoid of the right freely to establish and maintain places of worships. Other problems encountered by Protestants include but are not limited to hate crimes and speech, verbal and physical attacks and workplace discrimination.
Yazidis: The Turkish government does not recognize Yazidism as a religion. Therefore, the "religion" box on the ID papers of Yazidis in Turkey is either left blank or marked with an "X." Due to continued persecution and pressure from the government and society, many Yazidis from Turkey have fled to Europe. Their privately-owned lands were reportedly invaded and their owners threatened. Some of their abandoned villages have become uninhabitable. Most of the former Yazidi villages in Turkey have been completely Islamized. The estimated population of Yazidis in the country today is approximately 350 -- excluding the recent asylum-seekers from Iraq and Syria. Recently it was reported:
"The Yazidis, who were recently the target of massacre, rape and sex slavery by Isis, are now facing forcible conversion to Islam under the threat of death from Turkish-backed forces which captured the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on 18 March."
Alevis: The Turkish government does not recognize Alevism, another minority faith. Alevis in Turkey have been subjected to perpetual massacres and pogroms, including: the 1937-1938 Dersim (Tunceli) Massacres, the 1978 Malatya Massacre, the 1978 Sivas Massacre, the 1978 Maras Massacre, the 1980 Corum Massacre, the 1993 Sivas Massacre and the 1995 Gazi Massacre. Today's Alevis in Turkey are still often exposed to threats and arbitrary arrests.
The faces of many of the victims who were murdered in the 1993 Sivas massacre of Alevis are featured on this poster, used in a 2012 commemoration in Germany. (Image source: Bernd Schwabe, Wikimedia Commons)
Since the 11th century -- when Turkic tribes originally from Central Asia, who had converted to Islam and began occupying cities in Asia Minor and the Armenian highland -- Turks seem to have had a tradition, as above, of being unneighborly to non-Muslims. The West needs to be reminded that this tradition is alive and well in modern Turkey.
Çavuşoğlu's critique of Europe may have been an attempt to cloud his country's sordid past and precarious present, but it should serve as a warning about the danger posed to liberal democracies the world over.
*Uzay Bulut is a journalist from Turkey and a fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. She is presently based in Washington D.C.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Flooding the Voter Rolls in US and Greece
Maria Polizoidou/Gatestone Institute/April 30/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12227/voter-rolls-greece
In principle, the idea is no different from George Soros's 220-page guide seemingly to create a permanent voting majority for the Democratic Party by "enlarge[ing] the U.S. electorate by 10 million voters by 2018."
Greece's ruling Syriza coalition appears to be adopting a strategy of garnering votes from immigrants by expediting their naturalization process. It will be easier to obtain Greek citizenship than a fishing license.
A total of 800,000 immigrants -- almost one-tenth of the native Greek population -- will soon become citizens. Transposed to the United States, that would be the equivalent of 32,000,000 new voters.
As Greece struggles with accelerating economic decline and an increasing lack of public faith in the political leadership, the ruling Syriza coalition appears to be adopting a strategy of garnering votes from immigrants by expediting their naturalization process.
According to a recent report in the Greek daily Parapolitika, Interior Minister Panos Skourletis is laying the groundwork to enable hundreds of thousands of immigrants to become citizens and vote in the next elections. Although the mandate of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ends in September 2019, some analysts have been predicting a call for elections by the end of 2018.
Until now, candidates for Greek citizenship had to be vetted by a committee. Under the new system, applicants will be granted citizenship automatically if they correctly answer 20 out of 30 questions online. In addition, the government is planning to allow immigrants over the age of 65 to obtain Greek IDs, without testing their knowledge of the Greek language. In other words, it will be easier to obtain Greek citizenship than a Greek fishing license. As a result, a total of 800,000 immigrants -- almost one-tenth of the native Greek population -- will soon become citizens. Transposed to the United States, that would be the equivalent of 32,000,000 new voters.
In principle, the idea is no different from George Soros's 220-page guide, released by DC Leaks, seemingly to create a permanent voting majority for the Democratic Party by "enlarge[ing] the U.S. electorate by 10 million voters by 2018."
Easing citizenship requirements may be a calculated electoral ploy, but it is also in keeping with an overall European multiculturalism. The current leadership is not interested in the origins of the country's illegal immigrants, many of whom hail from Afghanistan, Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa and do not respect the Judeo-Christian roots and culture of modern Greek civilization. Nor does the government appear to concern itself with the danger involved in allowing huge numbers of migrants from terrorist-ridden Muslim-majority countries to become citizens, without vetting them.
Meanwhile, as its immigrant population increases, Greece is simultaneously undergoing a brain-drain. Over the past 8 years, for example, 500,000 skilled and educated young people left the country and have chosen to remain abroad rather than return home and contribute to the economy, the culture and society in general.
According to recent opinion polls, if elections were held in Greece today, the opposition party, New Democracy, would win. It is likely for this reason that the incumbent Syriza coalition has been stepping up its efforts to stay in power. Let us hope that its maneuver to do so by hastily granting voting rights to immigrants will fail. If not, the future of Greece and other countries where there are visible efforts to undermine democratic processes -- as in America's politicized, seemingly criminalized Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation and the efforts of U.S. Democrats to try to prevent the president from forming a government -- could be dangerously bleak.
*Maria Polizoidou, a reporter, broadcast journalist, and consultant on international and foreign affairs, is based in Greece. She has a post-graduate degree in "Geopolitics and Security Issues in the Islamic complex of Turkey and Middle East" from the University of Athens.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Kim the Playmaker
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 30/18
The football World Cup will take place this year and fans of the game are highly anticipating the Russia-hosted event. We are bracing for and rejoicing at this fever that is preparing to invade the world after a few weeks. I said to myself that I should take a break from political news, which are often smeared in blood.
The world would be a beautiful place if it indeed was held captive by the World Cup. It would be beautiful if it were preoccupied with “General” Lionel Messi instead of generals who destroy cities and their residents. It would be beautiful if it were preoccupied with “General” Ronaldo and his invasions that do not leave behind scores of orphans, widows and refugees. It would be beautiful if the world shifted its gaze to Neymar’s skill, wealth and future projects or if it turned to Mohamed Salah and his transformation into a global symbol and a trademark back home.
I will not hide the fact that I occasionally envy sports journalists. They cover clean and beautiful wars. They interview men who do not kill. They spend their time chasing the ball and its fans. They are not concerned with nuclear ambitions that ensnare fearsome and fearful regimes. They are not obsessed with ballistic missiles, especially when they are in the hands of men who ignore international borders and treaties. They cover victories that do not tear up maps or spark catastrophes. They spend their time following news about clubs, teams, transfers and astronomical player wages, while we spend our time between intimidating and misleading statements and militia innovations.
The world however was suddenly shaken by a development that took me out of my football holiday. Someone has proven to be more adept than Messi, Ronaldo and co. Kim Jong Un invaded the stage and stole the spotlight. The world was glued to television screens. For the first time since the Korean war, which ended some seven decades ago, a North Korean leader crossed the border in the Demilitarized Zone that separates his country from the South. Kim walked over with a handshake, dialogue and promises.
The world was shocked. This was the same man who made countries near and far hold their breath several times last year. He rejoiced at the success of the nuclear test just like a father rejoices at the birth of a long-awaited child. With a provocative flamboyant smile, he oversaw ballistic missile tests, making sure that they can reach American territories. Fate would have it that Pyongyang would be ruled by a man whose future actions are unpredictable and that Washington would be ruled by a newcomer whose reactions are unpredictable. When the verbal war broke out between them, the world feared for the worst. Donald Trump upped his pressure on Kim Il Sung’s grandson. He reminded him of the potential heavy prices and that all options were on the table.
It was difficult for the Chinese president to find excuses for its reckless neighbor. Comrade Vladimir Putin appeared distant and busy with the liberation of Ghouta and Damascus’ suburbs. Kim may have sensed that he would not have the necessary support in the looming storm, so he decided to flip the course on its head, especially after he completed his arsenal and fulfilled his pledges to the military and his friends in the party.
If Kim really means what he said in the summit statement with South Korean President Moon Jae In, then we are definitely standing before a historic development that would change the picture, balances and the fate of millions of people. The statement spoke of an agreement to continue international talks in order to announce an end to the Korean War, reach “permanent” and “lasting” peace and work for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
The prevalent belief was that Kim had no choice but to flounder further by joining the nuclear club and considering the bomb as his “insurance policy.” Some firmly believed that he would be sitting on a rocket arsenal until the collapse of his regime due to foreign sanctions and the people having grown fed up with poverty, oppression and slogans that had died since the days of his father. Kim, however, sprung the surprise and flipped the script.
It is hard to predict what went on in his head and persuaded him to alter his course. Was he convinced that improving the economy would be impossible without establishing a normal relationship with the world? Did someone recount to him the story of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and how East Germany was forced to throw itself in the lap of its Western half? Did he realize that the time of nuclear and rocket blackmail is over and that Donald Trump is not at all like Barack Obama? Was he taken aback by how far the South had advanced technologically and democratically, so he decided to at least open a window? Did he receive Chinese advice to offer concessions to the other Korea instead of offering them at the table of his expected meeting with Trump? Did he dream of receiving a pledge from the US similar to the one Fidel Castro obtained after the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Washington vowed not to attack it militarily in return for him to stop playing the part of the world’s evil child rocket-promoter?
These are many questions that should be approached with caution because the game of peace is not easy for a regime built on fear and whose absolute leader has an unlimited capacity to change course.
A country can no longer completely shut its windows and numb people with old formulas. The fortress is no longer a fortress. Isolation chips away at walls and pollutes the air. The nuclear bomb is not enough to satiate the hungry. The images of the beloved leader cannot replace the three daily meals. The rockets themselves are aging rapidly without new technology. Why would a poor Korean be appeased when the other Korean enjoys latest technological advances? The new world is seeping in without permission through the internet, telephone and television.
It is very hard for a fortress to surrender. Transforming into a normal state is not an easy task. Kim, however, may have spared his country the downward spiral, suicide and collapse if he chose the systematic change and followed the Chinese example, regardless of the differences between them.
The Korean example is not limited to itself. Can Iran, for example, shift from the revolution to a normal country? What went through President Hassan Rouhani’s mind when he saw Kim cross over to the South?
The world is waiting for Kim’s meeting with Trump. A meeting of two difficult nuclear leaders, but if Kim could continue normalizing ties with the world, then he may earn the Nobel peace prize, which he would share with Trump. The scene-stealer won the first round. It is also likely that he stole the title of “playmaker” from Messi and Ronaldo.

Have Trump and Macron Learned to Use Each Other?
David Ignatius/The Washington Post/April 30/18
At times during President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the United States last week, he may have seemed like President Trump’s French blind follower. But by the end, it was clear that he has his own character.
The French newspaper Le Monde captured the ambiguity with an editorial Thursday headlined: “A double-edged visit.” Macron’s touchy-feely encounter with Trump last Monday and Tuesday was “gesture,” the paper argued, but the baseline was in Macron’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday that was “on the edge of brutality” in its critique of Trump’s policies. Le Figaro put it more gently in a headline Thursday: “Macron seduces Congress.”
Macron emerges from his Washington trip as a clever, somewhat devious French counterpoint to Trump — a flatterer, manipulator and charmer. Most of all, Macron is an opportunist who sees a way, at a moment when Britain is down and Germany mute, to put France at the center of European diplomacy for the first time in many decades.
I asked Macron at a small gathering of journalists Wednesday afternoon whether he truly found the mercurial Trump a trustworthy partner. “Yes, I trust him very much,” he answered, “because I want him to move” to be a protector of multilateralism and Western values. In other words, Macron trusts Trump to the extent he thinks he can maneuver him.
Even some of Macron’s French diplomatic colleagues are skeptical that this new “entente cordiale” will end happily. Most people come away from Trump’s embrace tarnished by the encounter. During this visit, Macron’s stature was both diminished (by Trump’s domineering over-familiarity) and enhanced (by Macron’s undeniably charismatic public performances).
Macron already seems to have lost his battle to persuade Trump to remain within the Iran nuclear deal. His “bet” is that Trump will announce May 12 that he’s withdrawing from the pact. Macron is focusing on what comes next. He told us he accomplished two main things with Trump: getting his support for continued US “involvement” in stabilizing Syria; and encouraging his “openness to a new comprehensive deal” on Iran — a “bigger deal,” in Trump’s words, that would replace the “terrible” deal President Barack Obama signed and would last longer, cover ballistic-missile testing and address Iran’s regional behavior.
Macron is coaxing Trump toward a very big idea. He’s talking about a grand bargain that would draw in all the major players — Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States — to create a regional security architecture that would start with an agreement to revive Syria. This isn’t a new idea; diplomats have been exploring versions of it ever since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. And it has a kind of inevitability; when the Syrian war ends, it will surely be through some such formula.
But who can take on such a daunting project? Here’s where the weird synergy of Trump and Macron is interesting. A Middle East grand bargain is exactly the kind of “big deal” that Trump dreams of doing. Yet to get anywhere, he needs a smart, smooth-talking but unthreatening helper. Enter Macron.
The French president told us he sees his role as an “honest broker,” facilitating US diplomacy with Russia, Turkey and Iran. On his flight to Washington, he telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin. After he left, he planned to call Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Listening to Macron spin his strategy, I was reminded of another smart, manipulative man whose diplomacy rescued a European status-quo power in decline: Count Metternich of Austria, who crafted the Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815, which stabilized Europe for nearly a century.
Henry Kissinger unforgettably described Metternich in “A World Restored,” his 1957 book based on his Harvard University doctoral dissertation: “His genius was instrumental, not creative; he excelled at manipulation, not construction.” Metternich was a man who “preferred the subtle maneuver to the frontal attack” and sometimes “confused policy with intrigue.” Does that sound like anyone who visited Washington this week?
Macron told us that he sees himself as a man like Trump, because both are “mavericks” within their systems. He might have added that both men are also users, and that they may have found a way to use each other.

When Science Gets Demoted: The Case of Vitamins
Faye Flam/Bloomberg/April 30/18
Proponents of science-based medicine are fond of saying that there’s a name for alternative treatments that pass scientific tests: medicine. But what they don’t mention are those parts of long-established medicine that get demoted to “alternative” status — or should be.
For years, doctors pestered me — and apparently many other people — to take a daily multivitamin and a calcium supplement. There was nothing wrong with me; doctors said it was a kind of insurance. The calcium was to protect against fractures, and the multivitamin … well, the doctors were never too clear on that, but they were adamant.
And now, Kaiser Health News is reporting that most older Americans are “hooked” on vitamins. The story, which ran in the New York Times, detailed a litany of scientific studies showing vitamin supplements either failed to deliver benefits or caused harm. Experts quoted in the story presented all this as if consumers were buying into some egregious form of pseudoscientific quackery — as if this were never part of established medicine.
Paul Offit, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, included vitamins alongside homeopathy and “energy healing” in his book on quack medicine, “Do You Believe in Magic?”. He notes that indeed, the medical establishment did once assume everyone should take vitamins, and universally recommending them has been a hard habit for the doctors to break.
The benefit of supplemental vitamins for healthy people was, he said, based more on assumptions than data, as are many other common practices in medicine. And even as 21st-century medicine advances at lightning speed, with precision genetic testing, immunotherapy and robotic surgeries, it can slow to a crawl in discarding outdated practices. Doctors were slow to stop pushing low-fat diets, Offit said, and are still reluctant to acknowledge data pointing to the downsides of the standard mass screenings for prostate and breast cancers. The notion that people should take antibiotics long after they feel better was never based on testing, he said. That’s now being called into question.
Unlike many forms of alternative medicine, vitamins can have real benefits for some people. It was a giant leap for public health when scientists discovered that foods contained essential trace compounds — named vitamins in 1912. For the first time, doctors understood why people got sick from an unbalanced diet even if they consumed enough calories to keep from starving. There’s no doubt early sailors and explorers living on nothing but hardtack would have done much better with a few bottles of One-A-Day in the hold.
Now many foods are already fortified with vitamins, and it’s rare for people without unusual health conditions to have vitamin deficiencies, even if they eat a less-than-perfect diet. But somewhere around the 1980s, doctors became soured on food as a source of nutrition. We were told it was unsafe to eat fat of any kind, or anything with salt. We were supposed to avoid shrimp, shellfish, nuts, eggs and cheese. Vegetables were still on the list of acceptable foods, but they were pretty grim fare when cooked with no oil, butter or salt.
And then there was the demonization of calories, which are a measure of energy — of how much food is in food. While calorie counts can be useful in protecting us from massive portions of low-quality food, some experts have said the whole obsession with calorie counting is premised on the notion that food is bad. Vitamins, meanwhile, are for the most part calorie-free and fat-free, and doctors assumed they couldn’t be harmful.
Gradually, scientific studies started to show that food was not nearly as dangerous as thought, and that vitamin and mineral supplements could do harm. There was data showing that calcium supplements did not decrease the risk of fracture and might increase the risk of kidney stones. A large-population study found that less than 3 percent of subjects were deemed deficient in iron, but around 13 percent had levels that were dangerously high.
In other studies, vitamin A supplements increased the risk of death among lung cancer patients, and vitamin E increased deaths among people with prostate cancer. These were doses higher than what’s in multivitamins, but low enough that scientists assumed they were safe. Here’s one of the doctors quoted in the recent Kaiser Health News piece:
“Vitamins are not inert,” said Dr. Eric Klein, a prostate cancer expert at the Cleveland Clinic who led the vitamin E study. “They are biologically active agents. We have to think of them in the same way as drugs.”
Considering that larger doses of certain vitamins can cause harm, isn’t the safest course of action to eat some spinach and avoid the pills? Back in 2008, physician Harriet Hall posed the same question regarding her own use of vitamins in a post for the blog Science-Based Medicine. She wrote that she considered her past use of multivitamins “irrational,” and that she continues to take calcium and vitamin D to address a problem, but has dropped the daily multivitamins. She told me she still agrees with what she wrote back then:
There are two philosophies: to take everything that is suggested just in case, or to wait for scientific validation before taking anything. Based on long experience, I consider the latter course more reasonable. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard strong recommendations for something that was later shown to be useless or harmful.
Perhaps the enthusiasm for vitamins was also a product of that techno-optimism that was such a part of 20th-century culture. We were in the space age, and soon food would be replaced with technologically superior substances. But food is back in vogue, and finally, doctors are recommending people get their vitamins by eating it. If doctors are now concerned that too many people are hooked on vitamin pills, they might want to admit they were wrong.

What has Kim Jong-Un done to Khamenei?
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/April 30/18
Tehran’s supreme guide and officials are definitely going through a difficult test. Apart from the US administration’s threats to reapply economic sanctions on the regime, the collapse of its major nuclear ally, North Korea, is a loss that’s tantamount to a disaster.
True, as until now I have not heard one serious commentator who is pleased with the meeting and the historical reconciliation between the North Korean and South Korean leaders or who believes that this reconciliation will achieve the end of war and tensions, as announced by both leaders.
Although skepticism is the master of the situation, developments in the Korean Peninsula are among the Iranian regime’s calculations. What if the North Korean president really decides to end the state of war – although until now, we still do not understand why he altered his policy, that is if he really did?
Let’s assume that what he said expresses a new policy and that North Korea made up its mind and decided to transform into a nuclear-free peaceful country and reconcile with its sister South Korea, what will happen to Iran?
What’s happening is tantamount to a massive political coup and is a major international affair which repercussions will reach faraway areas, including our region.
Two countries have preoccupied the international community and threatened peace: North Korea and Iran. With Pyongyang’s withdrawal, Tehran will remain on its own and it will be easy to pressure it and force it to stop its nuclear program and amend its bad regional behavior. The impact of the news alone will weaken Iran and strengthen the US and its allies.
However the problem that everyone confronts is the North Korean leaders’ intentions which many doubt.
A charade?
In politics, trust and credibility are two rare currencies and as precious as gemstones. Since North Korea lied about the previous pledges which it had made in exchange of lifting the western economic siege, we fear it’s repeating that same charade via a more interesting performance.
Three reasons make Kim Jong-Un a liar in the eyes of his rivals. First of all, last time he promised to stop his nuclear program in exchange of ending the economic siege but he did not keep his word. Secondly, he succeeded in developing his military capabilities and it’s thus difficult to imagine that he decided to give them up. Finally, he relies on superior military power and technology to guarantee his rule and it’s thus difficult to believe that he will subject his governance to demise by giving up on this power.
Some think China is behind this change. US President Donald Trump has noted China’s role and acknowledged that this major breakthrough would not have been if it hadn’t been for the support of the Chinese leadership. Beijing can provide the required guarantees but he’s aware that China is not a guaranteed guarantor.
Therefore, with the absence of information about the justifications of the white North Korean coup, we are confused and skeptic but we hope this dream is true and that the world gets rid of this threat represented in the North Korean nuclear power. We hope the Iranian command benefits from this experience, learns from Kim Jong-un and gets rid of its nuclear weapons, gives up its military adventures and transforms into a major civil economic power in the region and competes with us in education, construction, manufacture and entertainment.

The reconstruction of Islamic Studies
Radwan al-Sayed/Al Arabiya/April 30/18
For the last 10 years, Arabs and Muslims have been preoccupied with fighting extremism and terrorism. Perhaps, they may continue fighting for the next 10 years as well.
Institutional reforms
As a result of the 10 years’ bitter experience in dealing with this issue that is dangerous on religion, societies and countries, I have sought to comprehend it via two concepts: qualification and rehabilitation. By qualification, I mean cooperation among institutions to better comprehend the world, the phenomena of modernity and changes in societies. This will make our religious, cultural and media institutions qualified with the necessary knowledge. What must be qualified is the structure of institutions and entities so that they are better equipped to confront dangerous phenomena.
Simultaneously, educational programs must be rehabilitated, religious discourse must be renewed and imams and teachers must be trained. The public must be addressed to prevent the emergence of a new generation of extremists after what has happened in various regions in Afghanistan, Somalia, West Africa, Syria, Iraq and Libya which witnessed the activities of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The discipline of Islamic Studies
However, there is another dimension to the issue that has not drawn the same attention due to its relative neglect in universities and academic and quasi-academic institutions. The study of Islamic studies arose in Western culture and matured in the hands of orientalists. There are hundreds of departments and dozens of institutes and magazines that have thrived upon this discipline for more than a hundred years. It is well known that this discipline was highly criticized by Edward Said in his book Orientalism (1977), since he considered that such an expression had colonial overtones.
But between Edward Said's criticism and today, fractures have emerged in the academics of these institutions due to two contradictory trends. The first one is the emergence of new commentators or new orientalists who have drifted apart from the traditions of Orientalism and decided to alter the image of the Quran and Islam by employing deconstruction to the texts from the historical context. The second one is represented in new Arab and Muslim commentators who criticized textual traditions and did not only work through militias but also via preaching ceremonies and specialties in the Sharia and Islamic studies colleges to conclude the full-scale implementation of Sharia.
Educational programs must be rehabilitated, religious discourse must be renewed and imams and teachers must be trained.
While the new orientalists used academic instruments to vandalize what they considered was a stereotype, reaching for support not only from revolutions in the social and human sciences, but also from the Islamophobic movements in the West and the world, fundamentalists in Sahwa movements and religious universities wanted to highlight the urgent need to make us more Islamic and more keen on enforcing Islam.
As such, in the middle of these two zealot approaches, the western and eastern doctrines, there is no longer free space for contemplation and research! During the 1980s and 1990s, we, the ones who were teaching Islamics in universities of the West and East, suffered from these two tendencies. Therefore, all we did in Europe and the US was answer the question of when the Qur'an appeared and whether it is a text or a collection of narratives that were arbitrarily assembled a century or more after the death of the prophet (peace be upon him). Meanwhile, everyone in Arab and Muslim countries were busy answering how to restore Islam in societies and nations, why sharia is not implemented, what the meaning of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran is and what the repercussions of the Salafist eruption in Arab and Islamic countries are.
Sahwa’s misreading
I was among the few that considered that the questions of the new commentators and Sahwa movements were spurious. Sharia is implemented, and it does not need implementation; religion is ever present and does not experience estrangement. As for the Qur'an, it is a text that has been present in the life of the community since the days of the Prophet, peace be upon him. We are tired of looking into the origins of the book and its relationship with the Old and New Testaments for over 200 years! As for Islamic history, it has never witnessed the events forged and claimed by people from both doctrines, nor did orthodoxy change the image of religion or history.
After four decades of reciprocal repudiation and contradictory conflicting stubbornness, not only among ordinary people but also in universities and academic departments, it can no longer be denied that the damage has occurred and the cracks have widened due to disputes over major ideas about what Islam, sharia and history are, what the meaning of modern Islamic movements is, why there is animosity towards the new national state, what the phenomena of Al Qaeda and ISIS are exactly and why there is ongoing violence in the name of Islam. Evidently, these questions can only be addressed in research centers, workshops, and departments of Islamic and Arab studies.
Reconstruction of religious thought
Therefore, the Sheikh Zayed Chair for Arab and Islamic Studies at the American University in Beirut organized a workshop entitled Towards the Reconstruction of Islamic Studies. It will include dozens of renowned scholars in the field of Islamic Studies from the East and West and will discuss issues related to the reassessment and reconstruction of Islamic studies and the new contexts for new syllabi and even new texts. We hope that all of this will create a consultative approach over the origins and tasks of this discipline and status within human, social and historical sciences. We do not only have hope in the new syllabi and in the exposure and suppression of fundamentalists on both sides but also in the new generations of Arab and Muslim students who are now present in the universities of the West and East as they are establishing new horizons for Islamic Studies.
The rewards of research
In methodical research and the requirements of academia, we should not cede to the terms of certainty and prohibition as this will be tantamount to surrendering to dictatorships and violence. Methodical research calls for freedom, courage and responsibility and for challenging fabrications as well as everything taken for granted.
The Qur'an says: “Arguing with you concerning the truth after it had become clear, as if they were being driven toward death while they were looking on.” (Anfal: 6) It is absurd, unreasonable and even inhumane neutrality that we see today when we meditate on the body of the nation going to ruin. In our consciousness or unconsciousness, we look at this body as if it wasn’t ours and as if we have no relationship with it. The Qur'an says: “Do not throw [yourselves] with your [own] hands into destruction.” You must not do so, whether adventurously or out of cowardice. There is no might nor power except with Allah.

We cannot afford another endarkenment
Hassan Yassin/Al Arabiya/April 30/18
I have recently tried to take a small step back from events to gain some perspective on our world and where we are going. My mind keeps returning to the darkest period in our collective history: the two world wars that stained the first half of the 20th century. More than 100 million people, mostly civilians, were killed in those two wars – a mass slaughter and destruction that is almost unimaginable today. The hopes of Europe’s Enlightenment and revolutionary ideals born in the 18th century were obscured during the two world wars in a long Endarkenment. Darkness, hatred, malice and tribal warfare of the meanest kind cast a long, dark shadow over Europe and the world at the time. The hopes and the great minds of Europe were directed towards death and destruction on a massive scale, developing rockets, atomic bombs and the most terrible and terrifying projects of ethnic cleansing. During that darkness, we all fell into a deep sleep, our humanity was probed and our usual waking defenses lay disabled. Understandably, it took some time for humanity to regain faith in humanity.
The lethal trenches and abhorrent chemical warfare of World War I, the mass bombing of civilians and the genocidal acts of World War II, the flattening of entire cities such as Coventry or Dresden, this Endarkenment of humanity still weighs heavily in our minds and on our consciences. Thankfully, the extremism and the emperors of destruction were eventually defeated, but our genetic predisposition towards hatred and destruction could not be expiated. Regrettably, injustices and burgeoning hatreds were also carried forwards, with the parcelling out of lands, continued Western interference in a disjointed Arab world, the stolen territories of the new Israeli state, the division into two Chinas, two Koreas, two Vietnams, and a self-mutilating Soviet Union that would later be dismembered. The period from 1990 gave the world some hope for a new enlightenment, but those hopes were rapidly dashed as the new century opened.
America’s military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq
What worries me today is that I see the same forces of darkness and aggression at play again, all while acting through different means and going almost unnoticed or unopposed. President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points that were supposed to neutralize the darkest instincts of World War I lie all but forgotten today – one could say they were never truly applied even at the time, particularly regarding the right of peoples to self-determination. In this young 21st century we have seen Russia grab Crimea, challenging Ukraine’s integrity; Israel holding on to Arab territories and drastically expanding illegal settlements; China grabbing any land it can, enforcing suzerainty over its neighbors and even expanding into the sea with newly-built islands; and Iran imposing its control over Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. These are clear forms not only of aggression but of dictatorial powers negating the recognized rights of other states and peoples. America’s military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have also robbed entire populations of their lives and right to self-determination, with both countries now in the throes of permanent chaos and fragmentation. There may be no formal world war raging, but the violence and pervasiveness of these acts of aggression are just a slow-burning version of the tragedies of the early 20th century, lacking international reaction.
We must be more creative in our thinking, shining some light into the darkness in order to spread a new enlightenment. We should not be scared to seek new ideas to prevent further endarkenment of our world, instead bringing some light and hope back into it.
We have fallen under penumbra in which we have all taken our tranquilisers, as even the United Nations is unable to utter more than a whimper. Our telescopes and microscopes are exploring every corner of the universe down to the tiniest elements of being, yet we are unable to look at ourselves, at our world and the forces of multiple hatred and aggression that are casting a darkness not unlike the impulses we witnessed during two nightmarish world wars. We can see these impulses even in the state of the European project, where division and the reaffirmation of xenophobic nationalisms are the order of the day. Our consciences are asleep, and no world power or embodiment of an international community is present to keep any of this in check. While America is busy dismantling itself politically and ideologically, Israel, Russia, Iran, China and others are given free rein. In Africa and Latin America, similar forces are at work. Those of us who have lived through a long 20th century history are rather concerned, but no one else seems to be paying any attention. It is time we woke up from our sleep and actively remembered what all of our past struggles were for.
Those who benefit from the penumbra and our sleepiness today are the autocratic land-grabbing powers of aggression mentioned above. They are following an imperial instinct, the lines appear blurred only because there is no distinct emperor at work, nor any explicit empire we can identify. Meanwhile, America is paying little heed to the proto-empire they built last century, reneging on the principles of free trade they spent decades imposing on the world and denying their continued role in Iraq, Afghanistan and American dependencies. These are two more of Woodrow Wilson’s points that now lie disregarded by the country that expounded them. It is a complex and changing world, but this must not prevent us from trying to understand it better and to draw attention to phenomena that are intrinsically disturbing. We have not even mentioned the greater issues that we face when we take a further step back: our continued disregard for the environment and our over-exploitation of resources has to be at the top of our concerns, for the consequences will otherwise be absolutely devastating for the planet that gives us all life. Instead of milking it, we must feed it and care for it.
Path forward
While the United Nations and its Security Council have seemed somewhat toothless in the midst of this period of unhinged international relations, its many agencies continue to do some very important work. There is great potential, and a great need, for the UN to lead a programme teaching the children and youth of the world the principles of peace, cooperation and respect for others and our environment. A universal course that would be willingly integrated into the curriculum of every nation could be jointly put together by several UN programmes and agencies such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Children around the world would be taught to be respectful and accepting of all genders, religions, ethnicities and skin colours; they would learn to respect the environment, to reduce waste and to pick up any abandoned waste they encounter; they would be given capacities to understand the world around them and the need for cooperation, preparing them to be true citizens and custodians of the world.
We must be more creative in our thinking, shining some light into the darkness in order to spread a new enlightenment. A United Nations Educational Programme for Youth Awareness and Empowerment is one such potentially transformative idea that could disperse the dark clouds of hatred and aggression. To some, this may sound like fantasy, but everything that humans have ever achieved began as a simple idea, just as humanity emerged from a single cell in the ocean, or from Adam and Eve, whatever your beliefs may be. We should not be scared to seek new ideas to prevent further endarkenment of our world, instead bringing some light and hope back into it.