Mr. Sarkozy’s rationale for the ban is not centered on public security concerns, but on what the burka symbolizes to him. “The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,” he opined. Is there a real difference between France or Turkey forcing women to remove their veils, and Saudi Arabia or Iran forcing them to keep them on? Well there is one baffling difference: we hypocritically label the former as liberation, and the latter as oppression. That is a double standard that sacrifices the integrity of the principle for the benefit of arbitrary cultural determinism.

Ahmed Rehab debates conservative radio host, John Gibson, on French president’s Sarkozy’s decision to ban the burqa and its implications.

It seems that Netanyahu just wanted to utter the words peace and two-state as a decoy to grab headlines and avoid the undesirable appearance that Israel is belligerent in the face of US demands to move forward. His conditions include but are not limited to: no right of return for Palestinian refugees forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homes, no compromise over Jerusalem including Arab-majority East Jerusalem, no dismantling or freezing of Israeli illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank, no sovereign control for the new Palestinian state over its own borders and ports, no Palestinian right of defense (he uses the fancy buzz word, “demilitarized”), and no democratically elected party that Israel does not approve.

Islam is not a set of empty rituals; Islam teaches us to think outside the box to rediscover ourselves and to realize an immutable path to contentment. The Qur’an is indeed the ultimate psychology handbook. In enjoining us to reflect inwards vis-à-vis the concept of wealth – “if you try to count the blessings of God, you will not be able to calculate them” – the Qur’an revolutionizes the very process of how we assess our wealth portfolios. Since God’s blessings are infinite, everyone is wealthy if they only knew it.

President Obama has so far exhibited unprecedented ambition on the part of a sitting US president to recalibrate the precepts of America’s relationship with Muslims around the world. My hope is that this means venturing beyond oil, conflict resolution and counter terrorism initiatives and into beginning to understand the genuine challenges and aspirations of most citizens in Muslim-majority countries.

Ahmed Rehab appears to accept the mainstream Muslim perspective of President Barack Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world as being “genuine”. He reasons that President Obama is “the first American president to have had significant experiences in the Muslim world”. “I believe that, unlike previous presidents, he is not limited, despite himself, to the notion that Muslims strictly represent the “other” and is able to appreciate the humanity and nuance in Muslim life,” Rehab told Al-Ahram Weekly.