Not long after his inauguration, President Barak Obama signed an executive order specifying that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay be closed within a year.  No sooner had Obama taken these positive steps than Republican members of congress and certain segments of the “Mainstream Media” (often abbreviated M$M) began their attempt to incite public opinion against Obama’s decision using the weapon the Right has so successfully wielded over the last eight years – fear.
 

 In the national discussion that was the 2008 Presidential Election campaign, Muslims and Islam were significant themes. As one might expect in a media-saturated society, what mattered was not Muslims and Islam themselves, but rather the ways in which “Muslims” and “Islam” could be portrayed, the extent to which these terms might be forged into simplistic tropes that could be wielded to conjure fear of the Other.
 

 While attempts have been made by many Muslims and non-Muslims to understand the  events of the terrorist attacks of September 11in their political context, others have attempted to link these events with the religion of Islam itself, and have called for a “reformation” of the religion.
  Irshad Manji published a book titled The Trouble with Islam, in 2003 and republished it 2004 with an opportunistically reworded title The Trouble with Islam Today
 Here is presented a critical review of her book and summary of how other critics view her work.
 

  Constitutional scholar, Claes G. Ryn, argues in his paper that some self-serving people in the American power elite, while claiming to want and protect us from domestic moral nihilism and cultural fragmentation and from the evils from abroad, are progressively subverting our constitution in the name of the constitution. They do this by means of a deception whereby they would have us believe that their centralized power-grabbing ideology actually “comports well with the thinking of the framers of the U.S. Constitution”.
 Mr. Ryn goes on to outline how this - neo-Jacobinism, he calls it - is an anti-constitutional ideology, eroding the old American pragmatic ideas of limited, decentralized government as well as that of the unwritten constitution which was the historical habits and beliefs of the American people.
 

 In the wake of a conference of Holocaust deniers sponsored by the Iranian government, Muslim leaders condemn the blatant disregard for historical truth.
 

 History Professor Lawrence Davidson examines the relationship between American neo-colonialism, Protestant evangelism and Zionism.
 

 Columbian University Professor of Government and Anthropology, Mahmood Mamdani, demonstrates how the label of "good Muslim" or "bad Muslim" changes depending on circumstance, but that the only constant litmus test seems to be pro-American sentiment. Official America, argues Mamdani, itself has played a large role in manufacturing a Muslim (political) identity which could be subservient to foreign policy goals, a historical occurence illustrated by front-line areas of the Cold War, such as Africa.
 

 Philosophy professor Michael Neuman questions the rhetoric of Islam's supposed failure in relation to Christendom (Bernard Lewis). In terms of providing for its citizens, violence or competent leaders, the Christian West does not appear so enviable. It was not Christianity or democracy that gave rise to the admitted economic and technological superiority of Western Europe, and thus America, but the "formation of cohesive, undemocratic nation states."
 

 Derek Cohen, a white Jewish leftist recounts his brush with a radical resistance movement while growing up in South Africa under apartheid. The author has some important insights into the atmosphere that breeds terrorism and how the lines between innocent civilians and collateral damage can sometimes be blurred in the minds of radical revolutionaries.
 

 Terri Ginsberg, a Jewish Studies professor at Dartmouth College, responds to the attempts of various pro-Israeli groups to limit criticism of Israel on U.S. college campuses in the name of academic "freedom."
 

 A brief essay identifying anti-Arab Bush Administration officials and calls from the rightwing press for a radical change in US policy.
 

 While dated, this article from a back issue Z magazine provides a means of seeing the current conflict in a different light. It is followed by a thoughtful commentary by an American Muslim.
 

 Edward Said, writing in Al Ahram Online, draws lessons for the future from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 

 Edward Said makes a personal commentary on Zionist tactics used against him, setting them in the context of the current struggle
 

 Commentary from a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster on the Intifadah al-Quds.
 

 Mass Deportations, Book Burnings and Censorship Konstantin Gamsakhurdia The history of the Chechens is significant not only for that people of 1 million souls, it is also a hallmark of Russian power politics during the czarist, Communist and post-Communist periods. From the perspective of Chechnya's South Caucasus neighbors, the Georgian-born, Swiss-based author of this article analyzes the deep-rooted Chechen drive for independence through the centuries, which, like that of numerous other mountain peoples, has often involved banditry and freebootery. The author, an orientalist and historian, is the eldest son of Sviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first freely elected president.