Ronald Reagan helped to usher in a hopeful wave of democratization in Latin America. In one country after another, multi-party elections ended decades of single-party rule and military dictatorship. But today, that legacy is under threat - and so is our own homeland. The southern front in the War on Terror, which runs through Latin America’s institutions of state, is cracking under a combined assault of political revolution, Islamist terrorism, and the world’s most heavily armed...

After four years of Evo Morales swearing in, Bolivians live anguished, while what was predicted is complied with - opposition persecution, state terrorism, vandalism, despotism, nepotism, racism, corruption, plunder to the country, lack of basic products, poverty on the rise, unlimited drug-trafficking, murder, lynching, torture, overbearing threats from members of the government, law violation in a bulk. Everything and more that happened with the worst de facto regimes that usurped power in...

The terms Caribbean and South American refer to aggregations of countries, not to specific areas within legally defined boundaries. Thirty-one countries form the Caribbean, which is divided into English, French, Spanish, and Dutch linguistic regions. The majority of the countries are English-speaking. The total Muslim population by country varies from 4 to 15 percent. The largest Muslim populations are in English-speaking countries such as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. There are small...

I was fortunate, by the grace of Allah, to travel with a group of 6 Muslim brothers to the country of Bolivia. Our mission there was to visit the Muslims in Bolivia so that they can establish the effort of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), and spread the word of Allah-to give Dawah. The word Dawah means to invite. In this particular case, we were inviting the Bolivians to the word of Allah, to the deen of Islam. I was very excited to be leaving. For the next 40 days, I would be leaving my family,...

Migrants from the Middle East have been circulating to the Americas for over a century. Scholarship on the subject, though rich, has often fallen through the cracks of academic geographical divisions. Clearly, this is a topic that merits further scholarly attention and debate, especially in the post-9/11 era. Middle Eastern migrants to Latin America traveled predominantly from the eastern Mediterranean region variously known as the Arab East, the Levant, or the Mashreq. Part of the Ottoman...

Hezbollah could be one of the first security challenges faced by the new Obama administration. An official government report concludes the Iranian-backed Islamic terror group has been forming sleeper cells throughout the United States that could become operational. The report estimates Hezbollah could become a much more potent national security threat by 2014. The group was responsible for the 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French servicemen. ...

The Israeli incursions into Gaza have triggered protests all over the world with demonstrators calling for an immediate ceasefire. Public fury at the Israeli violence targeting the residents of Gaza has brought thousands of people in Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Lebanon and Austria to the streets. Austria Austrian demonstrators gathered outside the United Nations Office in Vienna to protest Israel's incursion into Gaza. Protesters slammed Arab states for their silence...

Iran, the ultimate mischief maker with global reach, astounding patience, a shameless marriage to mayhem and terrorism, and interests that fall squarely in opposition to those of the United States, is making major diplomatic inroads under Washington's nose. It's amazing, really. Iran, after all, is regarded by most of the world as an outlaw country. Sanctions are in place on much of its military-industrial complex, and international loan guarantees are virtually impossible to come by. The...

Islamic leaders are allying with South American indigenous groups, because they see this impoverished, illiterate population, as the ideal environment for starting an extremist revolution and converting them to Islam. The process may take hundreds of years, but time means nothing to the fundamentalist. After all Allah is immortal and if Muslims waited 1300 years before invading Europe again, they can wait to convert Christians, animists and pagans. In 711 C.E. Muslims crossed the Straight of...

The purpose of this conference is to provide a balanced and dispassionate overview of Iran's relations with Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, put in the context of the foreign policy objectives and strategies of those Latin American nations as well as the strategic objectives of the Iranian government. In addition, we aim to explore what has been alleged about Iranian involvement in the bombings of the Jewish community center (AMIA) and the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. Farideh...