Isobel Coleman

Isobel Coleman, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses how the rise of a political Islam, which often condemns women’s empowerment as anti-Islamic, Western cultural imperialism, has strengthened the women’s movement. In Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East, she shows how the growing movement of Islamic feminism has led Muslim women and men to develop progressive interpretations of Islam to support women’s rights.

Hamid Karzai has been sworn in today as the president of Afghanistan for a second five-year term.  After an optimistic first presidential election in 2004, this second election was, i...