Martin Richard was eight years old. He was in the third grade. He was killed on Monday at the Boston Marathon, waiting at the finish line. Recently, his teacher, Lucia Brawley, released a photo of Martin holding up a sign he made in school. It said: "No more hurting people. Peace."

Nothing screams progress like telling a woman what she can and can't wear. In their valiant strides toward enlightened secularism, the French have a...

On February 15, 2013, Muslim students at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, attended a Friday prayer service, seeking enlightenment and spiritual comfort. Instead they were delivered a Khutbah filled with offensive comments against sexual minorities and women. Unfortunately, the Cornell incident is not an isolated one.

The subject matter and plot of Innocence of Muslims are an abomination, deeply offensive to people who really, really don't need to be offended any more, particularly during this delicate time in their history. But I believe absolutely in my right to be offended. Which is the reason I simply can't propose that we lessen our democracies by banning any writings and films offensive to Muslims or any other religious folk.

I initially vacillated between addressing Westerners in this blog, to alleviate their fears that Muslims were all crazy, and addressing the destructive Muslims that were affirming by their actions the discourse of the very people they hate. Amid my vacillation I realized that either article would be written for me alone. Those enraged Muslims that believe the U.S. government approved the video are not online seeking out measured arguments. Nor are those who simply can't understand "Muslim irrationality." So to my fellow Muslims caught in the middle I would say that we can't spend all our energy, time and writing reacting, defending, and explaining.

The man who "wrote" and "directed" Innocence of Muslims -- the same movie which has led to the deaths of four U.S. diplomats, up to 10 Libyans, four Yemenis, and one Lebanese in Tripoli -- in is fact Nakoula Bassley Nakoula, an Egyptian Coptic Christian living, or rather, hiding, in California. But what may help one better understand this artiste is to look at the company he keeps, namely, Pastor Terry Jones and Steven Klein.

It's said that a majority of Muslims have been hijacked by a tiny percentage of Islamic extremists. But it's also true that many Muslims consider the incidents of September 11, 2001, to have been staged by the Bush administration, the CIA, Jews, etc. The question arises as to why a majority of Muslims would assume that nothing bad could be delivered by Muslims? And why have many Muslims related all bad things to the United States, other western countries and Israel? Majority Muslims in the West should open their eyes and minds and get beyond the conspiracy theories.

An 11-year-old Pakistani girl with Downs Syndrome might be put to death for blasphemy. Killing people for expressing negative and/or dissenting views on religion, for burning Qurans, for writing letters -- is this Islam? No. In Islam, a law that penalizes a person for challenging or disparaging the religion -- is blasphemy itself.

Yesterday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, seven people were killed and a number injured, including a police officer, when a gunman, named Wade Michael Page stormed a congregation of five hundred people at an American Sikh gudwara. While we and other faith groups dug into our hearts in this manner, the Westboro Baptist Church representative Fred Phelps tweeted: "Beautiful work of an angry God who told Wisconsin to keep their filthy hands off his people." No. Before we are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, B'hai, Jain, Zoroastrian, Aboriginal, Wiccan, Humanist and Sikh -- we are human. God only cares about the way in which we treat one another.

You'd have thought Maclean's would have blazoned the death of Section 13 all over its front cover. With a massive headline along the lines of "SCREW YOU, CENSORS!!!" Or "WE WON!!!" Instead, the cover featured a generic picture of an innocuous youngish woman and an innocuous youngish man grinning maniacally and the silly headline: "The majority of us are singles. So why do we still live in a couples world?"

The cover of Foreign Policy's May/June 2012 issue is raising controversy for it's photo depicting a nude woman with a niqab painted on her body, with the title "Why Do They Hate Us?" I am thrilled to see the Muslim debate raised to a level I have been longing for.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has told Canadians: "Free your pennies from their prisons at home and donate them to charity." However, he does not want you to liberate American pennies from the prisons in your home by donating them to charity.

Faint racist thought in and of itself isn't really a problem and can't really be classified as such if more than half of us are doing it. The real problem is that 52 per cent of Canadians conceded their tame racism out loud.

Wanna know how 2012 is likely to be? Judging from how 2011 ended, 2012 as it unfolds is going to be a year that doesn't look very encouraging to anyone who isn't a congenital optimist.

If you obsess about Israel's supposedly murderous nature, yet feel neutral about Guatemala, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil -- each of which (though arguably not guilty of genocide) is responsible for the outright massacre of at least 100,000 innocent civilians -- then you are a bigot. You may not be an anti-Semite. But you have a problem with Jews.

The Learning Channel's series All-American Muslim is the first commercial television program that presents a real look at Muslims in America in all their diversity. Who would not want this show on the air?