Raha Moharrak is the first Saudi woman, and youngest Arab ever, to climb Mt. Everest.

As the title credits roll in “Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football” — a documentary about Fordson High School’s football team, whose ranks are drawn from the predominantly Arab population of Dearborn, Mich. — we hear a gripping audio montage of anti-Muslim tirades.

Akyol is a journalist in Turkey, and he hopes the Arab Spring shows a different side of Islam: one where there is no conflict between Islam and political freedom.

His new book, "Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty," which is being released in the United States on July 18, aims to tell people that there is a long history of freedom in the Islamic world.

At some point in time, the Muslim world divided into two major cultural factions, Desi Muslims and Arab Muslims. Desi Muslims are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and sometimes Afghanistan (but usually not Afghanistan). Arab Muslims are from Arabia...I think. To become more culturally educated everyone should understand the major differences that make no effective difference whatsoever. Here they are:

Last week, we out Sketch Comedy Night at the 7th Annual New York Arab American Comedy Festival here in NYC, produced by some of the most talented comedians in the industry. The 5 day festival included stand-up, sketch comedy, a self-proclaimed “Haram Show,” and, the first ever stand-up show ever to be performed entirely in Arabic.

New York (CNN) -- For Muslims living in the United States, the call to prayer requires a response at least five times a day. But when the U.S. Census Bureau comes calling once every 10 years, some Arab-Americans still hesitate to return the survey.

"There's a fear factor that this information may be used against you, or used for inappropriate reasons," said Rami Nuseir, president of the American Mideast Leadership Network. He said a misunderstanding of the census translates into some Arab-Americans simply not filling out the form.

A talented Saudi woman is rocking the Arab world. But with newfound fame comes fatwas.

Dubai, home of its eponymous film festival, fashion week, and cutting-edge architecture (including the tallest building in the world), is clearly the Islamic world’s leader in cultural exhibition. Continuing in this spirit was last week’s 4th annual Art Dubai expo, a large, multicultural contemporary art fair repping 70 galleries from every corner of the earth, including Sydney, Madrid, Paris, Mumbai, Istanbul, Beirut, Berlin, Budapest, and of course Dubai itself.

“We are so racially profiled now, as a group,” the Arab-American comedian Dean Obeidallah says in his routine, “that I heard a correspondent on CNN not too long ago say the expression, ‘Arabs are the new blacks.’ That Arabs are the new blacks.”

It is a funny bit, but Obeidallah is on to something more than a joke, something about the mischievous power of race and representation in contemporary US culture both to incorporate and to reject. By taking an observation -- the analogy of Arabness to blackness -- to its literal extreme, Obeidallah is playing with general perceptions of blackness and whiteness along the way. And by turning a liability into an asset, he flips the script of social exclusion to one of popular inclusion. What is more American today, after all, than the African-American?

But most people mean something else when they talk about Arabs (or Muslims) becoming “the new blacks,” a sentiment routinely expressed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Perhaps most directly, the idea is meant to evoke the practice of racial profiling.

Four animated, Arab grandmothers are taking over the world, one TV screen at a time. The hit UAE show “Freej” is soon to become the first globally distributed Arab series, centering around the lives of four traditional women living in a secluded neighborhood on the outskirts of Dubai.Read More