Salman Ahmad, Pakistani rock musician and founder of the popular band Junoon (as well as doctor, author, and film maker) explained last Saturday night to the standing room only crowd in the General Assembly of the United Nations that it was the video which pushed him into action. The video, of two men holding down a teenage girl while another beat her, sent by a friend from Pakistan, prompted Ahmad to fly to Pakistan from New York, his adopted home, to find the answer to the question that was tormenting him: "Which was the real Pakistan?"

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s speech at the opening of the U.S-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar (February, 2009) was interrupted with applause as the audience heard something unusual – at least in the last eight years: a firm criticism of U.S. government policy by a respected opinion leader from America.