He created man from a small seed and lo! he is an open contender.

He created man from a small seed and lo! he is an open contender.

Man He created from a drop of semen and still he becomes an open contender.

Man He created from a drop of semen and still he becomes an open contender.

He created man from a drop of seminal fluid, and, behold, he is an open contender!

He created man from a drop of seminal fluid, and, behold, he is an open contender!

Does not man see We created him from a drop of semen? Even then he becomes an open contender,

Does not man see We created him from a drop of semen? Even then he becomes an open contender,

Does not man see that We created him from a drop of seminal fluid, and, behold, he is an open contender!?

Does not man see that We created him from a drop of seminal fluid, and, behold, he is an open contender!?

The battle will be long and difficult, and victory is not assured. But these groups have already become a major contender in the Arab world s battle of ideas.

We have sent down to you the Book containing the truth, in whose light you should judge among the people as God has shown you, and do not be a contender for deceivers.

Yet the next national elections, due before May 2009, may produce a plausible Dalit contender for the job of prime minister Kumari Mayawati, the female chief minister of India s largest state, Uttar Pradesh.

We have sent down to you the Book containing the truth, in whose light you should judge among the people as God has shown you, and do not be a contender for deceivers.

We console each other when Chelsea loses, and worry together when our team plays big clubs, like recently when they played Liverpool, the only major contender that stood between Chelsea and the English title. Fortunately, Chelsea won.

She is far from being a weak contender, and she is a fast learner with a strong campaign team. If she can strengthen her program on foreign policy, she may yet open a new chapter in French political history.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading contender in the French presidential election, recently lashed out against what he called speculative capitalism, and says he wants to moralize the financial zone created by the euro. What does Sarkozy mean by speculative capitalism?

By contrast, former Secretary of State and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and a leading Republican contender, Donald Trump, have opposed reform of Social Security and Medicare. Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton s Democratic rival, actually proposes to expand the programs unfunded liabilities.

Yet, this idea, too, has strong support within the Republican Party led by Ron Paul, another contender for the party s presidential nomination. No one was surprised when the party s platform gave a nod to the Gold Standard in its convention in August.

He proved to be a great candidate in 2007, but he was also running against a particularly weak Socialist contender, Ségolène Royal. In 2012 it is unlikely that a Socialist Party starved for power will commit electoral suicide once again by nominating an unelectable figure.

One of the more bizarre aspects of this election is the success of Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and political neophyte. His extreme views on homosexuality he has likened it to bestiality and claimed that spending time in prison makes people gay has resonated with a swath of the Republican electorate, making him a real contender in Iowa.

Despite this imbalance, the US dollar s dominance as an invoicing currency is unlikely to change anytime soon not least because bringing about a shift would require coordination among a huge number of exporters and importers worldwide. The euro might seem like a strong contender, given the volume of trade among eurozone countries but, outside Europe, the currency is not used nearly as widely as the dollar.

But America has not provided it a point recently made by Jeb Bush, a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. In our country today, Bush said in a speech to fellow conservatives, if you re born poor, if your parents didn t go to college, if you don t know your father, if English isn t spoken at home, then the odds are stacked against you.

BERLIN Germany s current parliamentary election campaign looks like a front running contender for the title of the most boring in the history of the Federal Republic. The predominant response among commentators to the sole television debate between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her challenger, Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, held two weeks before the election, was a collective yawn all the more remarkable considering the historical events that overshadow this election.

The West should also recognize that the constituencies of Hezbollah and its allied, largely Christian, Free Patriotic Movement, led by presidential contender Michel Aoun, will be hit hardest by many of Siniora s proposed economic and administrative reforms, such as lifting fuel subsidies and sharply raising value added tax. Already the 200,000 member Federation of Labour Unions has joined the opposition bandwagon, and Siniora s proposals will further fuel grassroots populist nationalism.

Hasina s enormous popularity as a former prime minister, and her status as one of only two surviving daughters of Bangladesh s founder, Sheikh Mujib Rahman, always ensured that she would be a leading contender in the election. Her overwhelming triumph has vindicated her belief that ordinary Bangladeshis want a secular and stable future for their country one that, in contrast to Pakistan, is characterized by warm relations with their giant neighbor, India.