Islamists of various political shades are now in power in a growing number of Arab states. They are a new reality that everyone will have to deal with, and therefore seek to understand. The challenge is that most of these parties have been in opposition for decades under long-established military presidencies, and during these years […]
MINUTES after last week’s violent attacks on America’s missions in the Middle East, the country’s embassy in Cairo was already on Twitter. It tweeted an emergency number for American citizens. It criticised Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood for supporting the protests on their Arabic feed. And it thanked fellow tweeters for their condolences on the murder of […]
Rage is all the rage. As we all know, radical Muslims are enraged about blasphemous videos and cartoons—so much so that an American ambassador to a country liberated by the United States was murdered by a howling mob in Libya. I worry about that. I worry even more about this administration’s lame response to it. But […]
The other day I was on a talk show where the host asked me, “Are we better off now than we were before the Arab Spring?” And I said, “Who is we?” The furious attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in the Middle East have left many Americans feeling that the neighborhood was a lot safer when […]
How should Americans, and the U.S. government, react when some statement (in a book, video, tweet, or whatever medium) is made that insults a religion–and violence follows? Even this soon after the events of the last two weeks some conclusions can be drawn. Read Here – cfr.org
THE wave of violence directed at Americans and Europeans in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world has had two particularly malign effects. First, it has made many Westerners, especially Americans, wonder why they and their governments should seek to play a constructive role in those parts of the world where people apparently […]
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU’S fixation with Iran’s nuclear programme has had one positive side-effect—for the Israeli prime minister, at least. While Iran occupies centre-stage, fewer people badger him about the long-stalled Israel-Palestine peace process. Meanwhile, more homes are being built in Israeli settlements deep within the Palestinian West Bank, placed there deliberately to thwart the possibility of […]
During the Cold War, two blocs of nations stood ranged against one another in an easily comprehended conflict between two economic and political systems. In our age, the fault-lines are not so easily detected. Warfare is frequently asymmetric. The proximate causes of battle are often hyper-local, tribal and sectarian. The threads that link one to […]
THE imagery is graphic enough. A mob scales the walls of the American embassy in the Egyptian capital, raises an Islamist banner and burns the Stars and Stripes. A female announcer dons a headscarf on state television for the first time in its 50-year-long history. Bearded police officers demonstrate for an end to the force’s […]
Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks. Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in […]
looking beyond borders 