Understanding Players of Libya’s Recent Past
Last Tuesday, September 11, United States ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three of his staff members were killed when violent riots broke out in Benghazi, fueled by a 14-minute YouTube...
View ArticleBenny Morris’s 1948 Reconsidered
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech ensconced in a dramatic performance in front of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday night. The highlight of Netanyahu’s...
View ArticleThe Pride of the Veil
When one hears the term dress code, images come to mind of the French teenage media darlings of last winter, fighting for their right to wear skimpier clothes to school. A new school rule had stated...
View ArticleLeila Ahmed and Women’s Voices in Islam
What does it mean for a Muslim woman to wear a veil? What is the role of women in Islam? What is the relationship between culture and faith? Leila Ahmed, an author and professor at Harvard Divinity...
View ArticleDemocracy in Retreat: A Divided Egypt
Democracy has long been upheld as the ideal way to run a country. America, “land of the free” is revered for its representative government elected by the people for the people, and the US has committed...
View ArticleDavid Lesch: The Westerner Who Knows Assad
Watch David Lesch on C-SPAN2’s Book TV Around a year ago, David Lesch settled on a subtitle for his new book on the ever-changing Syria. He called it Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad. He admits to...
View ArticlePeter Mansoor on the Iraqi Surge
“The subsequent failures in Iraq shouldn’t take away from what American troops accomplished during what may well be the biggest comeback ever in a guerrilla war….Mansoor provides the definitive account...
View ArticleRemembering Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin (1950 – 2014), author, scholar, journalist and political analyst, passed away on February 3, 2014 after an 18-month battle with cancer. He was 64. Rubin was an expert on the Middle East and...
View ArticleClinging to Hope Amid the Carnage: A Response to Violent Extremism
Sherman A. Jackson— “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad!” This was the cry of the Parisian gunmen fleeing the scene of what they had to know would spell their ultimate doom. For as “committed...
View ArticleThe Islamic State: Humiliation, Shame, and Rage in Fundamentalism
Abram de Swaan— Today’s devil incarnate is the militia known as the Islamic State. So far it has done everything in its power to deserve the title. But it is only the latest in a long sequence of...
View ArticleThe Past, Present, and Future of America and the Islamic World
Tarek Osman— In 1801, the rulers of Tripoli, in today’s Libya, declared war on the US, after the republic had attacked North African corsairs who had repeatedly pirated American ships in the western...
View ArticleMoving Beyond Arab Spring
Ibrahim Fraihat— Five years have passed since several Arab countries revolted against their repressive regimes, and peace and stability are nowhere in sight. The unraveling of their political systems...
View ArticleThe Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Modern Middle East
Neil Faulkner— A hundred years on from Sykes-Picot, the Middle East is in turmoil. These two things are intimately related. Mark Sykes was a British diplomat, François Georges-Picot his French opposite...
View ArticleRemembering the 1967 Six-Day War
Guy Laron— Are wars the result of accidents, compounded by misassessments, misunderstandings, and miscalculations? If this is true, there is no one to blame; according to this view, wars simply happen....
View ArticleWhy Oil Prices May Go on Falling – Forever
Dieter Helm— When the Saudis decided to draw a halt to the great shale oil boom in the United States at the end of 2014, they thought they could administer a short, sharp shock of lower prices that...
View ArticleHas ISIS Won the Digital War?
Philippe Joseph-Salazar— First, let us remember that terrifying images of throat-slitting are not new. The atrocity of which our discourse community is (not) aware is more than a decade old: It did not...
View ArticleThe Other Middle East
Franck Salameh— Middle East specialists of a hundred years ago have traditionally been philologists trained in a dozen or more Middle Eastern languages, including Latin and Greek, but also the...
View ArticleTwo Rocks in the Holy Land
Gabriel Said Reynolds— A traveler walking along the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem could be forgiven for missing the ruins of the Kathisma Church. The ruins, found just past a gas station and just...
View ArticleWhat happened after the Crusades?
Christopher Tyerman— We all know about the Crusades, don’t we? They were wars fought by western European Christians against Muslim control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land of Palestine. They began in...
View ArticleIsrael and the Conundrums of the Left
Susie Linfield— Both the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the Labour Party in Britain are in a tizzy over issues relating to Israel and anti-Semitism. Stateside, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s various statements...
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