"How should we view and respond to the growing flow of refugees and migrants from, within, and beyond the Middle East? Is this mainly a temporary humanitarian challenge? An occasional security threat? A cultural and political concern for mostly white and Christian Europe? All of these are significant issues that need to be addressed, but perhaps the most important dimension of the growing refugees/migrants situation is what it tells us about the modern condition of the Arab world, and more specifically its critical vulnerabilities in the quality of statehood and the fragility of citizenship..."

This collective policy paper summarizes the main themes of Morocco's recent experience around migration policy. It draws upon many conversations with major stakeholders, group work, and site visits of the 16 Harvard students who participated in the winter field study course in Morocco and Italy, led by Prof. Claude Bruderlein and supported by the Middle East Initiative.

An audio recording from Nabil Fahmy, former Foreign Minister of Egypt and Dean, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP), Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy, American University Cairo.

On April 15, 2015 at MEI, Minister Nabil Fahmy presented his assessent of the challenges facing the Middle East today and laid out his vision for the region to confront those challenges and seize opportunities, with special focus on Egypt's role in the Arab world and Middle East at large, in a public address moderated by Kennedy School professor Nicholas Burns.

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” recorded on April 1, 2015, Dr. Philippe Fargues, Director of the Migration Policy Centre, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies European University Institute (EUI), discusses the humanitarian crisis of migrants from North Africa, the Levant, and the Sahel, crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe on boats.

The ferment we see in the Muslim world today is not solely due to despotic political systems, and it is not solely due to failing economies and the poverty they breed. Rather, it is also due largely to Islam itself and the incompatibility of certain of that faith’s key tenets with modernity. That is why the most important conflict in the world today is between those who are hell-bent on preserving, and even increasing, these incompatibilities, and those who are bravely prepared to challenge them — not to overthrow Islam but to reform it.

“Islam’s borders are bloody,” wrote the late political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1996, “and so are its innards.” Nearly 20 years later, Huntington looks more right than ever before. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, at least 70% of all the fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims. In 2013, there were nearly 12,000 terrorist attacks world-wide. The lion’s share were in Muslim-majority countries, and many of the others were carried out by Muslims. By far the most numerous victims of Muslim violence—including executions and lynchings not captured in these statistics—are Muslims themselves.

"IS's need continuously to expand is a central feature in its strategy since its blitzkrieg in Iraq and Syria last year gave it control over vast territory and facilitated the announcement that it is a caliphate....Expansion is also a mobilisation tool for IS. It adds to the myth of Islamic State's inevitability and invincibility that its leaders are trying to promote."

"We have learned much about the Arab world in the last four years, including a combination of heroism and criminal deviance that both dwell deep within our societies. In fact, we have learned more about ourselves in these four years than we did in the preceding century — because this has been the only stretch of time in which history in the Arab region has been driven heavily, even primarily, by the actions and sentiments of its own ordinary men and women, rather than only by its narrow elites or foreign powers."

An audio recording and report from Susan Akram, Director, International Human Rights Clinical Program, Boston University School of Law. Professor Akram presented her research on the legal issues that are creating barriers to relief and protection for refugees fleeing Syria at MEI on April 7, 2014. Along with Boston University graduate students Aaron Lang, Sarah Bidinger and Danielle Hites, Professor Akram recently published the full report of the research project, which is available to download here.