Articles

In an interview with Amin Arefi of French magazine Le Point, Ambassador (ret.) Nicholas Burns reflects on the first ten days of the Trump administration and the trajectory of American foreign policy going forward. Burns explains the fundamental differences between Donald Trump and George W. Bush, and the  worrying implications of Trump's indifference towards the US-backed system of alliances that has upheld the liberal world order for the past seven decades.   

In the 5 years following the Arab Uprisings, it is apparent that the Middle East and Islamic world are undergoing a profound sociopolitical reconfiguration. The rise of armed resistance groups and the clash of nationalisms between secular and religious movements have only served to undermine regional stability and deepened the fragmentation of the social cohesion. As a consequence, many Arab countries are immersed in a process of counterrevolution and experience deep cleavages. A number of these have been categorized as sectarian in nature, between Sunni and Shi’a, yet this article seeks to show that the term requires broader intellectual development to understand contemporary events. To this end, it engages with the term by looking at the rise of Islamist groups and their evolution across the twentieth century, to stress that socioeconomic contexts are also important in shaping the emergence of groups that are described as sectarian in nature. From this position, we are better placed to understand the fluid nature of domestic and geopolitical change across the Middle East and Islamic world.

The fall of Aleppo is a human catastrophe. It’s also a demonstration of the perils of choosing the middle course in a military conflict. Sometimes it’s possible to talk and fight at the same time. But in Syria, the U.S. decision to pursue a dual-track, halfway approach made the mayhem worse.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, states do not typically construct fortified boundaries in response to border disputes or to prevent terrorism. Instead, most build such boundaries for economic reasons, to keep out unwanted migrants from poorer states. Further, Muslim states are more likely to both build and be the targets of fortified boundaries.

In light of the Middle Eastern unrest over Western depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in Newsweek about her experiences fighting against Islamic outrage—and how we can solve the problem for good.

In a bold new book, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah says that honor has propelled moral revolutions in the past (think of slavery) and is essential to ending atrocities like honor-killings. Ian Klaus applauds a book that raises the moral stakes.

Patterns of Islamist violence in Saudi Arabia suggest that it has been much easier to mobilize Saudis for extreme pan-Islamist activism than for revolutionary activism. This is unlike most Arab republics which show the opposite pattern. This article empirically documents the curious extraversion of Saudi militancy, contrasts it with patterns of Islamist violence in Algeria and Egypt, and presents four explanations to account for it: first, that the typical grievances of revolutionary Islamism are less pronounced in Saudi Arabia; second, that structural characteristics of Saudi state and society inhibit anti-regime mobilization; third, that Wahhabism or socio-cultural isolation make Saudi Islamists particularly hostile to non-Muslims; and fourth, and most important, that the Saudi regime has promoted pan-Islamism to divert challenges to its own legitimacy.

Several Muslim countries have formulated various programs to fight extremism. From Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, authorities have devised more or less comprehensive measures to deradicalize committed militants and prevent the radicalization of new ones. This soft approach to counterterrorism has also been adopted by some European governments. The 2004 Madrid and 2005 London attacks, as well as the arrest of hundreds of European Muslims who had been involved in a variety of terrorist activities, have clearly shown that radicalization is a problem in Europe. Over the last few years, various European governments have decided to combat radicalization processes among their Muslim population by enacting various counterradicalization programs, acknowledging that they cannot simply arrest their way out of the problem.