Friedberg is an inconspicuous town with roughly 30,000 inhabitants in a rural district in the middle of Germany. It lies at the hinge of the metropolitan region of Frankfurt/Rhein-Main, where the European Central Bank is headquartered. In recent years, this town where urban and rural life collides...
Sovereignty and unity are much desired but rarely achieved goals, as the history of the Arab League demonstrates. In the ever evolving complexity of relationships in the Middle East, Al Jazeera published an interview in March 2018 with Middle East scholar Sean Yom that focuses on the changing...
Despite the commonplace homophobia in Asian societies today, no nation can deny a presence of LGBT practices in its history. A few years ago, most Indonesians probably didn’t know what the acronym LGBT—lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender—stood for. And yet for the past few months, it...
Europe and the Middle East have a long history of distrust, argues former Prime Minister John Bruton. I have just finished reading A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle That Shaped the Middle East by James Barr. The book deals with relations between France, Britain and the Muslim...
A real struggle is the only way to defeat racist, colonialist regimes, argues Miko Peled. As the recognition by European countries of a so-called “State of Palestine” continues, it is becoming obvious that this is nothing but an old colonial trick — dusted and reused. The fact that liberal...
In the Middle East, political regimes and economic performance are intertwined par excellence. Background The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) provides a highly diverse picture of economic structures and characteristics. Its far from uniform regional economic structure can be traced back to...
Muslim-majority societies are crying out for an intellectual revolution. This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here. Perhaps it is time to review priorities, to shift the paradigm; perhaps it is time for political Islam to cease being intrinsically political. After a century of...
Muslim-majority societies are crying out for an intellectual revolution. This is the first of a two part series. Islamism — or “political Islam” — is not dead. Those who have proclaimed its demise, or trumpeted the advent of a “post-Islamist” era, are...
Terrorism is a tactic of extremists within each religion, and within secular religions of Marxism or nationalism. No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents, argues Juan Cole. Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent...
