World
Stop Saying Our Wars Are Over, Mr. President. They’re Not.
“In America, and in Iraq,” Vice President Joe Biden assured an audience in Baghdad last December, “the tide of war is receding.” For its callowness, this observation was noteworthy. (The tide of war was not receding from Iraq; Joe Biden was.) President Obama, introducing his plan to cut defense expenditures a few weeks later, offered up this analysis by way of justification: “The tide of war is receding.” READ MORE >>
A Liberal Islamic Scholar Speaks Up in Egypt
The fight between the humane Egyptian opposition and the Islamists (both Muslim Brothers and Salafists) is not quite underway yet. The struggle between the religious fundamentalists and the military is still at the center of the city square. But there are shades of opinion even among the ultra-pious. Here is the voice of Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradhawi, one of the learned men of Egyptian Islam: READ MORE >>
The worst moments in the siege of Dammaj came in late November and early December of last year. During those weeks, the villagers in this little-visited, extraordinarily pious settlement in the northwest corner of Yemen had no access to the only hospital in the region, and dwindling supplies of food. Meanwhile, from day to day, snipers in the hills picked off the citizens as they walked to their mosque. READ MORE >>
Fevers
Silent Protest
Edward J. Epstein Makes History...Again
Happy Birthday to Egypt’s Doomed Revolution
One Year Later: The Failure of the Arab Spring
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Are We Sliding Toward War With Iran?
With so much alarming going on in the Middle East, it’s hard to keep track of everything that seems to be going wrong. No sooner had the Libyan civil war ended than another erupted in Syria. Iraq appears determined to follow, and perhaps overtake their Syrian neighbors. Egypt remains locked in a multi-sided struggle among the military, the Islamists and the secular liberals. And disturbing reports of low-level, but growing unrest in Saudi Arabia have begun to emerge. READ MORE >>
