A wave of economic austerity is squeezing the Arab world’s middle class, pushing a segment of society that is key to growth and stability into making painful cutbacks and fueling… Read more »
Arab democracy would simply be inconceivable without Islamist participation, writes Brookings analyst Shadi Hamid. That, by itself, should give us pause, particularly at a time when Western democracies appear uninterested or even… Read more »
Bernard Lewis, an eminent historian of Islam who traced the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to a declining Islamic civilization, a controversial view that influenced world opinion and helped… Read more »
By killing so many Syrians, President Bashar al-Assad also killed the dream of democracy, as well as for plenty of people elsewhere in the Arab world, notes Kamel Daoud, the author… Read more »
In last Friday’s legislative elections in Morocco, the ruling Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD, left) again secured a plurality, but while the elections were hailed as proof of… Read more »
Today, few people are touting democracy in Southeast Asia as an example of political freedoms, notes Council on Foreign Relations analyst Joshua Kurlantzick. In Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and… Read more »
There may be a continuum between the purportedly non-violent Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State, or ISIS. Nevertheless, “it bears repeating that ISIL’s campaign is not fundamentally… Read more »