Saudi religious diplomacy targets Jerusalem
A United Arab Emirates-backed Saudi effort to wrest control from Jordan of Islam’s holy places in Jerusalem signals a sharper, more overt edge to...
The Middle East: History threatens to repeat itself
If the notion that history repeats itself is accurate, it is nowhere truer than in the Middle East where the international community, caught by...
Shooting oneself in ones’s own foot: Pakistan’s failed effort to evade terrorism finance listing
The Pakistani government’s removal of a virulently anti-Shiite militant from its terrorism list at the very moment that an international money laundering and terrorism...
Iran’s Chabahar port is where Asian and Middle Eastern rivalries collide
Iran’s Indian-back port of Chabahar, inaugurated months before the United States re-imposed sanctions on the Islamic republic, is where Asia and the Middle East’s...
Malaysian-Saudi relations: A lesson in the pitfalls of authoritarianism and autocracy
Embattled former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was the main loser in last month’s election upset that returned Mahathir Mohamad to power as his...
Indonesian Muslim leader signals global shifts in meetings with Pence and Netanyahu
Yahya Staquf, a diminutive, soft-spoken leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim movement, and Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s advisor on religious affairs, has...
Eurasianism wins in Turkey even if ideologue loses election
He’s been in and out of prison during Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule and is running against the president in this weekend’s Turkish elections with...
The Saudi-Moroccan spat: Competing for the mantle of moderate Islam
Lurking in the background of a Saudi-Moroccan spat over World Cup hosting rights and the Gulf crisis is a more fundamental competition for the...
Morocco may have lost the World Cup but could lead the way in protest
Mounting anger and discontent is simmering across the Arab world much like it did in the walk-up to the 2011 popular revolts that toppled...
Israel adopts abandoned Saudi sectarian logic
Amid ever closer cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Israel’s military appears to be adopting the kind of sectarian anti-Shiite rhetoric that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed...