Islamic State (ISIS)

Gen. Jim Mattis once insisted: “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.” Regarding ISIS, we’ve done little to convince them their time is ended.

President Obama lectured, “‘Never again’ is a challenge to defend the fundamental right of free people and free nations to exist in peace and security.” Perhaps “never mind” is more apt.

Terry Ascott’s solution for the Middle East tramples over one of the region’s most sacred cows: Redraw the map.

The first of a five-part epistolary exchange between the actor Richard Dreyfuss and Providence associate editor Susannah Black exploring such issues as the potential of civics education to combat the appeal of groups like ISIS, the place of religion in public life, and the roots of the ideas of the American founding.

The Marrakesh Declaration is a good—albeit late—start. Political and religious leaders in the Middle East’s Muslim-majority nations have much ground to cover to protect religious minorities. Shiites are targeted in Sunni-majority nations, Sunnis in Shiite-majority nations, and Christians virtually everywhere in the Middle East.

Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church clearly have a close relationship, but their foreign policy in Syria is flawed.

Last month about 300 muftis, theologians, and scholars held a conference in Marrakesh, Morocco to address the problem of violence in Islamic states. The result is the Marrakesh Declaration, a 750-word document calling on Muslim countries to guarantee “full protection for the rights and liberties to all religious groups” and “confront all forms of religious bigotry.” Yet the crisis in modern Islam is that its leaders still steadfastly refuse to confront their violent past.

At the Church of England’s General Synod last November, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby delivered one of the most rousing calls to a truly Christian realistic approach to the civil war in Syria and the rise of Islamic radicalism in recent memory.

The Islamist political agenda cannot be accommodated. They do not want it to be.