Middle East & North Africa

Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms shows how Islam is not the only religion in the Middle East while displaying the hidden life of centuries old religious communities.

In the shadow cast by 9/11, it was difficult to believe something could be worse than al-Qaeda 1.0. But with American nightclubs and office buildings awash in blood, with Europe under siege, with Christians and Yazidis targeted for extermination, with the Pandora’s Box of chemical warfare reopened, with the female populations of entire cities enslaved, here we are.

Despite an adamantly proclaimed right to self-defense and a proven ability to carry it out during historic conflicts like the Six-Day and Yom-Kippur Wars, the tensions in and around Israel have only seemed to worsen. Cooperation with our Judeo-Christian cousin is more crucial now than ever.

Hamid’s Islamic Exceptionalism argues that Islam is far different from other religions in how it relates to governance, law, and the modern nation-state.

The lesson of the greatest generation is “Don’t repeat the mistakes of the America First Committee,” and here we are.

After EgyptAir flight 804 fell out of the sky, I exhaled deeply with many Egyptians, sighing in familiar resignation, “Oh no, not again.”

From the Winter print edition

Last week’s startling confession by White House operative Ben Rhodes—that the Obama administration lied to the American people about its dealings with Iran to secure a nuclear agreement—not only confirms the perception of a mendacious and arrogant presidency. It exposes a feverish and even delusional frame of mind: an uncompromising revulsion for war that has undermined American security and invited a cascade of extremism, violence, and human suffering.

Whatever the defects of Sykes-Picot, the century since the agreement proves the problems of the Middle East are not simply cartographical