US President Joe Biden may have little appetite for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking but seems determined to prevent some third parties from exploiting the regional stalemate to their advantage. That seems to be one message contained in ensuring that King Abdullah of Jordan will be the first Arab leader to visit the White House since Mr. Biden…
Education is emerging as a major flashpoint in competing visions of a future Muslim world. Rival concepts being instilled in a next generation are likely to shape what amounts to a battle for the soul of Islam. Reports earlier this year published by the Israel-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education…
Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to make Islamic radicalism his number one enemy. The isolationism practiced by some of the most radical Islamic immigrant communities began to worry Paris about the risk of possible separatist riots in order to form areas within French territory where French law does not prevail. However, this…
President Joko Widodo’s recent cabinetreshuffle suggests that Indonesia may adopt a more critical attitudetowards China and reinforce government support for efforts by Nahdlatul Ulama(NU), the world’s largest Muslim movement, to reform Islam and position theSoutheast Asian state as a key player in a battlewith Middle Eastern rivals for the soul of Islam. Mr. Widodo signaled…
For four years, French prosecutors strained every sinew to prove that a multinational jihadist conspiracy was behind the attacks on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris. A total of 17 were killed in gun attacks that spread across three days and stunned the nation. This was France’s biggest terrorist trial and yet, despite…
Punching above its weight, the United Arab Emirates is wielding a combination of religious soft power, commercial and economic sway, and hard power in its bid to counter political Islam in ways that potentially could threaten pillars of Western democracy as well as US and European strategic interests. The UAE’s footprint is visible across the…
