We live in an era of resurgent nationalism. From Scotland to Sri Lanka, from China to Brazil, governments rely on nationalism as a source of communal identity and a vehicle for common action. In countries where religious identity appears to dominate, as with Islam in Turkey and Hinduism in India, religion has bonded with nationalism….
I don’t trust you. Don’t take it personally. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a friend or a stranger. I don’t care about your identity or your politics, where you work or if you work, whether you wear a mask or carry a gun. I don’t trust you because you are, for the time being, a…
Human settlement and public order face a grave challenge as international law is applied to rights, claims and obligation in conflict with the nation state. *** The principle of integrity of boundaries and non-interference in the domestic affairs of states – a number of whose boundaries were redrawn to reconcile with ethnic populations – is…
The Pope recently visited the UAE in what was the first time in history that a Catholic Pontiff set foot on the Arabian Peninsula, symbolically occurring in the context of an inter-religious conference hosted by the comparatively tolerant UAE. The Emirates wants to establish itself as a bastion of stability and interfaith harmony in the…
President Macron’s protests against nationalism this weekend stand in stark contrast with the words of France’s WWII resistance leader and the man who would then become president: General Charles de Gaulle. Speaking to his men in 1913, de Gaulle reminded them: “He who does not love his mother more than other mothers, and his fatherland more…
Suddenly the world is full of leaders from Theresa May to President Erdogan of Turkey claiming to unite their countries while visibly deepening their divisions. Denunciations of supposed threats at home and abroad are a common feature of this new political style, whether they are tweeted from the White House or spoken at the podium…
