A Forum on Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics
KELLY HAMMOND, 24 MAY 2021 By now, the ongoing human rights crisis in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang is well-known and well-documented. Governments around the world continue to denounce the illegal incarceration of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups, such as Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. They are also speaking out vehemently against reeducation camps, the […]
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GÜLAY TÜRKMEN, 17 MAY 2021 On March 17, 2021, a top prosecutor at Turkey’s Court of Cassation filed a case with the Constitutional Court demanding the closure of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which is currently the third-largest party in the parliament. This move came as no surprise to those who are in the […]
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JOHN CALVERT, 3 MAY 2021 A century ago, in March 1921, the shape of the contemporary Middle East was decided at a conference held in Cairo, Egypt. In attendance were the movers and shakers of British imperial policy: Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence, and Gertrude Bell, among others. The decisions they made had lasting consequences for […]
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ALEXANDER R. ARIFIANTO, 26 APRIL 2021 Indonesia, the largest Muslim majority country in the world, is considered a prime example of a successful democracy with a Muslim majority society. Leading Indonesian Muslim organizations and intellectuals have promoted its brand of moderate Islam. Recently, such a reputation had come under serious challenge. New and more theologically […]
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KELLY HAMMOND, 05 APRIL 2021 China’s Uyghurs have rightly been the center of news coverage recently. In China, the ongoing efforts to suppress Islam and Uyghur culture have led to the terrible and illegal incarceration of over one million Uyghurs and forced labor conditions. Recently governments in Canada, the United States and the EU have […]
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SEAN YOM, 15 MARCH 2021 During President Biden’s first month in office, the US raised the possibility that relations with Saudi Arabia would need “recalibration,” given its harrowing record of recent human rights violations. This move signaled a familiar scene that plays out in Washington whenever a non-democratic American ally commits egregious human rights abuses. […]
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TURAN KAYAOĞLU, 6 APRIL 2020 On February 27, in the New York Times, Mustafa Akyol wrote that, “the justification of many terrible deeds in the name of Islam today, from terrorism to tyranny, from patriarchy to bigotry” is a cause of Islamophobia. He argues that the solution is “right there in the Quran”: Muslims should […]
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AHMET T. KURU, 4 NOVEMBER 2019 “Are Arabs Turning Their Backs on Religion?” was the title of BBC’s 2019 coverage of a survey conducted in 11 countries with 25,000 interviewees. In 2018, BBC had reported the decline of religiosity in Turkey, too: “The Young Turks Rejecting Islam.” Other sources also documented declining Islamic religiosity in […]
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NADER HASHEMI, 9 SEPTEMBER 2019 What do Iranian human rights activists want from the international community, the West in particular? What guidelines should be followed that can better support their heroic efforts? As someone who has written on the topic and spent considerable time studying the topic, reading their statements, and interviewing some prominent voices, […]
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WENDY PEARLMAN, 2 SEPTEMBER 2019 The war in Syria can seem bewilderingly complex. Over more than eight years, a dozen states supported hundreds of rival groups that competed on the ground in a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances and rivalries. A web of sectarian tensions, economic interests, ideological clashes, and geopolitical jockeying overlay a fundamentally political […]
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