Mahan Mirza One could mention several different reasons for influential actors from the West to systematically engage religious institutions and scholars in the Muslim world. The first is for the purpose of interfaith dialogue and cooperation. An example of this kind...
Ebrahim Moosa Madrasas have been much in the news in the past six months in both Pakistan and India. While hardly any credible madrasas engage in training suicide bombers, reports indicate that both the Jaish-e Mohammad and the Lashkar-e Tayyiba, two terrorist groups...
Joshua S. Lupo Recently, I traveled to Pakistan and India to participate in the Madrasa Discourses (MD) project summer intensives. This project aims to enhance the theological, scientific, and theological literacy of recent graduates of Muslim seminaries in south...
Caroline Hughes The banning of HTI and jailing of former Jakarta Governor Basuki Purnama for blasphemy represent an illiberal turn in Indonesia. This should be understood against the backdrop of decades of state suppression and manipulation of civil society movements....
Lailatul Fitriyah A pillar of the construction of the state in Indonesia is the ideology of Ibuism (“mother” in Indonesian), a form of socio-biological engineering that reflects and reinforces gendered differences in governmental policies and is, presently, justified...
Perin Gurel is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Concurrent Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The global and local fronts of our endless “War on Terror” intersect around the suspect figure of the Muslim. What might this...
Aysegul Keskin Zeren As the war against ISIS unfolds, acknowledging the conditions and events that paved the way for ISIS is crucial for rethinking strategy. As a result of a decade of instability in Iraq and more than three years of civil war in Syria, ISIS had...
David Cortright The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a clear and present danger to international security that must be stopped. The question is how. President Obama said there are no military solutions to this crisis, but he has sent American soldiers back to...
Ebrahim Moosa With another U.S. aid worker beheaded by ISIS and unreported civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes in ISIS controlled territories in Iraq and Syria, the conflict is taking on the features of a military stalemate. As long as ISIS is America’s problem,...
Scott Appleby The war being waged in mineral-rich Mindanao, the southernmost island region of the Philippines, is a perfect storm of contemporary violent conflict. It is about land and resources, religion and clan, sovereignty, governance, and corruption in high and...
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite Four senior U.S. statesmen — George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn — captured world attention in January 2007 with their call for “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” in the Wall Street Journal. Their premise is...
R. Scott Appleby This post includes video content. (6:01) In a major foreign policy speech in Cairo last June, President Barack Obama addressed not another state or group of nations but a religion: Islam, which many Americans continue to view (erroneously) as...
Emad El-Din Shahin Three issues are vital to U.S. security in the Middle East and will define America’s future relations with the Muslim world: the peace process (in Palestine, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan); the United States’ continued support for corrupt and...