The deeply contentious referendum on Egypt’s new constitution last December 2012 gave me some hope that not all is lost to Arabs and Muslims in the aftermath of the revolutions…
Editorials
The Tyranny of Religious Scholars
As any observer will have noticed, the debates that are consuming many Arabs right now have to do with the place of religion in their societies. Most Muslims want freedom…
The Specter of Salafism
Many people in the Muslim world are scrambling to get out from centuries (not just decades) of tyranny and build a good future for themselves and their descendants. They want…
Obama, Romney and Islam
The 2012 U.S. presidential election was most intriguing for what was relatively absent from the debates. We didn’t hear much about President Barack Obama’s hidden Islamic faith, although an exchange…
Fury Unbound
The French are in trouble. The publication Charlie Hebdo has just published cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, and now the French government is taking measures to protect its citizens in…
Bernard Lewis
I own twelve books by Bernard Lewis and they are all stacked horizontally on the left corner of one of my bookshelves in the office. I first heard about Lewis…
Tales of a Morisco
Hassan Aourid’s novel, Le Morisque, or, The Morisco, a lyrically written account of the unsettling life of a Morisco who lives in the tumultuous period of the late 16th and…
Looking for an Arab Herzl
As Arabs continue to agitate for freedom in their nations, no leading Arab or Muslim intellectual has been able to articulate a well thought-out program for the future of his…
Greek Lessons for the Arab Spring
As the Arab Spring enters its second year and the whiff of democratic possibilities hovers in the air of many an Arab nation, a question that continues to be left…
Why America Matters to Muslims
One thing that is striking about the recent revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain is the absence of any anti-American slogans or denunciations of the Great Satan,…