Policy Analysis

Moroccan responses to normalization with Israel are split along two opposing narratives, although popular resistance to normalization is unlikely to cause any real change.

The pope's visit in Iraq highlights Iranian-back militias' failure to successfully depict themselves as saviors of Iraqi Christians.

Given our perpetual crises, we Iraqis rarely look back. But unless Iraqis collectively understand the past and decide how to avoid repeating its mistakes, we are bound to pay these crimes forward as we have in the past.

Iran views a successful, democratic government in Iraq as a threat to its existence.

Despite media reports of division, a walk in Cairo reveals how Egypt's history of interfaith coexistence is still alive.

The recent rapproachement between Morocco and Israel can be partly understood through Morocco’s long history of relations with its Jewish minority.

Conflict over Iraq's Sinjar district has left Yazidis adrift in the complexities of Kurdish politics.

In my most recent Fikra Forum piece, In Defense of Islamic Religious Reform, I address the need for religious reform in the modern age. In Hassan Mneimneh’s response to my piece, Islamic Religious Reform Is an Institutional Need First, he raises several thoughtful questions regarding Islamic religious reform’s feasibility, and

In August 2019, Mikail Yüksel—a Swedish politician of Turkish origin—founded a new party in Sweden called ‘Nyans’ (Nuance). Yüksel, formerly a member of Sweden’s small liberal, slightly left-wing, Center-party, started the new party after being forced to resign on the cusp of Sweden’s elections to the European Parliament, where Yüksel

Even in relatively secular countries such as Germany, religion has played an important role in the public’s ability to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic—especially through religious practices like public prayer. However, countries where the role of religious leaders and followers is far more complicated and vital face additional challenges in

Without a doubt, we currently live at a time where powerful movements—international and regional bodies alike—are calling for religious reform. The call for religious reform is very real. It is a powerful expression of the feeling that there is a need to carry out review and self-criticism. Despite the enormous

With this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day recognizing the 75th anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz, it is also important for the German public to address the potential implications of a new wave of anti-Semitism within its borders. Germany’s notable acceptance of over one million refugees from Syria, where anti-Semitic

An existential battle is raging in Lebanon regarding the country’s national character, identity, and prospects, with nothing less at stake than the success or failure of Lebanon as a modern project. Given that the country occupies a unique place in the wider Arab consciousness, the implications of its failure have

Early Islamic traditions—compiled in the centuries following Islam’s formative phase through the literary corpus of Sirah (Biography of the Prophet) and Hadith (Acts and sayings of the Prophet)—openly drew on accounts from Jewish converts to Islam (Isra‘iliyyat). While classical Islamic scholars have generally discounted the value of these accounts, they

In the course of the past century, a troubling development has asserted itself in Islamic thought. Whether in scholarly religious texts or in popular presentations, a new Islamic “theology of the Jews” has coalesced into a thorough demonization of both historical and contemporary ‘Jews.’ In this evolving and radicalizing theological

The hate speech of groups that play on religious sentiments, poverty, and need has become a real threat not only to the region but also to European and American cities. In the age of the internet, ISIS’s gelatinous ideas are able to penetrate the minds of young people regardless of

On December 19, 2018, the Trump administration surprised the international community by announcing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria. While the Pentagon has begun crafting a strategy for withdrawal, the timeline for the departure is uncertain and could stretch over several months. With the process already in motion, Syrian

Marqos Ghabrial and his family gathered the what remained of their lives scattered around their old hometown in the Qena governorate of southern Egypt. The Ghabrial family was forced to leave in the middle of the night after news of Marqos’ romantic relationship with a Muslim girl from the same

Looking back one year on, the September 25, 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum and the October 16, 2017 Iraqi overrun of Kirkuk were disastrous setbacks for U.S. national security interests. With Iraq and the Kurdistan Region—America’s key allies in the counter-Islamic State campaign—having fought each other on the battlefield, these partners

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is driven by several factors: ethnic, national, historical, and religious. This brief essay focuses on the religious dimension of the conflict, which both historical and recent events suggest lies at its core. That much is almost a truism. What is less often appreciated, however, is how much