Arab & Islamic Politics

Washington must at minimum take a clear position with regard to Damascus and human rights -- which could prove a key point of consensus in the international response to the regime's brutal suppression of Syrian demands for democratic reform.

On April 11, 2011, J. Scott Carpenter, Dina Guirguis, David Schenker, and Robert Satloff addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute. Ms. Guirguis is a Keston Family research fellow with Project Fikra: Defeating Extremism through the Power of Ideas. Mr. Schenker is the Aufzien fellow and director

The authors contend that the primary motive behind the AKP's stance toward the Arab regimes is not money, but rather the desire to show solidarity with certain anti-American regimes and distaste for pro-American ones.

Although the Papyrus Revolution was a remarkable accomplishment for the Egyptian people, the ongoing transition has spurred trepidation as well as hope in the United States. Past transfers of power in Cairo have led to dramatic policy shifts, giving Washington little reason to believe that the latest leadership change will

During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Syria's Assad regime was helping insurgents to cross the border and kill Americans. In response to the Syrian provocation, the Bush administration considered a broad range of policy options. But one family of options always remained off the table: regime change or any combination of pressures that might destabilize Damascus. At the Department of Defense, we held a dissenting view.

The former head of Israeli military intelligence delivered the fourth annual Zeev Schiff Memorial Lecture on Middle East Security.

The small Persian Gulf state of Qatar is emerging as a significant international player in the Libyan crisis and a crucial supporter of U.S. policy. But its relationship with the United States has often been difficult, and its standing in the rest of the Arab world is questionable. For Washington

Ten days after millions of Egyptians voted in the first post-Mubarak election to approve nine constitutional amendments, the country's Supreme Military Council (SMC) has announced it will soon issue its own "constitutional declaration," effectively superseding the existing constitution. This raises the question as to why Egyptians were asked to vote

The lesson of the AKP experience for the Arab world and likely Muslim Brotherhood governments is that religious orthodoxy is an ideological beauty contest, in which the winner is always the ugly guy.