GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

Islam and the World

Are terrorist attacks and suicide bombings a betrayal of Islamic teaching? Is the world truly enduring a "clash of civilizations?" Are the world’s one billion Muslims a monolithic community, or is the diversity of Muslim life the key to understanding Islam’s future?

Islam often has uneasy relations with what passes for "modernity" across the rest of the globe: separation of church and state, equality for women, acceptance of an independent status for other religions (other than as prefiguring Islam), a secular legal system.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Echoes

Said Amir Arjomand Series: Islam

2010-02-02

Iran’s continued unrest, now extending through the 30th anniversary of the revolution that toppled the Shah, raises the question of whether the Islamic Republic is about to fall. As in 1979, millions of Iranians have taken to the streets, and the divide between Iran’s society and its government is much greater today than it was under the Shah 30 years ago. ... read

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Iran’s Republic of Fear

Mehdi Khalaji Series: Islam

2010-01-18

Iran’s clerical regime governs by a simple formula: he who is the most frightening, wins. But cultivating fear in others also makes one more susceptible to fear, and nothing is more frightening to the Islamic Republic's leaders than the social dynamism unleashed by the democratic movement brewing inside the country.... read

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Pakistan’s Next Fight

Hassan Abbas Series: Islam

2009-12-01

It took a while for the Pakistani Army to move against the region’s rising violence and chaos, but its campaign against militants in South Waziristan is making progress. Sooner rather than later, however, Pakistan will have to move against other terrorist havens, and find common cause with India in order to stabilize Afghanistan and be able to focus on its serious domestic problems.... read

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Palestine after Abbas?

Daoud Kuttab Series: Islam

2009-11-18

President Mahmoud Abbas’s withdrawal from the Palestinian Authority's presidential election scheduled for January 24, 2010, has produced no political scramble to pick a successor. The reason is simple: the PA presidency has become irrelevant.... read

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Learning to Leave Extremism

Paul Salem Series: Islam

2009-10-27

The struggle for the future of the Arab and Muslim worlds that is being fought now will be won or lost not on the battlefield, but in the classroom. Radical Islamists recognized this long ago, but it is a lesson that the West has yet to learn.... read

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Freeze the Settlement Freeze

Daoud Kuttab Series: Islam

2009-09-08

Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to approve new Jewish settlements on the eve of a possible settlement freeze is the latest round in a cycle that has been repeated so often that it would seem mundane were it not so dangerous. Unless and until Israel pays a heavy price for its illegal activities in the occupied territories, a successful peace process is hard to imagine.... read

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The Normalization of Fatah

Daoud Kuttab Series: Islam

2009-08-14

Fatah, the leading guerrilla movement within the Palestine Liberation Organization, has a long way to go before it becomes a full-fledged political party. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the Sixth Fatah Congress reflects a clear bias in favor of such a path rather than returning to an underground existence as an armed resistance movement.... read

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Fatah’s Status Quo Congress

Barry Rubin Series: Islam

2009-08-12

The Sixth Fatah Congress, held recently in Bethlehem, was an important event for the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict and for the Palestinian movement. But a careful look at the results of the Congress’s elections to Fatah’s Central Committee yields a picture that is quite different from what many will conclude about the meeting.... read

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Anatomy of a Revolution Delayed

Mansoor Moaddel Series: Islam

2009-07-10

The ongoing conflict between Iran’s rulers and the Iranian public is the result of a head-on collision between two contradictory forces: whereas public attitudes in Iran have become more liberal in recent years, power has shifted from conservative pragmatism toward a much more militant fundamentalism.... read

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Educating Americans about Muslim Voices	Vishakha N Desai, Karen Brooks Hopkins and Mustapha Tlili
President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo furthered his stated goal of extending a hand of friendship to the Muslim world, and engaging it with a commitment to mutual respect. But the sad fact that most Americans remain woefully ignorant about the basic facts of Islam, and about the broad geographic and cultural diversity of Muslim cultures. ... read

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How Can Qurei Succeed?

Daoud Kuttab Series: Islam

2003-09-12

The new Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei, faces daunting challenges. He must tread between the shrapnel shards of constant Israeli military actions against the Palestinians, the ambivalence of the US about the road map, and a plethora of militant Palestinian groups seeking revenge for every one of their assassinated leaders. This sickening cycle of violence is all too predictable. It need not be inevitable. ... read

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Islam’s Forsaken Renaissance

Mahathir bin Mohamad Series: Islam

2005-11-07

Children often play a game where they sit in a circle. One whispers something to his neighbor, who then whispers that information to the next child, and so on, around the circle. By the time the last child whispers the information to the first, it is totally different from what was originally said.... read

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Morocco’s Veiled Feminists

Fatima Sadiqi Series: Islam

2006-05-25

It is often assumed that modern feminism has no place, and thus can make little headway, in societies undergoing a religious revival, particularly in the Islamic world. But the real progress made in recent years on women’s rights in Morocco suggests otherwise: a unique combination of activism by secular and religious women, the calculations of political parties, and a significant role for the King has led to real progress.... read

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Engaging the Islamists

Saad Eddin Ibrahim Series: Islam

2006-02-07

The massive victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections stunned much of the world, but the outcome should not have been so surprising. Indeed, Hamas’s moment of triumph is part of a growing regional pattern. ... read

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Kuwait’s Parliamentary Revolution

Mai Yamani Series: Islam

2006-02-01

The world has been transfixed by the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian election. But a different assertion of democratic and parliamentary power, this time in the Gulf sheikdom of Kuwait, which possesses 10% of world oil reserves, may prove to be equally important. Every sign indicates that the wave of democratization in Kuwait is irreversible, and the impact of these changes extends beyond Kuwait to all the other oil-rich Gulf countries, which are also ruled by emirs and sheikhs.... read

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The Hamas Earthquake

Mkhaimar Abusada Series: Islam

2006-01-28

Hamas’s crushing defeat of Fatah in this week’s elections brings the Palestinian people to a crossroads. An Islamist political party that previously abstained from national politics and rejects Fatah’s policy of negotiations with Israel, is now in charge in Palestine. ... read

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Islam as a Tool of Modernization

Kee Beng Ooi Series: Islam

2005-08-31

A big worry in Iraq and the wider Middle East is that Islam and modernization are enemies. But Malaysian history over the past three decades shows that this belief is mistaken. In fact, Islamization has proved to be an effective political means of reconciling the majority of Malays to the country’s rapid economic development.... read

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The Hour of Hamas

Mkhaimar Abusada Series: Islam

2005-09-07

Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank has created a new reality for Palestinians. How the Palestinians choose to respond to these changed circumstances may well determine whether or not they at last achieve an independent state. So this moment may prove to be the Palestinians’ greatest opportunity. Or, in the words of Abba Eban, it may be yet another opportunity to miss an opportunity. How the Palestinians respond depends largely on how the Palestinian body politic deals with the growing power of Palestinian Islamic movements, which undoubtedly expect a significant share of power in post-withdrawal Gaza. Will armed groups resume their fight against Israel, or will the Palestinian Authority act to defuse or combat the attacks? To what degree are Fatah, the secular movement controlled by Palestine President Abbas, and the Islamist Hamas ready to reach an understanding about how to proceed after the disengagement?... read

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Jihad or Murder?

Abdou Filali-Ansary Series: Islam

2005-07-28

It is remarkable that some of the most critical concepts of Muslim religious terminology have now become part of the international language of current affairs. Questions drawn from Islamic theology are discussed freely by the world public, engaging specialists and non-specialists, Muslims and non-Muslims. Theological disputation has moved far from Islam’s religious academies.... read

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Islam’s Fanatical 1%	Muhammad Habash
The dominance of conservative Islam in the Middle East reflects a fundamental reality of Muslim society. But this conservatism should not be mistaken for violent radicalism, as America, unfortunately, has done. While conservatism may claim a majority of the “Arab street” (and the Persian street), this does not mean that violence and terrorism will inevitably rule the region.... read
The Return of the Radicals in Iran	Jack A. Goldstone
Twenty-six years after the Islamic Revolution, just when the West had expected Iran to settle down and become more pragmatic, the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have lurched back toward radicalism. By looking at earlier revolutions, we can perhaps come to understand what is happening in Iran, for recent events there have clear historical precedents.... read

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