Until the morning of 17 April, those who talked about early elections in Turkey were described as insane or as seeking factional interests and targeting the stability of the...

For some time, I have been grappling with the British reasons behind the Balfour Declaration and what it really meant. Let us start with what we know. In early...

The status of a country is not determined, as some historians would have us believe, by its history alone, nor just by its geography, nor indeed by its political...

Ten days ago, US warships fired dozens of missiles at a Syrian air base from where it is suspected fighter aircraft belonging to the Assad regime took off to...

The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in 1928 as an Islamic da'wah association, which means preaching Islam to Muslims. It was not the first organisation of its kind, nor was...

After nearly six years of battling the regime, its Iranian allies and sectarian militias, the prospect of change in Syria seems farther away than ever before. It is certainly...

Should the loss of Aleppo result in the end of the Syrian revolution, the outcome would be catastrophic for the country and the region as a whole. Aleppo, which...

The election victory of American billionaire Donald Trump came as a shocking surprise for many Americans, including leaders and experts within the Republican party that he represents. But it...

Egypt's president has alluded to the threat he faces from allies who now see him as a disaster for the country

The introduction of the European state model and collapse of the Ottoman Empire, not Islam, is at the root of regional violence today When we talk about the roots...

A few days after he took office in May, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim now famously said that his government would pursue a foreign policy aimed at "reducing the number...

Before the start of the annual gathering of Turkey's Military Consultative Council last week, the prime minister and top armed force commanders, following tradition, stood before the tomb of...

In a recent rambling address to the nation, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi stressed that he resorts to neither lying nor deceit (as if the matter necessitated such an...

In the aftermath of every single bombing or terrorist attacks in any European city, the debate erupts once again about Europe’s relationship with its Muslims as well as with...

In a sudden manner, and without prior warning, official Russian and United States statements succeeded one another, not without some ambiguity, about the prospect of turning Syria into a...

On Saturday, 14 February, the Turkish forces began shelling the positions of the Syrian Kurdish militias in the Azaz region, in its surroundings and in Menagh airbase. The Turks...

Francois Guizot (1787-1874), France's foreign minister, and Brugière, Baron de Barante, its ambassador in St Petersburg (the capital of Tsarist Russia) were friends. On 31 December 1840, the minister...

The fatal protest action of a street vendor in a marginal town deep inside Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on 17 December 2010, was the spark that triggered...

I do not recall a single election in any democratic country during the past ten years that created so much media discourse and aroused so much debate around the...

I used to think that the violence pursued by al-Qaeda since the 1990s and more recently by the Islamic State (IS) was nothing more than an extension of the...

It is remarkable to see Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu debase himself with revisionist history by suggesting grand theories on one of the most sensitive issues in the modern...

The Syrian crisis is witnessing a growing political dynamism that is not solely American and Russian, but also Arab. It is even distinctively Arab. The mufti of the Assad...

In 1994, Harvard University Press published the English edition of a book by the eminent French political scientist Olivier Roy. The Failure of Political Islam had a powerful impact...

The crisis in Egypt is growing in complexity and severity by the day. In the meantime, major Arab states, foremost among them Saudi Arabia, behave as if they have...

In a weird spectacle that reflects the oddities witnessed by post-occupation Iraq, former Iraqi prime minister and current Vice President Nouri al-Maliki recently took to the podium lecturing about...

A crisis exists within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It is described at times as the generational conflict. At other times it is seen as a dispute over the strategy...

Throughout the weeks of war and negotiations, various Palestinian leaders from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Fatah, all sought to stress the unity of the...

Opposition to something like President Mohamed Morsi's now-controversial constitutional declaration is an inherent right in a democracy. In any free country, authority needs to have a strong opposition, up...