Middle East

Shiism is the second-largest denomination of Islam, after Sunni Islam. Today, the Shia comprise about 10 percent of the total population of Muslims in the world. The most important group within the Shia is the “Twelvers,” so called for...

It is the mark of a great world religion to accommodate different outlooks and sensibilities. Quite often, these differences are manifested in terms of formal divisions within the faith. Thus, in Christianity, a distinction exists between the Roman Catholic...

In September 2007, the late Michael Radu wrote an important E-Note, titled “Struggle in the Sand Box:  Western Sahara and the ‘International Community’.”  He put the last two words in quotation marks because the struggle seemed to illustrate a...

Abstract Strategy is matching means and ends. If the ends desired in Afghanistan are about al Qaeda, the counterterrorism option is the best fit in terms of means. It is sustainable, always crucial in prolonged conflict, as it limits...

INTRODUCTION Many consider Yusuf al-Qaradawi to be the most influential living Islamic scholar. He is viewed as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, as Gilles Kepel, a recognized expert on Islamic movements, asserts, he “sets the tone...

The U.S. has had relations with Iran ever since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. American missionaries have been in Iran even longer than that. But the United States’ real engagement with Iran dates only from WWII. The...

Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood are two distinct forms of Sunni Islamism. They have separate histories and separate worldviews. In reality they are not even the same type of movement. Their origins were largely unrelated. Their historic missions have...

Standard discussions of the interplay of U.S. politics with Israel as a Zionist state tend to emphasize the contemporary triangular relationship among the U.S. government, Israel and the American Jewish community. Many topics inhabit the general subject—for example, the...