Religion

Over one million Lebanese gathered in a vast square in a southern Beirut suburb on Sept. 22 to celebrate their country’s largely successful campaign against Israel. Seyid Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hizballah, risked his life by appearing in public after Israeli leaders had sworn to kill him, and spoke to his adoring supporters in Lebanon and around the world.

Many children were given the day off from school, and buses ferried supporters from all over Lebanon for the victory celebration.… more

Alastair Crooke is considered the foremost international expert on Hamas. As EU Security Envoy under Javier Solana during the Second Intifada Crooke mediated with all the Palestinian political and armed factions, including ending the Bethlehem Church of the Nativity siege. Crooke worked for more than two decades in the broader Middle East region, including as a member of the Senator Mitchell Fact Finding Committee and a negotiator between Israeli security forces and Palestinian factions such as Hamas. … more

Are we headed toward a clash of civilizations? Or toward world peace, through freedom and democracy?

Four significant world figures -- President George W. Bush, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Pope Benedict XVI -- have spoken out on these questions, each with different answers. So they can’t all be right.

Let’s start with the pope, who on Sept. 12 delivered a speech in which he quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor saying that Islam was "evil and inhuman" and that… more

Flush with cash from high oil prices, ascendant in its battle with homegrown jihadists, buoyed by a newly robust private sector and entry into the World Trade Organization, and led by a popular, reform-minded king, Saudi Arabia has sputtered to life. After the dark days of the 1990s, marked by stagnation, drift and policy paralysis, the kingdom faces a brighter future.

As custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina, and a heavyweight in councils of Islamic states, Saudi Arabia… more

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been curious about the Shiite Muslims. But I figured, why go to Lebanon, Iraq or Iran to find them -- when I can go to Queens?

There are plenty of Shiites -- more properly, Shia -- right here; they have a history and politics that we need to know.

In the minds of most Americans, the Shia came on the world stage the hard way. The Iranians are mostly Shia; in the late ‘70s, their Shia… more

In March 1997, the neoconservative pundit David Brooks published a cover story in The Weekly Standard titled "A Return to National Greatness: A Manifesto for a Lost Creed" in which he called for a conservatism committed to a "national mission and national greatness." In an op-ed that following September, Brooks and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol elaborated on the argument, explaining that the American people are not great unless they are engaged in heroic collective projects, such as the Cold… more

A few weeks ago, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech to a group of liberal Christians in which he called on his fellow Democrats to tear down the party's self-imposed wall between religious faith and politics.

He criticized liberals who dismiss religion as "inherently irrational or intolerant," and he called the idea that Americans should refrain from injecting their personal morality into the political debate a "practical absurdity." Most important, however, he focused attention on the "prejudices" and "bias"… more

On Sunday, Billy and Franklin Graham preached to about 33,000 people at Baltimore's Camden Yards. In the audience were the converted, the unconverted and the curious. Oh, and I was there, too.

It was a display of theological power, that's for sure. But it was a display, too, of organizational and financial power and, potentially, political power. And it's the relationship to political power, around the world -- sometimes friendly, sometimes edgy -- that makes the Grahams' story… more

Since 9/11, many have cast the Global War on Terrorism as the forces of democracy and freedom pitted against an emerging and increasingly dangerous “Islamofascism”. Author and editor Robert Dreyfuss contends that during the Cold War (and since), the forces of the Islamic right have been erstwhile allies of the United States.

Dreyfuss, author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, will discuss the lessons our shared history offers us in dealing with the war… more