Category: Ideology

After the Arab Spring: democratization, authoritarianism, and radicalization

     

The struggle over the future of Islam is not taking place within the West or between the West and Islam, argues Carl Gershman, the President of the National Endowment for… Read more »

The real purpose of China’s new anti-NGO law

     

China’s new anti-NGO law is evidence of a xenophobic shift in the country’s politics, an anti-foreign turn driven by several related trends, The Wall Street Journal notes: First, President Xi Jinping has… Read more »

Iranian activists use social media to demand justice, accountability

     

The public outcry over the rape and murder of six-year-old Afghan refugee Setayesh Ghoreishi (left) demonstrates how social media has allowed Iran’s civil society to hold accountable hardliners in the… Read more »

Prospects for compromise in Iraq

     

The decision by Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to have his supporters seize and then vacate parliament in Baghdad appeared to be the act of a man who—at least for now—wants to control rather than… Read more »

An ‘existential threat’ in China’s future?

     

More than halfway through his five-year term as president of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party—expected to be the first of at least two—Xi Jinping’s widening crackdown… Read more »

China prompts criticism with new curbs on foreign NGOs

     

China took a major step on Thursday in President Xi Jinping’s movement away from Western influences and toward stronger social control, as it passed a new law aimed at limiting the work… Read more »

Mapping Pakistan’s Internal Dynamics

     

Pakistan poses one of the world’s most significant and vexing geopolitical challenges, as its geographic position at the nexus of the Middle East and Asia, nuclear stockpile, and domestic extremist… Read more »

Uighur case highlights most sustained crackdown since Tiananmen

     

Patriotic chest-thumping over the weekend in India gave way to embarrassment and bitterness as the government made a very public U-turn on issuing a visa to Uighur dissident Dolkun Isa, The Washington… Read more »

Political aftershocks hit Ecuador

     

Ecuador is still reeling from the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck last week, killing 654 people, injuring 16,600, and leaving 25,000 homeless, Vice News reports: Last Wednesday, President Rafael… Read more »

Islam and democracy after the Arab Spring

     

                       The authoritarian backlash in the Middle East, with the Arab Winter following the Arab Spring, is part of the… Read more »