The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Saudi sports strategy challenges global sports governors and activists alike

Even before it officially launched, Saudi Arabia's bid to host the 2030 World Cup is on thin ice.

The bid suggests that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is determined to do whatever it takes to become a dominant force in international sports.

UAE’s mastery of playing both sides against the middle has its limits.

The United Arab Emirates has mastered playing both sides against the middle.

In the game’s latest iteration, the Gulf state earned significant brownie points in Washington this week by withdrawing a draft United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity.

Hindu-Muslim dialogue progresses cautiously.

Many hold the RSS, a powerful grassroots organization with some six million members, responsible for the violence and explosion of anti-Muslim sentiment in India.

Even so, most would agree that there may be no Hindu Muslim reconciliation without Muslim engagement with the RSS.

Najeeb Jung, a prominent Muslim former civil servant and scholar, tells The Turbulent World why he initiated a dialogue with India’s most powerful Hindu nationalist movement in dialogue.

Saudi columnists bolster calls for reform of Muslim religious law.

Taliban bans on women’s education and employment by foreign aid organisations operating in Afghanistan are having unintended consequences.

The bans have sparked calls for reform of Muslim religious law in Saudi Arabia, a country that wields moral authority in the Muslim world because of its custodianship of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.

India could be this decade’s China.

This could be India’s decade if it plays its cards right.

The subcontinental state is poised to be the next China, even if its path will likely be less straightforward than that of China and more of a Leninist two steps forward, one step backwards.

Who are genuine Muslim moderates? Separating the wheat from the chafe

If you think Islamic scholars discussing the religious legitimacy of the United Nations and the nation-state will put you to sleep, think again.

A call by Nahdlatul Ulama or the Revival of Islamic Scholars, arguably the world's most moderate Muslim civil society movement, to anchor the nation-state as opposed to a caliphate and the United Nations in Islamic law is at the forefront of the ideological fight against extremism and jihadism as advocated by groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Protest in Iran: A Middle Eastern déjà vu with a twist of irony

A recent survey of Iranian public opinion suggests that the lack of confidence in a Middle Eastern regime is starkest in Iran, although crisis-wracked Lebanon, Egypt, or Syria may compete.

Israelis and Palestinians do what they do best, but for the wrong reasons

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has put Israel’s closest allies and some of his key partners on the spot.

So has a generation of Palestinian youth that has nothing to lose and no longer sees fruitless engagement with and acquiescence of the Jewish state as a means of realizing their national and socio-economic aspirations.

Shaping a 21st-century world order amounts to a patchwork

What do Moroccan arms sales to Ukraine, a transnational Russian Iranian transit corridor, and US assistance in developing a Saudi national strategy have in common?

The answer is that they are smaller and bigger fragments of a 21^st-century world order in the making that is likely to be bi-polar and populated by multiple middle powers with significant agency and enhanced hedging capabilities.

‘Saudi First’ aid policy marries geopolitics with economics

When Mohammed al-Jadaan told a gathering of the global political and business elite that Saudi Arabia would, in the future, attach conditions to its foreign aid, the finance minister was announcing the expansion of existing conditionality rather than a wholly new approach.

Coined ‘Saudi First,’ the new conditionality ties aid to responsible economic policies and reforms, not just support for the kingdom’s geopolitics.