Middle East Articles

Emma Williams is a British physician and journalist WHO has written extensively about the second intifada in the early 2000s. She has recently published a memoir on the subject, It's Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street (Olive Branch Press, 2010).

An increasingly common approach to governing religion and state relations in non-secular settings is a mixed system of religious law and general legal principles. Despite their many past and present variations, such hybrid legal regimes defy the Franco-American ideal of separating religion and state along private/public lines. At least one billion people now live under a legal order that enshrines religion and its interlocutors as “a” or “the” source of legislation (meaning that legislation must comply with principles of that religion), granting religious tribunals jurisdiction over important aspects of life, public and private, in addition to the tremendous symbolic weight religious edicts often carry.

Much has been written and argued about what Israel can do to effectively address Iran’s nuclear program, which Israel views as a credible existential threat. Most Israelis believe that Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and remain skeptical about the prospect of a diplomatic solution to neutralize the Iranian threat. There is hardly any public discussion in Israel concerning the acceptance of a nuclear Iran, and the question of the nation’s course of action is willingly left to the defense cabinet and a small group within the intelligence establishment.

On November 25, 2009, Dubai shocked the world by requesting a moratorium on debt repayment. Foreign banks had previously pumped significant amounts of money into Dubai, knowing that they would suffer huge losses if the emirate defaulted on its debt. Thus, Dubai’s request prompted financial markets worldwide to plummet immediately. Revelations that Nakheel, a subsidiary of the state-run Dubai World, had suffered losses of US$3.64 billion since June 2009 caused further financial turbulence, especially in Dubai’s stock market.