There is never a good time for a pandemic, but the coronavirus may have hit the world at the worst possible moment. In the decade before the virus, China had grown more dictatorial and assertive; populist nationalists held power in the United States, India, and Brazil; geopolitical tensions were heightened, not just between Beijing and Washington but within the West itself; and the very notion of objective truth was being called into question. There would be no muddling through this pandemic. Global cooperation broke down almost entirely, partly because many leaders were hardly on speaking terms. The World Health Organization buckled…

Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the US and Saudi governments to neutralise it as a live political issue. The Saudi Arabia embassy in Washington this week issued a statement detailing its anti-terrorist activities and ongoing hostility to Al-Qaeda. This was briskly rejected by the lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims who said that, “what Saudi Arabia desperately does not want to discuss is the substantial and credible evidence of the complicity [in the attack] of their employees, agents and sponsored agents”. Saudi Arabia claims that the 9/11 Commission Report, the official…

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”—Osama bin Laden (October 2001), as reported by CNN   What a strange and harrowing road we’ve walked since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state.Our…

As President Lyndon Johnson and the best and brightest of the 1960s were broken on the wheel of Vietnam, the Biden presidency may well be broken on the wheel of the Taliban’s triumph in Afghanistan. Less than a week into the chaotic U.S. withdrawal at Hamid Karzai International Airport, a CBS poll found that Americans, while still approving of President Biden’s decision to get us out of this “forever war,” were stunned by how badly botched the withdrawal was being executed. By 75-25, Americans believe the withdrawal is going badly. And those who believe it has gone “very badly” outnumber by 9-1…

An unprecedented amount of public attention focused on Muslim Americans in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The U.S. Muslim population has grown in the two decades since, but it is still the case that many Americans know little about Islam or Muslims, and views toward Muslims have become increasingly polarized along political lines. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=202,300 202w, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=160,238 160w, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=272,405 272w, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=200,298 200w, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=260,387 260w, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=310,461 310w, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ft_2021.09.01_muslimsinamerica_02.png?resize=420,625 420w" sizes="(max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px" style="box-sizing:inherit;border-style:none;height:auto;margin-bottom:0px;max-width:100%;border-radius:inherit"> There were about 2.35 million Muslim adults and children living in the United States in 2007 – accounting for 0.8% of the U.S. population – when…