The anti-Russian McCarthyism that has spread out from the United States to encompass the European Union, Canada and Australia has at its core an implicit recognition that neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy have failed. When I recently asked a European journalist why this anti-Russian hysteria had taken root among mainstream European political parties, he answered with a question: “Do you think they can run on their success in handling the recession and the refugees?” In other words, European voters are angry about the painful economic conditions that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the destabilizing surge of…

“If God had so willed, He would have made you a single people,” the Qur’an states (5:48). However, after having created all of humanity from a single male and female, God made us into different “nations and tribes” (49:13). The purpose of having created us in distinct ways, is that we “come to know each other” through respect and love and so we can “race each other in all virtues” and compete for the good (5:48).   The Qur’anic “come to know each other” can serve as an instructive interpretation of the deeper meaning of education. The main ambition of…

Think of our democracy as a house we built in 1776, big enough only for Christian, property-owning white men. Over the next two centuries, various groups struggled to make it bigger, with space for people of other faiths or no faith, people of color, poor people, and women. Imagine then that someone stole a shingle, or a nail — first one, then another. After many such small thefts, the structure weakens. The roof begins to fall in; whole rooms are torn down, the wreckage is carted away; eventually, all that remains is a skeleton. Democracy, as the historian Sean Wilentz wrote,…

Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: Thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done. Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President…

Many people charge that both the religion of Islam and realities of Muslim politics demonstrate that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Across the political and ideological spectrum, the Muslim experience has been one of kings, military, and ex-military rulers possessing tenuous legitimacy and propped up by military and security forces. In Syria, the president’s son recently succeeded his father; and some believe the rulers of Libya, Egypt, and Iraq now entertain such a possibility. Some “Islamic governments”—the Taliban’s Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan—have projected a religiously-based authoritarianism that parallels secular authoritarianism. And since 9/11, many Muslim governments have used the…