As the United Arab Emirates approaches the 50th anniversary of its 1971 founding, the country is confronting the twin threats of the coronavirus pandemic and its strategic consequences for diplomacy, geopolitics, the economy, and beyond.
“This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. The State Department rightly said this is the largest incarceration of any ethnic minority since the Holocaust,” says Nury Turkel, a leader of the Uyghur community in the United States and a newly appointed member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In a rare public dialogue, UAE Ambassador to the UN Lana Nusseibeh shared how the UAE is dealing with the pandemic, interfaith coexistence in her country, and Israel’s place in the region. The refreshingly frank conversation with Nusseibeh and my colleague Jason Isaacson aired live on AJC Advocacy Anywhere, the American Jewish Committee’s popular online program.
Religion is playing an increasingly pervasive role, threatening Indonesia’s national ideology, a tradition of pluralism, inclusiveness, moderation, and tolerance that is known as Pancasila. This trend is displayed most dramatically when terrorists strike at churches, but has been manifest in the political realm for some time, and very clearly in the important 2017 Jakarta local election.
US President Donald Trump’s state visit to India, a little more than eight months before he faces the voters in his bid for a second term, is significant not only for what it may yield in enhancing the strategic relationship between sister democracies but for what it says about the rising stature of India and Indian Americans on the US political landscape.