Max Rodenbeck

The Power of Arabic

Captain Pakistan’s Wild Ride

A Mighty Wind

How Narendra Modi and the BJP swept into power in India

Forced Conversion to Islam?

How She Wants to Modify Muslims

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s ‘Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now’

Iraq: The Outlaw State

Constant and fearsome violence has added hugely to Iraq’s woes.

The Father of Violent Islamism

The Agony of Syria

The Reporter Who Knew

Libya: The Losers

From Cairo: Goodbye to bin Laden

Bin Laden’s Death: Why the Arab World Shrugs

The demise of the world's most wanted man has been met, across the Arab and Muslim worlds, with a very untelegenic shrug of indifference.

‘Volcano of Rage’

How to Deal With Yemen

It's hard to imagine a longer or more pressing "to do" list than that of Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Quite apart from the attempt by Yemeni jihadists to plant parcel bombs in US-bound cargo planes, he is beset with trouble.

Yemen, al-Qaeda, and the US

Jaipur

Perhaps it was the squirrels and peacocks leaping in the foliage overhead. Or maybe the way the rambling grounds of the Diggi Palace divided into separate tableaux—here Gulzar, a venerated Urdu poet, recited before a rapt audience, there a pair of London publishers toasted a trio of hard drinking and smoking Kashmiris, while over on the lawn tablas thumped and sittars whined. All this made it hard not to feel like a figure in an outsized miniature, such as those late paintings of the great durbars of the Raj, in which suited British officers faced off against far more splendidly plumed native rulers. Yet the Jaipur Literature Festival, now in its fifth year, is determinedly void of pomp and hierarchy.

Which Way for Hamas?

The Iran Mystery Case

The Arab Spring, and After

An American in Iran