Peacetime Protections

Amartya Sen is reasonable in saying that Narendra Modi, re-elected as Prime Minister of India last week, has simply won the vote share, but not the battle of ideas.

The war on terror has always been a war against Muslims. It was conceived as a war that would be fought everywhere, without regard for national boundaries.

It is rare in the history of architecture for a new type of building to emerge. The Romans’ discovery of concrete birthed the great domes and fortifications of its empire.

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power...

Buddhist monks follow a lot of rules – 253 in one tradition, 200 in another. As the story goes, all of these rules were made by the Buddha himself...

Hindu gods are in a litigious mood these days. Following the struggle by Ram Lalla—the Hindu deity’s infant form—to lay claim to the 2.77 acres of land where the Babri Masjid once stood

The surveillance infrastructure in Kashgar is state of the art, but the Chinese government is already working on the next level of control. It wants to introduce a "social credit system" that rates the "trustworthiness" of each citizen

Women’s rights to legal abortion have increased in Latin America – but so have campaigns and policies for medical staff to be able to ‘conscientiously object’ and refuse to participate in these procedures.

It is difficult to understand the organized, systematic genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian military and civil authorities from the Republic of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Republic of Macedonia reached a deal with Greece on 12 June to change Macedonia’s name: it will now be known as Severna Makedonija, or the Republic of North Macedonia.

“When I was a teenager, I had to decide. I either left Nigeria. Or I killed myself.” That is how Miss saHHara, a young trans woman, describes the choice she faced, growing up amid transphobic discrimination, and violence.

The Olguita Marina drink on the menu had a beautiful name, and beauty makes me curious. I didn’t order it since I was informed that in addition to rum it contained three fruit liquors, of which two were strawberry and passionfruit.

West Ham fans tend to think that what happens at their club says something about the state of English football. It’s an illusion born of a summer afternoon 52 years ago...

Hawa, a Hindi word for wind or air, carries a subtler meaning in Indian politics. A politician’s hawa is the tailwind that propels him to victory; it is the superior momentum that comes with being on a roll.

Orbán has named his reign the Regime of National Cooperation. This expression well defines the expectations towards anyone who wishes to survive in this environment: either you collaborate or you are declared an enemy of the state.

On a research trip to the Kamituga gold mine in her home province of South Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), activist Marie-Rose Shakalili noticed something that’s often minimised in stories about mining in her country...

I recently returned from a three-month stay in Budapest, where I was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Central European University—a splendid graduate school of social sciences and philosophy founded by George Soros...

A few years ago one of my rare bookworm students asked me for a list of suggestions for “adventure” reading. But when I gave it to her, she seemed disappointed...