“Laïcité,” or secularism, the principle that separates religion from the state in France, has long provoked heated dispute in the country. It has intensified recently, when a teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded after showing his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
We look at the roots of secularism and ask whether it works in modern, multicultural Fran ... Show More
Mar 2
Celebration and Mourning: Inside an Iran at War
The United States and Israel continued to strike Iran with missiles for a second day on Sunday, destroying more power centers of the Iranian regime and, according to rights groups, bringing the civilian death toll over 100. Iran responded with retaliatory attacks. At the same tim ... Show More
35m 28s
Mar 1
The U.S. and Israel Strike Iran
The United States and Israel on Saturday launched an attack against Iran, killing the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and, according to Iranian state media, several people in the country’s leadership structure. The New York Times journalists Mark Mazzetti and Dav ... Show More
34m 32s
Nov 2020
French secularism and the resurgence of terror
<p>Over the last few weeks, Islamist terror attacks in France, and then Austria shook Europe, and the world. In response, the UK has also raised its terror threat level to "severe". But the French President Emmanuel Macron's response to the attacks has sent ripples ... Show More
30m 7s
Oct 2020
Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019)
In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “religion” and “secular” naturalizes these differences and promotes the seeming rigidi ... Show More
56m 8s