Sex jihad should be taken seriously and demands a thorough investigation.

Jihad in Islam is the call to fight and go to war and be ready to die for the victory of Islam against the enemy, who is defined as an infidel. The call for Jihad is seen, by some religious scholars, as a higher spiritual value. To die for your religion is seen as an honor and is defined as martyrdom whereby the martyr is guaranteed heaven and all its privileges, including not being seen as dead but as alive in the kingdom of God. 

Imparting war-fighting skills to Syrian insurgents might backfire.

Training and supporting insurgents against one’s adversaries has been a cost effective strategy since the late 20th century, when states co-opted their adversaries’ enemies as proxy forces, avoiding the monetary cost of deploying their own soldiers and the political cost of casualties.

Hamas seems to be in real trouble at the moment.

Syrian refugees in Yemen must be protected from exploitation.

Perhaps one of the most efficient ways to comprehend the political and economic situation in Yemen is to see who the beggars in the streets are. The common scene would involve Africans or Yemeni marginalized communities begging at every traffic light in the local bazaars.

Too many Syrians have been killed for a deal to contain chemical weapons.

Syria's appalling civil war must come to an end.

The agreement that US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently hammered out in Geneva will, if implemented, prove a milestone in the century-long effort to contain the horrors of modern war. For the first time, the world community will have compelled a country that has used weapons of mass destruction within its own borders in suppression of an armed insurrection to relinquish them to international control and destruction.

Social and economic gains of Palestinian refugees have changed due to the Syrian conflict.This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here.

The discourse of opponents to a military strike on Syria fell into the trap of cultural imperialism.

The threat of a military strike on Syria has not aroused the enthusiasm of many. It has succeeded, however, in bringing the Syrian revolution to the discussion table. Until now, Syria has been notably absent from the list of priorities on the Western agenda, apparently a matter of little interest to governments and public opinion alike, to both the left and the right.

The quest for stability in Syria will determine the outcome of the conflict.

Historian Niall Ferguson holds that order is always the best argument in favor of the empire. Precisely, territorial order or stability is taken by Richard Falk as the bedrock of state sovereignty. Historian Eric Hobsbawm, for his part, links the human need for such an order to people being subjects before becoming citizens.

The outcomes of the Syrian conflict are contingent on the different ways that stakeholders’ quest for stability and order in the territory unfurl.

It is essential to assess what type of chemical weapon was used in Syria.