Haroon Moghul

This weekend, US president Donald Trump is traveling to the Middle East to deliver a speech about Islam. My bet is that within the first half of that speech—written by the Muslim-baiting Stephen Miller—he’ll brag about his yuge election victory, possibly leak some intelligence, and offend the entire Middle East. Yet pundits will desperately try to parse his words for signs that he’s matured, as if, at his age, people ordinarily make dramatic life changes.

US president Donald Trump knows how to play the American media. So long as the press focuses obsessively on his bombastic persona, he controls coverage. If Trump talks about Muslim terrorism, well then we write about it, whether in agreement or in opposition. Either way, he sets the agenda. If he doesn’t talk about acts of terrorism by right-wing radicals against Muslims or immigrants, or ignores a wave of bomb threats and anti-Semitic hate crimes, then we are more likely to stay silent, too.

Every American Muslim I know is many kinds of frustrated up right now. We are anxious, uncertain, even terrified. We wake up every morning with a sense of disbelief—can this really be happening? We go to bed every night filled with dread—how bad is this going to get? If there’s any upside to this moment, it’s that the unpredictability and vagueness of the campaign is falling away, replaced with a clearer picture of where he stands. A small consolation indeed.

What if Donald Trump’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness?

Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, holds some surprisingly noxious views, even toward his fellow Jews. Never mind halting Israeli settlement construction, Friedman hails Jerusalem as the “eternal, undivided capital of Israel.”

Donald Trump was a good choice for TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” He’s certainly done enough in 2016, and probably too much.

I think about terrorism all the time. Not because I feel personally unsafe. But because I know who’s out there: Folks who want a civilizational war.

Sunni and Shi’a Muslims are two incredibly diverse, complicated, contested, even frequently overlapping religious identities, numbering in the hundreds of millions across dozens of countries and over a millennium of history. Republicans and Democrats are members of the two dominant American political parties. How are these two categories comparable? The short answer is: They’re not.

For years, conservatives have attacked Muslims like me by accusing our religion of supporting things like misogyny and despotism. Awkwardly for all of us, however, they’re spending a lot of time and energy trying to make America a more patriarchal and unequal place.

Yesterday (July 26) in the northwest of France, two Muslim terrorists attacked a Catholic church, taking nuns hostage and killing an elderly priest, before they themselves were shot dead by police. It certainly fits the pattern of ISIL violence: vile, shocking, made for media, and—something we talk about less—standing in stark opposition to the very religious tradition they claim to represent.

The last person I wanted to hear from this week was Tony Blair.

This Saturday (May 14), for the first time ever, Americans were able to watch the final round of the Eurovision song contest live. The contest is a very big deal. Two hundred million people around the world watch contestants from 42 countries (mostly Europe as well as Australia and Israel) compete in a massive, campy sing-off. Those fortunate enough to watch the 61st contest this year, however, saw something very different from the usual fare.

I’ve never considered myself addicted to anything. But for the past few years of my life, I have been addicted to Twitter.

Better safe than sorry, they say. But what that also means is: Don’t expect an apology.

This week, Britain’s Channel 4 released “an extensive and rigorous survey to get a better understanding of British Muslims.” The survey, which involved face-to-face interviews with “a representative sample of 1,000 Muslims across Great Britain” has captured headlines both in the UK and abroad.

In the aftermath of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) release of the so-called Panama Papers—a massive leaked database of documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca—it’s become public knowledge how many powerful people, including world leaders, have kept, circulated, and hidden away huge sums of money using tax havens. The leak proves that the legacy of corrupt world leaders reaches far beyond the stereotypical cronyism of figures like Vladimir Putin.

What makes America great?

Yesterday, a man opened fire in the visitors center of the US Capitol. He drew his weapon and pointed it at officers, one of whom fired and struck the suspect before he could go any further. The media would later learn that the same man had shouted “I am a Prophet of God” from the balcony of the House of Representatives in 2015.

We have seen, in under a year, two terrible attacks against two major European capitals. Not to mention the recent bombings in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. It seems the entire continent, from one end to the other, is vulnerable not only to violence, but to sophisticated and coordinated assaults. The terrorism in Brussels is perhaps even more shocking because it comes so soon after Paris, and because the city hosts much of NATO’s and the European Union’s infrastructure.

What if I told you there was a country that might be able to absorb significant numbers of Syrian refugees? A country that checks all the right boxes: mostly Muslim, a shared history with Syria, European Union candidacy, and a very recent experience of war that might make many of her residents sympathetic to Syria’s plight?

A few weeks back I was in a mosque, decrying the scourge of sectarianism. (I’d been invited to speak, to be clear: I wasn’t just monologuing uninvited.) In too many places, I noted, Sunni and Shia Muslims are not just at odds with each other, they’re at war. To prevent similar conflicts from poisoning our own communities, American Sunnis and Shias would have to learn and work with each other.

There are a couple neat things about the Donald Trump versus Pope Francis spat. Besides making for entertaining television (and even more entertaining Twitter), the scuffle has turned out to be a pretty good way to explain what Muslims mean when they say that the Islamic State isn’t Islamic.

Scandinavia is certainly having a moment in the sun.

We have failed you.