Can Anwar, the man who wrote a book on “his vision for a more tolerant, pluralistic Asia”, bring together a divided Malaysia?
Pakistani Islamists march to protest the Supreme Court lenient treatment of Asia Bibi, a Christian Pakistani woman accused of blasphemy, in Karachi, Feb. 1, 2019.
ASIF HASSAN/AFP via Getty Images
Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia all punish blasphemy harshly – even with death. Such laws have political as well as religious motives, says a scholar on Islamism: They’re a tool for crushing dissent.
Mohammed Morsi, a member of the controversial Islamist political organization the Muslim Brotherhood, was Egypt’s first democratically elected president. He was overthrown in a coup in 2013 and died on trial this June.
Reuters/Amr Dalsh
A few years ago, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s Gulenists were running the show. Now both religious movements face political repression. How did they fall so far, so fast?
Protesting for political freedom outside the Supreme Court in Malé.
Dying Regime via Flickr
With a hollowed-out agenda and a cynical attitude to corruption, Iran’s reformist forces have squandered their people’s trust.
Muslims attend a Defend Islam Action rally in Jakarta. The rallies show how political Islam utilises democracy to pursue a conservative religious agenda.
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Political Islam utilises Indonesia’s democracy to pursue its ideals, changing the democratic landscape. Attempts to exclude the movement from democracy are counterproductive. What to do?
The political crisis surrounding the 2012 ousting of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed led to a return to authoritarian rule.
Dying Regime/flickr
Democracy did not fail in the Maldives because it clashed with Islam. Instead, a privileged and powerful elite helped topple the elected government, and nations that advocate democratic ideals did little to stop them.
The tradition of freedom of expression on religious matters is not quite so venerable as many seem to imagine in the outcry at the killing of Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists in Paris. While modern…