Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. Last month, an assailant with a sword attacked a church during services in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, injuring four worshippers, including a priest. The attack appears to be the latest sign of growing religious intolerance in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, which has seen a rise in religious conservatism and flashes of extremism in recent years. In an email interview, Kikue Hamayotsu, an associate professor of political science at Northern Illinois University and faculty associate at the Center for [...]
On Feb. 16, South Africa’s new president and head of the ruling African National Congress party, Cyril Ramaphosa, delivered his first state of the nation address, which was sharply criticized by the country’s political opposition parties. After finding it easy to capitalize on the scandal-plagued presidency of former President Jacob Zuma, the opposition had its first opportunity to challenge Ramaphosa on his own policies, which were previously not well known. In an email interview, James Hamill, a lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester and expert on South Africa, discusses the current state [...]
On Feb. 17, during a meeting in New Delhi, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed nine new bilateral agreements, including an 18-month lease of part of the Iranian port of Chabahar, near the Pakistan border, to India for an $85 million development project. Modi said the port deal would help expand “the centuries-old bilateral relationship.” In an email interview, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the recent author of “Psycho-nationalism: Global Thought, Iranian Imaginations,” explains the significance of the port deal, [...]
