Robert F. Worth

Syria’s Lost Chance

Syria’s War on Screen: An Exchange

Idrees Ahmad: He uses cynicism as a scythe to effect a moral leveling, declaring the regime no worse than its opponents. Robert Worth: To recognize facts is not to practice “false equivalence.” And to deny that this is a civil war is to trade Syria’s complex reality for a partisan caricature.

A Simplified Story of Syria’s Civil War

The full truth about Syria—perhaps about any civil war—is very hard for the participants to bear. Perhaps that is why so many Syrians adhere to a fable that tends to absolve their own side.

The End of the Show

Yemen Under Siege

Crafting the Koran

Manuscripts of the Koran emerged from the desert in the seventh and eighth centuries AD: yellowed animal-skin parchments inscribed with Arabic letters that proclaim a faith in one God—the books themselves embodiments of God’s word.

In the Attic of Early Islam

Sometime around the year 1314, a retired Egyptian bureaucrat named Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri began writing a compendium of all knowledge. This 9,000-page work, in thirty volumes, covering all of human history, has been translated into English for the first time and radically condensed.

Yemen: The Houthi Enigma

Safa al Ahmad’s remarkable BBC documentary, Yemen: The Rise of the Houthis, is a rare close-up look at the most mysterious player in this agonizing and complex drama.

The Pillars of Arab Despotism

‘The New Arabs’ by Juan Cole and ‘Temptations of Power’ by Shadi Hamid

The Jihadis of Yemen

Al-Qaeda’s Inner Circle