Progress against poverty requires measuring countries by the rule of law, judicial independence and free speech.

On the first anniversary of the pro-democracy uprising in Bahrain, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Middle East scholar Michael Rubin warns that Bahrain could be headed for a bloodbath with dangerous repercussions for the United States.

There remains a widely perceived notion—still commonly held within intellectual, academic, and policy circles in the West and elsewhere—that ―Muslim societies are especially resistant to embarking upon the path of demographic and familial change. But such notions speak to a bygone era

Everybody who pays attention to these sorts of things knows Muslim societies are almost uniquely immune to the forces that have been driving down fertility rates on every continent for decades. But everybody, it seems, fell asleep before the final act.

Iranian outbursts towards the United States and Israel are nothing new, but the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington surprised many people. Iran's animosity toward Saudi Arabia, however, should have surprised no one.

AEI experts are available to comment on the ongoing crisis in Syria

We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

Far from enhancing the Putin regime's legitimacy, the election will diminish it further in the eyes of a significant part of the Russian population.