Over the long term, it will be crucial to turn off the IS recruiting faucet. Doing so will require counterterrorism officials to better understand that that the “snuff videos” for which IS has become so well-known are not the principal enlistment tools. Rather than “come kill,” the strongest message is “come build the caliphate.”

The Dubai expo, themed 'Connecting Minds, Creating the Future', will run from October 2020 to April 2021 and will mark the first time the event is held in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

When Afghanistan's national women’s soccer team takes the field in the near future, the players will be decked in a uniform that marks both their country’s deep-seated history and how far it has come. Just two years after FIFA gave the green light on head covers, sportswear company Hummel unveiled the newest iteration of the Afghani national team jersey on Tuesday, which now features a hijab.

A Saudi Arabian sociologist aims to counter stereotypes about her country with a coffee table book profiling successful Saudi women [...] "We are facing challenges but we are succeeding," said [Mona AlMunajjed] at the book signing for her work "Saudi Women: A Celebration of Success." The large-format book features her interviews with 40 Saudi women from a variety of fields, alongside their photographs.

Israel was ranked the eighth most powerful country, and 25 out of 60 on the overall best country ranking. […] [But,] Yair Lapid said the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is gaining strength; that international organizations are taking anti-Israel positions; that there is a crisis with the US and EU; and the international media has taken a sharp anti-Israel line with the help of Israeli organizations [...]

Over 600 high school and undergraduate students attended the Model United Nations (AUSMUN) conference at the American University of Sharjah last week. The three-day conference, now in its ninth year, allowed student delegates to simulate the various United Nations committees and develop a sound understanding of international relations and diplomacy.

Fuente Latina – a non-profit and non-governmental organization that intends to remove geographic and linguistic barriers for global Spanish language media covering stories about Israel and the Middle East – has recently open its first United States office in Miami. 

The closing of Al Jazeera America, expected in April, is a sad conclusion to a project that was by turns uplifting and inspiring as well as troubling and depressing. Its demise offers a lesson in both the limitations of public diplomacy and the obstacles to providing high-quality television journalism.