French authorities opened a preliminary probe Monday into the assets of Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Activist groups allege the elder Assad acquired vast wealth in France through corruption and embezzlement ....

In a religious country such as Egypt, despite atheism being a taboo highly frowned upon, atheists say their numbers are on the rise. But with any new movement taking hold, a cultural backlash is bound to ensue .   In an attempt to understand the...

Stories of women entering Syria on a “Sex Jihad” have taken the media by storm. But are any of them actually true?  Leila, 23, still blushes when she talks about her first kiss. Now heavily pregnant with her first child, she says she didn’t even hold hands with a boy until she...

This Lowy Institute Analysis examines the trajectory of the Syrian conflict in the wake of the Russian and US agreement to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons.  It argues that while that agreement, enshrined in Security Council Resolution 2118, may remove a pernicious class of weapons...