In their recent book, Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy, four scholars—an American Jew, an American Christian, and two German Lutherans—seek to address, from a religious perspective, what is ailing liberal democracies in Europe an America. Their common mission, writes Daniel Johnson in his review, is “to save their faiths from being co-opted by illiberal nationalists who are hell-bent on undermining liberal democracy. But, Johnson points out, they err in ignoring the close relationship between liberalism and nationalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and their assessment of the present is equally flawed:

The present authors . . . see nationalism as a kind of opioid epidemic of the masses and faith, as interpreted by liberal theologians, as a possible remedy. Liberal democracy, they believe, is being threatened as never before, not by external forces such as Chinese Communism or Islamist terrorism, but by a nationalist assault from within. Western civilization is not a phrase that would occur to any of these authors to use, but insofar as they do assume that the West still shares Judeo-Christian values, they see the supreme test of those values in our response to the migration crisis in Europe and America. It is by rejecting any politics that treats refugees and other migrants as “the Other” that biblical faith proves its authenticity.

In Central Europe, where borders had been moved many times over the years, refugees were a familiar sight; Muslim refugees, however, were not. They were unwelcome to many people, not merely on grounds of prejudice, but also of prudence: having observed the multicultural experiments conducted by their neighbors in Western Europe and North America, these culturally homogeneous nations were in no hurry to emulate them.

By refusing to engage directly with the arguments of their foes, are [the authors] not guilty of “othering” the ordinary people who may be susceptible to those arguments? What we have here, then, is a classic case of what Jean-Paul Sartre called mauvaise foi: “bad faith.” Professors Elcott, Anderson, Cremer, and Haarmann profess to have combined to write a manifesto for a liberal fight-back to reclaim the Judeo-Christian legacy from the clutches of religious reactionaries. But they are deceiving themselves. They have not done the intellectual heavy lifting required to refute their opponents. Nor do they take Muslims seriously enough to consider whether they too might have some responsibility for their fate.

So this volume . . . is an example of the very failing that it was written to address: “demonizing opponents by ‘othering’ them.” Faith leaders will gain no traction with the faithful by ignoring their fears and belittling their feelings.

On March 5, Riyadh appointed Salman al-Dosari—a prominent journalist and vocal supporter of the Abraham Accords—as its new minister of information. Hussain Abdul-Hussain takes this choice as one of several signals that Saudi Arabia is inching closer to normalization with Israel:

Saudi Arabia has been the biggest supporter of Palestinians since before the establishment of Israel in 1948. When the kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Red Sea in 1945, the Saudi king demanded that Jews in Palestine be settled elsewhere. But unlimited Saudi support has only bought Palestinian ungratefulness and at times, downright hate. After the Abraham Accords were announced in August 2020, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah burned pictures not only of the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain but also of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Since then, many Palestinian pundits and activists have been accusing Saudi Arabia of betraying the cause, even though the Saudis have said repeatedly, and as late as January, that their peace with Israel is incumbent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While the Saudi Arabian government has practiced self-restraint by not reciprocating Palestinian hate, Saudi Arabian columnists, cartoonists, and social-media activists have been punching back. After the burning of the pictures of Saudi Arabian leaders, al-Dosari wrote that with their aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians “have liberated the kingdom from any ethical or political commitment to these parties in the future.”