On the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, Mustafa Akyol examines the suggestion that Islam needs its own reformation to rid it of its more intolerant, bellicose, and brutal strains. He argues that the historical analogy is inapt—not least because Martin Luther sought to free Christianity from the church hierarchy, for which there is no Muslim equivalent:

During the recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, a few left-wing members of Congress not only condemned the Jewish state, but repeated libelous claims about “attacks” on al-Aqsa mosque. Worse still, their rhetoric seemed to imply, in classic anti-Semitic fashion, that Israel is not just a particularly problematic country, but one somehow at the root of all the world’s other problems. Seth Mandel writes: