PHILADELPHIA – December 2, 2025 – The Winter 2026 issue of the Middle East Quarterly ranges from Aristotle to Evangelicals, and from Churchill to Turkish drones.
In “What Islam’s Golden Age Ignored, and What It Means Today,” S. Frederick Starr explores the period of Islam’s “golden age,” from 800 to 1200. He observes that “while praising the intellectual curiosity of the new Muslim rulers and intelligentsia of Baghdad, recent scholars fail to report on the works that never made it into translation and hence had no impact on the Muslim mind. … The list of neglected works is long and impressive. Astonishingly, prominent among that salon des refusés were the ancient world’s greatest thinkers on society, law, politics, and history. In other words, everything pertaining to the conduct and governance of cities, states, and whole societies was excluded from the Arabs’ otherwise inquiring minds.”
In “Drone Power and Political Islam: How Turkey’s Military-Tech Complex Fuels Interventionism,” Mohammad Taha Ali “explores the intersection of drone warfare and political Islam in contemporary Turkish foreign policy, arguing that Turkey’s burgeoning military-tech complex—anchored by companies like Baykar—has enabled a new form of interventionism across West Asia, North Africa, and the Caucasus.”
In “Three Reasons Why Young U.S. Evangelicals Are Turning Against Israel,” Aaron David Fruh notes evidence of declining levels of support for Israel among younger Evangelical Christians in the United States. Fruh contends that biblical illiteracy, the growth of woke ideology, and the growth of “progressive” versions of Christianity are creating this phenomenon. He concludes that “if this downward trend is ignored, it could result in an American evangelical movement that, within a decade or two, is largely opposed to Israel.”
Finally, in “It Is a Question of Which Civilization You Prefer: Winston Churchill at the Crisis of Zionism,” authors Marjorie L. Jeffrey and Michael S. Kochin examine the thinking of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the question of Zionism. They conclude that “despite all the horrors of his age, Churchill maintained his faith that ‘the good cause will not be trampled down. Justice and freedom will reign among men.’ What made Churchill unique among all those who dealt with Palestine is that he thought at each stage that justice could be done to Jews, Arabs, and Britons provided all did their part in realizing both sides of Balfour’s promise.”
In book reviews, MEQ editor Jonathan Spyer reviews Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment, by Theo Padnos; Mitchell Bard reviews October 7: The Wars over Words and Deeds by Asaf Romirowsky and Donna Robinson Divine; and Patrick Clawson looks at Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History, by Vali Nasr.
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