On a Saturday night in early March 2021, Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, appeared on live television, seated at a long wooden table and flanked by the country’s prime minister and interior minister. Vucic said he had an important announcement to make about the arrest of an underworld gang responsible for multiple murders. The interior minister warned viewers to move their children away from the TV. A series of images flashed on the screen behind him: a severed head, a headless body, a torso. Vucic spoke slowly, often pausing and staring ponderously at the table in front of him, his...…On a Saturday night in early March 2021, Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, appeared on live television, seated at a long wooden table and flanked by the country’s prime minister and interior minister. Vucic said he had an important announcement to make about the arrest of an underworld gang responsible for multiple murders. The interior minister warned viewers to move their children away from the TV. A series of images flashed on the screen behind him: a severed head, a headless body, a torso. Vucic spoke slowly, often pausing and staring ponderously at the table in front of him, his...WW…

Welcome( | )Welcome( | )NYR DailyIn the beginning, long before ISIS or al-Qaeda, before the smiling suicide bombers and black flags and all the other lurid signposts we have come to associate with Islam, there were manuscripts. They emerged from the desert in the seventh and eighth centuries AD: yellowed animal-skin parchments inscribed with Arabic letters that proclaim a faith in one God. Some were written on the shoulder bones of camels, or stripped palm-branches. No one knows who wrote them. They may have come from many hands in disparate places. But at some point, a powerful story...…Welcome( | )Welcome( | )NYR DailyIn the beginning, long before ISIS or al-Qaeda, before the smiling suicide bombers and black flags and all the other lurid signposts we have come to associate with Islam, there were manuscripts. They emerged from the desert in the seventh and eighth centuries AD: yellowed animal-skin parchments inscribed with Arabic letters that proclaim a faith in one God. Some were written on the shoulder bones of camels, or stripped palm-branches. No one knows who wrote them. They may have come from many hands in disparate places. But at some point, a powerful story...WW…