In this video interview with TPNRD director Judd Birdsall, David Warren discusses his new report Tolerance, Religious Freedom, and Authoritarianism: Implications for U.S. Policy. Published by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the report analyzes why so many authoritarian states have invested heavily in major international conferences, initiatives, and declarations focused on religious tolerance.
David H. Warren is a scholar of contemporary Islam, politics, and media in the Middle East, with a particular focus on the understudied Arab Gulf states and Islamic soft power. His first book, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (Routledge 2021) investigated the political interventions of two of the most prominent figures among the Muslim scholarly-elite (the ulama) and their relationships with the Qatari and Emirati ruling families. The project included fieldwork in Doha and Abu Dhabi and qualitative analyses of media platforms ranging from satellite TV interviews, to YouTube sermons, to Twitter feeds.