Horrendous killing of college sophomore highlights the country’s ethnoreligious fault line, but interdenominational rivalry in the south is of no less moment. All in all, reactions to the murder of Ms. Deborah Yakubu, a 200-level home economics student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, have exposed Nigeria’s deepest political fractures and lingering questions over citizenship, national identity, and secularity. On May 12, following disagreement over a WhatsApp voice note deemed to have been blasphemous against Islam and Prophet Muhammad, a mob comprising some of the twenty-two-year-old’s schoolmates brutally clubbed and stoned her to death, after which they proceeded to incinerate her body.

Ahmad al-Akla writes about people’s return to rebel-controlled Idlib, Syria. A new party in Egypt calls for a secular constitution. Juan Cole discusses how recent shifts in Syria are driven by Turk…

Sara Pursley, in a two-part report on Jadaliyya, debunks the myth of Iraq as an artificial state. Mahmoud Riad protests the demolition of the National Democratic Party’s headquarters in Cairo. Ahma…