( Middle East Monitor) – Calls for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank are gaining momentum in both Tel Aviv and Washington. But Israel and its American allies should be careful what they wish for. Annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only reinforce the current rethink of the Palestinian strategy, as opposed to solving […]
Archives for June 2019
The U.S. Isn’t Winning Any Popularity Contests Among Arabs
By Lawrence Pintak | – Saudi Arabia’s King Salman may consider U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “dear friend,” but it turns out the U.S. isn’t winning any popularity contests outside the royal palace. Pompeo is in the region to meet with what he described as America’s “great allies,” Saudi Arabia and the UAE, […]
So, What Really is Jihad?
By Mohammad Hassan Khalil | – Often, many people conflate the terms jihad and terrorism. This is in part because many writers use the term “jihadist” when describing violent Muslim radicals. To be sure, such radicals have invoked jihad to justify their heinous acts, such as the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and […]
Dawn Newspaper: Contextualizing the Dawn of Islam: Glowing Review of Cole’s Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires
Hachette Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires By Juan Cole Bold Type Books, US ISBN: 978-1568587837 336pp. By Taha Ali | – (Dawn) – Every once in a while, if we are lucky, we get a book which brings the early days of Islam alive for us in a way that is […]
Are Young Arabs Abandoning Religion?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Arab Barometer in partnership with the BBC has interviewed a weighted sample of 25,000 people in the Arab world. One of the survey’s findings is the rapid decline in self-reported religiousness. About 30% of Tunisians say they are “not religious” in 2019, nearly doubling since 2013. The youth are […]
Can the Anti-War Movement of the Silent Majority stop Trump’s Warmongers?
By Allegra Harpootlian | – (Tomdispatch.com) – When Donald Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017, Americans took to the streets all across the country to protest their instantly endangered rights. Conspicuously absent from the newfound civic engagement, despite more than a decade and a half of this country’s fruitless, destructive wars across the […]
Erdogan’s Agony: Has Istanbul just begun saving Turkish Democracy?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Istanbul has clapped back for democracy big time, electing as mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu of the secular Republican Peoples Party. İmamoğlu had already won once, last May, with a margin of 15,000 votes. The increasingly dictatorial president, Tayyip Erdogan, of the center-right pro-Islam Justice and Development Party (AKP), argued that the […]
Trump’s Dismantling of our Government: Deregulating our Way to Disaster
(Informed Comment) – While Trump’s xenophobic and protectionist agenda, thankfully often blocked by the courts, has received the lion’s share of media attention, his henchmen have enacted a whole series of game changing initiatives in the area of federal regulation. Deregulating such domestic concerns as transportation, occupational health and safety, the environment is hardly new. […]
Mideast Peril: How Hardliners in Washington and Tehran are Reinforcing Each Other
London (Informed Comment) – Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive stance towards the Islamic Republic of Iran to supposedly curtail its nuclear capabilities is doomed to fail, as the regime is becoming more hard-line and will become more assertive in the region in response to Washington’s aggression. Trump’s stance clearly has no real benefit to the United […]