Juan Cole

Why Jacoby is Wrong Jeff Jacoby argues that there is something peculiar about the reaction of Muslims to the allegations that the Koran was disrespected at Guantanamo prison by US military interrogators. Jacoby’s position is pure bigotry. We have to be clear about this. Anti-muslimism is a form of racial prejudice no different from any […]

23 Die In Iraq Violence Shiite Cleric Assassinated Guerrilla attacks killed 23 persons in Iraq on Thursday, including one US serviceman. One bomb blew up near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, and an important Shiite cleric was killed. Al-Sabah says that when Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi met with Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf on […]

Best of the Web Scientists in South Korea, unhampered by the tradition of anti-intellectualism that still bedevils the United States, have made a major breakthrough in stem cell research. They took eggs from volunteers, snipped out the nuclei, and inserted nuclei from the skin of eleven patients sick with various disorders. They then jump-started cell […]

Oil Official Killed Jarba’s Home Attacked, 8 Dead Ahmad Seif of Reuters reports that An Oil Ministry official, “Ali Hameed, was shot outside his home as he left for work, police said.” He adds that guerrillas in Mosul attacked the home of Fawwaz al-Jarba, killing 8 persons before US troops backed by helicopters came to […]

The Lies that Led to War My article is online at Salon.com about the Downing Street memo “The lies that led to war”: A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush intended all along to invade Iraq — and lied about it to the American people. The full gravity of his […]

Dhari, Amiri trade Charges Sunni-Shiite relations in Iraq at Nadir Al-Zaman/AFP/Reuters: “The Association of Muslim Scholars called upon Minister of the Interior Bayan Jabr and Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi to resign. AMS leader Hareth al-Dhari essentially laid the responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of Sunni clerics at the feet of Mr. Jabr, a member […]

Sunni Leader Blames Shiites for Assassinations Hareth al-Dhari, a leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars and an important hard line Sunni cleric charged Wednesday that the Shiite Badr Corps paramilitary was behind a wave of killings of Sunni mosque preachers and worshippers. Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the Badr Organization (the political wing) denied […]

18 Killed in Violence Kharrazi in Baghdad Will blog more later on Wednesday. For now, Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi made a historic visit to Baghdad on Tuesday. He pledged help in controlling the borders between the two countries, and made the point that if Iran were actually supporting insurgent infiltration of Iraq (as Washington […]

Has Newsweek Retracted?Update: Riverbend weighs in with an Iraqi nationalist point of view on the allegations of Koran desecration in US military prisons. She points out that many Iraqis will find them plausible, given that we know that the interrogators have not shown respect for basic human dignity. Occasional US mosque invasions likewise lend credence […]