Juan Cole

*The stockpiling of arms in mosques has been denounced on Coalition radio in Iraq according to AFP/az-Zaman. The broadcast condemned the desecration of holy places in this way and pointed out that attacks on coalition forces with such heavy weapons typically injures innocent Iraqi civilians, as well. US troops in Falluja recently came under fire […]

*The formula for the transitional government in Iraq keeps changing an almost daily basis as Paul Bremer searches for a way out of the various dead ends that his predecessors had set up for him. Now he is talking, according to various reports including Az-Zaman and al-Hayat, about cancelling the Iraqi convention planned for July […]

*There were demonstrations in Basra against the new British governor. Thousands of Shiite demonstrators insisted that Iraqis could rule themselves. Some of the discontent may have come from followers of the deposed governor Shaikh al-Tamimi, a Shiite tribal leader. *The Bremer administration in Iraq has decided to widen the transitional leadership council of Iraqi organizations […]

*Three Shiite young men were killed by US troops in Samarra’ according to az-Zaman. The local Shiite clergy called for calm in their Friday Prayers’ sermons. There are various narratives about what happened. Some say the youths were engaging in celebratory gunfire for a wedding and that US troops mistakenly returned fire; another narrative had […]

*Tony Blair, in southern Iraq, warned Syria and Iran against interfering in Iraq or supporting terrorism there. There were demonstrations Thursday by Shiite clergymen who claimed that the Americans had imprisoned some of their colleagues, and had “plundered Najaf” (the Shiite holy city). The hundreds of demonstrators passed out pamphlets from the “military wing” of […]

Iranian Revolutionary Guards have stopped training Hizbullah fighters, according to Asharq al-Awsat. Correspondent Ali Nourizadeh suggests that this is a clear signal that Iran is taking the Bush administration’s warnings seriously. The source admitted that the Iranians had trained about 100 Hizbullah fighters in the techniques of aerial suicide bombing, but have now sent the […]

*It is wrong to attempt to force women to veil and to force men to wear long beards and “Islamic” dress in Iraqi public places and universities, according to Shaikh Muhammad Baqir al-Nasiri of al-Nasiriya in Iraq. He gave an interview to az-Zaman. He dismissed the Islamist fashion police as mere ignoramuses, of a sort […]

*One GI was killed Monday and another was wounded when armed men fired on their convoy near the town of Hadithah, which is about 120 miles north of Baghdad. One report I saw suggested that the locals taunted the US troops, saying “bye bye.” There is a lot of anti-American feeling in the Sunni Arab […]

*A huge march was staged yesterday in Casablanca, with tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of participants. Morocco’s Jewish community was among the marchers. But the rally, led by PM Driss Jettou, excluded members of Morocco’s largest Islamist party, Justice and Development. Apparently this was in part for fear that the Islamists would be attacked by […]