Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Germany, a pioneer in renewables among the advanced industrial economies, now gets 38% of its electricity from renewables. In the United States the proportion of electricity generated by renewables is only about 20%, about half as much as Germany, because of the opposition to green energy of Big Oil, Big […]
Abandoned by Trump, Syrian Kurds frantically turn to Moscow for Protection from Turkey
Anton Lavrov, a military analyst, writes in the pro-Putin Russian newspaper Izvestia that the withdrawal of US troops from northeast Syria will mainly affect the fate of the Kurds (via BBC Monitoring). He notes that the US has provided the YPG with armored vehicles and antitank missiles and a great deal of ammunition. These medium […]
Shiite Parties Decry Trump’s ‘Arrogant’ and ‘Disdainful’ Visit to Iraq, Ignoring Iraqis
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s surprise visit to a US military base in Iraq on the day after Christmas has provoked a strong critique among some Iraqis, who mind that Trump slipped in and out to visit the Ain al-Assad base in al-Anbar Province but did not bother to meet with any Iraqi officials. […]
Glowing NY Times Review of Cole’s ‘Muhammad: Prophet of Peace’
The New York Times Book Review has a glowing review of my new book, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires, calling it ‘erudite,’ ‘informative’ and ‘ambitiously revisionist.’ Mustafa Akyol writes in his review, “Illuminating Islam’s Peaceful Origins” “Cole’s book, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires,” is not just eruditely […]
Biggest Stories of 2018: Israel announced Apartheid, Shot Thousands of Civilians
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 2018 was in many ways a turning point for the position of Israel in the system of Western, liberal, capitalist democracies. It had long sat uneasily among France, Britain, and the United States, inasmuch as it was founded on a formal racial supremacist principle that Jews must rule the state. […]
Middle East Christians, with the population of Sweden, Celebrate Christmas
I do a column like this one from time to time, fighting back against the ‘veil of tears’ approach to the study of Middle Eastern Christians. Some have argued that Christianity is declining in the Middle East, and this allegation is certainly true in some ways and in some places. If Egyptian Christians declined from […]
Christmas and Sufism: Rumi on the Nativity and the Christ Within
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The great medieval Muslim mystic and poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), interpreted the birth of Jesus as an allegory of the soul. Rumi was born in Balkh in northern Afghanistan, but his family fled the Mongol invasions and settled in Konya in what is now Turkey. Rumi was a refugee […]
With Trump leaving, Syrian Kurds seeking Support of Damascus, Moscow against Turkey
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned on Thursday in part because he felt his president was violating the code of the Marines, that no man should be left behind. In abruptly pulling out of Syria, Trump was abandoning the Syrian Kurds, the only allies the US could find in the […]
Islamophobia and the Misuse of History: Iran, Alexander the Great and the Qur’an
As I mentioned earlier, an anonymous troll going by “Kirby” has attacked my new book Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires I have begun by addressing some of his substantive critiques ( here and here) – even though they may appear to be minor, because it is an opportunity to talk about […]
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