By Andrea Duffy | – In the late 16th century, hundreds of bandits on horseback stormed through the countryside of Ottoman Anatolia raiding villages, inciting violence and destabilizing the sultan’s grip on power Four hundred years later and a few hundred miles away in the former Ottoman territory of Syria, widespread protests escalated into a […]
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Ottoman Empire
Why the Suez Canal, now blocked, is so Important to the Global Economy and World History
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The super-super tanker Ever Given is stuck kitty-corner in the Suez Canal, having apparently run up on a sand bar. It is blocking dozens of other ships from going through the canal. The ship, one of the largest in the world, is a quarter of a mile long and can […]
On Juneteenth: That Time Muslim Tunisia Pleaded with Antebellum US to Abolish Slavery
Ann Arbor| (Informed Comment) | – – Back in 2017, then Trump chief of staff John Kelly created a controversy with an argument from historical relativism, defending the honoring of Confederate figures. I addressed his glib argument, and reprise it here in honor of Juneteenth. Juneteenth.com explains the origins of today’s commemoration of the end […]
Turkish Youth, WW I’s Gallipoli Battle, and the Secular-Religious Divide
The Secular Legacy of Kemal Ataturk is increasingly embattled in Erdogan’s Turkey
Dear John Kelly: Yes, Slavery was wrong in 1860s & Muslims helped Convince Americans to end It
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – John Kelly’s ignorant remarks about the Civil War and compromise on Laura Ingraham’s show have rightly angered a lot of people. One of the arguments he made was for historical relativism: ““I think we make a mistake, though, and as a society and certainly as, as […]
Why we should be wary of Calls for an “Islamic Reformation”
this demand for an Islamic Reformation functions to inscribe a narrative of Western civilizational superiority over backward, belligerent Islam
Was/Is there an Islamic Enlightenment? (de Bellaigue)
William Eichler interviews Christopher de Bellaigue | Informed Comment | – – Eichler: 1. In the conclusion to The Islamic Enlightenment you describe modern jihadists as “miracle-grow Muslims” who have been “incubated in the hothouse of modernity.” You write it is hard to attach the label “Muslim” to them. What is the relationship between today’s […]
London’s Muslim Mayor is nothing New: 1300 yrs of Muslims who Ran Major European Cities
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | The press is declaring Sadiq Khan, victor in the electoral contest for mayor of London, the “first Muslim mayor of a major European city.” They mean of course, something like ‘the first Muslim mayor of a really big Western European city in the modern period (say the past […]
Ottomans saved Hungarian PM Orban’s Ancestors; now he says Islam never part of Europe
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban not only continued to defend his anti-immigrant bigotry but went on to say that Islam has never been part of Europe. Mr. Orban not only is increasing the misery of largely Muslim refugees, but now he has erased 1300 years of […]