History

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In 1957 Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta went to Ghana in connection with its independence from Britain. The British had grabbed the fabled West African Gold Coast in the nineteenth century in order to profit from its gold and other resources (after having profited […]

Authoritarianism

Putin’s Medieval Romanticism and Russia’s Lurch Right

contributors

Dina Khapaeva | (Project Syndicate) | – – As much of the world makes amends for social and political injustices of the past, Russia is lionizing its despots, raising statues to the worst of them. Behind this phenomenon is an ultra-nationalist brand of conservatism that seeks to take Russian politics back to the Middle Ages. […]

Colonialism

2017 was so Gross we even had to relitigate Evils of Colonialism

contributors

Joseph McQuade | (The Conversation) | – – Recently an academic article, asserting the historical benefits of colonialism, created an outcry and a petition with over 10, 000 signatures calling for its removal. The Case for Colonialism, published in Third World Quarterly by Bruce Gilley, argues Western colonialism was both “objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate” […]

History

Far Right’s Misuse of Knights Templar, Who were actually Sympathetic to Muslims

contributors

Patrick Masters | (The Conversation) | – – When market trader Tina Gayle was banned from selling mugs featuring Knights Templar logos in a Loughborough Market, Charnwood Borough Council ruled that they were offensive to Muslims. A story in the Daily Mail reported that Gayle had “been previously been warned by the council for selling […]

Colonialism

Abbas: British gov’t should recognize Palestine on Balfour centenary

contributors

Ma’an News Agency | – – BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released a statement on Thursday, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, calling on the British government to “apologize to the Palestinian people for the suffering caused as a result of the Balfour Declaration a hundred years ago.” “The second […]

Colonialism

Israeli forces suppress protests marking Balfour Declaration centenary

contributors

Ma’an News Agency | – – BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli forces in Bethlehem city on Wednesday following a march commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 document which supported establishing a Jewish state on what would become British Mandate Palestine, and paved the what for the to […]

Featured

Dear John Kelly: Yes, Slavery was wrong in 1860s & Muslims helped Convince Americans to end It

Juan Cole

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 […]

Archaeology

A mid-6th Century (Christian?) proto-Arabic Inscription from N. Arabia Mentioning Al-Ilah

Juan Cole

(Politically oriented readers of IC please excuse this reprint of a path-breaking but extremely technical discussion in Arabian religious and linguistic history. It is highly important for the study of the beginnings of Islam, since it discusses an inscription from al-Jawf, Saudi Arabia dated to 548 CE, i.e. some sixty years before the beginning of […]

CIA

JFK Files Reveal US Mulled Use of Biological Weapons in Cuba

contributors

TeleSur | – – During a top-level meeting, U.S. officials warned against the possibility of it being traced back to the United States. The recently published JFK files have shed further light on U.S. plans to use biological weapons as part of its Cuban Project, an agricultural sabotage plot against the socialist country. During a […]