Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) In early December of last year, Lebanese Shiite leader Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, i.e. charged Riyadh with terrorism. Then in the middle of December, a small terrorist group that calls itself “Helpers of Holy Jerusalem” blew up the […]

Egypt

Will Russell Crowe as Noah help Egypt Separate Religion and State?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Darren Aronofski’s biblical epic “Noah” is already provoking controversy in the Muslim world, and has been preemptively banned in three Gulf states. Biblical figures, such as Abraham, Noah, David, and Jesus, also feature in the Qur’an, which sees sacred history as the serial dispatch by God to humans of messengers who remind […]

Featured

Bill O’Reilly says Muslims will Diss Hillary; but 8 Muslim Countries Chose Female Leaders

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Bill O’Reilly maintains that one downside of having a woman president is that Muslims won’t respect her. For Mr. O’Reilly’s information, here are the women leaders of Muslim-majority countries, most of them freely elected by Muslim publics and all of them respected by the latter: Tansu Çiller, elected prime minister of Turkey, […]

Dissent

Censorship: Turkish PM, President tangle over Bruited ban on Facebook, Youtube

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) President Abdullah Gul has rejected a suggestion by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey might ban Facebook and Twitter. Nearly half of Turkey’s 77 million people use Facebook at least once a month and the country ranks 15th in the world for Facebook use. Turkey had banned Youtube 2008-2010. The good news […]

Eastern Europe

US Hypocrisy on Crimean secession move: Washington Supported Break-up of Sudan, Yugoslavia, Iraq

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Russia has arranged for its supporters in the Crimean state parliament to vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, and has announced that there will be a popular referendum on the issue in the semi-autonomous province, which has been part of Ukraine since the 1950s and went with Ukraine when that […]

Climate Change

Ukraine Crisis Shows Urgency of Green Energy: Russian Nat’l Gas Blackmail

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Hawks are complaining that Europe has been insufficiently belligerent in its response to Russian moves in the Crimea, blaming the declining military budgets in most European countries. But this focus on military hardware is misleading, since there was never any prospect of a conventional military confrontation with the Russian Federation, given that […]

Featured

Obama to Netanyahu: Israel faces Int’l Sanctions over “Permanent Occupation of West Bank”

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C., this week was even more of a disaster for him than might have been expected. It did not help that the Crimea crisis had broken out, which rather cast a bad light on one country militarily occupying parts of another. Most observers in Europe […]

Egypt

What today’s GOP gets Wrong about Leadership: Obama & Eisenhower, Russian & Israeli Recklessness

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The usual suspects have been slamming President Obama for an alleged lack of leadership. Trolls for the military-industrial complex like Charles Krauthammer, and megalomaniacs from tiny states like Sen. Lindsey Graham have constructed a narrative in which Obama willfully withdrew from Iraq, giving it away to Iran; has been insufficiently slavish in […]

Egypt

The Crimean Crisis and the Middle East: Will Syria & Iran be the Winners?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Russian intervention in the Crimea is more direct and dramatic than the one in Syria, with actual troops deployed. But there are similarities. One of the little-noted rationales for Russian support for the Baath government in Damascus is that it is seen as more favorable, being secular and minority-dominated, toward Syria’s […]