Middle East

By Simon Mabon | (The Conversation) | – – With a simple 67-word letter sent on November 2, 1917, the British foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, irrevocably changed the political and geographic landscape of the Middle East. Outlining British support for the establishment of a Jewish state, it set in motion a series of events […]

Iraq

The Fall of the House of ISIL: Reduced from State to Random Terror

contributors

ISIL or ISIS has collapsed as a state and its fighters face looming defeat

al-Qaeda

CIA Cache: Bin Laden loved watching ‘Resident Evil’

contributors

Also: Evidence Iran tried to use terrorist mastermind of al-Qaeda

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 […]

Bill of Rights

Is Israel trying to Occupy the US 1st Amendment?

contributors

Anti-BDS Legislation backed by Israel Lobbies threatens Americans’ Freedom of Speech

Slavery and Trafficking

That Time when Muslim Tunisia advised the Antebellum US to Abolish Slavery

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised classroom version Some observers imply that in 1861, most people in the world believed in slavery and so you can’t blame the American South for retaining it. This premise is not true. For one thing, a majority of American states had abolished slavery. Ohio did […]

African-Americans

Upshot of Mueller Probe: Putin did to US what we did to Iran and Iraq

Juan Cole

US Middle East policy often seemed similar to Putin’s Plot on America via Trump

Donald Trump

Trump will regret Making the Iran Nuclear Deal a two-way relationship

contributors

By Jacopo Scita | (Informed Comment) | – – When President Trump, in the middle of his first speech at the United Nations, referred to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into” he made the case that, under his administration, Washington […]

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 […]