religion

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Going back to the late nineteenth century, Zionism has had a complex and storied history, and there have been many strains of the ideology. Some early Zionists did not insist on colonizing Palestine, while others did (and colonizing it was the word they used). All agreed that the Jewish religion […]

Anti-Zionism

Zionism’s Expired Shelf-Life: Why Naomi Klein is right that it has become Pharaoh

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Previously I’ve argued that Zionism has run its course as a political movement, and accomplished its goal: The creation of a viable Jewish nation-state. I’ve also argued that Zionism under Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) has become a driving force in nurturing global anti-Semitism. He has perverted […]

Islam

Learning about Patience and Impatience: Top Three Principles from the Great Sufi Scholar al-Ghazali

The Conversation

By Liz Bucar, Northeastern University | – From childhood, we are told that patience is a virtue and that good things will come to those who wait. And, so, many of us work on cultivating patience. This often starts by learning to wait for a turn with a coveted toy. As adults, it becomes trying […]

Featured

Israel on the Brink as Ultra-Orthodox Exemption from Military Service is Set to End

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – On March 29, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to stop subsidizing the academies and yeshivas (seminaries), whose students have been exempted from military service since Israel’s founding. This move, brought by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, was prompted by the expiration of prior government actions to maintain […]

Africa

Epic Fail: The New Junta in Niger Tells the United States to Pack up its War and Go Home

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Dressed in green military fatigues and a blue garrison cap, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to local television last month to criticize the United States and sever the long-standing military partnership between the two countries. “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and […]

Islam

Europe’s Jewish Scholars of Islam

Shalom Goldman

Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) – At the end of the nineteenth century, the Turkish government asked its Minister of Education to prepare a report on European universities and the possibility of introducing Western style higher education to the Ottoman realm. The Minister travelled to the great European educational institutions and submitted his report […]

Far Right

Israel’s ‘Iron Wall:’ A Brief History of the Ideology Guiding Benjamin Netanyahu

The Conversation

By Eran Kaplan, San Francisco State University | – (The Conversation) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that Israel’s military will soon launch an invasion of Rafah, the city in the southern Gaza Strip. More than 1 million Palestinians, now on the verge of famine, have sought refuge there from their bombed-out cities farther […]

Arab Americans

Invisible No More: The Gov’t could Soon include Americans of Middle East and N. African Origin in its Data

Michigan Advance

By Simon Marshall-Shah | ( Michigan Advance ) – Without equitable data systems, governmental policies will always come up short of fairly representing all of the people they are intended to serve. It is with that in mind that we at the Michigan League for Public Policy and many of our partners have long advocated […]

Featured

Purim at the Time of Genocide

Yakov M. Rabkin

Montréal (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Jewish holiday of Purim, related in the Book of Esther, celebrates deliverance from a genocide. How to celebrate it when death and starvation kill thousands in Gaza, and the holiday’s rhetoric, namely the memory of the archenemy Amalek, is being used by Israeli politicians responsible for it? […]