By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The currently partly unemployed Iraqi governor of Salahuddin Province, displaced from much of his territory by Daesh (ISIS or ISIL), maintains that former Baath vice president of Iraq under Saddan Hussain, Ezzat al-Douri, has been killed by Shiite militias in a firefight north of Tikrit in the Hamrin […]
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Spirituality
Is the Qur’an Really Violent? Not if you Read the whole Book!
By Alexander Gaute (Your Middle East) “Analyses tend to misuse the references to the Qur’an, often only citing single verses” Following the advent of the murderous Islamic State (IS), the need to scrutinize the relationship between Islam and violence has proved necessary. Several attempts have been made towards this aim, some even arguing for the […]
The Critical spirit of Islam against the mass insanity of ISIS
By Neslihan Çevik The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), having declared itself a caliphate, is now making a call to all Muslims (especially engineers and doctors) to emigrate to their new home, “Sham,” the land of Ibrahim, with the caution that ones who remain outside will be drowned in apostasy and heresy. However, […]
Can the Kabbalah teach us to Repair Climate Change?
By Alexandra Piacenza How can Kabbalah, the system of mystical interpretation of Jewish scripture with roots in the 13th century, have a bearing on modern-day environmentalism? In the Kabbalistic view, God’s very act of creation has resulted in placing a sacred obligation on man to make right what is askew in the world. This obligation […]
5 Most alarming Developments in Iraq
By Juan Cole 1. Airstrikes killed 7 and wounded 30 in Mosul on Sunday. But it isn’t clear who was flying the planes! The US denies it was Americans, and the spokesman for the Baghdad government said he did not know anything about it. The Syrian and Iranian air forces are other possibilities. It is […]
Unitarians divest from Fossil Fuels: Clear Commitment on Climate Change
By Robyn Purchia In some good new in the fight against climate change, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) passed a resolution calling for divestment of their $175 UUA Common Endowment Fund from fossil fuel companies at their 2014 General Assembly in Providence, Rhode Island, over the weekend. “The UUA has a long-standing history of fighting […]
Can Meditation Slow Ageing? One Nobelist thinks So
By Jo Marchant It’s seven in the morning on the beach in Santa Monica, California. The low sun glints off the waves and the clouds are still golden from the dawn. The view stretches out over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. In the distance, white villas of wealthy Los Angeles residents dot the Hollywood […]
Rumi on the Environment: Behind the Beauty of the Moon is the Moon-Maker
[For more of Rumi see 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love: Poems from the Rubiayat of Mevlana Rumi -ed. ] By Aisha Abdelhamid Rumi: “Behind The Beauty Of The Moon Is The MoonMaker” Rumi’s eloquent relationship with the natural environment is his signature — his elegantly simple expressions reflect appreciation for both Creation and […]
Who are Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and What did we Do to them?
By Juan Cole The two great branches of Islam coexist in Iraq across linguistic and ethnic groups. There are Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, Sunni Kurds and (a tiny minority of) Shiite Kurds. Arabs are a linguistic group, speaking a Semitic language. Kurds speak and Indo-European language related to English. Sunnism and Shiism as we […]