Juan Cole

OFAC Reverses Censorship Policy Further to William Fisher’s guest editorial here on last Friday, good news! OFAC has reversed itself on several of its provisions for censoring manuscripts from Iran, Cuba Sudan. The issue, however, has not gone away. The Scientist notes, “But Edward Davis, one of the publishers’ attorneys, said yesterday that the publishers […]

43 Dead, More than 95 Wounded in Najaf, Karbala Ambush in Baghdad Guerrillas detonated a huge bomb near the bus station in Karbala on Sunday, destroying several minibuses and leaving dead and wounded. Then an hour later, guerrillas set off another big explosion, this time in downtown Najaf, at a funeral procession. The bomb exploded […]

Voter Registration Stations Attacked Ayatollahs: Shaalan Must Go According to Reuters, guerrillas in Dujail, 30 miles north of Baghdad, subjected the local voter registration site to mortar fire on Saturday morning, killing 2 and wounding 8. Six of the wounded were Iraqi national guards who were trying to provide security there. Late Friday night, mortar […]

Fisher Guest Editorial: US Squelches Shirin Ebadi RIGHT HAND, LEFT HAND By William Fisher Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe performs a genuine public service by calling our attention to yet another screw-up in America’s war against the Axis of Evil. This one can only make us wonder if the government’s right hand knows what […]

Secular Majority in Iraq? Unlikely Stephen Farrell argues at the London Times online that opinion polling suggest that “secularists” will get about 60% of the vote in the upcoming Iraqi elections and the “religious parties” will get 40%. This statement is incorrect. Opinion polling consistently shows that 70% of Iraqis support a religious state (IRI […]

Karbala Bomb Blast A bomb blast outside the holy shrine of Imam Husain in Karbala left Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala’i wounded with shrapnel in his legs and killed two of his bodyguards along with six other persons. Altogether 32 were wounded. Al-Karbala’i is a prominent spokesperson for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. Sistani recently […]

Fassihi on Muslim-Jewish Relations in Prerevolutionary Iran Dr. Michael Fassihi writes concerning his own family’s experience of Muslim-Jewish relations in Iran: Today I came across the comment made via email to you by one of your readers, regarding the Muslims and Jews in the Middle East, that I think I should respond citing my personal […]

Iraqi Jews before 1948 Adam Ovadia Mansoor writes, with regard to the position of the substantial Iraqi Jewish population before 1948: ‘ I have one minor quibble with your assessment of Iraqi Jews and the cause for their expulsion. I can only relay what my father, who was 16 at the time, told me about […]

Election News The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group, appears finally to have gotten off the fence and decided definitively to contest the elections in January. Iyad Allawi’s decision to start trials against high Baath officials, however, may further roil ethnic relations in Iraq, since a recital of Baath atrocities just before the elections may […]