Juan Cole

Senior Member of College of Ayatollahs Slams US The al-Hawzah al-`Ilmiyyah is the seminary center of leading Shiite clerics in Najaf, which exercises enormous moral authority over Iraqis of that branch of Islam. It is presently dominated by four senior clerics: Grand Ayatollahs Ali Sistani, Muhammad Said al-Hakim, Muhammad Fayyad, and Hussein Bashir al-Najafi. Sistani […]

Bush’s Diplomatic Failures Hurt US Reservists The way in which reservists have been virtually kidnapped by the Bush administration, with 170,000 now on active duty and many given one-year overseas assignments, may become a political issue in the 2004 elections. Many reservists are small businessmen, whose businesses are in danger because they are absent for […]

For journalist Lawrence Pintak’s analysis of the fallout for the US in the Muslim world of Israel’s unilateral attack on Syria this week, see: http://www.commondreams.org/ views03/1008-08.htm

Attempts to Moderate Stance of IGC on Turks The Bush administration is saying that it will not take “no” for an answer from the Interim Governing Council on the issue of Turkish troops. Washington naively tends to lump all Muslims together and had assumed that Sunni Muslim Turkish forces would be welcome in Iraq, especially […]

One US soldier Wounded, One Iraqi Policemen Killed and another Wounded Guerillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at a US convoy near Balad on Wednesday, wounding one US soldier. In Kirkuk, guerrillas fired an rpg at an Iraqi police checkpoint, killing one policeman and wounding another. In the south, guerrillas fired a light mortar round at the […]

Protesters Pelt US Troops in Baghdad: Rally by the Army of the Mahdi Protesters from the Sadrist “Army of the Mahdi” gathered again Wednesday at a Shiite mosque in southwest Baghdad, demanding the release of two clerics, Moayad al-Khazraji and Jalil al-Shumri, who had been arrested Tuesday by US troops for “crimes against the coalition.” […]

Khamenei Calls for Sunni-Shiite Unity in Iraq: SCIRI: no Separation of Religion and State Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq met with Iranian Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, and Khamenei offered him his support. He also warned against Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq (apparently he fears that a religiously divided Iraq […]

Riots in Baghdad Rioting continued for the third day in Baghdad, this time by nearly 2000 former members of the Iraqi secret police, who want their jobs back. In southwestern Baghdad, a thousand Shiites staged a sit-in at the Ali Kazem al Bayai mosque to protest the arrest of their prayer leader, Shaikh Moayad al-Khazraji, […]

Three US soldiers Killed, 3 wounded in Iraq; Mortar at Foreign Ministry Guerrillas killed one US soldier and wounded another near Ramadi west of Baghdad on Monday. Guerrillas killed two other US soldiers, along with their translator, and wounded several more, at al-Haswa south of Baghdad. At Habaniya, a US helicopter was forced down. Guerrillas […]