Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US Energy Information Agency reports that California’s fossil gas use is steadily declining. In the first half of 2025, fossil gas use was down a whopping 18% compared with the same period in 2020, to 45.5 billion kilowatt hours (BKWh). Even just in 2025, California reduced fossil gas usage […]
In 2025, 65% of Americans view Muslims Favorably, 85% view Jews Favorably
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development and director of the Critical Issues Poll at the University of Maryland has the results of a sounding done this past summer on American attitudes to Jews and Muslims. The PDF of his conclusions and those of his colleague Michael […]
Pakistan now gets 25% of its Electricity from Solar, Plans Solar Panel factory
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Pakistan’s solar power switch continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In 2023, solar was the fifth largest source of electricity generation in the South Asian country of 240 million. Then Pakistani villagers and townspeople imported 17 gigawatts worth of solar panels in 2024, catapulting the country into one of […]
Syrian-Australian Muslim halts Indian-Australian ISIL Attack on Jewish Australians
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The gruesome and terrifying attack on a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, left 15 people dead, including a rabbi, a ten-year-old girl and a Holocaust survivor. Some 24 are in hospital. The perpetrators were apparently Australian Muslims of Indian origins, Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram, […]
Conflict in Mecca: The Prophet Muhammad and Soft Power
I gave an online talk to the `Inekas [Reflection] Study Group of scholars in Iran on a chapter of my book, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.. They have kindly put it up at YouTube, so I am mirroring it here. YouTube provides a computer-generated transcript. I asked Open AI’s ChatGPT to […]
“Into this Universe:” Heidegger and FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:29
One recurrent theme in the unconventional quatrains that were later gathered under the rubric of the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is surprise at having come into being unasked, and at being sentenced to non-being at the end of this bewildering life. This sentiment to my mind is a sign of medieval Persian secularism. The […]
Rumi and Shakespeare: On Forgiveness and Reconciliation
This essay first appeared at Renovatio, a humanities publication of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, Ca. Thanks to Hamza Yusuf and Safir Ahmad. NB the hyperlinks in the footnotes don’t work, but the numbers are accurate and notes are at the end. Jalaluddin Rumi (d. 1273) has sometimes been called “the Shakespeare of the East.” The […]
“With them the seed of Wisdom:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:28
Quatrain no. 28 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám continues riffing on stanza 121 in the Bodleian manuscript. XXVIII. With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow, And with my own hand labour’d it to grow : And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d- “I came […]
Was Volcano-Driven Climate Change partially Behind the Black Death?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – How plague came to Europe around 1347 has long been debated by historians. Scientists have located the origin of the primary reservoir of the disease in today’s Kyrgyzstan, and it has long been thought somehow to have come west with the Mongol invasions of the fourteenth century. One colorful tale […]
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