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 […]
Rate of Global Heating in the Arab World is Twice the Global Average
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The World Meteorological Organization has issued its annual report on the 22 countries of the Arab world, covering last year, and presents alarming conclusions about human-driven climate change in that region. 2024 was the hottest year on record in the Middle East, around 1º Celsius (1.8º F.) hotter than the […]
Several Countries to Boycott Eurovision Singing Contest over Israeli Participation
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The European Broadcasting Union declined o have a vote on whether Israel should be allowed to participate in next year’s Eurovision singing contest. Several European countries had argued that the country’s genocidal behavior in Gaza was grounds for excluding it from the competition. Russia used to participate in Eurovision, as […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved