Juan Cole

Christopher Anzalone writes in a guest column for Informed Comment The killing of Usama bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qa‘ida Central, this week in Pakistan has opened the door to intense speculation about the future of the militant organization and the transnational jihadi-takfiri trend that it represents. A great deal of attention has been paid […]

President Obama’s decision not to release photographs of Usama Bin Laden’s disfigured corpse is wise and decent. Obama is right that the photo would be used by radicals to whip up emotions. But it should also be remembered that a Mahdi Army member surreptitiously filmed the execution of Saddam Hussein on his cell phone, and […]

The Obama team is said to have been dismayed by the rapidity with which the national subject has switched from the death of Usama Bin Laden to the use of torture in interrogations. The first thing to say is that Democratic leaders and the Obama administration only have themselves to blame for this torture issue […]

New details of the operation against Usama Bin Laden have emerged. Here are the myths that people keep bombarding me with and which are now known to be untrue. 1. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf held that Bin Laden had long been dead. Not true. Musharraf said in 2002 that he thought Bin Laden might have […]

My interview on the significance of Bin Laden’s passing with Detroit Channel 2’s Bill Gallagher is now available. I argue that to take full advantage of this political moment, the US must withdraw from Iraq and support the declaration of a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. U-M Professor Juan Cole Sees […]

Usama Bin Laden, a mass killer, passed virtually unmourned from the scene. There were no demonstrations against his killing in the Arab world. A few Taliban protested in Quetta and Afghanistan, as one might expect. Mostly Muslims denounced him and expressed relief he was gone. Bin Laden carried out 9/11 to begin a big political […]