Featured

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The assassin shouted “Britain First!” as he repeatedly stabbed Jo Cox in the stomach with a hunting knife and then shot her with an old revolver several times. He also cut a 77-year-old man who unsuccessfully attempted to intervene. Cox, 41, and mother of two, served […]

Arab Americans

Despite Terrorism fears, 59% of Americans Welcome Syrian, Iraqi Refugees

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | “American attitudes on refugees from the Middle East”: A Public Opinion Poll by Shibley Telhami is just out. Despite the raft of Republican mayors who have pledged to keep Syrian refugees out of their states (that isn’t actually a thing) and the sewage that has spilled from the […]

Featured

Obama: Hating on Muslim-Americans makes you an ally of ISIL, & Unamerican

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama is clearly concerned about the direction of the country and the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim hate speech, especially in the context of impossible-to-prevent lone wolf attacks like that at Orlando. He launched his fiercest attack yet on Donald Trump and warned of a repeat of […]

Featured

Top 7 ways to tell if Someone is lying about being a ‘Salafi Jihadi’

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Regulars at Pulse Nightclub are saying that Omar Mateen, the alleged shooter in the early Sunday morning massacre there, was himself a regular! The Orlando Sentinel writes, “‘Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would […]

Domestic Terrorism

Omar Mateen and Rightwing Homophobia: Hate Crime or Domestic Terrorism?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – US law enforcement is at least initially categorizing the horrific Orlando shootings as “domestic terrorism.” I don’t think it probably was terrorism in any useful sense of the term. I used to know what domestic terrorism was, before the term became politicized in the past decade. […]

Featured

Is Tel Aviv Mayor Right that Israel is unique in Occupation & denying Civil Rights?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, reacted with enormous sadness to Thursday’s terrorist attack on the Sarona Market restaurant district in Tel Aviv, which left 4 dead, committed by a teenagers from the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. But he then went on to put the […]

Featured

America’s First Communal Muslim Funeral: Muhammad Ali

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The funeral of Muhammad Ali, attended by a throng of 20,000, was the first national funeral for a national hero of the United States that was also a Muslim ceremony or janazah. Muhammad Ali crafted it as a interfaith event, but obviously Islam was central. The […]

Featured

World More violent in past Year, but Middle East drives Deterioration

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The 2016 Global Peace Index has been released, with the bad news that the world is slightly more violent this year than last. But much of the increase of violence happened in the greater Middle East, in Syria, Libya, Turkey, etc. If you subtracted the Middle […]

Featured

Clash Looming? Russia-backed Syrian Army heading for ISIL’s al-Raqqa in race with US-backed Kurds

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Syrian Arab Army is advancing toward al-Raqqa city, the capital of the phony ISIS “caliphate,” with Russian air support. US Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Christopher Garver confirmed on Wednesday that the US has seen the movement of the troops of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad “to […]