Islamophobia

(By Juan Cole) Bill O’Reilly maintains that one downside of having a woman president is that Muslims won’t respect her. For Mr. O’Reilly’s information, here are the women leaders of Muslim-majority countries, most of them freely elected by Muslim publics and all of them respected by the latter: Tansu Çiller, elected prime minister of Turkey, […]

Domestic Surveillance

Judge: All right for NYPD to spy on Muslim-Americans; not all right for Journalists to reveal it

contributors

(By Sarah Lazare) A federal judge ruled Thursday that the NYPD's secret spying on Muslims in schools, restaurants, and mosques with no evidence of wrongdoing is perfectly legal, and it was the media's exposure of this surveillance that was the real cause of harm. The decision prompted outcry from civil rights and racial justice advocates. […]

Arab Spring

Racializing Politics: We don’t say “Slav” Democracy troubled in Ukraine, why Talk about “Arab” Failures?

Juan Cole

The troubles that Ukraine is having (and that Russia and the former Yugoslavia also had) in its post-Soviet politics, with a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy and between a Moscow orientation versus a Brussels one, are very similar to the difficulties that have beset many countries of the Arab world in the past few years. […]

Human Rights

Descent into Bigotry: 21st Century Americans increasingly negative toward Muslims, Minorities

contributors

(By Charles Kurzman via IslamiCommentary) Islamic terrorism has proved to be a relatively small threat to public safety in America since 9/11. Isolated individuals have engaged in sporadic violence such as the Boston Marathon bombings, but radicalization has remained far more limited than security officials feared. A report issued this month by the Triangle Center […]

Africa

CAR Muslims Risk Ethnic Cleansing: What if Thousands of Christians were forced out of a Muslim Country?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Central African Republic has a population of 4.5 million, about 15 percent of them Muslim, or about 670,000 people. Those Muslims are now, according to Amnesty International, in serious danger of being ethnically cleansed. “The group [Amnesty Interntional] said attacks against Muslims had been committed “with the stated intent to forcibly […]

Egypt

Putinism in Cairo? The Rise of the Russian Model

Juan Cole

Vladimir Putin on Thursday hailed the possibility of a run for the presidency of Egypt by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the architect of the July 3 coup against the elected Muslim Brotherhood government. Al-Sisi flew to Moscow this week in search of such support and of arms sales. The implicit message is that he is […]

Featured

Another non-terrorist non-Muslim Plane Hijacker: The Sochi Plot

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Associated Press article on the Ukrainian hijacker who tried to divert a plane to Sochi on Friday is interesting for the words it does not use. (I’m not picking on AP– all the other articles on this subject are like this one in this regard.) This Ukrainian man had political discontents […]

Islamophobia

Ms. Marvel Comics a lightning Rod for Islamophobic Intolerance

contributors

(By A. David Lewis for IslamiCommentary) A. David Lewis Kamala Khan is not the first Muslim superhero. She’s neither the first American Muslim superhero, the first teenage Muslim superhero, nor the first Muslima superheroine. In fact, even as the all-new Ms. Marvel, Kamala is not the first Muslim character to inherit the mantle and legacy […]

censorship

3 Years after Democratic Revolution, Egypt Decides it Prefers North Korean Model

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The title of this piece is provocative and a little tongue in cheek. Were I in Egypt as I publish it, I’m not sure, though, that the authorities would get the joke. The 2011 revolution, which was in part about dignity and personal autonomy and censorship and police torture, apparently went too […]