Views and controversies concerning Juan Cole

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Juan Cole is an academic scholar on the Middle East and, since 2002, an a media commentator and blog pundit. His political comments and views have attracted lively controversy.

Cole's Views

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On al-Qaeda's "Doomsday Document"

In April 2003, Professor Cole presented a paper to the Yale Center for Genocide Studies analyzing the letter found in 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta's luggage. Cole's close textual analysis of the document attempts to understand how the language and mythology of Islamic spirituality was manipulated in order to prepare the hijackers psychologically to commit monstrous acts. Cole argued that: "The beginning instructions of the Doomsday Document give us vital insight into how a normal, middle class, secular young man like Ziad Jarrah, a Lebanese engineer with at Turkish-German live-in girlfriend, could become a mass murderer and suicide. He and others were convinced that they were reenacting sacred history... Just as small bands of early Muslims often inflicted defeats on larger Meccan forces, so a handful of young believers could hope to inflict a grievous blow on the 21st century Mecca of the West. The hijackers thus saw themselves as holy warriors, as Muslim raiders. Their victims were not even human, but rather mere animals for ritual slaughter. Atta and other handlers convinced them to live a double life. Inwardly they were committed to piety and asceticism and self-sacrifice. Outwardly they frequented bars and strip clubs, both to throw the intelligence agencies off the scent and to get a foretaste of the rewards of martyrdom. If it was Bin Laden who put them up to this double life, he may well have done so with personal knowledge of the kind of guilt it would induce, and the kind of self-hatred and openness to manipulation to which the guilt could lead."

On Islam and terrorism

Cole has been a frequent proponent of the view that mainstream Islam does not condone modern suicide terrorism. When Reverend Jerry Falwell called the Prophet Muhammed a "terrorist" on CBS's 60 Minutes, Cole pointed out, "Falwell's comments are problematic for many reasons, not least with regard to historical accuracy. Muhammad forbade murder and the killing of innocents, and never used terror as a weapon in his struggles against his aggressive pagan enemies. Far from glorifying aggression, the Koran says (2:190), 'Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but do not begin hostilities, for God does not love aggressors.'" When journalist Thomas Friedman wrote in 2005 that "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden," Cole responded with references to many such condemnations, and argued, "As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want?"

On the war in Iraq

Cole is a staunch critic of the George W. Bush administration's policy in Iraq. He has been highly critical of the conduct of the American and British post-War occupation of Iraq. In particular, the decisions to disband the Iraqi Army, the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, and the details of the interim Constitution of Iraq have been problematic for Cole. As of May 2006, he believes Iraq is in a state of civil war, and that large scale conflict between Sunnis, Shias, Turkomen, and the Kurds, or a Yugoslavia-like breakup of Iraq, can be avoided in the absence of the occupation forces. He has been highly skeptical of the war's value in combating international terrorism and suggests it could increase terrorism by producing Jihadists out of angry Iraqis who would not have otherwise become violent extremists.

Cole has provided several critical judgements on the occupation. First, it has led to resurgence of pan-Arab nationalism "In the 19th century the Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamid II, and the reformer, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, launched the pan-Islamic project - the unity of Sunnis and Shia against European imperialism - but it always failed. The US hyperpower seems finally to be nudging the movement from a dream into political reality." Second, the Iraq war has been enormously beneficial to Salafi jihadists in general and to al-Qaeda in Iraq. ".. Bush and his policies led to there being anything like an effective Islamic radical terrorism in Iraq in the first place. The tiny Ansar al-Islam group that operated in the north before 2003 had been hunted by the Baath security and only survived because of the US no-fly zone that prevented Iraqi armor from being deployed against it. Bush has not shown any particular ability to put this genie, which he unleashed, back in the bottle. His war in Iraq has been an enormous boon to the international Salafi Jihadi movement, encouraging angry youths from all over the world to join it to fight to the US. " Third, the biggest beneficiary of the occupation of Iraq has been Iran. Cole sees the neoconservative goal of creating an American-aligned "model democracy" as a failure, and argues that it has instead strengthened the Iranian influence in Iraq. "The United States lacks the troops, but perhaps even more critically, it is now dependent on Iran to help it deal with a vicious guerrilla war that it cannot win."

Cole critics have stated that he has made contradictory statements about the Iraqi invasion. For example, on March 19, 2003, on the eve of the invasion, he wrote approvingly of Saddam Hussein's removal by force: "I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides" Cole responded to these critics saying "My position on the war was in fact very complex. I thought it was a terrible idea, but declined to come out against it because I believed that if Saddam's genocidal regime could be removed by the international community in a legal way, that some good would have been accomplished. But the bottom line is that I thought a war would be legal only if the United Nations Security Council authorized it."

On the "Israel lobby" and US foreign policy

Cole's critics allege that he accuses pro-Israel Jewish Bush Administration officials of having dual loyalty to Israel. Cole has been critical of Jewish US government officials whom he alleges have ties to the Likud Party. Charging that this group has dual loyalties, Cole writes:

"One of his charges is that I am accusing the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon of "dual loyalties."

That is true, but not in the way Lake imagines. I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U.S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party.
I don't think there is anything a priori wrong with Feith being so devoted to the Likud Party. That is his prerogative. But as an American, I don't want a person with those sentiments to serve as the number 3 man in the Pentagon. I frankly don't trust him to put America first.

Some critics see Cole's criticism of certain US government officials as holding dual loyalites as an "anti-semitic conspiracy theory" and an example of new antisemitism. Efraim Karsh, professor and Head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, writes: "Cole may express offense at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but their obsession with the supposed international influence of "world Zionism" resonates powerfully in his own writings."

Cole has responded to these charges, writing:

Political dual loyalties have nothing to do with any particular ethnicity. It is natural for Armenian Americans to have a special tie to Armenia, for Greek Americans to have a special tie to Greece, for Iraqi Americans to feel strongly about Iraq. For them to take pride in the achievements of their homeland is right an natural, and unexceptionable. There is no reason on the face of it to even bring up their ethnicity with regard to public service.

But if a Syrian American is a strong devotee of the Baath Party, would you appoint him Undersecretary of Defense?

The Likud Coalition in Israel does contest elections. But it isn't morally superior in most respects to the Syrian Baath....

So I don't see a big difference between having a fanatical Syrian American Baathist as the number three man in the Pentagon and having a fanatical Jewish American Likudnik....

I simply think that we deserve to have American public servants who are centrally commited to the interests of the United States, rather than to the interests of a foreign political party. So my position implies a political litmus test for high public office. And, of course there is such a litmus test. Why bother to have Congress confirm or reject appointees otherwise?

Cole has additionally argued that his US neoconservatives and Israeli "Likudnik" critics have used claims of "anti-semitism" against him not because they believe he is anti-semitic, but rather as a tool of intimidation due to his political views:

"So this is the way it goes with the Likudniks. First they harass you and try to have you spied on. Then they threaten, bully and try to intimidate you. And if that fails and you show some spine, then they simply lie about you. (In this case the lies are produced by quoting half a passage, or denuding it of its context, or adopting a tone of pained indignation when quoting a perfectly obvious observation). . . The thing that most pains me in all this is the use of the word 'anti-semite' . . . David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes are encouraging a new kind of anti-semitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should criticize Likud Party policies".

Cole sees support in the controversial Mearsheimer and Walt 2006 working paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Cole has also stated that he does not feel most American Jews were in favor of the war in Iraq or support the interests of AIPAC, and states that, "no one should blame 'the Jews' for the Iraq War." When Douglas Feith resigned from the Bush Admininstration, Cole emphasized that his arguments against Feith and the "Likudniks" should not be twisted into attacks against Jews: "It is also important to underline that only a small minority of American Jews support the Likud Party or its policies, and that a majority of Jewish Americans opposed the Iraq war. In short, the problematic nature of Feith's tenure at the Department of Defense must not be made an excuse for any kind of bigotry."

On Israel

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Cole is a vocal critic of some of Israel's policies claiming "Israel as a state is not perfect and cannot be above criticism in democratic societies, including practical criticism." Specifically, Cole was critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and in particular "Ariel Sharon's arrogant trampling on the basic human rights of Palestinians" and feels that the "U.S. government keeps silent about Israeli human rights abuses." With regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Cole believes the "main obstacle to a comprehensive peace has been Israel's refusal to give the Palestinians and the Syrians the same deal they gave Egypt." Cole has long advocated a comprehensive Middle East peace granting the Palestinians their own state on the West Bank and Gaza. He advocates peace treaties with full trade in accord with the Arab Peace Initiative.

Cole has stated that he views the state of Israel as "a project of Jewish nationalism that is as legitimate as any other national project." Critics, however, have argued out that Cole's position vis-a-vis Israel's existence is more ambiguous than this statement would suggest. Efraim Karsh criticizes Cole on this point: "While Cole pays the customary lip service on his blog to Israel's right to exist within its pre-1967 borders (and says it would be worth American lives to defend Tel Aviv), he also makes clear that he thinks the Middle East would have been better off without the Jewish state. Discounting altogether the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine, so as to misrepresent Israel's creation as an ordinary colonialist project, he claims in one post that it would have been preferable for the British to have simply accepted Jewish refugees "rather than saddling a small, poor peasant country with 500,000 immigrants hungry to make the place their own." .

Cole has also stated that "Israel is a close ally and friend of the United States, and we should defend it from its enemies" . Cole's critics, however, point to other of statements of his in which he suggests the Pentagon has become a sort of proxy for Israeli policy: "These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying)." In regard to this particular statement by Cole, Alexander Joffe has said that "Suggestions that American Jewish officials desired 'someone else's boys' to fight is anti-Semitic and a common refrain in Cole's commentary."

Controversies

Expertise and professionalism

Efraim Karsh has challenged Cole's expertise on subjects he addresses in his blog: "Having done hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East, Cole's analysis of this era is essentially derivative, echoing the conventional wisdom among Arabists and Orientalists regarding Islamic and Arab history, the creation of the modern Middle East in the wake of World War I, and its relations with the outside world." . Critics have characterized Cole's extra-academic work as promoting, "polemic over scholarship" Cole has also been criticized for altering, correcting and removing material on his blog posts after learning they contained incorrect or embarassing information without alerting readers to the changes.. cited in .

Legal disputes

Cole threatened legal action against Daniel Pipes and historian Martin Kramer, after Campus Watch, published a "dossier" on Cole. Cole asserted that the document (screenshot reproduced here) incorrectly portrayed him as a supporter of Islamic extremism, exposed him to acts of violence, and thus constituted "stalking."

Cole was threatened with legal action by Yigal Carmon for making what Carmon described as "patently false" claims about MEMRI, an organization led by Carmon. Cole called MEMRI, "a sophisticated anti-Arab propaganda machine...essentially on behalf of the Likud party of Israel..funded to the tune of $60 million a year by someone" MEMRI's actual funding, as reported to the IRS is less than $2 million a year. In a personal letter to Cole, Carmon objected to Cole's statements, saying that they went, "beyond what could be considered legitimate criticism, and...qualify as slander and libel" and objected to Cole's "trying to paint MEMRI in a conspiratorial manner by portraying us as a rich, sinister group". Cole posted Carmon's letter on his blog, along with a suggestion that Carmon was threatening to sue not because he found Cole's remarks libelous, but out of an attempt to silence him using a SLAPP suit. " Martin Kramer viewed Carmon's legal threat as "frivolous", but also considered Cole's protest ironic in light of Cole's previous threat against himself and Pipes.

Cole and the Bahá'í Faith

Cole joined the Bahá'í Faith as an undergraduate in 1972, and the religion later became an important focus of his academic work. In the 1990s, he became a regular participant on "Talisman," an academic email list devoted to intellectual discussion of Bahá'í topics. On the list, Cole advocated some structural changes to some Bahá'í procedures, including how to prevent perceived abuses of authority. Cole's ideas were felt by some to overlook scriptually-defined Bahá'í methods and channels for the voicing of grievances or disagreements to lead to the resolution of conflict while preserving the unity of the community. The Bahá'í administrative system, defined in Bahá'í scripture, is seen by the community as sacred and divinely revealed. After exchanges involving himself, various contributors to Talisman, and representatives of the Bahá'í administration, Cole resigned his official membership in the organization. He later announced that he had recovered his private faith, but remains unaffiliated with the central Bahá'í institutions. Since his resignation, Cole has continued to publish academic articles and book chapters on the Bahá'í religion. In addition, Cole has created H-Bahai, a Web site making available a wealth of difficult to obtain primary sources on the Bahá'í Faith.

Dispute over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel

On October 26, 2005, Iranian President Ahmadinehad gave a speech at the "World without Zionism" conference in Tehran. In the speech, Ahmadinehad addressed the history of relations between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds, Israel as the current focus of this relationship, the recognition of Israel by Islamic countries, and visions of the future of Zionism. In the speech, he referred to a statement that had been made by Imam (Ayatollah) Khomeini, calling it "very wise" and saying,"the issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise": "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e Qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

The phrase was translated by the New York Times as Israel,"must be wiped off the map". A similar translation was provided by the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera. Iran's official IRNA news agency and all official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away. MEMRI translated the phrase as, 'This regime that is occupying Qods must be eliminated from the pages of history". Many interpreted the speech as the expression of an Iranian threat against the state of Israel.

Cole objected to the use of the idiom, "wiped off the map", commenting that "no such idiom exists in Persian". He translated the phrase literally to mean the occupation of Jerusalem ( "Qods"), "must from the page of time." He interpreted the object of the statement to be the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 War rather than the whole state of Israel. He interpreted Ahmadinejad's use of the phrase quoted not as a threat, but as a metaphor describing an inevitable and grand historical process culiminating in the end of the Zionist state. Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say "wipe off" or "wipe away" is more accurate than "vanish" because the Persian verb is active and transitive. .

Christopher Hitchens attacked Cole's translation and interpretation, considering it to be a whitewash of Iranian threats to destroy Israel, especially in light of Iran's nuclear ambitions. Andrew Sullivan, a friend of Hitchens who was present when he submitted his Slate article, called Cole's justification a "rhetorical sleight of hand... an attempt to deny the existence of a real genocidal evil in the world that Cole himself knows exists."

Cole countered, "Ahmadinejad...has condemned mass killing of any sort and was not threatening military action (he is in any case not in command of the Iranian military). He compares his hope for an end to any Zionist regime in geographical Palestine to Ayatollah Khomeini's prediction that the Soviet Union would one day vanish. It wasn't a hope to kill Soviet citizens, but a desire for regime change."

Faculty position at Yale University

In 2006 Cole was nominated to teach at Yale University and was approved by both Yale's sociology and history departments. However, the senior appointments committee overruled the departments, and Cole was not appointed. This overruling was described as "highly unusual" by some members of Yale's faculty. . When Cole’s potential hiring became publicly known, several of his detractors, including the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin and Washington Times columnist Joel Mowbray, took various steps to protest the decision. They wrote op-ed pieces in various publications and Mowbray went as far as to send a letter to a dozen of Yale’s major donors, many of whom are Jewish, urging them to call the university and protest Cole’s hiring. Cole subsequently told The Jewish Week that "the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity."

References

Juan Cole, "Muhammad Was a Terrorist?" History News Network (7 October 2002).
Thomas L. Friedman, "If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution," New York Times (8 July 2005) A23.
Juan Cole, "Friedman Wrong about Muslims Again," Informed Comment (9 July 2005).
Cole, Juan Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion Informed Comment, March 31, 2003
Cole, Juan Cole on Iraq, 2002-2003 Informed Comment, June 12, 2005
^ Cole, Juan Dual Loyalties Informed Comment, September 09, 2004
Juan Cole, Media - and MESA - Darling by Jonathan Calt Harris (FrontPageMagazine) December 7, 2004
^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies Alexander H. Joffe, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006 13(1) Cite error: The named reference "DeclineOfMES" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Juan Cole's Bad blog, by Efraim Karsh in the The New Republic
Cole, Juan "Character Assassination", Informed Comment, December 8, 2004
Cole, Juan. Breaking the silence, Salon.com, April 19. 2006.
Cole, Juan Fixing the Intelligence Around the Facts Part DeuxInformed Comment, June 20, 2005
^ The Misuse of Anti-Semitism, Juan Cole, The History News Network, September 30 2006
^ Have Arabs or Muslims Always Hated Israel, Juan Cole, December 14 2004
Review of Bernard Lewis' "What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response", Juan Cole, Global Dialogue, 27 January 2003
Pentagon/Israel Spying Case Expands: Fomenting a War on Iran, by Juan Cole in Informed Comment
Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Yale's Next Tenured Radical?, Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
Making Cole-slaw of history, Martin Kramer, Sandbox blog, 10 July 2005
Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? Campus Watch, Martin Kramer, Sandstorm blog, September 18, 2002
Dossiers: COLE, Juan, Screenshot on ei: The Electronic Intifada
^ Juan Cole Jogs My MEMRI at "Martin Kramer's Sandstorm" blog, November 25, 2004
Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
Intimidation by Israeli-Linked Organization Aimed at US Academic. November 23, 2004
Johnson, K.Paul (Winter 1997). "Bahá'í Leaders Vexed by On-Line Critics". Gnosis Magazine. Retrieved 2006-06-11.
Universal House of Justice (1996-07-02). "Dissidence and Criticism by Bahá'ís and Scholars". Bahá'í Library Online. Retrieved 2006-06-11.
Universal House of Justice (1997-04-07). "Issues Related to the Study of the Bahá'í Faith". Bahá'í Library Online. Retrieved 2006-06-11.
^
Special Dispatch Series 1013 MEMRI, October 28, 2005
The Cole Report, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Hitch vs Cole, Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish blog, May 3, 2006
Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, May 03, 2006
^ Leibovitz, Liel (2006-06-02). "Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale". The Jewish Week. Retrieved 2006-06-07.
Goldberg, Ross (2006-06-10). "Univ. denies Cole tenure". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 2006-06-12.