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Juan Cole
Professor Juan Cole giving a lecture at the University of Minnesota
Born	October 1952 Albuquerque, New Mexico
Occupation	Historian

John "Juan" Ricardo I. Cole (born October 1952 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television, and testified before the United States Senate. He has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East and is a translator of both Arabic and Persian. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Comment (formerly Informed Consent).

Background and education

Cole's father served in the United States Army Signal Corps and afterwards in the Satellite Corps, completing two tours with the U.S. military in France (a total of seven years) and one 18-month stay at Kagnew Station in Asmara, Eritrea (then Ethiopia). When Cole was age two his family left New Mexico for France. He was schooled at a variety of locations. These included being on a series of military bases at dependent schools, sometimes in civilian schools. Some of schooling occurring in the USA in North Carolina and in California. He attended twelve different schools in twelve years.

He obtained his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University. For two quarters in his senior year he conducted a research project in Beirut. Although he returned to Beirut as a graduate student in the fall of 1975, the civil war prevented him from continuing his studies there. As a consequence he pursued a Masters degree at the American University in Cairo in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Upon completion he went back to Beirut for another year. From 1978 to 1979 he worked in Beirut as a translator for a newspaper.

In 1979 he attended University of California, Los Angeles as a doctoral student in the field of Islamic Studies, graduating in 1984. After his graduation, Cole was appointed Assistant Professor of History at the University of Michigan where he would become a full professor in 1995. Cole married the former Shahin Malik in Lahore in 1982. The couple has one son, Arman, born in 1987. Cole became a member of the Bahá'í Faith in 1972 as an undergraduate at Northwestern, and the Bahá'í religion later became a focus of his academic career. Cole officially separated himself from the religion in 1996 after disputes with Bahá'í leadership concerning the Bahá'í system of administration.

Cole reports that he first became interested in Islam in Eritrea, which has a population roughly half Christian and half Muslim. He has personal and professional experience in the Middle East and South Asia having lived for six years in the Arab world, and another two and a half in South Asia. He has continued to visit the region in the past fifteen years, as stated in his blog, in order to keep in touch with the "pulse of opinion and changing local views."

Appointments and awards

Cole was awarded Fulbright-Hays fellowships to India (1982) and to Egypt (1985-1986). From 1999 until 2004, Juan Cole was the editor of The International Journal of Middle East Studies. He has served in professional offices for the American Institute of Iranian Studies. He was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in November 2004. In 2006, he received the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism administered by Hunter College.

• 1975 B.A. History and Literature of Religions, Northwestern University
• 1978 M.A. Arabic Studies/History, American University in Cairo
• 1984 Ph.D. Islamic Studies, University of California Los Angeles
• 1984-1990 Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan
• 1990-1995 Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan
• 1992-1995 Director, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Michigan
• 1995- Professor of History, University of Michigan

Yale appointment

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.

According to "several Yale faculty members," the decision to overrule Cole's approval was "highly unusual." Yale Deputy Provost Charles Long stated that "Tenure appointments at Yale are very complicated and they go through several stages, and can fail to pass at any of the stages. Every year, at least one and often more fail at one of these levels, and that happened in this case." The history department vote was 13 yes, 7 no, with 3 abstensions. Professors interviewed by the Yale Daily News said "the faculty appeared sharply divided."

Yale Historian Paula Hyman commented that the deep divisions in the appointment committee were the primary reasons that Cole was rejected: "There was also concern, aside from the process, about the nature of his blog and what it would be like to have a very divisive colleague." Yale political science professor Steven B. Smith commented, "It would be very comforting for Cole's supporters to think that this got steamrolled because of his controversial blog opinions. The blog opened people's eyes as to what was going on." Another Yale historian, John Merriman, said of Cole's rejection: "In this case, academic integrity clearly has been trumped by politics."

In an interview on Democracy Now!, Cole noted that he had never applied for the Yale job: "Some people at Yale asked if they could look at me for a senior appointment. I said, 'Look all you want.' So that's up to them. Senior professors are like baseball players. You’re being looked at by other teams all the time. If it doesn't result in an offer, then nobody takes it seriously." He described the so-called "scandal" surrounding his nomination as "a tempest in a teapot" that had been exaggerated by "neo-con journalists": "Who knows what their hiring process is like, what things they were looking for?"

Academic interests

Cole's work has focused on the social and cultural history of modern Egypt, Shi'ite Islam in modern Iran and Iraq, the Baha'i Faith, and religion in South Asia. Since 9/11 he has written more about current affairs. In addition to academic work, he enjoys translating and has rendered into English books by Kahlil Gibran and Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl, as well as working on Urdu fiction.

Cole's initial work was on the 19th century, but he has formally published in refereed academic proceedings on the Taliban, on 9/11, the Ayatollahs of Iraq and their involvement in democracy (the Ayatollah Sistani approach of minimal interference as distinguished to the Jurisprudence of the Guardians of Ayatollah Khomeini), on the historiography of the Muslim Brotherhood, on the Salafi leader Rashid Rida and on many other twentieth century and twenty-first century subjects. His book Sacred Space and Holy War contains material on the modern history of the Arab Shiites and on the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has also published material on the treatment of religious minorities by the Islamic Republic in the last thirty or so years. His most recent book, The Ayatollahs and Democracy in Iraq, Cole examines clerical participation in Iraq's emerging government.

Cole speaks Arabic (Modern Standard as well as Lebanese and Egyptian dialects), Persian, and Urdu, and is familiar with Turkish.

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, including valuable contributions such as the translation of some primary and secondary source literature. In the 1990s, he became a regular participant on "Talisman," an academic email list devoted to discussion of Bahá'í topics. On the list, Cole advocated structural changes to some Bahá'í procedures addressing personal perceived abuses of authority. After exchanges involving himself, various contributors to Talisman, and representatives of the Bahá'í administration, Cole resigned his 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.

An article entitled "Race, Immorality and Money in the American Baha'i Community: Impeaching the Los Angeles Spiritual Assembly" refers to a 1986-88 action of the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly to disband the local Los Angeles one, also an elected body. The national body cited the prevalence of nonmarital sexual relations (the "immorality" of the title); persistence of separate identity among white, black, and Persian Baha'is ("race"); and financial irregularities ("money"). Cole charges that the situation did not warrant the disbanding of the local assembly, criticizes the US NSA's spending habits, and takes issue with the Baha'i system of elections (which Baha'i literature presents as divinely inspired).

Another article called "The Baha'i Faith in America as Panopticon, 1963-1997" examines "social control mechanisms" in the Baha'i religion, such as "prepublication censorship" (also known as Baha'i review). Here too Cole criticizes the Baha'i electoral system, which he says favors incumbants, and makes it difficult to hold leaders accountable. As a result, an otherwise liberal religious group fell under the control of "fundamentalists," making the religion more cult-like. Cole's article elicited a lengthy response from Baha'i official Ian Kluge.

The most substantial of Cole's writings on the Baha'i religion has been his monograph Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East. "Modernity" refers to various then-contemporary progressive causes which found their way into the nascent religion: feminism, world peace based on the concert of powers, universalism. (Many Baha'is would have assumed these aspects of their faith to have originated with Baha'u'llah, whom they view as a prophet, rather than have been inspired by now-obscure historical movements.) The second part of the title alludes to the Baha'i religion's origins in an eschatological Iranian sect, namely Babism.

Commentator on Middle Eastern affairs

Cole was cited by the press as a Middle East expert several times since 1990. However, he was considered obscure outside his field prior to 2002, when he began publishing his weblog. From 2002 onwards, Cole has been an active commentator in the UK and US media on topics related to the Middle East. His focus has primarily been Iraq, Iran, The Palestinian Authority, and Israel. He has published op-eds on the Mideast at the Washington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Guardian, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Review, The Nation, the Daily Star, Tikkun magazine as well as at Salon.com, where he is a frequent contributor . He has appeared on the PBS Lehrer News Hour, Nightline, ABC Evening News, the Today Show, Anderson Cooper 360°, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Al Jazeera and CNN Headline News.

Informed Comment blog

Since 2002, Cole has published the blog Informed Comment, covering "History, Middle East, South Asia, Religious Studies, and the War on Terror". Blog entries include comments on widely-reported articles in Western media, summaries of important articles from Arabic and Israeli news sources, and letters and discussions with both critics and supporters.

The blog has won various awards; as of April 2006 the most prominent is the 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism from Hunter College. It has also received two 2004 Koufax Awards: the "Best Expert Blog" and the "Best Blog Post". It has since dropped off the list, but Informed Comment has been ranked as the 99th most popular blog on the Internet by Technorati on October 21, 2006. Cole is a strong critic of the George W. Bush administration and is one of the most respected foreign policy commentators amongst left-wing bloggers.

The July 2006 issue of Chronicle of Higher Education featured a cover story on Cole's blog and its role in his career ("The Lessons of Juan Cole"). Following essays by several academic bloggers, Cole was given a chance to respond to the question of whether academics should risk careers advancement by blogging. His reply, in part, was:

The question is whether Web-log commentary helps or damages an academic's career. It is a shameful question. Intellectuals should not be worrying about "careers," the tenured among us least of all. Despite the First Amendment, which only really protects one from the government, most Americans who speak out can face sanctions from other institutions in society. Journalists are fired all the time for taking the wrong political stance. That is why most bloggers employed in the private sector are anonymous or started out trying to be so.

Hitchens and Ahmadinejad's speech

Cole and Christopher Hitchens traded barbs regarding the translation and meaning of a passage in one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches, which Fathi Nazila of the New York Times's Tehran bureau translated as saying: "Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map." Hitchens accused Cole of attempting to minimize the meaning of the speech. According to Hitchens, Cole was distorting the meaning of the speech which was that Ahmadinejad was "repeating the standard line" that "the state of Israel is illegitimate and must be obliterated". Cole wrote that although he "personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini", that he "object to this translation" for two reasons. First, because he believes that it suggests that Ahmadinejad advocates an invasion of Israel, and secondly, because Cole argues that a more precise translation would be "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time" which is likely a poetic phrase, rather than a military threat.

Hitchens also impugned Cole's competency in both Persian and "plain English", and called him "a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community," and Cole accused Hitchens of unethically using his emails to a private discussion group, having a "debilitating drinking problem", and pushing for a neoconservative-backed invasion of Iran.

Other activities

In 2004, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations requested Cole's testimony at hearings to better understand the situation in Iraq.

Cole is president and treasurer of the Global Americana Institute, a group of academics specializing in the Middle East who are working to translate the seminal works of American democracy into various Middle Eastern languages. The group's web site states that the "project will begin with a selected set of passages and essays by Thomas Jefferson on constitutional and governmental issues such as freedom of religion, the separation of powers, inalienable rights, the sovereignty of the people, and so forth."

Cole is an avid science fiction fan and has a strong personal interest in human rights issues.

Views

Generally speaking, Cole approaches the Middle East and West Asia from the point of view of anti-colonialism. Viewing the USA as a colonialist power, he sees it as defending the post-World War I "Sykes-Picot/ Balfour architecture" (described as "a colossal failure") against Arab nationalist or pan-Islamic challengers. These foundered for various reasons, especially "particularism." The U.S., like previous empires, seeks to take advantage of such internal rivalries in order to "divide and rule." Terrorism, he explains (after comparing several countries in the region), is the result of foreign occupation in combination with weak states.

Cole's perspective is also informed by his Baha'i background which favors internationalism, ethnic diversity, and modernism--values which he traces to various 19th-century Middle Eastern historical developments (the subject of his Modernity and the Millennium.) One important consequence is that he tends to valorize multinational (and especially UN) initiatives over unilateral military ones. Another is that he favors multi-ethnic states over separatist movements. A third is that he views Islam (along with other religions) as essentially good, but distorted by certain of its political appropriators (and critics). Cole's resignation from the organized form of his religion freed him from Baha'i strictures against political involvement, and his blog often offers center-left political opinion.

Al-Qaeda

Cole distinguishes "traditional" al-Qaeda from various 4-6 man cells scattered around the world who may identify with its goal, and use the name, but are not otherwise in contact with it. The former group consists of perhaps 5,000 members ("probably no more than a few hundred of them actually dangerous to the United States") whose activities "should be combatted by good police and counter-terrorism work." Cole thinks that the prevailing U.S. understanding of "al-Qaeda" conflates various unrelated Muslim groups into a "bogeyman."

He particularly resists applying the label to Sunni resistance fighters in Iraq:

The Bush administration has dropped the ball on al-Qaeda, big time. The Iraq War has created a new recruiting ground for al-Qaeda and its soul mates among the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. In Haifa Street in Baghdad and in Samarra, there have actually been crowds wearing al-Qaeda insignia. Contrary to what the Bush administration would have you believe, Iraqis had had virtually nothing to do with al-Qaeda before the American invasion. Iraqi Sunnis had once mostly been secular Arab nationalists. But the American destruction of the Baath Party has made religious fundamentalism attractive to them as an alternative political identity. The US has succeeded in pushing 5 million Middle Easterners away from secular nationalism and toward the arms of al-Qaeda.

Fears that "al-Qaeda" might take over Iraq, he says, are unfounded:

Nor is it plausible that "al-Qaeda" could take over Iraq! The United States couldn't take over Iraq. The Shiites and Kurds would never put up with it. Bush doesn't need to stay in Iraq to fight al-Qaeda there. If Bush weren't in Iraq, neither would al-Qaeda be. There less than 1,000 such foreign fighters, anyway.

Afghanistan

Cole calls the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan "the right war at the right time," and credits it with breaking up a network of al-Qaeda training camps which posed a danger to the U.S. However, he charges that Bush

left the job half done in Afghanistan and ran off to Iraq, which was always irrelevant to al-Qaeda. There were no good targets in Afghanistan, just Bin Laden and Zawahiri.

Cole complains that Iraq has displaced Aghanistan from the public consciousness. "As for money, Iraq has hogged the lion's share," he writes. "What has been spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan is piddling." Talk of furthering democracy and women's rights, or eliminating opium poppy cultivation there, has all but evaporated.("Half of Afghanistan's gross domestic product now comes from poppy sales.") Al-Qaeda now controls some territory in the south of Afghanistan, and is poised to return to power.

In 2001, Cole criticized journalist Robert Fisk in a letter to the London Independent for charging the U.S. with "war crimes" in Afghanistan. Cole argued that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan would likely prevent a large scale famine: "If Mr Fisk is so upset about the death of a few hundred murderous thugs who went back on their word to surrender and viciously fell upon their captors, how would he have felt about five million corpses in the great Taliban famine? If this mass-scale starvation is avoided, it will be because of the brave US pilots whom Mr Fisk slanders as criminals."

Iran

Cole's perspective on Iran is inescapably colored by his Baha'i background. The Baha'i religion first arose among Persian exiles in the Ottoman empire, has many of its scriptures in Persian, and has always had a large number of Persian adherents. Cole's writings accordingly celebrate Persia as a source of culture. At the same time, Cole has met Baha'is who were later martyred by the Khomeini regime.

Cole supported the reformist president Muhammad Khatami and rued his electoral loss to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He reports that in 2003, Iran (addressing the Bush administration through the Swiss embassy) proposed a comprehensive peace agreement, which Bush refused even to discuss:

Recognition of Israel within 1967 borders, pressure on Hizbullah and the Palestinians to moderate, signing the additional protocols of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it was all there for Bush's taking.

Cole has written numerous posts warning that the Bush administration is attempting to create a war with Iran. He suggests that sabre-rattling offers a way for two unpopular regimes to attract nationalistic support. He has also speculated that the Bush administration's objective in Iran is to control future supplies of oil and natural gas, while denying them to energy-hungry China and India.

On the nuclear issue, he writes that "Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb," and points out that Ali Khamenei and other leaders have condemned nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. Cole also dismisses the Bush administration's allegation that Iran has supported terrorism in Iraq or Afghanistan. Rather, the U.S. has lent support to anti-Iranian terrorist groups such as PEJAK.

Cole chastizes several U.S. presidential candidates including Hillary Clinton, Rudolf Giuliani, and Mitt Romney, for making bellicose statements about Iran in order to present themselves in a tougher or more conservative light:

Among the Republican front-runners, debate about Iran occurs in a dark, upside-down fantasy land, where a weak third-world regime with no air force to speak of plots a military strike on the planet's sole superpower. Iran has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak.

Iraq

From the beginning of his blog in 2002, Cole has warned of the difficulties a U.S. invasion of Iraq would present, especially in its aftermath. At first he tried to dissociate himself from either pro-war or anti-war stances, stating that he had "mixed feelings" on the issue. (I.e., he opposed Saddam Hussein's regime, but feared disaster.)

Cole now blames the George W. Bush administration for creating what he calls a "failed state" in Iraq. He particularly cites its decision to disband the Iraqi Army, its treatment of prisoners, its alienation of neighboring countries, its corrupt economic policies, and long delays in organizing elections and forming a (weak) government.

Cole rejects the Bush administrations early claims of Iraqi cooperation with al-Qaida, noting that Saddam Hussein had "...persecuted and killed both Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists in great number."; as well as claims to the effect that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction Rather than making America safer, he says, the war has ironically had the opposite effect, inspiring anti-U.S. militants.

Cole, who began to call the Iraqi conflict a "civil war" as early as 2004 , now says that it consists of three distinct wars: "for control of Basra among Shiite militiamen; for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunnis and Shiites; and for control of Kirkuk among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen." Two of these conflicts are traceable to Arab enmity against the U.S. invaders, perceived as supporting Shi'is and Kurds, while the conflict in Basra ("...among SCIRI, the Sadr Movement, Da`wa and Fadhila, plus some small Sadrist offshoots") is unrelated. A key issue is whether some of the southern Iraqi provinces are to be joined together into a "regional confederacy" (Cole's language), as in Kurdistan. Several Shi'i political parties support incompatible plans which would benefit their respective constituencies and home regions.

In a 2003 editorial entitled "Iraq must be Kept together as a Single State," , Cole states that partition would be "unacceptable to all the neighbors" and undesired by most Iraqis. Furthermore, the Sunni daughter state would be unviable, while Kurdistan would face dire problems. Cole writes:

The Middle East suffers from having small countries imposed by Western colonialism, such that the petroleum wealth is in tiny principalities and the human capital in huge but poor countries like Egypt. The region doesn't need any more small poor countries with populations of 4 million each.

The alternative is to build into the new Iraq guarantees against a tyranny of the Shiite majority. Have a bicameral legislature that over-represents the Sunnis slightly. Have a bill of rights. Have elected provincial governors and legislatures with their own local purview that the central state cannot over-rule. In other words, learn something from a success story: the US constitution.

Cole's "nightmare scenario" for Iraq (August 22, 2005):

And as I have argued before, an Iraq civil war will likely become a regional war, drawing in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. If a regional guerrilla war breaks out among Kurds, Turks, Shiites and Sunni Arabs, the guerrillas could well apply the technique of oil pipeline sabotage to Iran and Saudi Arabia, just as they do now to the Kirkuk pipeline in Iraq. If 20% of the world's petroleum production were taken off-line by such sabotage, the poor of the world would be badly hurt, and the whole world would risk another Great Depression.

His proposed exit strategy for the U.S. may be found in the same article, with additional comments here.

Turkey

Cole praises Turkey's secularism and booming economy, calling it "the strongest ally that the United States has had in the Middle East since the end of WW II." He chastizes the Bush administration for alienating Turks by failing to control the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan, and because of a (failed) 2007 Congressional resolution condemning the Armenian genocide. At the same time, he also warns Turkey not to invade Kurdistan, as this would result in disaster for these two relatively well-off regions.

Saudi Arabia

Noting that 45 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudi, Cole asks:

Which country is providing a lot of foreign suicide bombers? US ally Saudi Arabia. Has any general or Bush administration official called a press conference to denounce Saudi Arabia? No. Has Joe Lieberman threatened it with a war? No. Everything is being blamed on Iran because powerful American special interests want to get Iran, regardless of the facts.

Several years earlier he wrote:

I don't like the lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia, because I think it makes a key country unstable (on the whole, democracies are stable in the long run and dictatorships are not). I don't like radical fundamentalism in any religion because it is reactionary and threatens the liberty of us all. But the Saudi state is not like the Iraqi Baath Party or a sponsor of international terrorism as that is currently defined by the Bush administration.

On another occasion he observed that "there is no prospect in my lifetime of Saudi Arabia being less than indispensable to the United States in the global energy market."

Israel

Cole is a strong critic of Israel's foreign and military policy and its treatment of Palestinians. He criticizes the nature of America's support for Israel and the activities of the Israel lobby, and claims that some senior US officials such as Doug Feith have dual loyalties to America and the Israeli Likud Party.

Cole opposes boycotts of Israeli academics because he believes that the academic community in Israel is mostly opposed to the policies of the Likud party.

Cole's positive prescriptions can be summarized thus:

It wouldn't take much now to settle the Israel-Palestine thing, and the time is ripe to have Israel give back the Golan to Syria and the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon in return for a genuine peace process. The Israelis are not made more secure by crowding into the West Bank or bombing Gaza daily. South Lebanon has demonstrated the dangers of ever more sophisticated microwars over rugged territory. It is time for Israel, and for the United States, to do the right thing and rescue the Palestinians from the curse of statelessness, the slavery of the 21st century. Ending this debilitating struggle would also be the very best thing for the Israelis themselves. In one fell swoop, the US would have solved 80 percent of its problems with the Muslim world and vastly reduced the threat of terrorism.

Lebanon

Cole lived in Beirut for several years, and was present for part of the 1975-1976 civil war. His overview of 20th century Lebanese history blames the CIA for rigging elections there in 1957, in order to allow then-president Camille Chamoun a second term. (Chamoun had apparently persuaded President Dwight D. Eisenhower that the Druze leaned towards Communism.) This had the effect of forcing pro-Nasser Arab nationalists outside the political process. Cole additionally blames the influx of 100,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948--and the various later military actions against them by Syria and Israel--for the condition of Lebanese politics today.

Cole often points out the incongruity of the U.S. allying itself with offshoots of the Daawa Party in Iraq, but vehemently opposing Hizbollah in Lebanon. He says:

The Shi'ites in southern Lebanon are the poorest part of the population in Lebanon with the possible exception of the Palestinian refugees. They're the movement of the deprived. And this is especially played to by the Hizbullah, which is what it is in part because of its social services and the way in which it has gotten clinics and other services to the poor in southern Lebanon. However, I wouldn't actually say that the resentments among the Shi'a in southern Lebanon are formulated in particular with regard to Sunni Arabs. They've had resentments about the Palestinians poaching on their resources. They've had resentments occasionally against the Maronite elite. In Lebanon, you know, it's a kaleidoscope. Sometimes these groups will be allied with one another. Then sometimes they'll switch off and not. But the main rhetoric has been to focus on Israel. I think Hizbullah has benefited from the Iraq situation. It has a old - in fact, Hizbullah in some ways was formed under the tutelage of the Iraqi Da'awa party. It has old and long-standing relationships with the Iraqi Shi'ite religious groups.

When Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Cole accused both sides of committing "war crimes" against civilians. Cole stated that " every right to defend itself against Nasrallah and his mad bombers" while voicing disapproval for the "wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general." Cole also accused Israel of having planned the operation as much as a year in advance, rather than simply responding to provocation. .

Syria

Cole describes Syria thus:

Syria, population 19 million. Poor, militarily weak. Gross Domestic Product of $26 bn. Minority ruling clique of Alawi Shiites (think New Age California Shiism). State ideology, secular Baath Socialist Arab Nationalism, an ideology founded by Arab Christians and which has nothing much to do with Islam. Would make peace with Israel and the US in exchange for the return of the Golan Heights and an equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians.

Syria helped bring about Lebanon's Cedar Revolution by "overplaying its hand and making the Lebanese accept its choice for president, Gen. Emile Lahoud..." As a result of these political shifts, the Baathists are concerned that their Lebanese opponents "will try to use the UN, the US and Israel to unseat them," and in order to forstall this, have attempted or successfully arranged several assassinations in that country.

As to the possibility of "regime change," Cole writes:

If the Baath regime in Syria really were overthrown at this point in time, likely the Muslim Brotherhood would take power in Damascus. It would be far more menacing to Israel than the secular Baathists, who just want the Golan back and a basic humane settlement for the stateless Palestinians. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in power would certainly fully back the Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq, would connive at overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, and would hook up powerfully with Hamas in Gaza. A Muslim Brotherhood Saladin might emerge who could unite the entire Sunni Arab Greater Syrian hinterland against Israel, posing a profound threat to it.

Syria now hosts 1.4 million refugees from Iraq, but has recently tightened visa rules and is attempting to gradually repatriate them (despite the arrival of 500 more every day).

Kurdistan

Cole takes a generally negative view of Kurdish separatist movements. On June 18, 2007, in regard to an article in The Guardian on tensions between Turkey, the PKK, and Iraqi Kurdistan, Cole wrote:

...things have changed in the past 30 years, though the good Lord knows that much remains to be done in ensuring that Turkish Kurds are first class citizens (not a goal that will be reached by thuggish, murderous PKK tactics). First of all, Turkish Kurds have spread all over Turkey as guest workers. There are millions living in cities such as Istanbul and other industrial centers. Political scientists studying their voting patterns have found that they vote like other Turkish citizens living in the same place. That is, Kurds in Istanbul vote like the Turks in surrounding neighborhoods. There is no pan-Kurdish political identity in Turkey. Only a tiny proportion of Turkish Kurds supports the PKK, which has a very nasty history as a far-left terrorist group that killed thousands.

See here for Cole's analysis of a political opinion poll in southeastern Turkey.

Cole criticizes Iraqi Kurdistan under Massoud Barzani as "proto-fascist" , and opposes the partition of Iraq into multiple sovereign states, while conceding that some sort of devolution is inevitable. As of 2006, Cole recommended the establishment of five "superprovinces" ("Deep South, Middle Euphrates, Baghdad, Sunnistan, and Kurdistan, along with two smaller ethnic enclaves, of Turkomanistan and Chaldeanistan in the north..."); the partition of the Kirkuk region as a compromise between Kurdish, Arab, Chaldean, and Turkmen aspirations (with Kirkuk itself as a shared capital on the model of India's Chandigarh); and a complex oil-sharing formula:

Of Kirkuk's petroleum profits, the central government gets 33 percent. The Kurdistan regional confederacy gets 33% if it stays in Iraq. If Kurdistan secedes, it gets nothing. The oil belongs to Iraq. This principle should be guaranteed by the Coalition.

Some formula would have to be worked out for apportioning the 33% among Turkomans, Chaldeans and Sunnistan. Sunnistan is much bigger but will have other sources of income...

And here's the rest. The Rumaila oil field income is also split up. 20% goes to the federal government. 20% goes to Deep South Provincial Confederacy. 20% goes to Middle Euphrates Provincial Confederacy. 20% goes to Baghdad Province. And 20% goes to Sunni Arab Confederacy.

He often cites the partition of India, in which hundreds of thousands died and tens of millions were made refugees, as a cautionary example arguing against a division of Iraq into multiple sovereign states.

As for Syria (home to 2 million Kurds), Bashar al-Assad's government views Kurdish aspirations as a threat, and therefore supports Turkey (despite having secretly assisted Iraq's Kurds during the 1990's.

The Kurdish situation in Iran, and the government's attitude to it, is roughly similar. Cole suspects the U.S. military and intelligence services of supporting PEJAK and counts this as yet another of the various "fronts" of the Iraqi civil war.

Pakistan

Cole opposes the Pervez Musharraf regime, which he blames for cracking down on democracy activists, while simultaneously allowing Islamists based in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province to consolidate and expand their political power. He points out that Musharraf is actually a "hawk" with respect to India (in contrast to the government of Nawaz Sharif, which had made overtures to it before the coup), and cancelled a special-forces operation aimed at killing Osama bin Ladin. (The operation had been urged by President Clinton, and if successful, would likely have prevented 9-11.)

Cole also censures the George W. Bush administration for not pushing for democratization in Pakistan. Such a development would not threaten U.S. interests, he writes, since whenever elections have been held, Taliban-like movements have not received much support from voters. On the contrary, the danger is that U.S. support for Musharraf may alienate middle-class Pakistanis.

Cole's wife Shahin received her legal education in Lahore, Pakistan, and has also written against Musharraf's crackdown.

Kashmir

Cole recommends that "the US should strong-arm India and Pakistan into a final settlement of the Kashmir issue. The Kashmir issue generates far more terrorism, and even the threat of nuclear war, than Iraq ever did."

In 2002 he wrote that "It is unclear whether Musharraf simply cannot stop the terrorists , or whether his military government is still lukewarm about trying to do so." However, in 2005 he expressed doubt that one would find

many, if any, persons engaged in international terrorism from Kashmir. There has been a lot of political violence in Kashmir, but there are two sides to it, and heavy-handed Indian military tactics have killed a lot of Kashmiris. The UN had decreed that a referendum would be held in Kashmir on its future, which India has ever since 1948 refused to allow.

Egypt

Cole lived in Cairo for several years during the 1970's (after fleeing Lebanon). On pressures for democracy in Egypt, he writes that "Having a slightly more representative government is always to the good, but the Muslim Brotherhood is not exactly a force for progressivism in the region." He attributes the success of the Muslim Brotherhood to 1960's-era support from Saudi Arabia (which distrusted Nasser's secular nationalism); and more generally, to the legacy of British imperialism. His book Napoleon's Egypt holds up that historic episode as a mirror of contemporary American policies in Iraq.

Sudan

While Cole does not often discuss Sudan ("There are lots of massacres, deaths and tragedies in the world that I don't have time to cover in my little blog...") , he does argue that rather than than a "black African" versus "Arab" conflict (as "rightwing Zionists" characterize it for the benefit of American domestic politics), "the dispute is not about race. It is about political separatism and regionalism." The parties to the conflict are, in fact, racially indistinguishable. In Darfur they are also religiously indistinguishable (both groups being Muslim), and Arabic is spoken to some extent on both sides.

Criticism

Alexander H. Joffe in the Middle East Quarterly has written that "Cole suggests that many American Jewish officials hold dual loyalties, a frequent anti-Semitic theme.". Cole argues that his critics have "perverted the word 'antisemitic,'" and also points out that "in the Middle East Studies establishment in the United States, I have stood with Israeli colleagues and against any attempt to marginalize them or boycott them".

According to Efraim Karsh, Cole has done "hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East", and Karsh characterized Cole's analysis of this era as "derivative." He has also responded to Cole's criticism of Israeli policies and the influence of the Israel lobby, comparing them to accusations that have been made in anti-semitic writings. Cole responded directly to Karsh in his blog, dismissing one of Karsh's charges, that Cole's criticisms echo themes in the antisemitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as a "propaganda technique," adding that "No serious person who knows me or my work would credit his outrageous insinuations for a moment." Cole also defended his knowledge of modern Middle Eastern history, comparing his experience "on the ground" in the modern Arab world favorably with that of Bernard Lewis, a historian he said is "lionized" by Karsh.

Selected bibliography

Texts

• The Ayatollahs and Democracy in Iraq (Amsterdam University Press, 2006)
• Historiography of the Muslim Brotherhood, essay in Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century by Israel Gershoni et al, 2006
• The Imagined Embrace: Gender, Identity and Iranian Ethnicity in Jahangiri Paintings. In Michel Mazzaoui, ed. Safavid Iran and her Neighbors (Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 2003), pp. 49-62.
• Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002)
• Modernity and the Millennium:The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East. New York:Columbia University Press. May, 1998) ISBN 0-231-11081-2
• Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's `Urabi Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Paperback edn., Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999)
• Comparing Muslim Societies. (Comparative Studies in Society and History series.) Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1992. Review
• Roots of North Indian Shi`ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991)
• Shi`ism and Social Protest. . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)
• From Iran East and West: Studies in Babi and Baha'i History, vol. 2 "Baha'u'llah and the Naqshbandi Sufis in Iraq, 1854-1856." Los Angeles:Kalimat Press, 1984)

Journal Issues

• Rashid Rida on tne the Baha'i Fairth: A Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religions, Arab Studies Quarterly 5, 3 (Summer 1983): 276-291

• Nationalism and the Colonial Legacy in the Middle East and Central Asia. Co-edited with Deniz Kandiyoti. Special Issue of The International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 34, no. 2 (May 2002), pp. 187-424.

• The United States and Shi‘ite Religious Factions in Post-Ba‘thist Iraq, MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL VOLUME 57, NO. 4, AUTUMN 2003

• The Taliban, Women, and the Hegelian Private Sphere, Social Research- An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences: Islam Private and Public Spheres, Volume 70 No. 2 (Fall 2003)

• The Iraqi Shiites: On the history of America’s would-be allies,, Boston Review, Fall, 2003.

• A Shia Crescent: What Fallout for the United States, J.I. Cole et al Symposium Middle East Policy Council Journal Volume XII, Winter 2005, Number 4

• The Reelection of Bush and the Fate of Iraq, Constellations, Volume 12, no. 2 (June 2005): 164-172.

• A ‘Shiite Crescent’? The Regional Impact of the Iraq War.” Current History. (January 2006): 20-26.

Translations

• Religion in Iran: From Zoroaster to Baha'u'llah by Alessandro Bausani. . New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000.
• Broken Wings: A Novel by Kahlil Gibran. Ashland, Or.: White Cloud Press, 1998)
• The Vision of Kahlil Gibran . Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998. [ Hardcover Edn.: Ashland, Or.: White Cloud Press, 1994)
• Spirit Brides of Kahlil Gibran . Santa Cruz: White Cloud Press, 1993.
• Letters and Essays 1886-1913 of Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani . Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1985.
• Miracles and Metaphors of Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani . Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982)

See Juan R. I. Cole Publications for complete list of publications.

References

1. ^ "Juan Cole Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley". 2005. Retrieved 2007-06-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. Resume of Juan Cole
3. ^ "Juan R. I. Cole Publications". Curriculum Vitae. Juan Cole's Academic Web site. Retrieved 2006-05-28.
4. MESA Board of Directors, MESA of America Website, accessed April 23, 2006
5. Faculty News and Awards, Department of History: University of Michigan, 2007
6. Leibovitz, Liel. "Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale", The Jewish Week, 2006-06-02. Retrieved on 7 June 2006.
7. ^ Goldberg, Ross (June 10 2006). "Univ. denies Cole tenure". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 2006-06-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. Leibovitz, Liel (02 June 2006). "Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale". The Jewish Week. Retrieved 2006-06-07. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. David White, "Juan Cole and Yale: The Inside Story", CampusWatch, August 3, 2006.
10. Philip Weiss, "Burning Cole", The Nation, July 3, 2006.
11. Democracy Now!, "Hundreds of Thousands Rally in Iraq Against the War in Lebanon: Middle East Analyst Juan Cole on War in the Middle East - from Baghdad to Beirut", Friday, August 4, 2006
12. Juan Cole, personal statement on Baha'u'llah, 3 years on, 2 Mar 1999
13. H-Bahai Website
14. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/2000/dialala2.htm
15. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/jssr/bhjssr.htm
16. http://bahai-library.com/reviews/panopticon.kluge.html
17. See, for example, Melinda Beck, et al., "The Case Against War," Newsweek (29 October 1990) p. 24; "The Gulf War," Los Angeles Times (13 February 1991) p. 8; Scott Shane, "Muslim world suffers by actions of terrorists," Baltimore Sun (23 August 1998) p. 1A; and Bill Schiller, "Locals tied to Al Jihad terror network," Toronto Star (21 October 2001) p. A10.
18. Curt Guyette, "The Blog of War," Metrotimes (25 August 2004).
19. Essays and Op-Eds, Juan Cole's website.
20. As Violence Escalates, President Bush Assures Iraq of U.S. Support PBS NewsHour transcript, Originally Aired: October 16, 2006
21. "Cole Receives Aronson Award from Hunter College", Informed Comment, March 29, 2006.
22. Drum, Kevin. Koufax Awards, Washington Monthly blog, February 23, 2005.
23. Technorati blog ranking page
24. The Hotline: National Journal's Daily Briefing on Politics, Blogometer Profiles: Informed Comment, National Journal, October 02, 2006
25. Fathi, Nazila (October 30 2005). "Text of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Speech". Week in Review. The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-10-17. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
26. Hitchens, Christopher (May 2 2006). "The Cole Report: When it comes to Iran, he distorts, you decide". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2007-03-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
27. ^ Cole, Juan (May 03 2006). "Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War!". Retrieved 2006-05-04. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
28. Philip Weiss, Alcoholism, Privacy and Blogging: the Cole-Hitchens Feud, The New York Observer, May 4, 2006
29. News Hits staff, Juan up, Metro Times, 5/10/2006
30. Joel Mowbray, Hatchet man or scholar?, The Washington Times, May 22, 2006
31. Juan Cole's Senate Testimony Brief, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2004.
32. Global Americana Institute, accessed July 3, 2006.
33. Juan Cole, Juan R. I. Cole: Personal Interests, "Juan R. I. Cole Home Page", University of Michigan website.
34. http://www.juancole.com/2002/09/architecture-of-middle-east-it-has.html
35. http://www.juancole.com/2002/09/architecture-of-middle-east-it-has.html
36. See http://www.juancole.com/2002_04_01_juanricole_archive.html
37. See http://www.juancole.com/2006/03/peace-and-love-in-quran-list-of.html
38. http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/bush-turns-to-fear-mongering-creation.html
39. http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/911-77-and-830-on-fourth-year.html
40. http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/bush-turns-to-fear-mongering-creation.html
41. http://www.juancole.com/2004/07/arguing-with-bush-yet-again-president.html
42. http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/bush-turns-to-fear-mongering-creation.html
43. http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/kabul-under-curfew-after-anti-us-anti.html
44. http://www.juancole.com/2006/01/reconstruction-aid-to-afghanistan.html
45. http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/guerrillas-shoot-down-us-helicopter.html
46. Juan Cole, "Legitimate Targets," Independent (3 December 2001) p. 2.
47. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/persdec.htm
48. http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/iran-offered-recognition-of-israel.html
49. http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/iran-can-now-make-glowing-mickey-mouse.html
50. http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/one-ring-to-rule-them-wholesale.html
51. http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/iran-can-now-make-glowing-mickey-mouse.html
52. http://www.juancole.com/2007/10/us-sanctions-on-iran.html
53. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/17/iran/
54. http://www.juancole.com/2003/03/british-are-asserting-that-there-has.html
55. Cole, Juan (24 May 2006). "Critique of US Policy in Iraq". Informed Comment. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
56. Sullivan, Elizabeth (26 September 2002). "Iraq No Friend of al-Qaida, Experts Say". Cleveland Plain Dealer. pp. A11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
57. Blanford, Nicholas (09 September 2002). "Syria Worries U.S. Won't Stop at Iraq". Christian Science Monitor. p. 6. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
58. http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/shiite-sunni-shiite-shiite-no-civil.html
59. Informed Comment Nov. 13, 2007
60. http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/eighth-front-according-to-turkish.html
61. Informed Comment, 9/20/2003
62. http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/ten-things-congress-could-demand-from.html
63. http://www.juancole.com/index.html/2006/04/exit-plans-senator-john-kerry-argues.html
64. http://www.juancole.com/2007/10/who-lost-turkey.html
65. http://www.juancole.com/2007/07/few-foreign-fighters-in-iraq-many-are.html
66. http://www.juancole.com/2002/07/date-wed-3-jul-2002-152902-0400-edt-to.html
67. http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/us-dependent-on-saudi-arabia-bush.html
68. Cole, Juan (19 April 2006). "Breaking the silence". Salon.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
69. Cole, Juan (09 September 2004). "Dual Loyalties". Informed Comment. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
70. Cole, Juan (26 July 2002). "Why We Should Not Boycott Israeli Academics". The Chronicle of Higher Education. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
71. http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/war-with-al-qaeda-war-with-al-qaeda.html
72. http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/lebanon-realignment-and-syria-it-is.html
73. http://www.mepc.org/forums_chcs/41.asp scroll down to the questions section
74. Cole, Juan (17 July 2006). "Israel Widens Airstrikes; 140 Civilians Dead since Weds; Nasrallah Threatens Haifa with Worse Attacks". Informed Comment. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
75. Informed Comment, July 25, 2006
76. http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/bush-turns-to-fear-mongering-creation.html
77. http://www.juancole.com/2006/11/bushs-cedar-revolution-collapses-in.html
78. http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/battle-of-speeches-breaks-out-in-wake.html
79. http://www.juancole.com/2007/04/israel-vs.html
80. http://www.juancole.com/2007/11/maliki-said-to-induct-18000-militiamen.html
81. http://www.juancole.com/2007/11/poll-turkish-kurds-would-not-emigrate.html
82. http://www.juancole.com/2006/03/kamal-sayid-qadir-jailed-for-criticism.html
83. http://www.juancole.com/2007/10/turkish-parliament-authorizes-iraq.html
84. http://www.juancole.com/2007/07/are-we-already-at-war-have-us-enabled.html
85. http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/eighth-front-according-to-turkish.html
86. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/06/musharraf/
87. Informed Comment, Nov. 8, 2007.
88. "Al-Qaeda's New Geostrategic Master Plan," Informed Comment, Sept. 11, 2003
89. ("The Downside to the Bush Doctrine", Informed Comment, June 7, 2002).
90. "Arguing with Bush and the GWOT," Informed Comment Oct 7, 2005.
91. http://www.juancole.com/2005/12/middle-east-and-america-in-2005-how.html
92. http://www.juancole.com/2003/03/british-are-asserting-that-there-has.html
93. http://www.juancole.com/2005_03_01_juanricole_archive.html
94. http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/googlesmear-as-political-tactic-google.html
95. Joffe, Alexander H (Winter 2006). "Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies". Middle East Quarterly.
96. Cole, Juan (December 8, 2004). "Character Assassination". Informed Comment.
97. Karsh, Efraim. "Juan Cole's Bad blog". The New Republic.
98. Cole, Juan (October 12 2006). "Misplaced Pages, Karsh and Cole". Informed Comment. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• Juan R. I. Cole Home Page at the University of Michigan
• Informed Comment - Juan Cole's weblog
• Three-State Solution? The Nation review, March 29, 2004
• Alexander H. Joffe, "Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies", article in Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006

• 1952 births
• Living people
• American bloggers
• American historians
• American political pundits
• University of Michigan faculty
• Islamic politics and Islamic world studies
• American Middle Eastern studies
• University of California, Los Angeles alumni
• Northwestern University alumni
• People from Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Bahá'í individuals
• Science fiction fans