Archives: Sufism

Syria’s forgotten pluralism and why it matters today

By Andrea Williams | (The Conversation) | - - The Syrian Civil War has been raging for six years. It has killed nearly half a million people and left over 12 million,…

Why ISIL is Targeting Tolerant Sufi Islam

By Peter Gottschalk | (The Conversation) | - - On Feb. 16, 2017, a bomb ripped through a crowd assembled at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in southeastern…

Image of the Day: “Jonah and the Whale” (Persian Miniature)

Metropolitan Museum of Art | (Persian Miniature Painting) | - - "Jonah and the Whale", Folio from a Jami al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Chronicles [A medieval World History]) Inscription: In Persian, on the…

Is Religion really Driving Middle East Violence?

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - - Pew Research has released a report saying that "As a whole, the region continued to have the highest levels of religious hostilities in…

Top 5 things that Make Bangladesh a natural Target for Extremists

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - - Bangladesh has been plagued by extremist violence for years, but the violence and hostage-taking in Dhaka on Friday and on Saturday morning was…

Who Was the mystic Jalaluddin Rumi, and Whose Rumi Is He?

By Bismellah Alizada | (GlobalVoices.org) | - - As all the countries that call the work of Jalaluddin Rumi their own rise up against the idea of Leonardo Di Caprio playing the…

US Air Force Absent as Daesh/ ISIL advances on North Aleppo against Sunni Rebels

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | - Daesh (ISIL, ISIS), the murderous terrorist organization that has taken over the eastern desert of Syria and the western desert of Iraq, along with…

Iraq: Why it doesn’t Matter if Ezzat al-Douri was Killed

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) - The currently partly unemployed Iraqi governor of Salahuddin Province, displaced from much of his territory by Daesh (ISIS or ISIL), maintains that former Baath vice…

From Iraq’s Next big Front: Kurdish Fighters Closing in on Mosul

VICE News | - "With the timeline unclear for a forthcoming US-led coalition assault on the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Mosul, Kurdish peshmerga fighters continue to man the trenches at the…

With US Tanks, are Iraq’s Shiite Militias getting stronger than the Army?

by Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) - Iraq’s unofficial Shiite militias are an essential part of the fight against the extremist Islamic State group. But they act independently of the army,…

Iraqi Kurdistan: Can a Bastion of Tolerance and Democracy survive in the Middle East?

By Richard Foltz | --- Having committed ourselves to military involvement in Iraq, we in North America should be asking ourselves exactly what goals we hope to achieve. Personally, after recently spending…