Howler of the Month ArchiveWhat we call "howlers" demonstrate the moral obtuseness, politicized outlook, and rank absurdity in the field of Middle East studies, and thus the need for Campus Watch. Selections change roughly every month. "MESA is a pillar of the field, and a constant advocate for the best in scholarship and teaching, as well as the broader principles of academic freedom, with respect to both study and pedagogy,"
Asli Bâl, president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and professor of law at Yale, on MESA's relocation to the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Georgetown University's (GU) Walsh School of Foreign Service; MESA press release, February 21, 2024. (link to source)
Studies have shown that pornography makes men less religious. . . . That pornography makes people pray less and think of things like martyrdom less. So that Israelis took over Palestinian channels in Hebron, took them over, and broadcast on these channels pornography to be consumed by Palestinians.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and founder of the Institute of Advanced Usuli Studies, in a Friday sermon he delivered at the Usuli Institute on January 12, 2024. Posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on January 12, 2024. (link to source)
"But it was really 9/11 that became a major catalyst for Islam and Muslims to be seen as a global threat. ... [Osama] bin Laden and al-Qaeda, which played a major role in the growth of Islamophobia, as Muslims and Islam came to be seen as violent and dangerous. Then ... there was the Islamic State. ... And now ... we've seen Hamas being equated to ISIS."
John Esposito, founding director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a professor at Georgetown Univ., lamenting the unfairness of the "roots of Islamophobia"; quoted in Indlieb Farazi Saber, "'Seen as Less than Human': Why Has Islamophobia Surged amid Israel's Gaza War?"; Al Jazeera, Dec. 21, 2023. (link to source)
"We are seeing a horrifying attempt to shut down the space for freedom of speech in Western societies around Palestine. They are not just shutting down people who support Hamas. They are shutting down people who say anything positive about Palestine in American universities or in the media."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, on the reaction to Hamas's murder of over 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. From an interview with Daniel Finn: "We Are Seeing a Horrifying Attempt to Shut Down Speech Around Palestine"; Jacobin, Oct. 31, 2023. (link to source)
"Some Arab regimes spend millions of dollars on think tanks, academic institutions, and lobbying forms to shape thinking in Western capitals. So . . . supporting some think tanks . . . suddenly you have coverage at the [center] of that part of the world, or starting their own think tanks."
John Esposito, University Distinguished Professor, director of the Bridge Initiative, and founding director of the Saudi-funded Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University at Georgetown University, in his Zoom-delivered keynote address to the annual Center for Islam and Global Affairs conference in Istanbul; YouTube, March 10, 2023. (link to source)
"The members of this association, now more than half a century old, have harnessed years of rigorous scholarship and intellectual output to conclude that solidarity with Palestinians must today deepen and expand."
Noura Erakat, Rutgers University assistant professor of Africana Studies, defending the Middle East Studies Association's (MESA) adoption of an academic boycott of Israel as its official policy, in "Why Our Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Will Hurt the Apartheid Regime"; Middle East Eye, April 13, 2022. (link to source)
"Zionism actually never really combated white supremacy, which shaped Nazi racism, and instead left it intact."
Noura Erakat, Rutgers University assistant professor of Africana Studies, speaking at a webinar titled "Two-State Solution Is Dead—Now What?"; Nonviolence International, January 13, 2022. (link to source)
"We have only just begun to comprehend the homo-nationalist and ... homo-capitalist forces of a purported secular queerness that produces coming out as a technology of Christian theological confession ... and hypercritically demands reconciliation of Islam and sexuality through those very terms."
Jasbir Puar, professor and graduate director of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, in her introduction as moderator of a webinar featuring professors and activists, "Twenty Years After 9/11: Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire," September 10, 2021. (link to source)
"Our singular backing of ever-evolving Israeli racism and illegal territorial expansion (I value international law over the Old Testament) earned us our enemies."
Lawrence Davidson, professor emeritus of history at West Chester University, on how America has made enemies in the Middle East, and why the U.S. was attacked on 9/11. "Biden's Middle East Withdrawals Do not Portend a Strategic Shift"; The National Interest, August 18, 2021. (link to source)
"The idea for [Israel], there's been the effort to try to rebuild the Third Temple by destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock [...] They already have the designs the plans."
Hatem Bazian, lecturer in Arabic and director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, conspiracy mongering that Israel is removing Arabs from the neighborhoods around Al-Aqsa Mosque to rebuild the Third Temple. Quoted in "U.S. Lecturer Urges Muslim World to Militarily Support Palestine"; AA (Anadolu Agency), a state-run news agency in Ankara, Turkey, May 18, 2021. (link to source)
"The attempts to transform the conversation on Israeli state violence to a series of stale talking points about Hamas rockets reflect the thorough dehumanization of Palestinians and the abject disregard for Israeli military aggression."
From a vehemently anti-Israel petition defending Palestinian rocket attacks and calling on universities to implement BDS, encourage activism by students, and end military aid to Israel. Signed by over 4,000 professors, including many in Middle East studies. "Open Letter and Call to Action," Palestine and Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom; May 14, 2021. (link to source)
"It is certainly the case that using language like 'an ugly Israeli occupation of precious Palestinians' would be enough to keep someone from being hired at most American universities. This is because many pro-Israel professors and administrators (as well as those hoping for big donations from pro-Israel donors) are corrupt, and are entirely willing to misuse their positions to silence voices that are inconvenient for Israeli propaganda."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the Univ. of Michigan, on Harvard's refusal to award a tenured position to Cornel West, Victor S. Thomas Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard; West (quoted by Cole) blamed the decision on his support for Palestinians. "Is Harvard Denying Tenure to Cornel West over His Views on Palestine?" Informed Comment, Feb. 24, 2021. (link to source)
"We really idolize somebody like Leila Khaled, somebody who actually stands up for herself, speaks for herself, actually goes to a plane and hijacks it."
Rabab Abdulhadi, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies and Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative, College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University, commenting on convicted Palestinian terrorist/hijacker Leila Khaled. Quoted in "Zoom Denies Service for Controversial Panel Featuring Leila Khaled"; Goldengatexpress.org, September 22, 2020. (link to source)
"Those monarchies are so reactionary that they make Henry VIII and Louis XIV look like Tom Paine and Robespierre. They are the most — they are the most absolute monarchies in the world today."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, characterizing the United Arab Emirates after it announced a peace agreement with Israel. From a transcript of his interview with Amy Goodman, "Israel & UAE Deal to Normalize Relations Is New Chapter in 100-Year War on Palestine"; "Democracy Now," August 14, 2020. (link to source)
"To call [Israel] a settler colonial project is not to deny the legitimacy of Judaism or of Jewish people in the region. Settler colonialism is not just controlling the territory in the land, but it's actually moving people onto that land and replacing the indigenous people of the land."
Marc Lamont Hill, Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University, explaining "Why Black People Should Care About Palestine"; The Root, March 11, 2020. (link to source)
"The secret of Palestinian resistance and ultimate triumph: they sing they dance they live they love and they pass the message from one to the next generation—over the last 100 years over the next century if necessary — long after the racist settler colonialist occupiers of their homeland have rotten [sic] in the dustbin of history."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, commenting on a video of Palestinian girls performing the Dabka, a traditional Levantine dance; on his Facebook page, January 30, 2020. (link to source)
"The killing of General Soleimani was not the killing just of a bad guy. It was an assassination ... We have a rogue government. It's a government we cannot trust with our security or our lives, and the way forward with Iran is the way of peace, not a war."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, on the US air strike against Iranian general and arch-terrorist Qasem Soleimani after he orchestrated an attack on the US Embassy in Iraq that resulted in the death of an American contractor; The Michigan Daily, January 8, 2020. (link to source)
"This is Wag the Dog galore. . . . Trump has just started his re-election campaign and Qassem Soleimani was the first casualty of his bid to keep the White House."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, claiming that President Trump ordered an air strike against Iranian major general and arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani in order to avoid impeachment and win re-election in 2020; Hamid Dabashi on Facebook; January 3, 2020. (link to source)
"This article posits a theorisation of decolonisation in relation to queer as it emerges from the settler-colonial context of Palestine, what I call decolonial queering. The first part provides a new reading of Zionist settler-colonialism, which I define as hetero-conquest. Its novelty lies in refocusing the question of colonialism in native grounded knowledge of queering, while showing the limitations of those existing studies whose frames emanate mainly from American and/or global north contexts of racism and homo-nationalism."
Walaa Alqaisiya, Fellow of Gender, Conflict, and Sexuality in the Dept. of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics; "Palestine and the Will to Theorise Decolonial Queering"; Middle East Critique, Vol. 29, 2020, Special Issue on Queering the Middle East. (link to source)
"She [Sarah Ihmoud] has maintained an academically fair and balanced view of Israeli-Palestinian issues. I applaud the WGS [Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program] for hiring a highly intelligent and capable young professor who fits the diversity profile advocated by our Provost at Boston University."
Shahla Haeri, a Boston University (BU) professor, on BU postdoctoral associate Sarah Ihmoud, whom the WGS Program is considering for a position based on writings in which Ihmoud falsely accuses Israel of the "rape and killing of Palestinian women" and "systematic massacres," and Jewish women of experiencing "sexualized pleasure" while watching the IDF bomb Palestinian civilians; The Daily Free Press, November 15, 2019. (link to source)
"The intelligent-but-lost zombie character is brought to the very edge of anxious modernity. They have to look past modernity and colonialism and also reflect on their pasts to make sense of it all."
University of Wisconsin–Madison professor Samuel England in a lecture on "Arab Zombie Arts" at Binghamton University; October 31, 2019. (link to source)
"I think it [ISIL] appealed to people on the internet who were already angry and unstable, often mentally ill, and they would go out and commit violence, and then would attribute it to ISIL even though ISIL knew nothing about it. . . . In many ways, although not with the same systematic effect, Trump also is responsible for a certain amount of stochastic terrorism."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, on the news that ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. special forces in Syria; Democracy Now, October 28, 2019. (link to source)
"In the American media context, intifada has been used in connection with violence imagery. Just like other Arabic words. Intifada is actually 71 years old. It is resistance to occupation of a people's land. It is like Native American resistance to white settlers. You have violent aspects in that, but you also have mostly peaceful resistance. You have to completely use the Native American example in the context of Palestinian resistance."
Golbarg Bashi, a Middle Eastern studies professor at Rutgers University, explaining the inclusion of a section titled "I Is for Intifada" in her children's book, "P Is for Palestine"; Bridgewater Courier News, October 14, 2019. (link to source)
"Israel & Netanyahu's banning @Ilhan and @RepRashida from entering Palestine represents the Palestinian Nakba; thus the insistence on the right of return for the 1948 refugees is a key demand for the BDS movement."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, comparing Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu barring BDS activists and US Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from a planned trip to Israel to the Palestinian "Nakba," or catastrophe, the Arabic term for Israel's founding in 1948; Twitter, August 15, 2019. (link to source)
"With the increasing military threats from the US, this is perhaps the Iranian government's way of saying to the European community: 'Hey folks, this is serious. You need to help us out here or things could get really bad.'"
Stephen Zunes, professor and coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, after Iran seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and released footage showing it docked in an Iranian port with an Iranian flag hoisted atop; Al-Jazeera, July 22, 2019. (link to source)
"Israel is just an extremely mean place."
Former academic Norman Finkelstein in an interview with Jordan's Al Bawaba; July 9, 2019. (link to source)
"Given that Trump is a narcissistic fraud, it is appropriate that his name be attached to the illegal Israeli theft of Syrian territory. In fact, we should just call the Occupied Palestinian Territories in general Trumpland . . . ."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement of a new settlement in the Golan Heights named "Trump Heights" after U.S. President Donald Trump, who recognized Israeli sovereignty in the region three months before; Informed Comment, June 17, 2019. (link to source)
"I think what we have to deal with in the case of Iran is that it's a developing democracy where the majority of the population being under 30 years old are voting for a moderate candidate. . . . [B]eing an ancient and proud civilization and being a democracy in progress, when their hard-line ruler says, 'We have no interest in nuclear weaponry and please bring the United Nations and bring the global powers and verify that we're not developing nuclear weaponry' — I think this represents an extraordinary opportunity for anybody in the world that would like to see a path other than warfare and destruction."
Omid Safi, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center, in an interview with Public Radio International's (PRI) "The World"; May 30, 2019. (link to source)
"Only organized resistance and solidarity between struggles, both in the region and across the world, against Zionist settler colonialism, capitalist imperialism (and US imperialism in particular), neoliberalism, racism, heteropatriarchy, and fundamentalism, can prevent a catastrophic reordering of the region that is well in order. Palestine is at the heart of this struggle."
Chandni Desai, assistant professor at the University of Toronto, on the Trump administration's Arab-Israeli peace plan; Kalamazoo College (MI) Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, May 24, 2019. (link to source)
"We ain't got to walk around struttin' talking about two state solutions. . . . What about a world where everyone has freedom, justice, equality, safety, and self determination? One person one vote. Gettin' rid of the settler colonial project altogether."
Marc Lamont Hill, Temple University Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education, speaking at the annual dinner for the Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation (WESPAC); Mondoweiss, May 3, 2019. (link to source)
"Arabs' views of the Israeli elections are no different from how South African blacks regarded elections of whites in apartheid South Africa. . . . The state that killed, displaced, and prevented the return of the natives can't be said to be democratic, even if the majority Jewish population are permitted to select who among them should lead the apartheid state."
As'ad AbuKhalil, a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus, falsely equating the 2019 Israeli legislative election with that of apartheid-era South Africa; Consortium News, April 11, 2019. (link to source)
"Donald Trump has made sure that Israel will be in a perpetual state of war with its Arab neighbors for many decades to come. What Trump has done is to hammer a deadly nail in the coffin of the peace process and Arab-Israeli reconciliation. This is a fundamental turning point. There is nothing left to discuss anymore."
Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations and holder of the Emirates Professorship in Contemporary Middle East Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, on U.S. President Donald Trump officially recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; Reuters, March 25, 2019. (link to source)
"We are at a new stage of the fight to realize Palestinian rights and free both Palestinians and Jews from the consequences of Zionist racism. . . . To combat the popular criticism to which Israel is now subject, the Zionists have shifted tactics. They have abandoned popular debate and now use their influence with the West's ruling elites to simply criminalize any rhetoric that points out the real discriminatory nature of the Zionist state. The gambit here is to have such criticism legally equated with anti-Semitism."
Lawrence Davidson, professor emeritus of history at West Chester University, in "Anti-Semitism vs. Anti-Zionism in France"; Consortium News, March 6, 2019. (link to source)
"'[Ilhan Omar] has been facing anti-Muslim racism [since] her campaign [for Congress] and it has only continued since she was elected. . . . And to push that aside and treat the smear campaign following her tweets is an explicit act of misdirection that doesn't address anti-Semitism in America. . . . Rather, it gives people another opportunity to attack and diminish our first Black Muslim congresswoman."
Mariam Durrani, assistant professor of anthropology at Hamilton College, on widespread criticism of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitic tweets implying that
members of Congress support Israel because they're paid to do so; Millennial Politics, February 14, 2019. (link to source)
"The teen's smug look no doubt was worn by those thugs who ordered the Trail of Tears, when Native Americans were expelled from the Southeast."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, on the Covington Catholic High School student who was falsely accused of racism towards a Native-American activist at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. on January 18, 2019; Informed Comment, January 20, 2019. (link to source)
"[D]iscussions on college campuses about the complexities of freedom, history, and belonging in Israel and Palestine are under increasing pressure and potential censorship from right-wing entities. In fact, new policies adopted by the US and Israeli governments are intended to eliminate any rigorous discussion of Israeli–Palestinian politics in university settings. Not since the McCarthyite anti-Communist purges have we seen such an aggressive effort to censor teaching and learning on topics the government disfavors."
Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and executive committee member for the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, in "The Pro-Israel Push to Purge US Campus Critics"; New York Review of Books, December, 12, 2018. (link to source)
"I consider the statement below from President Wong, welcoming Zionists to campus, equating Jewishness with Zionism, and giving Hillel ownership of campus Jewishness, to be a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and all those who are committed to an indivisible sense of justice on and off campus. . . . I am ashamed to be affiliated with SFSU administration and demand the immediate retraction of this racist, Islamophobic and colonialist statement, and the restoration of SFSU social justice mission. "
Rabab Abdulhadi, director of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies at San Francisco State University, responding to SFSU President Leslie Wong's statement affirming, in contrast to an earlier comment, that Zionists are welcome on campus; Facebook, February 23, 2018. (link to source)
"Anti-Zionism is something that ought to transcend Palestine. Anti-Zionism, when it's done correctly, is concerned with the equality and the well-being and the dignity of all human beings, including the Jewish people."
Former academic Steven Salaita speaking at the University of Michigan; The Michigan Daily, January 16, 2018. (link to source)
"What happens in Europe is universal; what happens somewhere else is a form of retardation that only has meaning once it is touched by a European scholar. . . . You become discovered in the same way Columbus discovered America when he was lost. . . . You have to re-frame it: Columbus did not discover America, because he was going to India. He was trying to get chicken tikka masala and he arrived there and they said, 'no, no, we only have cornbread for you.' . . . We have to rewrite history . . . the past 200 years of written history."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, on the alleged evils of colonialism; Press TV, January 13, 2018. (link to source)
"Nimrata Randhawa, the career opportunist comprador emigre who changed her name to 'Nikki Haley' and conveniently converted to a Christian Zionist to advance her career is at it again — what was wrong with your own perfectly beautiful name and culture? How white a Christian Zionist did you have to turn to promote your career?"
Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, on Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations who, as an Indian American, was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa and later married Michael Haley; Facebook, December, 15, 2017. (link to source)
"I would caution against assuming that the decision to cancel the panel was because 'the Zionists' made them do it. The AAR [American Academy of Religion] executive committee's decision is theirs and theirs alone, whether it was motivated at least in part by pressure from right-wing supporters of the Israeli occupation, corporate interests impacted by BDS, Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists, supporters of Trump administration Middle East policy, or others opposed to human rights and international law."
Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, on the American Academy of Religion's cancellation of a panel on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement at its annual meeting; Facebook, November 17, 2017. (link to source)
"The New York Times today is integral to a massive Islamophobic machinery that marks Islam and Muslim as the diabolic enemy of history, of humanity, and of all manners and claims to a civilized life."
Hamid Dabashi, prof. of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, objecting to Asra Q. Nomani's New York Times blog, "Could This Be the Harvey Weinstein of Islam," on allegations of rape against Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan; "'The Harvey Weinstein of Islam' - Anyone?"; Al-Jazeera, October 23, 2017. (link to source)
"There is a temporal shift within the asphixatory control society from a Virilian narrative of increasing speed to other forms of algorithmic, parallel, distributed, and networked time, working through suspension between states and slow attenuation, in direct contrast to the always connected ideal. In fact, slow death itself is literalized as the slowing down of Palestinian life."
Jasbir Puar, associate professor of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University, in her new anti-Israel book, "The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability." (link to source)
"People who are . . . oppressors have no place in spaces where people need to be protected. So, the Know Your Rights Fair was right to not have a table for Hillel!"
Rabab Abdulhadi, director of San Francisco State University's Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative, contradicting SFSU's finding that the Jewish student group Hillel was "improperly excluded" from a campus civil rights information fair; American Thinker, October 7, 2017. (link to source)
"It's no shock, then, that Palestinians and their neighbours get salty whenever hearing the phrase 'Israeli hummus.' Using Arabic food as a symbol of Zionist identity hands over the day-to-day victuals of the native to the coloniser. It's a project of erasure, a portent of nonexistence, a promise of genocide."
Former academic Steven Salaita in "'Israeli' Hummus is Theft, Not Appropriation;" The New Arab, September 4, 2017. (link to source)
"In fact, we are all climate criminals and saboteurs. . . . We should be rapidly reducing our carbon footprint. We aren't. You're endangering your grandchildren."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, on the occasion of the first total solar eclipse to sweep across America in 99 years; "Why no Eclipse Denialists? The Same Science predicts Global Heating," Informed Comment, August 21, 2017. (link to source)
"Despite applying to positions on four continents, I was unable to find an academic job, so I no longer count myself among the professoriate. A number of colleagues have attempted to recruit me, but their efforts always get shut down by management. . . . I don't intend to slosh around in self-pity. . . . Zionists have worked overtime to incriminate me . . . ."
Steven Salaita, infamous for his vicious, vulgarity-laced anti-Semitic rants, announcing that he is leaving academe because he is unable to find academic employment after searching on four continents; Steven Salaita's Facebook page, July 22, 2017. (link to source)
"'What do the Israelis want?' I was asked the question again and again, with each questioner looking at me searchingly, sometimes imploringly, for an answer, for some insight they clearly felt that they didn't have. Why is Gaza being punished in so heartless a manner, and what does Israel truly hope to gain by it?"
Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, writing about a recent trip to Gaza while omitting the Hamas-led terrorism that has resulted in Israel's security measures; London Review of Books, June 15, 2017. (link to source)
"[W]e must, of course, remember that, as a fictional superhero, Wonder Woman predates the Zionist occupation and theft of Palestine. . . . But in this particular rendition, this specific Wonder Woman might have as well been commissioned by the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban and the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson together, putting their differences over Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton aside for the good cause of bringing US and Israel romantically together for the salvation of the world."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, on the film "Wonder Woman" starring Israeli actor Gal Gadot; Al-Jazeera, June 10, 2017. (link to source)
"I'm hoping that the Pentagon follows [Ariana] Grande's Twitter feed. Because she nailed it."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, encouraging the Pentagon to use pop singer Ariana Grande's statement after the Manchester attack, "We will not quit or operate in fear. We won't let this divide us. We won't let hate win," as a guide to fighting terrorism; The Nation, May 31, 2017. (link to source)
"The 59 who were injured in Manchester are getting top level medical treatment in the best hospitals. More than half a million terrorized people of Mosul, including thousands of children fleeing from the bombing campaign are sitting under the scorching sun, with little food and water, with no hope for the future except their faith, Islam."
Kaukab Siddique, an English professor at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, equating the suicide bombing outside a concert in Manchester, England that killed 22 and wounded at least 59, mostly children and teenagers, with the allied military campaign to end ISIS's occupation of Mosul, Iraq; Facebook, May 23, 2017. (link to source)
"The gas attack in Syria on April 4 consumed the world's attention and galvanized the Trump White House. . . . Yet the president and most of his party are committed to increasing the daily release of hundreds of thousands of tons of a far more deadly gas—carbon dioxide."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, in "The Other Poison Gas Killing Syrians: Carbon Dioxide Emissions"; The Nation, April 18, 2017. (link to source)
"Rasmea Odeh embodies the progressive left agenda, and in doing so she is also a lucid example of intersectional feminism, which accounts for womanhood as a multidimensional experience."
Noura Erakat, assistant professor of international studies at George Mason University, praising Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who awaits deportation after her U.S. citizenship was revoked for immigration fraud for concealing her 1970 conviction in Israel for two bombings that killed two people; Jezebel, March 24, 2017. (link to source)
"[Cary Nelson] stands in defense of a long-debunked notion of objective scholarship, which ultimately translates into an abdication of our professional and moral responsibility."
Neve Gordon, visiting prof. of politics and int'l studies at SOAS, Univ. of London, arguing (contra former AAUP president Cary Nelson) that the Middle East Studies Association should stop describing itself as "non-political" in its bylaws; Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2017. (link to source)
"In our neoliberal imperial age, believing in liberal democracy, women's rights, and sexual rights might very well lead, if not inspire and inform, anti-Islamic attitudes."
Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, in a February 16 lecture at Washington University in St. Louis; Student Life, February 20, 2017. (link to source)
"I don't think you can talk about slavery in Islam until you realize that there is no such thing as slavery. . . . Slavery cannot just be treated as a moral evil in and of itself. I don't think it's morally evil to own somebody because we own lots of people all around us. And we're owned by people."
Jonathan Brown, Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization and Director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, in a February 7 lecture at the International Institute of Islamic Thought; The Investigative Project on Terrorism, February 13, 2017. (link to source)
"[A]n active combat soldier, even if not in the field, can be killed."
Noura Erakat, assistant professor of international studies at George Mason University, on whether the four Israeli cadets killed and 15 wounded in a Palestinian truck-ramming terrorist attack in Jerusalem on January 8, 2017 were legitimate targets; The Algemeiner, January 10, 2017. (link to source)
"Palestinian violence is a byproduct that was set and situated upon them."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking at Zaytuna College; American Thinker, December 1, 2016. (link to source)
"[I]f the occupied Palestinians end up living in the hell of a decades-long Apartheid under the Israeli jackboot, then Camp David looks more and more like just a separate peace in which Egypt extricated itself from further confrontations with expansionist Israel, receiving back the Sinai, and leaving the poor weak Palestinians and Lebanese to their oppressive fate."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, on the 1979 Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt; Informed Comment, November 29, 2016. (link to source)
"They come in the middle of the night. They put up [sic] intimidation and run away, exactly like the Klan does, exactly like the Israeli military does that comes and raids Palestinians in the middle of the night!"
Rabab Abdulhadi, director of San Francisco State University's Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative, referring to her critics while speaking at the University of California, Berkeley's Third Annual International Day of Action for Palestine; October 27, 2016. (link to source)
"Peres was the last decent man to rise high in Israeli politics. His removal from the scene leaves the management of the Israeli government to racists, warmongers, war criminals, ethnic cleansers, militant colonizers, and generally arrogant pr!*ks and insufferable dou*#@bags."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, on the death of former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres; Informed Comment, September 28, 2016. (link to source)
"Most Jews are not Semites, and indeed many of them are from Europe."
John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, denying the widely acknowledged fact that most Jews around the world trace their origins to Israel and have a common ancestry; "Islamophobia in Focus: Muslims and the Media" conference, September 22, 2016. (link to source)
"Compared to the scale of death and destruction that the U.S. has unleashed on major cities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later Bashar al-Assad and his nemesis have visited upon Syria, the destruction of those two [World Trade Center] towers now appears as entirely negligible, even remembering them perhaps an insult to the memories of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings maimed and murdered and turned into hopeless refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.; Al-Jazeera, September 11, 2016. (link to source)
"The incident provides a window into everything that is wrong with the Israeli occupation: the cycles of revenge killing, the settler colonialism enabled by Americans, Palestinian despair that turns to violence, and the takeover of Jewish values by extremist ideologies."
Nina Tannenwald, director of the International Relations Program at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, on the Palestinian terrorist stabbing murder of 13-year-old Israeli girl Hallel Yaffa Ariel while she slept; "It's the Occupation, Stupid," The Providence Journal, July 14, 2016. (link to source)
"Stoking anti-Muslim sentiments in the U.S. and Europe is believed by those at the hub of the Islamophobia network to make Israel indispensable for the long-term clash of civilization underway and the open-ended war on terror, where Islam is identified as the enemy."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, in "Islamophobia: Israel's Last Frontier to Rescue Its Image!"; Daily Sabah, July 7, 2016. (link to source)
"It is all too easy, I fear, to envision a similar set of hearings designed to bring out the supposed terrorist connections of those scholars of the Middle East who have already been singled out as insufficiently supportive of the current Israeli government."
Ellen Schrecker, professor of history emerita at Yeshiva University, warning that the U.S. Congress may restore powers similar to those exercised by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to scrutinize and possibly punish scholars who are critical of Israel as it did pro-communist professors during the McCarthy era; Chronicle of Higher Education, June 30, 2016. (link to source)
"The 1,400-year-old Islamic faith in itself has little to do with the modern jihadist movement."
Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, addressing Omar Siddiqui Mateen's terrorist attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; Steamboat Today, June 15, 2016. (link to source)
"Assemblyman Richard Bloom, the bill's author, has falsely claimed that such tactics, when targeting the Israeli occupation, are being used to 'attack Jews' and 'destroy the state of Israel.' In reality, the leading endorsers of such boycotts and divestment have included major peace and human rights organization. . . . They are not singling out Israel, much less wanting to destroy that country or to 'attack Jews.'"
Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, arguing against the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions of Recognized Sovereign Nations or Peoples Act, passed by the California State Assembly and now before the Senate, that would penalize companies that engage in BDS against any country; Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 3, 2016. (link to source)
"Before I get started, I just wanted to say that we are meeting on stolen indigenous people's land. That's really important to acknowledge."
Rabab Abdulhadi, director of San Francisco State University's Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative, speaking at the University of California, Berkeley's Seventh Annual International Islamophobia Conference; Independent Journal Review, April 22, 2016. (link to source)
"It's a feminist idea, based on intersectional feminist analysis that views gender oppression as systemic and intertwined with other forms of systemic oppression. Postcolonial feminism addresses specifically feminist critiques of settler colonialism. . . . If we re-conceptualize the injustice of Palestine, and reframe it by taking an intersectional look at multiple oppressions and multiple struggles, then it makes sense."
Simona Sharoni, professor of gender and women's studies at State University of New York, Plattsburgh, on likening Israeli "occupation" to campus rape; AlterNet, April 18, 2016. (link to source)
"ISIL is U.S. and EU militarism by other means. . . . The victims of U.S. and EU invasions, occupations, bombings, drone strikes, and deadly sanctions are identical with the victims of ISIL attacks. . . . 'Terror' and 'War on Terror' are the mirror images of each other."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, responding to the ISIS terrorist attacks on Brussels; Al-Jazeera, March 22, 2016. (link to source)
"[T]he U.S. political process is an Israel-occupied zone."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, in "US Presidential Election: The Pandering to Israel Festival"; Daily Sabah, March 16, 2016. (link to source)
"It is not yet known whether this was the first use of a robot to monitor Israel-Palestine discourse on campus. It is no coincidence that a right-wing organization would deploy the newest form of surveillance at an event sponsored by Middle East Studies at Brown University. . . . The department, it appears, is being targeted because it is promoting the study of Palestine and Palestinians."
Open Hillel statement on the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs (SWU) sending a robot topped by an iPad, which featured the face of SWU northeast executive director Shahar Azani, to a Brown University Middle East Studies-sponsored event to interact with attendees and foster greater political diversity; Jewschool, March 6, 2016. (link to source)
"Israeli complaints that Gaza is controlled by the party-militia, Hamas, freely elected in 2006, and that Hamas fires (mostly small, home-made and ineffectual) rockets into Israel, are irrelevant to the requirement that civilian noncombatants in Gaza be provided with basic staples by the occupying authority."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, in "Flint and Gaza: Water Crises of Colonialism"; The Nation, February 3, 2016. (link to source)
"[ISIS is without] historical or intellectual substance, an Islam that bears no resemblance to the Islam that it is trying to replace or the Islam it is seeking to recreate."
Hasan Azad, a doctoral candidate in Islamic studies at Columbia University, speaking at an annual event to honor Martin Luther King Jr. in Philipstown, New York; Philipstown.info, January 22, 2016. (link to source)
"Definitely the mosque or masjid has a role to play [in the radicalization of Muslims], the imams — the community leaders in the Muslim community — have roles to play but the wider society also has a role to play. And unless and until we can accept that and assume that responsibility as societies that we all belong to, I think it might continue to happen."
Zaid Shakir, co-founder of Zaytuna (Islamic) College in Berkeley, California, on what radicalizes Muslims in the West; CBC News, December 24, 2015. (link to source)
"The yellow Star of David with the word Muslim written on it is a symbol that my students and I wear with utmost respect for the memory of the Jewish lives lost."
Bahar Davary, a religious studies professor at the University of San Diego, who, along with her students, protested "Islamophobia" by wearing yellow star badges--like those the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust--inscribed with the word "Muslim"; Washington Free Beacon, December 18, 2015. (link to source)
"As I surveyed the scene in Paris, after Paris, through Paris, there was a reminder of healing on a scale that I could wrap my arms around, and hold tight. This week it came to me through flower power. The healing power of flowers. . . . Flower power was on display in Paris."
Omid Safi, director of the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University, on the aftermath of the ISIS attacks on Paris; "The Power of Flower in a New World," On Being, December 3, 2015. (link to source)
"We have no choice. We are political by being nonpolitical. And we are political by being political. That is the quandary we are facing."
Jens Hanssen, associate professor of Arab civilization at the University of Toronto-Mississauga, on why he believes the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) should support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel; Inside Higher Education, November 23, 2015. (link to source)
"Yes, the members of ISIS come from Muslim backgrounds. No, their actions cannot be justified on the basis of the 1400 years of Islamic tradition. Every serious scholar of Islam has confirmed this clearly, and unambiguously. ISIS is about as Muslim as the KKK is Christian."
Omid Safi, director of the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University, reacting to the Paris attacks carried out by ISIS, in "Where Does It Hurt, Oh City of Light"; On Being, November 15, 2015. (link to source)
"They make it sound as if the Palestinians are attacking Israelis just because they are Jewish. It just happened that those who came from Europe to settle in an already inhabited homeland happened to be Jewish. What do you want the Palestinians to do?"
As'ad AbuKhalil, a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus, on the current wave of stabbing attacks by Arabs against Jews in Israel; Angry Arab blog, October 22, 2015. (link to source)
"The vast majority of people in the Muslim world are like Americans."
John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, speaking on "Building Bridges: Protecting Pluralism, Ending Islamophobia" at Allegheny College; The Campus, October 1, 2015. (link to source)
"[H]ow do we know what we know, how do we think, in what terms, and do we really read what we read, or do we assimilate what we read backward into what we already know? It is an ontologically predicated epistemic question I ask, rhetorically, but of course deadly seriously."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, discussing his book, "Can Non-Europeans Think?"; Jadaliyya, September 16, 2015. (link to source)
"The Iran of today is no longer the Iran of 1978-1979, and the United States is no longer the unrivaled military empire in the world. Beyond the realm of ideological shouting, both countries have come to realize the substantial need for mutually beneficial relationships."
Omid Safi, director of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center, on the Obama administration's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran's nuclear program; Duke Today, September, 3, 2015. (link to source)
"To assure its audience that [The Daily] Beast was doing a good job, it also brought in the five year old story that I am a Holocaust Denier. . . . Dear Beast, I am not a scholar of the Holocaust story, but specialists like [published Holocaust deniers] Germar Rudolf, David Irving, Prof. [Arthur] Butz, Bradley [Smith] and many others have studied the Jewish claims. If Beast has not read any of them, don't try to engage with me. I have."
Kaukab Siddique, an English professor at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, attempting to rebut a Daily Beast article on his anti-Semitic, anti-gay, sexist Facebook commentary and, in the process, his history of Holocaust denial; New Trend Magazine, July 22, 2015. (link to source)
"If you look at the constituencies that Iran supports in these various arenas, we may want to label them terrorists, but the reality is, these are unavoidable constituencies in their societies with real and legitimate grievances. And what Iran does more than anything else is to help these communities organize in various ways to press their grievances more effectively."
Flynt Leverett, professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University, discussing the new U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement with Democracy Now!, July 14, 2015. (link to source)
"By easing sanctions and giving Iranians . . . access to the rest of the world, a nuclear deal may accomplish what all Iranians in Southern California . . . dream of: an Iran that is a responsible actor on the global stage, that respects the rights of its citizens and that has warm relations with the rest of the world."
Reza Aslan, University of California, Riverside creative writing professor, on the Obama administration's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran's nuclear program; "What Do Iranian-Americans Think of the Nuclear Deal?" The New York Times, July 3, 2015. (link to source)
"This group [ISIS] does not emerge out of a sudden Islamic tendency for beheading. . . . Some of this intense fetish for violence is coming from the leaks of torture that are coming out of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Some of it is coming out of Hollywood, particularly the images of violence against Iraqi bodies [American Sniper]."
Sherene Seikaly, an assistant professor in modern Middle East history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at a UCSB talk titled, "ISIS: A Historical Perspective"; The Bottom Line, May 27, 2015. (link to source)
"There is no more anti-Semitism in the West anymore. The 'Jewish Question' has been settled with equality."
Anne Norton, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking at the launch of Georgetown University's Bridges Initiative, a project of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding devoted to "protecting pluralism – ending Islamophobia"; FrontPage Magazine, May 20, 2015. (link to source)
"To understand how it feels to be a Palestinian, you need to think like a particle physicist, not a social scientist."
Mark LeVine, professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of California, Irvine, in "The Quantum Mechanics of Israeli Totalitarianism"; Al-Jazeera, May 7, 2015. (link to source)
"Saudi women are pretty pampered. They don't drive; they have drivers and you might think they are deprived of one thing, but they are provided with another. Saudi women are treated as queens in their homes."
Ahmed Abou-Zaid, an economics professor at Eastern Illinois University, speaking on the "Conversation on Middle Eastern Culture" panel; The Daily Eastern News, April 16, 2015. (link to source)
"It would be easy to consider the barbarisms of ISIL's various incarnations from North Africa to the Middle East and imagine some kind of darkness at the heart of Islam that could explain the group's obscene violence. . . . ISIL's rise and brutality are not accidental. They mark the arrival of a new kind of blowback that seeks, through violence every bit as vicious as the kind long used and supported by the West, to complete the revolutionaries' call to 'take down the system.'"
Mark LeVine, professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of California, Irvine, in "ISIL's New Model of Resistance"; Al-Jazeera, March 31, 2015. (link to source)
"Islam has been around for 1,500 years. Why no suicide attacks before now? They are telling us over and over again — it's because of occupation."
Robert Pape, University of Chicago political science professor; "Lecture Explores the Strategy Behind ISIS, Suicide Attacks," Emory University News Center, March 30, 2015. (link to source)
"This moment for American Muslims must be contextualized and considered with an important event and circumstances some 50 years ago, the march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, comparing the first accreditation of an Islamic college in the U.S., Zaytuna College in Berkeley, to the historic civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama that led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act; Turkey Agenda, March 14, 2015. (link to source)
"Like Europe, liberalism's external others turn out to be internal to it, though the ruse of externalizing them as outsiders intends to hide the operation of projecting them as an outside so that liberalism's inside can be defined as their opposite, as their superior. Edward Said understood this well."
Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, on his new book, "Islam in Liberalism;" interview, "New Texts Out Now: Joseph Massad, 'Islam in Liberalism,'" Jadaliyya, March 11, 2015. (link to source)
"We know there's no such thing as truth and lies. It's more complicated than that."
Lila Abu-Lughod, an anthropology professor at Columbia University and author of "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?," responding to criticism that her book spreads falsehoods in blaming the oppression of Muslim women not on religion, but on government, poverty, and war; The Columbia University Independent, February 16, 2015. (link to source)
"I think one of the attractive aspects of Islamic politics is that presenting yourself as a savior, as the great man is distasteful. This doesn't mean that there aren't people who do it. I can think of certain Muslims who believe they are the great man right now and spend a great deal of time telling everybody in the world how great they are and building a home appropriate to that greatness. But the fact of the matter is that there is a current of modesty in Islamic politics that I rather appreciate."
Richard Bulliet, a professor of Middle East history at Columbia University, in an interview with Today's Zaman; January 31, 2015. (link to source)
"Islam has been a great civilization which has been haunted for centuries by populations that were not Muslim."
Thoraya Boumehdi, an Arabic instructor at the Stanford Language Center, speaking on a panel titled, "Terror, Freedom, Blasphemy: Reflections on Citizenship in Our Times"; Stanford University; January 30, 2015. (link to source)
"Maybe the staff at Charlie Hebdo would be alive if George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney hadn't modeled for the Kouashi brothers how you take what you want and rub out people who get in your way."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, blaming the Bush/Cheney Administration for the January 7, 2015 terrorist attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine whose editors were murdered by radical Muslims Sharif and Said Kouashi for depicting and mocking Islam's prophet Muhammad; Informed Comment, January 8, 2015. (link to source)
"[T]he Islamophobic industry in Europe and the U.S. are happier the more such murderers in Paris, Yemen, Iraq, and Nigeria authenticate with violent actions their distorted and racist views of Islam and the Prophet."
Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, in "Charlie Hebdo, and Murder in the Name of Islam?"; Turkey Agenda, January 8, 2015. (link to source)
"Similar to pink-washing or green-washing, Israel has been working diligently to appeal to progressive and leftist groups with its growing vegan movement. Enticing vegans from all over the world with a myriad of vegan eateries, the publicization of the Israeli vegan movement is one of the latest ploys to conceal the violence embedded in the occupation of Palestine. . . . [T]he Israeli vegan-washing campaign is yet another arm of the settler-colonial state's campaign to present itself as progressive and ultimately, as superior to Palestine."
Shawndeez Davari Jadali, a research assistant for the University of California-Berkeley's Islamophobia Studies Journal, in "Vegan Killers: Israeli Vegan-Washing and the Manipulation of Morality"; Turkey Agenda, December 19, 2014. (link to source)
"It has been proven that among all area studies associations and even among the academic professional associations, MESA [Middle East Studies Association] is the most conservative and the most establishment. It will stigmatize MESA--it should--for years to come that Asian Studies and American Studies associations were ahead of MESA in adopting BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel]. . . . There is a clear Zionist or Zionist-fearing mood and currents in MESA."
As'ad AbuKhalil, a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus, commenting on the 2014 annual convention of the notoriously politicized Middle East Studies Association (MESA), where members voted overwhelmingly for a resolution that sets the stage for MESA to adopt BDS in 2015; Angry Arab Blog, November 25, 2014. (link to source)
"Civility is the language of genocide. It's inherently a deeply violent word. It's a word whose connotations can be seen as nothing if not as racist."
Steven Salaita, a former Virginia Tech University English professor whose offer of a position at the University of Illinois was withdrawn, speaking on the "Scholars Under Attack" panel at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association; Jewish Telegraph Agency, November 11, 2014. (link to source)
"It's just a way of beating up on the Muslims in the UK. . . . Cameron is grandstanding about this and it's Islamophobia, it's just racism. . . . It's a kind of political hysteria, it's racism, and it's unworthy. I think David Cameron, who has an Oxford education, should be ashamed of himself."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, on British Prime Minister David Cameron addressing the security threat posed by British citizens joining ISIS; California State University, Long Beach, October 16, 2014. (link to source)
"It would not be a stretch to say that the United States is actually a greater threat to peace and stability in the region than ISIS."
Musa al-Gharbi, an instructor in the department of government and public service at the University of Arizona and a research fellow with the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts, in "How Much Moral High Ground Does the US Have Over ISIS?"; Truthout, October 13, 2014. (link to source)
"[The Islamic State] is as real a form of expression of Islam as the violent and chauvinist Israeli settler movement is to Judaism or as extreme Hindu nationalism, Rahkine Buddhism and militant Christianity are to their religions in India, Myanmar and the United States."
Mark LeVine, professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of California, Irvine, in "The Falsehoods in President Obama's Speech on the Islamic State"; Aljazeera , September 13, 2014. (link to source)
"However fitfully, America recognizes its race problems. Israelis are still living in the American 1950s, while Gazans remain trapped in a ghetto in which no Ferguson resident would want to live."
Mark LeVine, professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of California, Irvine, drawing a parallel between the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Operation Protective Edge, Israel's military response to Hamas rocket fire; "Ferguson is Not Gaza . . . Yet," Al-Jazeera, August 18, 2014. (link to source)
"I strongly suspect that Zionist organizations pressured the university to fire Professor Salaita. . . . This behavior is undemocratic and cult-like, and it is unacceptable in a Liberal society. We also see Jewish nationalists on the bench, in public office, and in high administrative positions who misuse their public position to engage in a sectarian vendetta so as to protect Israel from criticism or to punish its critics."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, on Steven Salaita, who was offered a position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that was rescinded following publicity on his inflammatory, anti-Israel Twitter posts; Informed Comment, August 7, 2014. (link to source)
"[T]hey will bomb Gaza back to the Stone Age they said, and that they did--and yet there are very few spots on planet earth today nobler to the human spirit of resistance to tyranny and injustice than Gaza--now held like a shining jewel on the loving ring of humanity around the globe--I kiss that noble ground and hold it dearer than cities full of ignoble postmodern architecture built on the stolen land of other people."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, referring to Israel's Operation Protective Edge; Facebook, August 6, 2014. (link to source)
"Ending Zionism is a feminist and a reproductive justice issue."
Nada Elia, global and gender studies professor at Seattle's Antioch University, in "Ending Zionism is a feminist issue"; The Electronic Intifada, July 24, 2014. (link to source)
"Because of its relevance and discursive power in so many domains, the study of Islam has become indispensable to the study of what it means to be human. The most enduring questions in the liberal arts inevitably involve Islam and Muslims these days. The very definition of freedom, goodness, beauty, and justice invoke Islam and Muslims in one way or another."
Edward E. Curtis IV, Millennium Chair of Liberal Arts and professor of religious studies at at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, in "Ode to Islamic Studies: Its Allure, Its Danger, Its Power"; Bulletin for the Study of Religion, May 2, 2014. (link to source)
"Muslims as enemy Others as queerphilia xenophobia. By that, I mean in which their queerphobia is displaced onto the enemy Others, who they now claim are the queerphobic ones. . . . Queers are now shifted to this position which under colonialism belonged to women: that is, queers are constructed as either silent self-hating collaborators with the presumed straight and queerphobic collective enemy Other camp, or imagined as enemy Other's victims requiring dominant saviors."
Paola Bacchetta, associate professor of gender and women's studies at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking at the Fifth Annual International Islamophobia Conference; UC Berkeley, April 17, 2014. (link to source)
"Historians, what they really do is erase. That is their number one job."
Beshara Doumani, director of Middle East studies at Brown University, speaking at "The Settler Colonial Paradigm: Debating Gershon Shafir's 'Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict' on its 25th Anniversary"; University of California, Los Angeles, April 10, 2014. (link to source)
"They're supporting Israel in order to destroy the world."
Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at San Francisco State University (SFSU), describing Christian Zionists during the "Report and Discussion From Members of the North American Based Academic and Labor Delegation to Palestine 2014" at SFSU; ProIsraelBayBloggers, March 14, 2014. (link to source)
"I voted for President Obama in two elections hoping that he would uphold the legacy of the real 'Jedi order' of civil and human rights advocates. But alas, it is a loss and a profound disappointment that he opted for the allure of the 'Dark Side.'"
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies and director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, using a "Star Wars" analogy to describe President Barack Obama's adoption of "drone warfare" in the war on terror; Al-Jazeera, February 16, 2014. (link to source)
"[I]t seems to me that if one cannot criticise Israel's use of the holocaust without condemning anti-Semitism at the same time, lest the anti-Semites use one's criticisms to justify their rhetorical or physical attacks on Jews, it stands to reason that given the history of the use of the holocaust to justify Israeli and Zionist crimes, one should not be able to speak about the holocaust without condemning Israeli and Zionist crimes either, lest one's invocation of the holocaust be used by Zionists to justify their on-going crimes against the Palestinians."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, in "Jewish suffering, Palestinian suffering," Al-Jazeera, December 3, 2013. (link to source)
"The stage will be set for ruthless oppression, mass mobilization, riots, brutality, terror, Jewish and Arab emigration, and rising tides of international condemnation of Israel."
Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Chair in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, describing what he sees as "likely scenarios" that will impel the implementation of his proposal to abandon the two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict; "Two-State Illusion," New York Times, September 14, 2013. (link to source)
"The utilization of Islamophobic and 'war on terror' tropes in Egypt are reflective of the global post-colonial epistemological trend that problematise Islam, as a religion, and Muslims, when seeking political agency grounded in a living tradition in the 'modern' nation-state."
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies and director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, on the Egyptian military's "Islamophobia" towards the Muslim Brotherhood; "Egypt, the 'War on Terrorism' and Islamophobia," Al-Jazeera, August 20, 2013. (link to source)
"Rachid Ghannouchi, the spiritual leader of the Tunisian Islamists, has emerged as the closest thing to an Islamic Nelson Mandela."
Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of Law at Harvard University, comparing Rashid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia's ruling Islamist party Ennahda, to South African anti-apartheid activist and politician Nelson Mandela; "Don't Blame Islam for the Failure of Egypt's Democracy," Bloomberg News, July 5, 2013. (link to source)
"Lack of evidence does not mean the lack of existence of Islamophobia."
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies and director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, referring to FBI statistics showing that hate crimes against Muslims have remained relatively low and have trended downward since 2001; "Bias Against Muslims Rampant in 'Liberal' California," Electronic Intifada, June 25, 2013. (link to source)
"President Obama visited the historic gate at Berlin Wall to make a series of comments on the 50 [sic] anniversary of JFK's famed 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech. . . . As you stood on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall, we too invite you to stand on the other side of another wall, the segregation wall in Palestine/Israel. Mr. President, tear down that wall."
Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, mistaking the Brandenburg Gate, at which President Obama spoke on June 19, for the Berlin Wall; "Beyond the Berlin Wall: 'Mr. Obama: Tear Down All These Walls," at the web log, "What Would Muhammad Do?," June 20, 2013. (link to source)
"How we as a nation move forward is critical. . . . Do we turn into an angry mob accusing all Muslims of a crime that two men committed? Do we turn this into an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant hysteria? . . . Do we want to be heroes, like the ones that put their own lives on the line. . . . Or do we give in to unjustified bloodlust?"
Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in "10 Essential Points About the Boston Marathon Bombers, Islam, and America," Religion News Service, April 20, 2013. (link to source)
"What happened in Boston is undeniably important and newsworthy. But so is what happened in Iraq and Syria. It is not the American people's fault that they have a capitalist news model, where news is often carried on television to sell advertising."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, criticizing the U.S. media for devoting more coverage to the Boston bombings than to same day bombings in Iraq and government air strikes in Syria; Informed Comment, April 16, 2013. (link to source)
"The imperial complicity of the Gay International, including its Arab members, lies in their calling upon all Arabs who refuse the imperial hegemony of the hetero-homo binary to unlearn and unthink the way they desire, and that they learn and think their desires along the lines of the hetero-homo binary, indeed that the way they exist and the way they are, their very ontology, is a form of false consciousness, which they must shed, as the truth of who they are, according to this logic, lies in their adoption of the imperial hetero-homo binary through which they must apprehend themselves and their desires, which will lead, according to the Gay International, to their emancipation."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, in an interview titled "The Empire of Sexuality" conducted by Félix Boggio Éwanjé-Épée and Stella Magliani-Belkacem; Jadaliyya, March 5, 2013. (link to source)
"If you get a B.A., you get a cubicle for your job when you graduate. If you get a Master's, you get a cubicle with a window. And if you get a PhD, you get a cubicle with a window and a bathroom."
Hatem Bazian, senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of California, Berkeley, lamenting the fact that college graduates end up seeking out a profession rather than becoming activists; "SHHHH! Don't Talk About Palestine: Chuck Hagel, Judith Butler, and the Israel Lobby's Threat to Free Speech on Our Campus," UC Berkeley, February 26, 2013. (link to source)
"I remember the very first time we met Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas. And he said to us that he and his colleagues pray everyday that they can see facts as they are. And I always thought that is the ultimate realists' prayer: God give me the strength to see facts as they are."
Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran Project at the New America Foundation and professor of international affairs at Penn State University, speaking at an event for him and his wife (Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of Strategic Energy and Global Analysis and Senior Lecturer at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs)'s new book, "Going to Tehran," at the Center for the National Interest on February 21, 2013. (link to source)
"Taliban were brutal, in their order, in their rule, but at least they brought stability and order."
Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies and director of the Middle East studies program at the University of San Francisco, condemning U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in an interview with the Iranian regime-run PressTV; December 13, 2012. (link to source)
"I have often fantasized about my feelings as I board the plane to Palestine after the demise of Israel. How I would relish looking at all Israeli terrorist leaders behind bars. Hell, I would volunteer to serve as judge, jury, and guardsman."
As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, in a web log entry titled, "Fantasy"; Angry Arab Blog, November 1, 2012. (link to source)
"Just as Israeli racist representations of Arabs are a reflection of an overall Israeli Jewish structural racism that pervades every aspect of Israeli Jewish society, American media racism is also just a branch of a larger American racism and racialism on which much of American culture, history, and national identity is based."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, in 'Homeland,' Obama's Show; MWC News, October 25, 2012. (link to source)
"[Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] is a pretty rational leader. He is not this crazed individual that the Western media tries to portray. He does have controversial views, and certainly gives justifications for that, but he was careful to support his arguments with facts."
Ghassan El-Eid, a professor of political science at Central Connecticut State University who brought twelve of his students to New York to dine with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the United Nations General Assembly in September, 2012; The Central Recorder, October 24, 2012. (link to source)
"U.S. officials have been really insulting my intelligence all week with talk of the 'freedom of speech' that we have here in the U.S. that Muslims don't understand. . . . They understand that the U.S. government has made it illegal for anyone to express support for Hamas and Hizbullah in the U.S. Muslim[s] do understand that the U.S. has banned TV channels from the U.S. because they deemed them offensive to Israel. . . . We remember that the Bush administration asked all U.S. news media after Sept. 11 to refrain from airing any Bin Laden tapes."
As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, citing the banning of terrorist propaganda outlets such as Hezbollah's Al-Manar and Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as examples of free speech being impeded in the U.S.; Angry Arab Blog, September 17, 2012. (link to source)
"Freedom of speech falls alongside other freedoms to live and be free from bombs falling on people's heads and to be free from occupations. . . . I will take free speech comments seriously when others take people's freedom of life and dignity and to be free from occupation just as seriously."
Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in "Reaction to Anti-Islam Film Fuels Debate on Free Speech Versus Hate Speech," CNN's Belief Blog, September 12, 2012. (link to source)
"Washington has . . . been unable to restore stability, which, in US terms, is defined as dictatorial regimes that are staffed by obedient servants to American diktat and its junior partner in the region, the Jewish settler-colony."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, on instability in the Middle East in the wake of the "Arab spring"; Al-Jazeera, July 17, 2012. (link to source)
"The Muslim Brotherhood is being positioned by the American Right as the new bogie man, in their quest to make America and the world Muslim rein."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, in a web log entry titled, "Fox Smears Mursi with 'Jerusalem Capital' Lie (Murphy)"; June 25, 2012. (link to source)
"Today, Egyptians are the light of our world: instead of discouraging them, finding fault with them, the world must stand up in reverence and awe, salute them and happily sing with them in humility: 'Tahya Masr wa Tahya al-Huriyya, Thwarah Thwarah hatta al-Nasr, fi umma al-Dunya Diya / Long Live Egypt, and Long Live Freedom, Revolution, Revolution until Victory, in Egypt, the Mother of the World!'"
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, in "The Mother of the World: The Birth of Egypt's Democracy"; Al-Jazeera, June 13, 2012. (link to source)
"What if Afghan women were coming to the West to save American women? What if Afghan women in burkas hearts' bled for women in this part of the world?"
Munir Jiwa, founding director of the Center for Islamic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and assistant professor of Islamic studies at the Graduate Theological Union, discussing his opposition to Western intervention in the Muslim world in the interest of protecting women's rights; UC Berkeley "Critical Discourses on Islamophobia: Symbols, Images, & Representations" conference, April 20, 2012. (link to source)
"The flaw in the west's case [for Iran to abandon its nuclear program] is that it is hypocritical as long as the Israelis have some 400 nuclear warheads. Asking Iran to surrender even a virtual nuclear capacity when its rival has a real one makes for difficult strategic calculations. . . . Iran doesn't even have the nukes to give up, and probably cannot have them for a good ten years even if they decided they wanted them, which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei emphatically says they do not."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, in "China Hopeful Iran Will Compromise with the UNSC"; Informed Comment, April 14, 2012. (link to source)
"Campus Watch still exists?! Someone just told me they are still peddling poison about events at UCLA."
Saree Makdisi, professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and nephew of Edward Said, writing on his Twitter account, March 4, 2012. (link to source)
"Let us pause and recall that it is the United States that is the largest producer of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons on the face of the planet. And recall that the United States is the only country — so far, and God-willing, ever — to have dropped not one but two nuclear weapons on another population. And that our "democratic ally in the region" Israel, which is doing more warmongering than anyone else to drive this mad slide towards a war on Iran, is already in possession of over 200 nuclear warheads."
Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in "Is Iran Really a Threat?"; God's Politics, a blog of the online journal Sojourners, February 7, 2012. (link to source)
"I'm uncomfortable with Ahmadinejad's rhetoric. But the person I'm more concerned about is Netanyahu, because his track record is that he not only says but he does."
John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, equating Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu; The Irish Times, January 28, 2012. (link to source)
"[About] those firecrackers from Hamas [fired] at a town in occupied Palestine: You will notice there were like ten injured and sometimes they had shocks . . . they actually list the injured; they [listed] those whose feelings were hurt; those who were startled. This war crimes thing is for victimhood reputation."
As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and a research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, discussing rockets fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza into southern Israel at a "teach-in" at the University of California, Berkeley, on November 12, 2011. (link to source)
"Religion is not just about praying . . . it's about manifesting justice. . . . If Moses, Muhammed, and Jesus come today, would they be a CEO or would they be here in tents with the people protesting?"
Hatem Bazian, senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at the University of California, Berkeley, delivering a "Solidarity Jummah Prayer" at the Occupy Oakland encampment; Bay Area Muslim Community Organizing Network, YouTube.com, October 28, 2011. (link to source)
"Holocaust denial is a form of protest."
Gilbert Achcar, professor of development studies and international relations at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies and author of "The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives," speaking October 20, 2011, at the University of California, Berkeley. (link to source)
"Palestinians are routinely asked for their IDs . . . in Jewish areas and businesses. . . . This gate-keeping—a kind of invisible, internal Apartheid wall — is considered necessary because of the Palestinians' cultural characteristic of hating Jews."
Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, a visiting scholar in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, inadvertently alluding to Palestinian anti-Semitism as the root cause of Israel's security measures at the first annual Students for Justice in Palestine national conference in October 2011; New Voices Magazine, October 15, 2011. (link to source)
"We have a very skewed definition of what's terrorist. We had a war between--war in which Israel waged on Gaza in 2008, 2009. There were 1,400 people killed in Gaza. There were 13 Israelis killed, and we castigate Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think...that's an American political determination of what is terrorist, unfortunately."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, responding to the statement, "Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department," made by host Neil Conan on the National Public Radio show, "Talk of the Nation"; transcript, September 19, 2011. (link to source)
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's repeated insistence that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state is entirely at odds with the principles of the modern-day United States and a throwback to an era in which the U.S. was considered a white state."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, upset that Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. visited Israel and urged Palestinian leaders to recognize it "as the homeland of the Jewish people"; Chicago Tribune, August 31, 2011. (link to source)
"It seems to me clear that the Bush White House was upset by my blogging of the Iraq War, in which I was using Arabic and other primary sources, and which contradicted the propaganda efforts of the administration attempting to make the enterprise look like a wild shining success."
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, in a web log entry titled, "Ret'd. CIA Official Alleges Bush White House Used Agency to 'Get' Cole"; June 16, 2011. (link to source)
"In his speech to Congress, Prime Minister Netanyahu correctly diagnosed the situation on the ground. He declared: 'Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state.' It is the establishment of a Jewish settler colony that the Palestinians must accept to ensure a future for Jewish children and terminate a future for Palestinian children. Indeed it is precisely the refusal of Arabs to adopt Arabopedophobia that is the biggest impediment to peace in the region."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, in his essay, "Are Palestinian Children Less Worthy?"; Al Jazeera, May 30, 2011. (link to source)
"Being a Muslim in the United States is another form of torture, a psychological torture, an emotional torture, and it's just getting worse."
Abdullah Antepli, Duke University's first Muslim chaplain, speaking March 26, 2011, at the Duke Divinity School conference "Toward a Moral Consensus against Torture." (link to source)
"I had an unexpected surprise when I showed up in Madison, Wisconsin, last week. As a Wisconsin resident, I had gone to join statewide demonstrations against the newly elected Republican governor Scott Walker's bill proposing to outlaw collective bargaining for most public employees. There, in the capital, I found the seeds of a revolution against Orientalism."
Heidi Morrison, assistant professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, comparing the public union protests in Wisconsin to the protests against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt; "Down With Hosni Walker," Middle East Online, February 28, 2011. (link to source)
"The Muslim Brothers began in the 1930s as a legalist, anti-colonialist and nonviolent movement that claimed legitimacy for armed resistance in Palestine against Zionist expansionism during the period before World War II. The writings from between 1930 and 1945 of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Brotherhood, show that he opposed colonialism and strongly criticized the fascist governments in Germany and Italy. . . . Al-Banna's objective was to found an 'Islamic state' based on gradual reform, beginning with popular education and broad-based social programs."
Tariq Ramadan, Swiss Islam scholar and grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, whitewashing the Islamist group's origins and goals; the New York Times, February 8, 2011. (link to source)
"Given the history of Mossad bombings of Egyptian post offices, cinemas, cultural centers, and train stations in the 1950s, and Mossad bombing operations across the Arab world that have never ceased to the present (the Mossad has always had a flair for car bombings), it would be important to investigate possible or even potential links between the Mossad operatives and the church bombers."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, suggesting that the Mossad was behind the December 31, 2010 bombing of a Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt, that killed 21 people; in Al-Ahram, January 7, 2011. (link to source)
"The alternative to the peace process is resistance in all its forms, including violence. I believe that if the Americans and Israelis maintain their conduct, it will lead us to confrontation. The only thing that prevents this confrontation now is the exaggerated leniency of the Palestinian leadership, which exposes its people to danger."
Tamim Al-Barghouthi, visiting assistant professor of politics at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, speaking on Al-Jazeera TV December 14, 2010. (link to source)
"If there's anyone who deserves the next Nobel Peace Prize more than the courageous American soldier, Bradley Manning, who is alleged to have given the documents to Wikileaks in the first place, I'd like to know."
Mark LeVine, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and senior visiting researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden, in his op-ed, "Wikileaks: Call of Duty"; Aljazeera, December 9, 2010. (link to source)
"There's no document that says Ben Gurion said 'Expel all the Palestinians,' but I'm not sure you need one. There's also no paper from Hitler saying 'kill all the Jews' ... The point is, you don't always need documentary evidence to draw conclusions."
Zachary Lockman, professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, during a discussion at NYU's Carter Journalism Institute, November 3, 2010. (link to source)
"This is actually a concerted act by the extreme right wing aligned with Israel to destroy someone who spoke out against them . . . I see this as a tremendous dumbing down of the discourse."
Kaukab Siddique, associate professor of English and journalism at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, responding to the outcry over his call for the destruction of Israel at a September 3, 2010, rally in Washington as well as his history of Holocaust denial; Inside Higher Education, October 26, 2010. (link to source)
"[F]or a 'Middle East peace process' to have any chance of working, the Islamic Republic of Iran needs to be at least an indirect party. Of course, Iranian officials have said over a number of years that...the Islamic Republic is not prepared to recognize a Zionist state."
Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran Project at the New America Foundation and professor of international affairs at Penn State University, and Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of Strategic Energy and Global Analysis and Senior Lecturer at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, writing on "The Obama Administration, Iran, and Middle East Peacemaking," at their web site, The Race for Iran; September 6, 2010. (link to source)
"It wasn't the 21-year-old Michael Enright who drunkenly slashed his New York city cab driver after asking 'Are you Muslim?' It was the Republican National Committee. . . . Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio may as well have kept Enwright in their basements in chains and whipped him into a frenzy as to spew their hatred on the airwaves."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, in a web log entry titled, "Republican National Committee Slashes New York Muslim Cabbie," August 25, 2010. (link to source)
"Most of the scholars I know who have spent their adult lives studying, living and working in the Arab/Muslim world have no desire to 'contribute to America's defence' in an unending global war; precisely because...they understand how false the premises of that war are, and how dangerous and unreliable are its goals."
Mark LeVine, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, in "Understanding the Muslim World," Aljazeera.net, August 3, 2010. (link to source)
"We will never see a viable Palestinian state created and the United States and Israel will work arm-in-arm and hand-in-hand together in furthering US hegemony in the Middle East and beyond in central Asia and their policies all coincide with what Israel's long-term policy goals are which is regional domination."
Jennifer Loewenstein, associate director of the Middle East studies program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in an interview with Iran's Press TV, Tuesday, July 13, 2010. (link to source)
"When Muslims object to mockery of Islamic symbols, we scream freedom of speech. We call it an important institution of our culture and of democracy itself. But when Helen Thomas expresses her opinion, we destroy her career and her legacy."
Muqtedar Khan, associate professor of political science and director of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of Delaware, in his op-ed, "Pandemic of Hypocrisy Dominating Muslim Faith and American Life," Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal, June 29, 2010. (link to source)
"It is tragically fitting that this disaster should happen on Memorial Day in the US. The martyrs of the ships are heroes, they are warriors every bit as deserving of our tears and support as the soldiers of American wars past and present."
Mark LeVine, UC Irvine history professor, describing the members of the Turkish terrorist-supporting group IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi), who were killed by Israeli soldiers in self-defense aboard a Gaza Strip-bound flotilla; Al-Jazeera, June 1, 2010. (link to source)
"The population of Jews in the US is three percent ... but [their 'genius'] leads to their controlling so much power that even presidents are scared [of them]. Whether [President Barack] Obama will be able to escape the notion that three percent of the country is so powerful that the top gentile in the land cannot criticize Israel is not clear."
Ali al-Amin Mazrui, director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at SUNY Binghamton, speaking at the Ifriqiyya Colloquium Conference at Columbia University on May 6, 2010. (link to source)
"All the assaults in 2006 from Israel into Lebanon were described as Israeli acts of self-defense. That is absurd. If the Israelis have the right to do that to another nation...then certainly Hezbollah has the right to receive arms from anybody it wants if Israel is going to attack it. ...[T]he real offenders here are the United States and Israel not Hezbollah, not Iran and not Syria."
Jennifer Loewenstein, associate director of the Middle East studies program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in an interview with Iran's English language network, Press TV, May 22, 2010. (link to source)
"If the threat of terrorism can be used to curtail civil liberties, why cannot it also justify putting limits on the right to mock Muhammad? Will we rather fight multiple wars, and even eliminate habeas corpus from our judicial philosophy (which is like war on ones own citizens), but not abstain from mocking Islam?"
Muqtedar Khan, associate professor of political science and international relations and director of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, attacking the Western concept of free speech in a post titled "The Verbal Assault on Islam," at the On Faith blog of the Washington Post, May 4, 2010. (link to source)
"If Jews can get reparations from Germany, then Palestinians should get reparations from Israel. After all, what the Germans supposedly did to the Jews is what Israel is doing to the people of Palestine."
Susan Slyomovics, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at UCLA, speaking to colleagues during a break at a conference at UCLA on April 16, 2010. (link to source)
"Fox News and Rupert Murdoch bear some responsibility for such groups. When Glenn Beck tosses around a charge like 'anti-Christ' at a prominent liberal, he knows that term is an incitement for militant Christians. And the years of rabid Fox promotion of hatred of US Muslims is bound to get someone among them killed-- and is therefore murder by television."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, writing about the Hutaree militia members who were arrested in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana last month on charges that included seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction; in Salon, March 29, 2010. (link to source)
"People in distress blame the government, and now blaming the government means taking the side of these Muslim terrorists. They're about as jihadist as you and me, but they're a lot less happy."
Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Chair in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, speculating on the motivation of Colleen LaRose, aka "Jihad Jane," a convert to Islam indicted for plotting with terror suspects abroad to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for a caricature of Muhammad he drew in 2007; as quoted by the Associated Press, March 18, 2010. (link to source)
"Wahabism is like the Baptists; it's kind of a denomination of sorts that started out in Saudi Arabia."
Ebrahim Moosa, associate professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, commenting on Wahhabi influence in higher education via the funding of Middle East studies at Georgetown and Harvard universities by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; as quoted in the Charlotte Observer, February 25, 2010. (link to source)
"What I've said is that I think for a variety of reasons — strategic, moral, historical — that they should adopt a policy of non-violence, not just not killing civilians. I think that violence doesn't serve them, partly because they're dealing with a people which sees itself as the ultimate victims, and anything they do involving violence reinforces and strengthens that sense of victimhood."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, on what Palestinians should do to advance their cause, The Brown Daily Herald, February 19, 2010. (link to source)
"I always seem to speak in huge ballrooms that are filled. I wonder if it could be me?"
John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, speaking about "The Future of Islam," of which he is co-author, at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, New York City, January 27, 2010. (link to source)
"The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender equality, more specifically, female equality....Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable, even reasonable."
Andrew March, assistant professor of political science at Yale, in the abstract of "Is There a Right to Polygamy? Marriage, Equality and Subsidizing Families in Liberal Public Justification," in the Journal of Moral Philosophy, Forthcoming. (link to source)
"Benjamin Netanyahu is insistent that no progress will take place in the so-called peace process unless the Palestinians officially recognize Israel's right to be a racist Jewish state."
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, speaking at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City, October 27, 2009. (link to source)
"I don't understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him. The Army has had at least as much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as the Muslim community."
Ingrid Mattson, professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations and Director at the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary, on Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan, New York Times, November 8, 2009. (link to source)
"Abbas is too feeble to negotiate because the Israelis disdain him.... Hamas is also too weak to carry out its chosen strategy of what it calls 'resistance' --they haven't fired a rocket in almost nine months since the Israeli attack on Gaza ended in January. And so really this is a totally unsatisfactory situation."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, as quoted in an interview with the Council of Foreign Relations on "The Tragedy of Palestinian Divisions," October 29, 2009. (link to source)
"They are made invisible...they are nonexistent. One can travel through Palestine and never see Palestinians."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, as quoted in the "Columbia Spectator," October 8, 2009. (link to source)
"The Danish anti-Islamic cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005 are...far from being a bold and innovative defence of Western values...instead the latest manifestation of a long medieval European tradition of seeking out martyrdom by deliberately insulting Islam in general and the Prophet Muhammad in particular."
Lucy K. Pick, director of undergraduate studies and senior lecturer in the history of Christianity in the Divinity School, University of Chicago, in "Orientalism and Religion," published in "Orientalism's Wake: The Ongoing Politics of a Polemic," in Viewpoints, No. 12, September 2009; the Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C.. (link to source)
"By talking about 'patriots' 'protecting' the individual right to bear arms, Palin skated awfully close to the militia or 'patriot' movement on the right-wing American fringe (and not for the first time). Ahmadinejad is not similarly in favor of all citizens having guns, but he comes out of a popular militia, the Basij, which consists of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizen patriots, armed and pledged to defend the constitution of the Islamic Republic."
Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor, equating former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's support for 2nd amendment rights with contested Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's involvement with the oppressive Basij militia, Salon.com, August 3, 2009. (link to source)
"The conflict taking place at present between the Islamic world and the West is not because of doctrinal or civilization differences but because of the adoption of double standards towards the Islamic world. Some groups and lobbies, which have an influence over decision making in the West, support the practice of this erroneous policy."
John Esposito, founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Mulsim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, speaking recently at the World Association of Al-Azhar Graduates in Cairo, as quoted in Asharq Alawsat, July 16, 2009. (link to source)
"I fear that the Ahmadinejad-Netanyahu duo might audaciously mug us of the hopes for a peaceful and just solution to the Arab-Israeli problem inspired by President Obama."
Muqtedar Khan, director of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, discussing the repercussions of the uprising in Iran in "Threatened Hopes," published in the Daily Times (Pakistan), June 28, 2009. (link to source)
"The parallel would be for a deputy sheriff to require a woman going through security to take off her brassiere right there in the inspection section."
John Voll, professor of Islamic history and associate director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, as quoted in the June 5, 2009 Baltimore Sun asserting that Muslim women passing through security checkpoints at court houses should not be required to remove their hijab or niqab. (link to source)
"As Palestinians are murdered and injured in the thousands, world powers are cheering on. This is hardly a new development. It happens often in the context of other populations being murdered by allies of the US and Europe, and it even happened during World War II as the Nazi genocide was proceeding."
Joseph Massad, Columbia University associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, in "The Gaza Ghetto Uprising," which appeared in The Electronic Intifada, January 4, 2009. A photo of Nazi troops rounding up Polish Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of May, 1943, accompanied the article. (link to source)
"This is the role of the Center for Near Eastern Studies – to bring us programs of this sort."
Sondra Hale, professor of anthropology and women's studies at UCLA, responding to a February 19, 2009 student op-ed in the Daily Bruin on a UCLA symposium on "Human Rights and Gaza" that, in the words of Campus Watch contributor Eric Golub, "instructed attendees on how best to spread anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism." (link to source)
"For political and military elites in Israel, and the War on Terror constituency in the US, the killing of Arabs and Muslims no longer requires any weeping or soul-searching. It's just what freedom-loving people do."
Gabriel Piterberg, professor of history at UCLA, writing about Gaza in the January 29, 2009 issue of the London Review of Books. (link to source)
"This class traces the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict from its roots during the late Ottoman period through the current period. Students should keep in mind that this course is NOT designed to present 'an objective' account of a 'two-sided' conflict. The fact that there are supposedly two sides does not obligate us to portray each as equally right and/or equally wrong."
Joshua Schreier, assistant professor of history at Vassar College, in the introduction to the syllabus for History 214, The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict, which Schreier taught during the Fall 2008 semester. (link to source)
"[G]overnments continue to avoid addressing root causes [of terrorism] such as Palestine and Kashmir. Increasingly abuse of Islam, its values, its history and its symbols is being used as a weapon in the war on terror and this too continues to win more recruits for the extremists."
Muqtedar Khan, director of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, in "Losing the War on Terror," published at On Faith, a web log of the Washington Post, December 1, 2008. (link to source)
"Third, this war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, in "Attack Iraq?," pubiished in "In These Times," January 27, 2003. (link to source)
"You have myself and others who think roughly in the same school of thought. And you have a second school of thought represented by people like Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Martin Kramer, and legion. But of course we know that Christ cast out the legion of devils, but I won't go that way"
John Esposito, Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, speaking at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne on Wednesday, September 24, 2008. (link to source)
"The American empire is going down."
Joel Beinin, Stanford history professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, during a September 2, 2008 taping of the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center cable television program, "Other Voices." (link to source)
"Sami is dedicated family man....Sami Al-Arian is a proud, dedicated and committed American as well as a proud and committed Palestinian. He is an extraordinarily bright, articulate scholar and intellectual-activist, a man of conscience with a strong commitment to peace and social justice."
John Esposito, Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, in a July 2, 2008 letter to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in support of granting bond for Sami Al-Arian, who pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide goods and services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and who awaits an August 13 trial for criminal contempt. (link to source)
"If there is to be a resolution of the Palestine problem, it depends on the Palestinians' understanding the massive disadvantages they labor under in fighting a struggle for liberation against the heirs of the victims of the Holocaust, in the growing shadow of worldwide Islamophobia."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arabic Studies at Columbia University, in "Palestine: Liberation Deferred," which appeared in The Nation, May 8, 2008. (link to source)
"'No university will accept money with strings on it,' said the Middle East Institute's David Long. 'Period. Academic freedom in our country is a cornerstone of academic discourse, and that will not be breached by any university that I know of.' According to Long, there's no grand Saudi strategy to influence America's view of Islam. 'Yes, they want to help Islam, just like we have foreign missionaries,' Long explained. 'But I think there's a lot of fear about abilities that I don't really think they have.'"
David E. Long, consultant on the Middle East and international terrorism, retired U.S. State Department diplomat, and former adjunct professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins University, in a Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) segment on Saudi funding for Middle East studies; aired March 10, 2008. (link to source)
"Who are you? Who are you? You are a nothing! I am a professor! You can only have an opinion! I have knowledge!"
Joel Beinin, director of Middle East studies at the American University in Cairo and on leave from Stanford, reacting to a question from audience member Scott Abramson following a December 2, 2003 lecture Beinin gave at Grace Baptist Church, San Jose, California; reported to Campus Watch in reaction to a web log post from February 15, 2008. (link to source)
"In remembering Edward Said we are putting Palestine on the map—although it never left."
Hatem Bazian, lecturer in Arabic at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking at the dedication of a mural of Edward Said at San Francisco State University, November 2, 2007. (link to source)
"Sometimes outside intervention and pressure is counterproductive. They will change when they are ready to change. [Other] Saudi women said they wouldn't have it any other way."
Yvonne Y. Haddad, professor of the history of Islam at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, as quoted in the Middle East Times, February 7, 2008, on concerns voiced by the United Nations and human rights organizations over the lack of progress made in securing women's rights in Saudi Arabia "as mounting pressure on the kingdom fails to stem violence against women." (link to source)
"There's one thing that should be said about Habash, which is that he was a fierce secularist. It's interesting, if you go back and look at the degree to which he and his comrades in the PFLP argued for the separation of religion and politics...in effect, I think it'd have to be argued, sort of Cold War imperatives led these secular, Marxist, leftist, radical groups to be seen as enemies by people like the Israeli intelligence and American intelligence services who, in the case of the Israelis, cultivated their Islamic rivals, giving us later on groups like Hamas."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arabic Studies at Columbia University, speaking on January 27, 2008 with Andrea Seabrook of NPR about the late Palestinian terrorist George Habash. (link to source)
"The Bush administration's assertion that 5 small Iranian boats confronted big, well-armed US ships in the Straits of Hormuz and threatened to blow up the American vessels is looking more and more like a serious error if not a Republican Party fabrication."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, writing at his blog, Informed Comment, January 11, 2008. (link to source)
"You have a big chunk of the [Middle Eastern history] specialist community that starts every sentence with the word Palestine. And they have successfully from 1967 onwards, partly through the extraordinary skills of Yassir Arafat, to turn this side-show into a great world concern so that it's a given in many, many quarters in the Arab world that all problems stem from the Palestine question. That's a great sell. Certainly it's succeeded on this campus."
Richard Bulliet, professor of Middle East history at Columbia University, in an interview with The BWOG at Columbia, September 27, 2007. (link to source)
"We never saw Saddam Hussein up close in a question-and-answer session with an American college audience. My guess is that if we had, we would have found him odious. But I'm not absolutely sure because, like everyone else, I relied on a journalistic profession that was undergoing a (temporary?) lapse of scruple."
Richard Bulliet, professor of Middle East history at Columbia University, writing in the Columbia Spectator, September 24, 2007, in defense of Columbia president Lee Bollinger's decision to invite Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. (link to source)
"Gaza is the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan and former president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), writing at his web log, Informed Comment, September 18, 2007. (link to source)
"Leonidas' mission in Snyder's 300 is an act of suicidal violence -- a suicidal violence that if performed by white people in remote corners of history is heroic but if by Palestinians or Iraqis then it becomes sign [sic] of barbarism....What Snyder actually portrays (for the whole world to see) is the best picture of the US army in action. That monstrosity that Snyder pictures marching towards Thermopylae is the American empire -- and that band of brothers that stood up to that monstrosity are those resisting this empire: they are the Iraqi resistance, the Palestinians, Hizbullah."
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature of Columbia University, reviewing the film "300" in Al-Ahram Weekly Online, August 2-8, 2007. (link to source)
"If the talks are to be about stability in Iraq, the United States must not bias them by making pre-conditions about other issues - such as Iran's nuclear program. It must acknowledge that Iran has an equal and respected position in creating stability in the region. Language must be unfailingly polite and humble."
William O. Beeman, chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and president of the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Association; in "How to Talk the Talk with Iran," New American Media, July 23, 2007. (link to source)
"Anti-Semitism in the Middle East is growing steadily as the situation in Palestine becomes ever more hopeless and depressing for Arab viewers. The war in Iraq and proliferation of violent Islamist groups and rhetoric is fanning the flames of anti-Semitism."
Joshua Landis, assistant professor of Middle East studies and co-director of the Center for Peace Studies at the University of Oklahoma, as quoted in the New York Observer, July 12, 2007. (link to source)
"I've heard a lot of bashing of Muslim clerics for not stepping up to the plate and condemning extremist violence...But Catholic priests are not stepping up to condemn those who kill abortion doctors...[and] rabbis are not condemning the violent settlers' movement."
Jessica Stern of Harvard's Kennedy School speaking at a June 14, 2007, conference at the EastWest Institute. (link to source)
"I think that this is a direct, logical, inevitable result of American, Israeli and European policy. The foolishness and the irresponsibility of the Palestinian leadership played an enormous role. But while this has to be laid at the doorstep of Bush administration and Israeli government policy, they almost willed this result. They refused to deal with anybody. They refused to negotiate. They refused to try and bring along the people with whom they could have negotiated, including leaders of Hamas. And this is the logical, inevitable, natural result."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, speaking of the Hamas takeover of Gaza on National Public Radio, June 16, 2007. (link to source)
"Given what's happened in Iraq and Palestine, I would be shocked if there wasn't discontent."
Omid Safi, associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, speaking to the Associated Press on June 7, 2007, regarding the recent Pew Research Center Poll showing that 26 percent of American Muslim between the ages of 18 and 29 say that suicide bombing is justified in at least some circumstances. (link to source)
"But Camp David was a terrible step in the wrong direction, in my view. I think it's to his [Jimmy Carter's] discredit that he then failed to get Begin to do what we all know Begin wasn't intending to do."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, speaking about Jimmy Carter to reporter Gaby Wood in The Observer, May 27, 2007. (link to source)
"[Israel's] demand that its 'right to exist' be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians' presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function."
Saree Makdisi, professor of English at UCLA, writing about Israel's demand that the Palestinians recognize its right to exist, on his blog, Saree Maksisi Archives, April 22, 2007. (link to source)
"While stories on global terrorism and domestic threats are important to us all, at the same time how many stories have gone one step further and focused on the thousands of Muslims indiscriminately arrested, detained, monitored and interviewed and not found guilt or released for lack of evidence; the number of Islamic charities shut down but despite the passage of years not successfully prosecuted; the continued detention of Muslims like Prof. Sami al-Arian..."
John Esposito, founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center at Georgetown University, blogging on March 28, 2007 at On Faith about Sami al-Arian, the former University of South Flordia professor imprisoned for aiding the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (link to source)
"It is within the context of that distinctive history of archaeological practice and settler nationhood that one can understand why is was that 'thousands of Palestinians stormed the site' of Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus, looting it and setting it alight during the renewed Intifada that rocked Palestine and Israel in the fall of 2000."
Barnard College professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, from page 281 of her book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," Chicago, 2002. (link to source)
"I do not find any evidence that makes me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack on the twin trade towers. All we have heard from him was simply a praise and commendation of those who had carried out the operation."
Natana DeLong-Bas, Lecturer in Theology at Boston College and in the Department of Near East and Judaic Studies at Brandeis, as quoted by Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 21, 2006. (link to source)
"I really believe that both the Jews and the Palestinians, basically, are, have suffered from similar historical injustices."
ABC News analyst and Sarah Lawrence College professor Fawaz Gerges, speaking about the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran on the NPR show "Talk of the Nation" with Lynn Neary, December 14, 2006. (link to source)
"You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, in a November 22 blog entry on the risks that blogging poses to one's academic career. He also claimed that free speech in academe is threatened by outsiders who criticize Middle East studies. Prof. Cole neglected to mention his unsuccessful attempts to climb the career ladder to jobs at Duke and Yale. (link to source)
"The statements, not only of the Pope, but similar statements, themselves are acts of violence to the sacred realities that another civilization holds very dear."
Seyyed Hossain Nasr, University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, speaking on the Diane Rehm radio show on September 19, 2006 in a discussion of Pope Benedict XVI's recent lecture at the University of Regensberg, (link to source)
"If you put a gun to my head and said choose between Ahmadinejad and Bush, I might say, 'Shoot.'"
Mansour Farhang, a professor of international relations and Middle Eastern politics at Bennington College, as quoted in the October 13, 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education.
"There is no winning this war, because the war on terror is the enemy."
Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Chair of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking at Penn about his new book, Trapped in the War on Terror, on September 21, 2006. (link to source)
"...Because it is not inflammatory, at least not in the context of Islamic culture. 'We must not try to interpret Islamic terms and cultural signals by using our Western ideas,' said Fawaz Gerges, a professor in the department of international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College, and an ABC News consultant. Gerges pointed out that in Islamic culture 'ghadab' means anger or frustration. A day of rage does not mean a day of jihad (war), added Gerges."
Fawaz Gerges, commenting September 18 on Qatari Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi's call for a "Day of Rage" on Friday, September 22, in response to Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments on Islam. (link to source)
"Jihad has become a global fad, rather like gangsta rap."
Jessica Stern, lecturer on terrorism at Harvard University, explaining the surge in Islamist violence, August 1, 2006. (link to source)
"I do know — I don't believe — I know that 9/11 was an inside job."
Kevin Barrett, adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on 9/11, in a television interview on July 10, 2006. (link to source)
"I win, every day."
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, summing up his response to critics after he was denied a tenured faculty position at Yale, June 9, 2006. (link to source)
"The Iranian human-rights record is atrocious, as is the human-rights record of any country including the U.S."
Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University commenting on Iran's record of human rights, May 6, 2006 (link to source)
"Hamas is mainly popular because one of the things it is trusted to do is probably be ready to live with Israel, even if not officially, for a very long time."
Ian Lustick, the Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, commenting on the February 2006 electoral triumph of the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas (March 22, 2006). (link to source)
"As far as I can tell, American empire is safe and secure, despite my best efforts to topple it (although Musab al-Zarqawi seems to be doing a good job in Iraq)."
Mark LeVine, University of California at Irvine professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies, discussing the his appearance in David Horowitz's new book "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America," February 26, 2006. (link to source)
"In this sense, a strong showing from Hamas, even its assumption of power would likely be the best thing that could happen to what remains of the peace process."
Mark LeVine, University of California at Irvine professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies, discussing the prospect of Hamas winning the Palestinian elections, January 22, 2006. (link to source)
"I am not convinced that government and academia are on the same page as to what the goals of this initiative should be...the people who are making decisions are not the people with expertise in the language and culture of the Middle East."
Roger Allen, University of Pennsylvania professor of Arabic language and literature, commenting on the Bush Administration's proposed National Security Language Initiative, January 13, 2006. (link to source)
"In this country, where we even had to use "national defense" as the justification to build our interstate highway system, you just can't squeeze enough money out of the mountebanks, charlatans, ideologues and goobers who represent us in Congress to fund these programs unless they can be sold as "national defense" (or now, "homeland security")."
F. Gregory Gause III, professor of Middle East politics at the University of Vermont, commenting on the newly announced National Security Language Initiative, January 5, 2006. (link to source)
"It is nothing to do with radical Islam or even Muslims... these guys are building a new idea of themselves based on American street culture."
Olivier Roy, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, commenting on the rioting in France, November 7, 2005. (link to source)
"Nonetheless, the two countries have much to talk about: both are trying to solve their Iraq problems. They share a common interest in subduing jihadism and helping Iraq build stability. But instead of helping Syria help the United States, Washington prefers to make demands."
University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis, advocating changes in American policy toward Syria, September 17, 2005. (link to source)
"If you read him in his own words, he sounds like somebody who would be a very high-minded and welcome voice in global politics."
Duke University religion professor Bruce Lawrence, discussing his collection of Osama bin Laden's speeches and interviews, September 13, 2005. (link to source)
"Many of the clauses in the new [Iraqi] constitution are "extremely problematic" when compared to the progressive laws concerning women's rights under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, [professor of anthropology Ted] Swedenburg said."
University of Arkansas anthropology professor Ted Swedenburg discussing legal protections for women's rights in the new Iraqi constitution, September 9, 2005. (link to source)
"According to the September 11 Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready," July 8, 2005.
University of Michigan professor of History Juan Cole, commenting on the alleged relationship between 9/11 and events in Israel. Martin Kramer points out that the 9/11 Commission determined the hijacking plan was conceived by early 1999, that Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount took place in September 2000 when he was head of the opposition, and that the Jenin operation took place in April 2002, seven months after 9/11. After these factual problems were pointed out Cole changed his original posting. The original text is reproduced on Martin Kramer's web site and is linked here. (link to source)
"The staff statements, read out at the beginning of relevant public hearings, contributed to the development of a common voice. Work on these statements sometimes went on through entire nights. The effect was to produce agreed-upon language, some of which would be borrowed for the final report. The process heightened everyone's sensitivity to terms and meanings. (One endless debate concerned the question of whether "Islamism" and "Islamic extremism" were synonyms.)"
Ernest R. May, Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University, discussing the internal deliberations of 9/11 Commission, to which he was a consultant, May 23, 2005. (link to source)
"I have the world's greatest job because I've been saying the same thing for 30 years. Can anybody else make that claim?"
Georgetown University professor John Esposito speaking about "Understanding Islam" at the University of Missouri, April 11, 2005 (link to source)
"Experts and non-experts alike have tried to implant the American ideal of Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East, Khalidi said. But the democratic ideal "doesn't really exist in the U.S. either," he said, leaving Westerners to foist an unrealistic political vision on Middle Eastern societies."
Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi commenting on American efforts to encourage democratic reforms in the Middle East, March 31, 2005. (link to source)
"The rightwing Zionists want to racialize the Sudan conflict in American terms, as "Arab" versus "black African" because they want to use it to play American domestic politics, and create a rift among African-Americans and Arab-Americans. Both of the latter face massive discrimination in contemporary society, and they should find ways of cooperating to counter it. "
University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole, commenting on the situation in Darfur, March 27, 2005 (link to source)
"The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model."
University of Michigan Associate Professor of History Juan Cole, commenting on the Terri Schiavo case, March 22, 2005. (link to source)
"It's a time when people can get away with anything,...When people have a breakdown of traditional leadership, largely because the U.S. government has delegitimized the Muslim leadership in America, American Muslims are searching for new leaders more able to address their daily needs...People in America think they are going to be the vanguards of change...But for Arab Muslims in the Middle East, American Muslims continue to be viewed on the margins of the faith."
Georgetown University professor of Islamic studies Yvonne Haddad, commenting on a Muslim prayer service led by a woman, Amina Wadud, professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, March 18, 2005. (link to source)
"Iraq was easy prey, but the (Bush administration's) lies fell apart," Khalidi said. "Iraq was governed by one of the worst administrations in the world, but there are problems with the government in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and (other places, too)."
Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab Studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, commenting on the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, February 3, 2005. (link to source)
Merely holding an election is "a pretty low bar... But then, this election is being run with Main Street, U.S.A., more in mind than Main Street, Baghdad, and for them to get away with saying such things depends on our collective gullibility."
Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab Studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, commenting on the Iraqi elections, January 27, 2005 (link to source)
"When our government blunders clumsily, often with lethal force, into Middle East situations, which about our leaders are not only nearly totally ignorant but about which they entertain politically colored Orientalist stereotypes. And, when right-wing ideologues have the chutzpah to denigrate the American Middle East studies academic community for failing to alert the nation to the terrorist threats when it is these ideologues themselves who have grievously damaged American national security."
Michael C. Hudson, Seif Global Professor of Arab Studies and professor of international relations, and current Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, commenting on America's "imperial overreach," January 22, 2005. (link to source)
"From Shakespeare to Hume, the influences of Islamic civilisation on the literary and philosophical traditions of the time are innumerable."
Tariq Ramadan, professor of philosophy at the College of Geneva and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Fribourg, commenting on the Islamic contribution to European civilization, January 21, 2005. (link to source)
"If Rice is going to be a successful Secretary of State, she simply has to get back control of US foreign policy from the Likudniks in the Bush administration."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan, commenting on the Senate confirmation hearings of Condolezza Rice, Januar 20, 2005. (link to source)
"The university should have looked at MEALAC five or ten years ago...It's become locked into a postmodernist, postcolonialist point of view, one that wasn't necessarily well adapted to giving students instruction about the Middle East."
Richard Bulliet, Professor of History at Columbia University, commenting on that university's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, January 10, 2005. (link to source)
"On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die - and to kill - for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity."
M. Shahid Alam professor of Economics at Northeastern University, explaining the hijackers' motivation for attacking on 9/11, December 29, 2004. (link to source)
"All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists."
Columbia University professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History Joseph Massad interpreting Arab Holocaust denial as a form of Zionism, December 15, 2004. (link to source)
"The state of Israel exists because, in different ways, the United States and the Soviet Union thought that establishing it was the best way to reduce British influence in the Middle East."
Stanford professor of Middle Eastern history Joel Beinin commenting on the creation of the State of Israel, December 3, 2004. (link to source)
"He was, in a sense, a Moses- like figure, leading his people within sight of the Promised Land," said Glenn E. Robinson, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and author of "Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution." Ultimately, though, "Arafat couldn't get there himself."
Glenn E. Robinson, commenting on the death of Yassir Arafat, November 10, 2004 (link to source)
"Its support for Hizbullah in southern Lebanon is "terror" only in the sense that Israeli support for Gush Emunim in the West Bank is "terror." Indeed, the Likud policy in the West Bank is far worse than the policies of Hizbullah,since the Lebanese Shiites just want their own territory to be free of foreign occupation--they aren't expanding into other people's back yards."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, comparing the Likud party in Israel to Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon, October, 11, 2004. (link to source)
"The Likud Coalition in Israel does contest elections. But it isn't morally superior in most respects to the Syrian Baath."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, comparing the Likud party in Israel to the Syrian Baath party, September, 9, 2004. (link to source)
"Now, more than a year after a failed occupation of Iraq, after the revelations of systematic torture by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, after the erosion of liberties inside the United States, after the establishment of an American Gulag whose geographic expanse exceeds anything established by the Soviet Union, American prestige in the world has sunk to the lowest point in its history."
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, Boston commenting on America's war on terror and on her policy in Iraq, September, 2, 2004. (link to source)
"It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran.... 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)..."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, explaining the espionage allegations against Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst, claiming that he passed on to Israel classified documents on Iran through AIPAC, August 29, 2004. (link to source)
"He worries that offering pointed commentary could damage his academic credibility, but at this point he feels a moral obligation to point out ' the very bad foreign policy mistakes' the United States continues to commit."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, explaining the reasons for his commentary on the situation in Iraq , August 25, 2004 (link to source)
"If the Bush/Cheney team gets back in, there will be further wars and massive disturbances to world peace and security, starting with Iran. Maybe the whole doctrine of pre-emptive war is a form of inferiority complex, impelling Cheney to be a strident war-monger to try to vindicate his uninvolved youth. If he was a coward, he may be endangering us all (and especially our teenagers) in a desperate ploy to regain his own manhood."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, analyzing Vice President Dick Cheney's character of , August 17, 2004. (link to source)
"In a lengthy interview, she spoke of how U.S. President George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden parody each other with their talk of black and white, good and evil. Ms. Armstrong said that, throughout history, when religious fundamentalist movements have been attacked they have become more extreme. The way we're going -- and Britain is just as culpable as the United States -- we're alienating Muslims who were initially horrified by Sept. 11 and we're strengthening al-Qaeda, which has definitely been strengthened by the Iraq war and its awful aftermath."
British historian Karen Armstrong warning that fighting Islamist terror groups actually makes them stronger, August 6, 2004. (link to source)
"All military and diplomatic agreements and aid to Middle Eastern countries that aren't democratic or don't respect the rights of the peoples under their control should be suspended. Yes, this means for Israel as well as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other 'allies' and 'partners'."
Mark LeVine, associate professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies at the University of California, Irvine commenting on the steps the United States needs to take if she wants to have peace with the Muslim world, August 6, 2004. (link to source)
"Even medieval Islamic law recognized the right of Christians, Jews and other monotheists to practice their religion and enjoy rights to their lives and property. This relative tolerance has often been enhanced in the twentieth century by the rise of nationalism, wherein Arab Christians sometimes are privileged as symbols of national authenticity, because Christianity predated Islam in the nation's history."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, claiming that Islamic law and practice has resulted in respect for Christians and other minorities that has been enhanced by Arab nationalism, August 3, 2004. (link to source)
"No American media will report the demonstrations in Israel as fascist in nature, and no American politicians will dare criticize the Likud. But the fact is that the Israeli predations in the West Bank and Gaza are a key source of rage in the Muslim world against the United States (which toadies unbearably to whatever garbage comes out of Tel Aviv's political establishment), something that the 9/11 commission report stupidly denies."
Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, commenting on the non-violent human chain Israeli protestors formed between Gaza and Jerusalem, July 26, 2004. (link to source)
"The nexus of disinformation about the Saddam government and about terrorist activity in Iraq may lie in tales fed to Mossad by the Kurds, who in turn passed it to Washington. The Kurds have steadily and implausibly alleged a Saddam/al-Qaeda connection."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, blaming the Kurds and Israeli intelligence for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, June 21, 2004. (link to source)
"[W]hen Palestinians refer to Jews as 'descended from apes and swine' or encourage support for those who 'kill Jews,' they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor."
Scott Alexander, associate professor of Islam at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, speaking on June 8, 2004, in his capacity as planned expert witness in the defense of Fawaz Damra, on trial in Cleveland, Ohio, for immigration fraud and concealing terrorist ties. On June 15, Mr. Alexander, after deciding not to testify on behalf of Damra, stated: "Mr. Damra did indeed promote violence and hatred. I unreservedly condemn the speeches and actions of Mr. Damra in the early 1990s when he was advocating and helping to raise money for movements that perpetrate violent attacks on Israeli citizens." (link to source)
"Experts can be wrong, but the dedicated [Middle East studies] professionals have often been prescient in their warnings."
Columbia University historian Rashid Khalidi in a May 27, 2004 talk at UCLA for the Center for Near Eastern Studies. (link to source)
"Israel did not face an existential danger in 1967."
Joel Beinin, professor of Middle Eastern History at Stanford commenting on the Arab-Israeli wars since the Six Day War, May 13, 2004. (link to source)
"It's about time that we have an intifada in this country that change fundamentally the political dynamics in here."
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in Islamic studies at Berkeley, at a rally in San Francisco organized by the far left group A.N.S.W.E.R. in response to the increased fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, April 10, 2004. (link to source)
"What would drive the crowd to this barbaric behavior? It is not that they are pro-Saddam any more, or that they hate 'freedom.' They are using a theater of the macabre to protest their occupation and humiliation by foreign armies. They were engaging in a role reversal, with the American cadavers in the position of the 'helpless' and the 'humiliated,' and with themselves playing the role of the powerful monster that inscribes its will on these bodies.."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, talking about the latest bombing in Fallujah where 9 Americans were killed and their bodies desecrated, April 1, 2004. (link to source)
"Iraq [under Saddam Hussein] was a rather nasty one-party state."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, talking at Indiana University on ‘The War on Terrorism and Islam in Bush administration policy', March 30, 2004. (link to source)
"[Iraqi resistance] happened quicker than I thought it would. Anyone who knows the history of colonial occupation should have been aware of this. It's horrendous in the sense that the health, social life, economic life of Iraqis are no better. I don't think they have more democracy than they had under Hussein."
Gabriel Piterberg associate professor of history at UCLA, commenting on the situation in Iraq post-Saddam, March 22, 2004. (link to source)
"It seems fairly obvious by now that the Bush administration likes being lied to. It is even paying for the privilege of being screwed over. This is sort of reverse crooked. It is to crookedness as sado-masochism is to sex."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, criticizing the Bush Administration's use of intelligence from Iraqi sources for the war in Iraq, March 11, 2004. (link to source)
"About half of Americans are terminally stupid."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, commenting on the American public's belief that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, February 24, 2004. (link to source)
"The events of 9/11 brought further restrictions on the Arab/Muslim community. The Bush Administration initiated and the Congress passed HR3162, commonly known as USA PATRIOT (Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act of October 24, 2001. It basically lifted all legal protection of liberty for Muslims and Arabs in the United States."
Georgetown University professor of Islamic studies Yvonne Haddad, in a speech to the Al-Hewar Center on ""George Bush and the Muslims After 9/11: The Search for Moderate Islam," February 18, 2004. (link to source)
"We get money from the federal government. That does not mean we do what the federal government says. As academics, we have academic freedom. That's our God-given right."
Nezar AlSayyad, chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, speaking against H.R. 3077, legislation establishing an advisory board over area studies programs, February 6, 2004. (link to source)
"Throughout the Arab world Islamists have concluded violence and terrorism not only hurt their movement but harm the interests of the Muslim community. Since 9/11 some of the most militant Islamists published books condemning Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri's tactics."
Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, commenting on what is happening in the Middle East post 9/11, in an interview in the Christian Science Monitor on February 4, 2004 (link to source)
"We don't need any more US buildings blown up because our government is coddling cuckoo [Israeli] settlers who are stealing other people's land to fulfill some weird religious power fantasy."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, referring to what the US still has to do in 2004 with regard to the War on Terror, January 2, 2004. (link to source)
"... the Syrians also feel they were double-crossed by the US after the Iraq war."
Michael Hudson, Seif Ghobash Professor of Arab Studies and Professor of International Relations, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, December 22, 2003. In fact, it was the Syrians who double-crossed the U.S. government, once in 2001 by giving a "direct commitment" to desist from purchasing Iraqi oil and then continuing to so, and again in 2003 by promising to shut down the Hamas and Islamic Jihad offices in Syria, then not doing so. (link to source)
"What happened Sunday was that the Republicans captured a former ally, with whom they had later fallen out."
Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan, referring to the Dec. 14 announcement of Saddam Hussein's capture, in History News Network, December 15, 2003. (link to source)
"There has been a closing down of the American mind, and it worries me. If a pro-Palestinian person comes to speak, you have to have a pro-Israeli person. That's not the way to foster debate. The debate does not always occur in television terms, which is you against me. The debate occurs in people's minds, it's ongoing, and what you learn from one person you apply to question the next one."
Ariel Dorfman, a professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke University, is a member of the academic freedom committee of the international group Human Rights Watch explaining academic freedom on December 12, 2003 (link to source)
"Intifada is something that Muslims and Palestinians all approve of. It means 'just get off my back'."
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, professor of the History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Georgetown University quoted in the Los Angeles Times on December 7, 2003.
"The United States is the most phantasmagoric propaganda machine in history."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, speaking at a conference on "U.S. imperialism in the 21st century" at Columbia University, December 5, 2003.
"'Polygamy can be liberating and empowering,'" Cooke answered sunnily when I asked her about it. 'Our norm is the Western, heterosexual, single couple. If we can imagine different forms that would allow us to be something other than a heterosexual couple, we might imagine polygamy working,' she explained murkily. Some women, she continued, are relieved when their husbands take a new wife: they won't have to service him so often. Or they might find they now have the freedom to take a lover. But, I ask, wouldn't that be dangerous in places where adulteresses can be stoned to death? At any rate, how common is that? 'I don't know,' Cooke answers, 'I'm interested in discourse.'"
Miriam Cooke, professor of Arabic in the Asian and African Languages and Literature Department at Duke University, as quoted by Kay Hymowitz in City Journal (Winter, 2003). (link to source)
"America's military presence is metastasizing throughout the Arab world to the point of malignancy. Isn't it curious that Muslims are the ones under pressure to proclaim that their religion is the 'religion of peace'?"
Hamid Algar, professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at Berkeley, commenting on the growing US presence in the Middle East, March 16, 2003. (link to source)
"The Saudis have given millions to Harvard Law School, Does that make it a Wahhabi institution?"
John Voll, professor of Islamic History and the Associate Director for the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, making the point that Wahhabism has moderate and extreme strains. (link to source)
"I have not previously spoken about suicide attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. I did not avoid the subject--it simply did not cross my mind as a priority among the many issues I felt needed to be addressed."
Ingrid Mattson is a professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations and Director at the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. Ms. Mattson is addressing remarks made by President Bush in a speech to the nation on Sept 20, 2001 while discussing criticism she received from other Muslims for her public discourse on the role of the Taliban in terrorism, October, 2001. (link to source)
"Why should we see Salman Rushdie, for example, as a great Islamic moderate and ally, as opposed to looking for those people, and talking with those people, who are strong believers in and upholders of religiously-based moral values, people who believe that religion does have a place in public policy. In this context, the Ayatullah Khumayni, to put it as an extreme case, would have been a better ally for us than Salman Rushdie."
John O. Voll is a professor of Islamic History and the Associate Director for the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, talking to the Philadelphia Society on April 22, 2001 on the topic of "Islam and the End of Secularism." (link to source)
Rashid Khalidi, then a University of Chicago professor, told USA Today that Bashar Assad represented "a very big change in outlook."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, commenting on the future of Syria under Bashar Assad following Hafez Assad's death, June 12, 2000.
Esposito explained that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter; and that terrorism, as seen in the case of Israel's or the Tel Aviv regime's treatment of Palestinians, can and has been used to legitimate wanton violence and continued acts of oppression. However, surprisingly, Esposito added, "Although I have not read or come across the actual 'fatwa', as a rule, we must not be too quick to draw upon the 'bid`a' gun against anyone, not least of whom the Sheikh al-Azhar."
John L. Esposito, professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, responding to the question of whether a fatwa from the Sheikh of Al-Azhar (Cairo) in favor of suicide bombings against Israel was a 'bid`a' [illegitimate legal ruling], September 1997. (link to source)
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