6. If you are not Muslim, don’t speak Arabic well, haven’t read the basic texts of Islam or participated in services, haven’t been to Iraq, and/or believed – for whatever reason – prior to the invasion that it was a smart, or at least reasonable, idea to invade Iraq – that is, if you can’t answer “yes” to a decent number of my first five questions – then why should I bother to take seriously anything you might think to say?
Meanwhile, right now it is a good idea to check in every day with Juan Cole, Mosaic (if you have satellite TV), Middle East Report.
Suggest others in the comments.
I recently went to Lebanon to visit a friend (before the recent Israeli attack), and Jordan and Syria to meet with Iraqi refugees and activists.
Afterward the members of our peace group asked what blogs I regularly read. Number one was Juan Cole — here’s the rest of the list:
Other useful sites:
You can keep up with Faiza al-Arji (with whom we met in Amman; many stories of the trip at my site) at “A Family in Baghdad”
http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com/
Salam Adil, an Iraqi in London, writes a weekly survey of Iraqi blogs, especially those in English which appears at his blog “Asterism” and at “Global Voices” which is a place that digests many areas of the world for English speakers.
http://asterism.blogspot.com/
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/author/salam-adil/
Helena Cobban, a Quaker journalist who speaks Arabic and has lived in the Middle East, has consistently interesting commentary on many regional issues at “Just World News.”
http://justworldnews.org/
Professor Joshua Landis who spent most of last year in Syria with his Syrian wife provides a window on that country in “Syria Comment”– and fierce controversy in his comments.
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/
Also consistently interesting is Marc Lynch’s commentary on Arabic language media at “Abu Aardvark.”
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/
For Lebanon I’d now add:
http://lebanonheartblogs.blogspot.com/