2021 marked the 80^th anniversary of Farhud*—a two-day pogrom against Baghdad Jewry. Following a failed pro-Nazi coup d’état in 1941, angry Muslim rioters killed 175 Jews, injured 1000, and robbed and destroyed 900 Jewish homes. Many Jewish girls were raped and children maimed in front of their...

It was raining heavily that May morning in 2019. I reluctantly walked into the law firm’s office in Auckland, greeted Joy, the receptionist and legal assistant, and took a seat, waiting for the lawyer to witness my will. I heard him talking to a client in French, which I’d studied many years ago at...

Can literature widden the scope of our understanding of the nations of the Middle East away from Orientalism and ISIS to include the struggle of a middle class that continues to fight for reform in the region?   

A translated excerpt from a memoir describing Iraq during the Gulf War and the misery and uncertainty plaguing those living in war zones.  

A personal reassessment of the exodus of Jewish Iraqis to Israel through published histories, biographies, and novels.   

Who—in this shamelessly visual age—would bother to read an analysis of the Muslim world’s modern history when ISIS is swamping social media with ghastly short videos whose impact on viewers is often irrevocable? What can my apologetic writings change if the Pandora’s Box of fear has been opened and is indiscriminately spreading poison?

As the underlying structures of the war in Iraq become publicly visible, its basic logics emerge: a systematic campaign of disinformation waged at home and abroad, a propaganda machine of unparalleled sophistication, and a cultivated manipulation of fear in the interests of justifying and perpetuating an increasingly questionable war on terror.