Juan Cole

John Ricardo I. "Juan" Cole (born October 23, 1952) is an American scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television, and testified before the United States Senate. He has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East and is a translator of both Arabic and Persian. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Comment (juancole.com).

Background and education
Cole was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His father served in the United States Army Signal Corps. When Cole was age two, his family left New Mexico for France. His father completed two tours with the U.S. military in France (a total of seven years) and one 18-month stay at Kagnew Station in Asmara, Eritrea (then Ethiopia). (Cole reports that he first became interested in Islam in Eritrea, which has a population roughly half Christian and half Muslim.) Cole was schooled at a variety of locations, twelve schools in twelve years, at a series of dependent schools on military bases but also sometimes in civilian schools. Some schooling occurred in the United States, particularly in North Carolina and California.

Cole obtained his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University in 1975, having majored in History and Literature of Religions. For two quarters in his senior year he conducted a research project in Beirut, Lebanon and returned to the city as a graduate student in the fall of 1975, but the civil war prevented Cole from continuing his studies there. Therefore he pursued a Masters degree at the American University in Cairo in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, graduating in 1978. Cole then returned to Beirut for another year and worked as a translator for a newspaper. In 1979 Cole enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles as a doctoral student in the field of Islamic Studies, graduating in 1984. After graduation, Cole was appointed Assistant Professor of History at the University of Michigan where he became a full professor in 1995.

Cole was from a mixed Catholic and Protestant heritage but was brought up a non-denominational Protestant on army bases. In the late 1960s and the 1970s he became interested in Eastern religions, including Buddhism. Cole became a member of the Bahá'í Faith in 1972 as an undergraduate at Northwestern, and the religion later became a focus of his academic research. He resigned from the faith in 1996 after disputes with Bahá'í leadership concerning the Bahá'í system of administration, especially demands by the administration to censor his writings. After 1996 he became uninterested in organized religion as a personal matter.

Cole married Shahin Malik in Lahore in 1982. The couple has a son, Arman, born in 1987.

Appointments and awards
Cole was awarded Fulbright-Hays fellowships to India (1982) and to Egypt (1985–1986). In 1991 he held a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for the study of Shia Islam in Iran. From 1999 until 2004, Juan Cole was the editor of The International Journal of Middle East Studies. He has served in professional offices for the American Institute of Iranian Studies and on the editorial board of the journal Iranian Studies. He was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in November 2004. In 2006, he received the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism administered by Hunter College.


 * 1975: B.A. History and Literature of Religions, Northwestern University
 * 1978: M.A. Arabic Studies/History, American University in Cairo
 * 1984: Ph.D. Islamic Studies, University of California Los Angeles
 * 1984–1990: Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan
 * 1990–1995: Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan
 * 1992–1995: Director, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Michigan
 * 1995–2007: Professor of History, University of Michigan
 * 2007–present: Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan
 * 2009-2012: Director, Center for South Asian Studies, University of Michigan

Academic interests
Cole became interested in Islam and Arabic while a teenager living in Eritrea when his father was stationed there. He studied Arabic at Northwestern University, in Beirut, at the American University in Cairo, and at the University of California, Los Angeles, including classical historical, theological and philosophical texts and classical and modern literature. He speaks Arabic (Modern Standard as well as Lebanese and Egyptian dialects), Persian, and Urdu, and reads the Ottoman form of the Turkish. He also knows French, German and Spanish.

Modern Egypt
Among Cole's major academic specializations has been the history of modern Egypt, including Sunni Islam. His second monograph was on a nineteenth-century Egyptian revolt, and his fifth was on the French invasion and occupation of the country under Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte. Egypt was one focus of his Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave, 2009). He has authored nearly a dozen major journal articles and book chapters on Egypt.

Shia Islam: Iran, Iraq and India
Modern Shia Islam has been a major preoccupation in Cole's scholarship. Native Shi'a communities stretch in an arc from Saudi Arabia to India, and Cole has written on various countries in this arc as well as on Islam in general, the secular history and politics of the region, and comparative studies. His first monograph was on the modern history of Shi'ism in north India. His fourth book was a treatment of modern Shia movements throughout South and West Asia. He has published over two dozen journal articles and book chapters on modern Shia Islam.

Current affairs history
After September 11, 2001, Cole turned increasingly to writing on radical Muslim movements, the Iraq War, United States foreign policy, and the Iran crisis. His scholarship was influenced by his blog, "Informed Comment," founded in 2002. He has pioneered in the field of what he calls not "contemporary history" but "current affairs history." See also "The Case for Current Affairs History"

Khalil Gibran translations
Khalil Gibran is a well-known Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and artist who wrote in Arabic as well as English. Cole has translated three volumes of his Arabic-language literary writings. One of these, Broken Wings (al-Ajnihah al-Mutakassira, 1912), is alleged to have been the first Arabic-language novel, and has early feminist themes, protesting against arranged marriage and religious corruption.

Global Americana Institute
After September 11, Cole founded the Global Americana Institute to translate works concerning the United States into Arabic. The first volume was selected works of Thomas Jefferson, translated for the first time into Arabic, and the second is a translation of a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. along with selected speeches and writings (scheduled for fall, 2012). The Institute is partnering with Dar al-Saqi books in this series. Cole has successfully solicited contributions through his web site to support the translations and publications.

Bahá'í studies
Having converted to the Bahá'í Faith in 1972, Cole devoted some of his academic research to the history of that tradition. He treated it in some journal articles and in his third monograph, which, however, appeared after he had resigned from the religion after being threatened with being shunned by the Baha'i authorities, who criticized his academic scholarship as "materialistic."

Early in his career Cole established contacts with a number of like-minded Bahá'í scholars, whose discussions took on a life of their own with the rise of the internet. For example, Cole created H-Bahai, a (now inactive, though still extant) website making available a wealth of difficult-to-obtain primary sources on the religion.

Many of Cole's early writings on the Bahá'í Faith were for Bahá'í presses, or else for an online journal which he co-edited (Occasional Papers in the Shaykhi, Babi, and Baha'i Religions, associated with H-Bahai). Some of these were translations, including several "unofficial" scriptural translations, and two volumes by/about early Bahá'í theologian Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl. He has maintained much of this material, as well as other documents and links, online.

Journalism and media appearances
Cole has written a great deal of journalism, although much more in the form of commentary than direct news gathering. From 2004 to 2009, Cole had a regular column at Salon. Since 2009, he has written semi-regularly for Truthdig and Tom Engelhardt's Tomdispatch.com.

He has published op-eds on the Mideast at the Washington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Guardian, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Review, The Nation, the Daily Star, Tikkun magazine

Cole has been a regular guest on The NewsHour at the PBS, and has appeared widely on television shows such as Nightline, ABC Evening News, the Today Show, Anderson Cooper 360°, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Al Jazeera and CNN Headline News. Charlie Rose, Fareed Zakaria GPS, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others.

With regard to radio, he has also been a frequent guest on National Public Radio and has been interviewed by Ian Masters (KPFK), and has been interviewed by Terry Gross ("Fresh Air") and Diane Rehm, among many others.

Cole was occasionally cited in the press as a Middle East expert in the 1990s. He became much more prominent after 2002, when he began publishing his weblog.

From 2002 onwards, Cole became a widely recognized public intellectual. Foreign Policy commented in 2004, "Cole's transformation into a public intellectual embodies many of the dynamics that have heightened the impact of the blogosphere. He wanted to publicize his expertise, and he did so by attracting attention from elite members of the blogosphere. As Cole made waves within the virtual world, others in the real world began to take notice."

His focus has primarily been Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and the Arab Spring. He has also occasionally written or given interviews about about Israel and the Palestinians.

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

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

The July 28, 2006 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education featured a story on Cole's blog and its role in his career. Following essays by several academic bloggers, Cole was given a chance to respond to the question of whether academics should risk career advancement by blogging. His reply, in part, was:

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

In that same article, he was referred to as a public intellectual by associate professor of culture and communication at New York University Siva Vaidhyanathan.

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

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

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

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

Cole tends to value multinational (and especially UN) initiatives over unilateral military ones. He favors multi-ethnic states over separatist movements. Given his background in the 1960s and 1970s religious counter-culture, he views Islam (along with other religions) as essentially good, but distorted by certain of its political appropriators (and critics).

Iran
Cole mastered Persian in the 1970s and 1980s and has written academically on Iran's early modern and modern history, including the Qajar period and the Islamic Republic from 1979.

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

Cole viewed the 2009 presidential election as having been     stolen by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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

On the nuclear issue, Cole wrote in 2007 that "Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb," and points out that Ali Khamenei and other leaders have condemned nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. Cole also dismisses the Bush administration's allegation that Iran has supported terrorism in Iraq or Afghanistan. Rather, the U.S. has lent support to anti-Iranian terrorist groups such as PEJAK.

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

Cole is also a vocal critic of President Ahmadinejad. He has written that "I profoundly disagree with his characterization of Israel, which is a legitimate United Nations member state". He also considers Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial to be "monstrous".

Ahmadinejad's remarks on Israel

Cole and Christopher Hitchens have traded barbs regarding the translation and meaning of a passage referring to Israel in a speech by Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fathi Nazila of the New York Times's Tehran bureau translated the passage as "Our dear Imam [Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map."

In an article published at the Slate Magazine website, Hitchens accused Cole of attempting to minimize and distort the meaning of the speech, which Hitchens understood to be a repetition of "the standard line" that "the state of Israel is illegitimate and must be obliterated." Hitchens also denigrated Cole's competence in both Persian and "plain English" and described him as a Muslim apologist.

Cole responded that while he personally despised "everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini," he nonetheless objected to the New York Times translation. Cole wrote that it inaccurately suggested Ahmadinejad was advocating an invasion of Israel ("that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland"). He added that a better translation of the phrase would be "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time," a metaphysical if not poetic reference rather than a militaristic one. He also stated that Hitchens was incompetent to assess a Persian-to-English translation, and accused him of unethically accessing private Cole emails from an on-line discussion group.

Iraq
Cole was asked to address the pros and cons of the building war against Iraq in January 2003 for the journal of the University of Michigan International Institute. He warned that any invasion of Iraq would inevitably be rejected by Iraqis and the Arab world as a form of necolonialism. He wrote, "The Sunnis of Iraq could well turn to groups like al-Qaida, having lost the ideals of the Baath. Iraqi Shi’ites might become easier to recruit into Khomeinism of the Iranian sort, and become a bulwark for the shaky regime in Shi’ite Iran." Considering the problem of ethnic politics, he said, "A post-war Iraq may well be riven with factionalism that impedes the development of a well-ensconced new government." He rejected the argument that Baathist Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" or backing of terrorism posed threats to the United States. Cole admitted that he had had "mixed feelings" on the issue. (I.e., he opposed Saddam Hussein's regime, but feared disaster and opposed international illegality.) He was insistent that any war would be illegal without a UN Security Council resolution (which was not obtained by the Bush administration). His position on the war resembled that of the French government, which is generally held to have opposed it. By January 2003, he said he had become "cynical" about the Bush administration motives for the war. On the day of the U.S. invasion Cole wrote that "for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides." He has explained that this posting was not intended to show support for the invasion: "The passage quoted ... was not about whether the war was legal or not. Being from a military family, it mattered to me as an ethical issue whether troops lives were being lost for no good reason, in an illegal boondoggle. I decided on careful deliberation that even though the war was wrong, the lives lost would not be in vain, since a tyrannical regime would have fallen. To say that some good could come of an illegal act is not to endorse the illegal act."

Cole blamed the George W. Bush administration for creating what he calls a "failed state" in Iraq. He particularly cites its decision to disband the Iraqi Army, its treatment of prisoners, its alienation of neighboring countries, its corrupt economic policies, and long delays in organizing elections and forming a (weak) government. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, Cole wrote in 2005, resulted from a "coalition of disparate forces" within the Bush administration, "each with its own rationale" for going to war. He identifies: Bush's own "obsession with restoring family honor" slighted by Saddam Hussein's remaining in power after the Gulf War; Dick Cheney's interest in benefits to the oil industry (he cites "billions in no-bid contracts for [Halliburton]" - of which Cheney was CEO in the 1990s - and which "saved Halliburton from bankruptcy"); Cheney's "Manichaean, Cold War-inspired worldview -- in which the U.S. battled an evil enemy"; Evangelical Christians who "wanted to missionize Iraq"; Karl Rove's wanting to "turn Bush into a war president" to ensure re-election; and neo-conservatives who hoped to transform the Middle East and remove what they perceived as a danger to Israel. The Bush administration's focus on purported weapons of mass destruction, he added, was an attempt to find a rationale acceptable to the public.

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

Cole, who began to call the Iraqi conflict a "civil war" as early as 2004, now says that it consists of three distinct wars: "for control of Basra among Shiite militiamen; for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunnis and Shiites; and for control of Kirkuk among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen."

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

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

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

As of 2006 there were "less than 1000" foreign (i.e., genuine) al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, although the Bush administration's actions have caused increasing numbers of Iraqi Sunnis to sympathize or identify with that organization. Such native sympathizers are referred to on his blog as "Salafi jihadis." Cole correctly dismissed as "implausible" the prospect of such groups taking over Iraq.

Afghanistan
Cole calls the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan "the right war at the right time," and credits it with breaking up a network of al-Qaeda training camps which posed a danger to the U.S. Cole later criticized Bush for leaving the job half finished in Afghanistan to go off and fight in Iraq.

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

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

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

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

Pakistan
Cole opposed the Pervez Musharraf regime, which he blames for cracking down on democracy activists, while simultaneously allowing Islamists based in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to consolidate and expand their political power. He points out that Musharraf is actually a "hawk" with respect to India (in contrast to the government of Nawaz Sharif, which had made overtures to it before the coup), and cancelled a special-forces operation aimed at killing Osama bin Ladin. (The operation had been urged by President Bill Clinton, and if successful, may have prevented the September 11, 2001 attacks.)

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

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

Libya
Cole supported the NATO/American intervention in Libya in 2011, and criticized those on the left that did not support it.

CIA harassment allegations
In 2011, James Risen reported in The New York Times that, "Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information" on Cole "in order to discredit him." "In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted 'to get' Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful."

Yale controversy
In 2006 Cole was nominated to teach at Yale University and was approved by both Yale's sociology and history departments. However, the senior appointments committee overruled the departments, and Cole was not appointed.

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

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

In an interview on Democracy Now!, Cole noted that he had not applied for the Yale job: "Some people at Yale asked if they could look at me for a senior appointment. I said, 'Look all you want.' So that's up to them. Senior professors are like baseball players. You’re being looked at by other teams all the time. If it doesn't result in an offer, then nobody takes it seriously." He described the so-called "scandal" surrounding his nomination as "a tempest in a teapot" that had been exaggerated by "neo-con journalists": "Who knows what their hiring process is like, what things they were looking for?"

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

According to Efraim Karsh, Cole has done "hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East", and Karsh characterized Cole's analysis of this era as "derivative." He has also responded to Cole's criticism of Israeli policies and the influence of the "Israel lobby", comparing them to accusations that have been made in anti-semitic writings. Cole responded directly to Karsh in his blog, dismissing one of Karsh's charges, that Cole's criticisms echo themes in the antisemitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Cole also defended his knowledge of modern Middle Eastern history, comparing his experience "on the ground" in the modern Arab world favorably with that of Bernard Lewis, a historian he said is "lionized" by Karsh.

Publishers Weekly, reviewing Coles' 2009 book, Engaging the Muslim World, wrote, "For all his expertise, Cole fails to source some of his harshest accusations; moreover, for a scholar championing greater subtlety of thought, he too often discards nuance himself. To the extent that Cole argues against painting the Middle East with overly broad strokes, he brings a constructive addition to public discourse; his failure to be consistent is a lost opportunity."

Jeremy Sapienza of Antiwar.com has criticized Cole for what he deems as partisan bias on issues of war and peace, noting his support for wars supported by the Democratic party such as in the Balkans and Libya while opposing Republican wars such as Iraq.

Writing for CounterPunch, John Walsh and editor/commentator Alexander Cockburn described Cole as being an advisor to the CIA and Walsh referred to Cole as a "humanitarian hawk." Cole responded to Walsh's charges, saying that he was never a consultant to the CIA but did give talks in Washington, D.C. at events sponsored by think tanks at which a range of US government officials were present, including CIA analysts: "Qaddafi was a CIA Asset"

David North, writing on the World Socialist Web Site has strongly criticized Cole's defense of the US/NATO Libyan intervention, claiming an inconsistency between Cole's 2006 opposition to the "wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon" as part of a broader strategy to acquire control of the major sources of oil and natural gas, and Cole's 2011 statement that "I haven't seen the war-for-oil argument made for Libya in a manner that makes any sense at all."

Monographs and edited works

 * Engaging the Muslim World, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN 0-230-60754-3
 * Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ISBN 1-4039-6431-9
 * The Ayatollahs and Democracy in Iraq, Amsterdam University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-90-5356-889-7
 * Nationalism and the Colonial Legacy in the Middle East and Central Asia. Co-edited with Deniz Kandiyoti. Special Issue of The International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 34, no. 2 (May 2002), pp. 187–424
 * Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam, London: I.B. Tauris, 2002. ISBN 1-86064-736-7
 * Modernity and the Millennium:The Genesis of the Bahá'í Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-231-11081-2
 * Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's `Urabi Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Paperback edn., Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999.
 * Comparing Muslim Societies (edited, Comparative Studies in Society and History series); Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.
 * Roots of North Indian Shi`ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722-1859. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991)
 * Shi'ism and Social Protest. (edited, with Nikki Keddie), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Selected recent journal articles and book chapters
Reference:


 * "Islamophobia and American Foreign Policy Rhetoric: The Bush Years and After." In John L. Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin, eds., Islamophobia: the Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 127–142.


 * "Shi'ite Parties and the Democratic Process in Iraq." In Mary Ann Tetreault, Gwen Okruhlik, and Andrzej Kapiszewski, eds. Political Change in the Arab Gulf States: Stuck in Transition. (Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). pp. 49–71.


 * "Notes on 'Iran Today.' Michigan Quarterly Review. (Winter, 2010), pp. 49-55.


 * "Playing Muslim: Bonaparte's Army of the Orient and Euro-Muslim Creolization." In David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmaniyam, eds., The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 125–143.


 * "Struggles over Personal Status and Family Laws in Post-Baathist Iraq." In Kenneth Cuno and Manisha Desai, eds., Family, Gender and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009), pp. 105–125.


 * "Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century." Macalester International, Volume 23 (Spring 2009): 3-23.


 * "The Taliban, Women and the Hegelian Private Sphere ," in Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi, The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 118–154 (revised version of Social Research article below.)


 * "Islamophobia and American Foreign Policy" Islamophobia and the Challenges of Pluralism in the 21st Century," (Washington, D.C.: ACMCU Occasional Papers, Georgetown University, 2008). Pp. 70-79.


 * "Marsh Arab Rebellion: Grievance, Mafias and Militias in Iraq," Fourth Wadie Jwaideh Memorial Lecture, (Bloomington, IN: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, 2008). pp. 1–31.


 * "The Decline of Grand Ayatollah Sistani's Influence." Die Friedens-Warte: Journal of International Peace and Organization. Vol. 82, nos.2-3 (2007): 67-83.


 * "Shia Militias in Iraqi Politics." In Markus Bouillon, David M. Malone and Ben Rowswell, eds., Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict (Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 109–123.


 * "Anti-Americanism: It's the Policies." AHR Forum : Historical Perspectives on Anti-Americanism. The American Historical Review, 111 (October, 2006): 1120-1129.


 * "The Rise of Religious and Ethnic Mass Politics in Iraq," in David Little and Donald K. Swearer, eds., Religion and Nationalism in Iraq: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for the Study of the World Religions/ Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 43–62.


 * "Muslim Religious Extremism in Egypt: A Historiographical Critique of Narratives," in Israel Gershoni, et al., eds. Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), pp. 262–287.


 * "Of Crowds and Empires: Afro-Asian Riots and European Expansion, 1857-1882." [Extensively revised.] In Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, eds. States of Violence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006, pp. 269–305.


 * "Empires of Liberty? Democracy and Conquest in French Egypt, British Egypt and American Iraq." In Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power. Ed. Calhoun, Craig, Frederick Cooper and Kevin W. Moore, eds. New York: The New Press, 2006. pp. 94–115..


 * "A 'Shiite Crescent'? The Regional Impact of the Iraq War." Current History. (January 2006): 20-26.


 * Juan Cole et al., "A Shia Crescent: What Fallout for the U.S.?" Middle East Policy Volume XII, Winter 2005, Number 4, pp. 1–27. . (Joint oral round table).


 * "The United States and Shi'ite Religious Factions in Post-Ba'thist Iraq," The Middle East Journal, Volume 57, Number 4, Autumn 2003, pp. 543–566.


 * "The Imagined Embrace: Gender, Identity and Iranian Ethnicity in Jahangiri Paintings." In Michel Mazzaoui, ed. Safavid Iran and her Neighbors (Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 2003), pp. 49–62.


 * "Mad Sufis and Civic Courtesans: The French Republican Construction of Eighteenth-Century Egypt." In Irene Bierman, ed. Napoleon in Egypt. (London: Ithaca Press, 2003), pp. 47–62.


 * "Al-Tahtawi on Poverty and Welfare," in Michael Bonner, Mine Ener and Amy Singer, eds. Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 223–238.

Translations

 * Religion in Iran: From Zoroaster to Baha'u'llah by Alessandro Bausani. [Editor of this English translation of Persia Religiosa, Milan, 1958, and contributor of afterwords and bibliographical updates]. New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000.
 * Broken Wings: A Novel by Kahlil Gibran. [Translation of the Arabic novel, al-Ajnihah al-Mutakassirah.] Ashland, Or.: White Cloud Press, 1998)
 * The Vision [ar-Ru'ya] of Kahlil Gibran [prose poems translated from the Arabic]. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998. [Hardcover Edn.: Ashland, Or.: White Cloud Press, 1994)
 * Spirit Brides [`Ara'is al-muruj] of Kahlil Gibran [short stories translated from the Arabic]. Santa Cruz: White Cloud Press, 1993.
 * Letters and Essays 1886-1913 (Rasa'il va Raqa'im) of Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani [tr. from Arabic and Persian]. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1985.
 * Miracles and Metaphors (Ad-Durar al-bahiyyah) of Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani [tr. from the Arabic and annotated]. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982)

= Resources =