"Sectarianism or Class Conflict? The ISIL Crisis" with Juan Cole

Monday, October 6, 2014 5:00 PM EDT
Johnson Center, Meeting Room A, 3rd Floor


Media depictions of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and its capture of northern and western Iraq have misinterpreted what happened. Mosul, Tikrit and other largely Sunni Arab areas were not conquered by a few thousand fighters-- rather there were a series of regional urban revolts in coalition with ISIL against the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army and state. But were the discontents really religious? Or was this urban revolt largely economic and political in character, a marriage of convenience with ISIL rather than an ideological turning point?

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East, Engaging the Muslim World, and Napoleon's Egypt. He has been a regular guest on PBS’s News Hour and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the TODAY show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now!, Aljazeera America and many others. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Iraq, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Syria, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs.

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