News out of Iraq, Yemen, and Turkey

I’m pleased to learn that my 2007 biography of the Prophet Muhammad will shortly appear in Turkish, published in Turkey.  I don’t yet know the exact publication date, but will share the news for all of the many Turkish readers here when I receive my copy.

And I’ve just been invited this morning to update my article on the “Zaydiyya” (a relatively moderate sect of Shi‘a Islam) for the Oxford Bibliographies series.  Of course, it’s not as if anything ever happens in Yemen, where the Zaydiyya are mostly concentrated and where they play a vital role in the life of that perpetually unstable and strife-torn country.

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I’m pleased (and a bit worried) to note that my friend and fellow student from many years ago in Cairo, Matthew Tueller, has now, as of June 2019, assumed the role of United States Ambassador to Iraq.  He had previously been serving as the American ambassador to Yemen.

We were contemporaries at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in Cairo in the early 1980s, as well as fellow members of the Cairo Egypt LDS Branch.  His wife gave birth to their first child about a month before my wife gave birth to our first, and we went through much of that experience together.  We never did resolve who won the illness competition between us, though.  I had a fairly rough case of hepatitis, while he suffered through relatively mild cases of malaria and amoebic dysentery.  (Quality versus quantity?)  He has nerves of steel and excellent Arabic — both desirable qualities for his diplomatic work in the Middle East — and he was, at least, a very accurate marksman with a slingshot whenever packs of wild dogs showed up near our apartments on the edge of the desert.

Ambassador Tueller is the second Latter-day Saint ambassador to Iraq in the post-Saddam era.  Steve Beecroft headed up the American diplomatic mission there during the period 2012-2014.

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I may have already posted this link.  But I’m not sure, and it discusses an important and interesting development:

“Apostle Thanks State of Kuwait for Formally Recognizing the Church: Elder Cook and his wife, Mary, greet Mr. Fareed Emadi in Kuwait City”

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I’m sorry to say that I no longer recall who brought the following item to my attention.  I believe that it was Matthew Wheeler.  In any event, I’m grateful for the heads-up:

“Iran’s Jewish community is the largest in the Mideast outside Israel – and feels safe and respected: In a nation that has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, the Iranian government allows thousands of Jews to worship in peace and continue their association with the country founded more than 2,500 years ago.”

And then there’s this:

“As anti-Semitism makes news, a new exhibition revisits the lessons of the Holocaust”