Juhani Huttunen, at The Blogs

Mar 14, 2021, 8:05 AM

How Pope Francis’ middle-way strategy failed in Iraq

Pope Francis made church history recently by his four-day long stay in Iraq. The leader of Roman Catholic Church toured places where thousands of Christians had been slaughtered by ISIS only few years ago. For years, liberal Christians in the...

Jul 16, 2020, 11:32 PM

The World Council of Churches’ war against Zion

The World Council of Churches was established in August 1948. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

When no one really knew what exactly Israel is about to do with plans to extend sovereignty over certain settlements in the West Bank, church bodies over the globe expressed their fears in numerous public statements. So, earlier this...

Feb 4, 2020, 2:27 PM

While Abbas the victim begs for peace, Abbas the guerilla rejects every offer

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas holds a placard showing maps of (L to R) historical Palestine, the 1947 United Nations partition plan on Palestine, the 1948-1967 borders between the Palestinian territories and Israel, and a current map of the Palestinian territories without Israeli-annexed areas and settlements, as he attends an Arab League emergency meeting discussing the US-brokered proposal for a settlement of the Middle East conflict at the league headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo on February 1, 2020. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP)

Almost five years ago, on September 30, 2015, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rose to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly to deliver a speech in which he highlighted all the ills his people had encountered under...

Dec 5, 2019, 7:42 AM

Anti-Zionists’ new best friends: neo-Nazis

On the anniversary of Kristallnacht, neo-Nazis vandalized multiple Jewish sites in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland with yellow star shaped “Jude” stickers. For the perpetrators, it was an ugly way to show how well organized they are. It seems that the...

Aug 28, 2019, 12:10 AM

Finland deported ex-Muslim to Iran, then discussed business with its FM

Two weeks ago, an Iranian man called Sardar was arrested at an airport in Tehran. He was taken to a three-hour interrogation after which no one has heard from him since. He disappeared. Sardar had left his Islamic faith and...

May 14, 2019, 5:23 AM

Why the Boycott against Eurovision Song Contest in Israel Is about Voodoo?

BDS supporters with a pro-Palestinian banner urging Europeans to give "zero point to apartheid" and not vote for Israel's Eurovision entry in Lisbon, Portugal on May 12, 2018. (Eurovision boycott of Israel - ZERO points to the song of Israeli Apartheid/Facebook)

I see beauty in that after starting two world wars, Europe sought to unite in order to prevent another intra-European war. In the mid-90s, this became a significant theme for Eurovision songs due to horrors of the wars in...

Jan 27, 2019, 12:49 AM

The McJesus sculpture controversy: Finnish perspectives

The ”McJesus” sculpture controversy is a nice scale model of religious coexistence in the Middle East. Personally, I find the incident interesting because I share the same nationality with the artist himself, Jani Leinonen. The way the Finnish media...

Oct 22, 2018, 11:16 PM

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the Western hypocrisy

Was it Spotify or what? I mean, the music they listened to while cutting off limbs of Jamal Khashoggi's body while he was still breathing. At first glance, the question certainly sounds like disrespect for the dead. However, it is...

Aug 9, 2018, 11:14 AM

What if the nation-state law was necessary in combating anti-Semitism?

Controversy over the newly passed nation-state law is so fiery it might only add insult to injury if outsiders try to say something about it. The Jewish state has defined itself as Jewish state since its birth. Moreover, the desired...

Jun 8, 2018, 2:22 PM

Explain this: The UN addressed Taliban in the 90s, but Hamas is still too much

Not so surprisingly, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) failed to take action against Hamas. The UNSC’s non-permanent Arab representative Kuwait blocked the U.S. drafted statement, which condemned the Islamist organization’s attacks on Israel. Considering the Saudi led coalition...

About Me

Juhani Huttunen is a Finnish journalist who has focused on the Middle East issues. He is of a Lutheran Christian background. Views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect any official position of any agency or media company.