Change Agents

Selected ideas surrounding the growingly influential Muslim reform movement from five Muslim thinkers. I want to thank The Christian Century for commissioning this article well before the topic was noted by the American grassroots.

Published in The Christian Century (Aug. 9, 2005). Updated for the debut issue of the Muslim Public Affairs Journal (January, 2006). Also published online at Middle East Window.

IR & Theory

This is the first in a series of articles at the International Relations 101 section of the website, on “understanding international relations and foreign policy decision making.” These articles seek to make this complex, multi-dimensional arena accessible to people outside the halls of power. The series also pulls duty as a necessary backdrop for understanding the wisdom-based alternative approaches to the field that are being developed by The Wisdom Project.

Taliban Neighbors

How do you serve as a Christian in a hostile region, where violence has become a norm, where the news for you is rarely encouraging, where you’re held down economically, socially, and politically, and where traveling just from one place to another may make you the subject of a kidnapping? Bishop Rumalshah of the Church of Pakistan has had to find a way.

A slightly shorter version of this essay was published in The Christian Century, Jan. 13, 2009.

Realism & Idealism

This is the second in a series of articles at the International Relations 101 section of the website, on “understanding international relations and foreign policy decision making.” These articles seek to make this complex, multi-dimensional arena accessible to people outside the halls of power. The series also pulls duty as a necessary backdrop for understanding the wisdom-based alternative approaches to the field that are being developed by The Wisdom Project.

Wisdom Actors, part 1

This article looks into the political careers of several prominent classes of domestic and international government advisors and officials in the royal courts old-world Middle East, with illustrations from several individuals who held high-level positions in those offices.

Wisdom Actors, part 2

In the fascinatingly instructive Book of Daniel, we see many of the ideas and norms of the wisdom tradition applied by its main actor during his long and distinguished political career. There are more clues concentrated in this one book about a wisdom-based praxis in politics and government than in any other piece of ancient wisdom literature that I know about. And these can be surprising finds when considered through the lens of wisdom. The features covered in this article explore Daniel’s education in wisdom and his religion, as well as his politics, sticking points, and style of communication in his relationships with kings and top government officials.

Snow (review)

Snow
a novel, by Orhan Pamuk

As the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk knows, a novel can take its readers into the play of religion and secularism in a way that nonfiction “issue” books cannot.

Reviewed by Charles Strohmer

(First published in The Christian Century; Mar. 22, 2005.)

The Trouble with Islam (Review)

The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, by Irshad Manji (St. Martin’s Press, 2003; 230 pp)

Why I Am a Muslim: An American Odyssey, by Asma Gull Hasan (Harper Collins/Element, 2004; 174 pp)

“Muslim Women on Islamic Reform,” reviewed by Charles Strohmer

(This review first published in Sojourners, Oct., 2004.)