Is a UN Imposed Palestinian State Wise?

Is a UN Imposed Palestinian State Wise? by Charles Strohmer In September, the United Nations will vote on whether to grant statehood to Palestine. Unless something profoundly changes in Israel or Palestine before that day, almost certainly the vote in the General Assembly will be overwhelmingly “Yes.” This will seem like imposing a bridge too […]

Images of Wisdom in Cairo

One of the prominent features of wisdom is that, to use an image from the book of Proverbs, she cries to be heard in the streets. In other words, Lady Wisdom is not some disinterested spectator. You will find her in the public square, resolutely engaged. And her aim? It is to be a reasonable […]

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.

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.

Truth about ‘The Mosque at Ground Zero’

Being covered up on a demanding writing deadline during the weeks this firestorm was brewing, I decided to give this controversy a miss. But church, friends, media obfuscation, and a conference call with Daisy Khan indicated that I needed to find the time. I did. Here are the plain facts in plain English.

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.)

Rami Khouri (interview)

Rami Khouri, a Palestinian-Jordanian, has some wise words for Americans who are trying to come to grips with life in the Middle East. Khouri is a prominent and well-respected journalist and internationally syndicated columnist. He was editor-in-chief of The Jordan Times and is now editor-at-large of the Beirut, Lebanon-based The Daily Star, the largest English language newspaper in the Middle East.

A shorter and differently emphasized version of this interview, “The Christian Message in Lebanon,” appeared in Christianity Today, August 2007.