This Blog is intended for use by students in the Islamic Middle East course at Northfield Mount Hermon School and guest students and teachers from other participating schools.
Mark Oppenheimer reviews a new book on Horatio and Anna Spafford, who pulled up stakes in Chicago and moved to Jerusalem in the nineteenth century and started the “American Colony” there.
The book: Jane Fletcher Geniesse. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem. Doubleday.
Mark Oppenheimer, “Spiritual Controller,” New York [...]
Tensions between Muslims and Christians in Egypt are worsening. Christians (mostly Copts) account for ten percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million. The government is inclined to deny the problem is sectarian.
See: Michael Slackman, “As Tensions Rise for Egypt’s Christians, Officials Call Clashes Secular,” New York Times, August 2, 2008
A recent issue of The Economist features an article on important discussions occurring between representatives of the world’s religions.
The Economist, “Islam and the West: When Religions Talk,” June 12, 2008
More on the polemical battles between Muslims and Christians throughout history
The New York Times today is running a story about an American soldier who had been deployed to Iraq and who is an avowed atheist. The soldier was sent home early from his tour after being threatened by his fellow soldiers and superior officers, and is filing a lawsuit against the Army. The suit complains [...]
The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States this week has spurred mixed reactions in America’s Muslim community. Muslims cite the pontiffs remarks about their religion in the fall of 2006 and his baptism this past Easter of a high profile Muslim as evidence that he has at times offended Muslim sensibilities. Some Muslims accuse [...]
The kidnapping of a Chaldean Christian bishop yesterday in Mosul, Iraq and the killing of three of his aides has highlighted the plight of Iraq’s Christian community. Iraqi Christians have been regular targets of al-Qaeda militants in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003.
Go to articles and background pieces from the BBC
George Habash, a medical doctor who founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has died in Jordan. Habash, a Christian by faith, was a Palestinian secular nationalist whose group became best known for airplane hijackings in the 1970s. His cause became increasingly sidelined with the rise of Islamist Palestinian militancy in the [...]
BBC Middle East