Stephen Schwartz

Stephen Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, DC and author of the bestselling The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role In Terrorism (Doubleday).

He was born in 1948, and has pursued a long literary and journalistic career, having published seven books on modern political history, with special attention to extremism.   He was a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle for 10 years and was secretary of the Northern California Newspaper Guild, AFL-CIO.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, his extensive and authoritative writings on the phenomenon of Wahhabism established him as one of the leading global experts on Islam, its internal divisions, and its relations with other faiths.  

 He began a serious examination of Islam in 1990, when he first visited Yugoslavia.   Researching the history of Jews in the Balkans – for articles published in the Jewish Forward and other periodicals – he developed close relations with Balkan Islamic intellectual, religious and political leaders.  His writings in Balkan Jews were collected in the 2005 volume Sarajevo Rose:  A Balkan Jewish Notebook (Saqi/Palgrave Macmillan).


19 Articles Published | Follow:
Castro’s 12

Often in the chronicles of human endeavor, what appears a great beginning, or at least…

Joan Marsé, Novelist Who Wrote on POUM, Receives Highest Spanish Literary Prize

In furtherance of an ongoing interest in the historiography of the Spanish civil war, I…

The Cheapest Transaction

“In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw…

The Revolutionary Kitsch of Barcelona

Greetings from Barcelona where there is now a Passeig Andreu Nin (Passeig being Catalan for…

Saudi King Calls For Interfaith Dialogue

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has announced plans to organize an "interfaith conference" among Jews,…

Kosovo: Serbs Lie, People Die

[Editor's note: Earlier today, a mass anti-American and anti-Kosovar protest broke out in Belgrade. Protesters…

The Leftist Debate Over “Islamofascism”

[Note: This post is Stephen Schwartz's take on an ongoing Jewcy debate between Jamie Kirchick…

The Kingdom Breaks Through the (Smoke) Screen

(Welcome, Stumblers!) The Kingdom, still playing in major movie houses, may be the most important…