Occupation Journalist, writer Education Lowell High School Role Journalist | Name Stephen Schwartz Religion Sufi Islam | |
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Born September 9, 1948 (age 75) ( 1948-09-09 ) Columbus, Ohio, U.S. Books The Two Faces of Islam: Th, The other Islam, Wicked ‑ Vocal Selections, Sarajevo Rose: A Balkan Je, From West to East: California Similar People Stephen Schwartz, Alan Menken, Tim Rice | ||
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz (born September 9, 1948) is an American Sufi journalist, columnist, and author. He has been published in a variety of media, including The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Islamic Pluralism. In 2011–2012 he was a member of Folks Magazine's Editorial Board.
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He has been an adherent of the Hanafi school of Islam since 1997. His criticism of Islamic Fundamentalism, especially the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, has attracted controversy.
Early life
Schwartz was born in Columbus, Ohio to Horace Schwartz, a Jewish independent bookseller. His mother, the daughter of a Protestant preacher, was a career social services worker. Schwartz later described both of his parents as "radical leftists and quite antireligious", his father a "fellow traveller", his mother a member of the Communist Party. He was baptized in the Presbyterian church as an infant.
The family moved to San Francisco when he was young, where his father Horace became a literary agent. At Lowell High School Schwartz made his first serious writing attempts, focusing initially on poetry. He became affiliated with Leninist communism until 1984.
Labor activism and literary career
After college, Schwartz became a member and officer in the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, as well as an employee of locals affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Among others, he founded a small semi-Trotskyist group FOCUS. In 1985, the S.U.P. commissioned Schwartz to write Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific as part of its of 100th anniversary commemoration.
In the 1990s, Schwartz spent a decade as a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He was a member of the local union at the Chronicle, a branch of the Newspaper Guild.
At the end of 1997, he converted to Islam. In 1999, Schwartz left the Chronicle, and moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he lived for the next 18 months.
Schwartz supported the Iraq War.
On March 25, 2005, Schwartz launched the Center for Islamic Pluralism. The Center is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., with Schwartz as executive director.