Mission

Humantrustees.org aims to foster understanding and cooperation between Muslims and Christians so as to empower them to live up to their God-given calling as “trustees of the earth.” This Christian initiative seeks to accomplish this goal through scholarship, teaching, news commentary, and networking between scholars, members of both communities, and with anyone else who is passionate about peace and human flourishing.
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22 March 2020

The Rise of Global Protests

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“Earlier this week, an iconic photo [taken by local photographer Lana Haroun] of a woman named Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old engineering and architecture student, addressing protesters from atop a car went viral.” From a Vox article, “The Women who helped bring down Sudan’s president.”
First, a very belated wish: a peaceful and prosperous 2020 year to all! By “prosperous” I don’t only mean freedom from financial woes. I mean a deep sense of flourishing and thriving in your soul. You can find any number of signs around you pointing to this year as a harbinger of stress and grief -- and above all, being…
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05 October 2019

Turkey: Secularism, Nationalism, and Democracy (2)

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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, c. 1016 (1881-1938)
In the first installment of this post I showed how the extreme secularism imposed on his nation by Kemal Attatürk, borrowed from the French ideology of laïcité, could not hold forever. The world dramatically became more religious starting in the 1970s (see my blog post on this) and social science scholars began to describe a wave of “fundamentalism” sweeping over…
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09 September 2019

Turkey: Secularism, Nationalism, and Democracy (1)

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A helpful article in the Russian press, days after the failed coup: “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the uprising on Fethullah Gulen, a retired Islamic cleric and former political ally, who once had a sizeable following in the Turkish police, judiciary and military.”
I begin here a two-part blog post on Turkey. What has captured the headlines is the Trump administration love affair with Saudi Arabia (apparently uninterrupted by the grisly murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggji) and its support of its proxy war against Iran in Yemen, now in its fifth year. But it is not just the Kingdom of Saudi…
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07 May 2019

The Fight for Justice in Palestine

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In an article by The Thirdside, “March of Hope: How Israeli-Palestinian Women Wage Peace." Photo caption: “Israeli, Druse and Israeli Arab women of ‘Women Wage Peace’ protest outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resident in Jerusalem, Israel, October 19, 2016. The women’s march is to urge lawmakers to act to bring a secure future for their children by making peace.” Source: Debbie Hill/UPI
I confess to being surprised that I haven’t touched this topic more than once, and that back in January 2012 (though I do have a ten-page paper on Christian Zionism and the I/P conflict in Resources, the ideology without which President Trump could not do what is doing with this issue). We lived there for three years as a family…
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Recent Blog Entries

Books

  • Muslims and Christians Debate Justice and Love
    Muslims and Christians Debate Justice and Love

    This book is now published and available as an ebook. Unfortunately, with the current COVID-19 pandemic, the publisher cannot send out the actual physical books. Read a summary for each of the 6 chapters and buy it on the publisher's page. Here's the abstract, or précis:

     

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  • Earth, Empire and Sacred Text
    Earth, Empire and Sacred Text

    This book seeks to construct a Muslim-Christian theological discourse on creation and humanity, which could help adherents of both faiths work together to preserve our planet, bring justice to its most needy inhabitants and contribute to peacebuilding in areas of conflict. For more information or to purchase (now also in paperback!)

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