Lulu Schwartz

Lulu Schwartz (born Stephen Schwartz, September 9, 1948) is an American Sufi[1] journalist, columnist, and author. She has been published in a variety of media, including The Wall Street Journal.[2] Schwartz worked as a senior policy consultant and held the role of director of "Islam and Democracy Project" at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neo-conservative think-tank based in Washington, D.C.[3] She is the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Islamic Pluralism. In 2011–2012 she was a member of Folks Magazine's Editorial Board.[4]

Lulu Schwartz
Born
Stephen Schwartz

(1948-09-09) September 9, 1948
Columbus, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation(s)Journalist, writer

She has been an adherent of the Hanafi school of Islam since 1997.[1] Schwartz was a key figure in the neo-conservative movement that held considerable influence in the administration of George W. Bush.[5] Schwartz's criticism of Islamic fundamentalism, especially the Wahhabi movement within Sunni Islam, has attracted controversy. Alongside fellow neo-conservative writer Daniel Pipes, Schwartz has been a major critic of Islamism and has depicted Islamists as the new ideological nemesis of the West after the fall of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union.[6][7]

Schwartz has been strongly critical of the AKP government in Turkey, portraying it as a hostile pan-Islamist threat following the Gaza flotilla raid incident in 2010.[8][9] Schwartz has also condemned the Iranian government, asserting that American academia is being threatened by the infiltration of pro-Khomeinist state agents of Iran.[10] Schwartz's works have also been a major influence on neo-con factions that favour the severing of Saudi Arabia-US relations and lobby US foreign policy officials to take a hostile stance against the Saudi government.[11]

Early life

Schwartz was born in Columbus, Ohio to Horace Schwartz, a Jewish independent bookseller. Her mother, the daughter of a Protestant minister, was a career social services worker. Schwartz later described both of her parents as "radical leftists and quite antireligious",[12] her father a "fellow traveller", her mother a member of the Communist Party. She was baptized in the Presbyterian church as an infant.[12]

The family moved to San Francisco when she was young, where her father Horace became a literary agent.[13] She attended Lowell High School[13] and she became affiliated with Leninist communism until 1984.[12]

Labor activism and literary career

After college, Schwartz became a member of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific. With others, she founded a small semi-Trotskyist group FOCUS.[14]

The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote of Schwartz in 1989: "As he himself readily admits, Schwartz has made a lot of enemies over the years as he performed a series of dizzying ideological leaps: from the Industrial Workers of the World to meeting with Oliver North and the Outreach Group on Central America in the basement of the White House, from minuscule Trotskyist sects meeting in North Beach cafes to serving as a U.S. press representative for a Contra leader.[15]

In the 1990s, Schwartz spent a decade as a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. She was a member of the local union at the Chronicle, a branch of the Newspaper Guild. During the NATO bombing of Serbia, Schwartz published a piece in the Chronicle accusing the Serbs of countless crimes while absolving the Albanians and the KLA of all responsibility and brushing all Serb arguments as mere propaganda.[16] The article was criticized by journalist Robert W. Merry for being tendentiously biased and highly inaccurate.[16]

At the end of 1997, she converted to Islam.[12] In 1999, Schwartz left the Chronicle, and moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she lived for the next 18 months.[17]

While in Bosnia, she published the pro-Albanian book "Kosovo: Background to a War".[18] It was criticized by historian Robert C. Austin for weak and polemical writing and for being "decidedly biased in favour of the Albanian community in Kosovo", who concluded that "When [s]he is attempting to be an historian, Schwartz is at his worst".[18]

Schwartz also supported the Iraq War.[19]

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.

In 2017, Schwartz came out as a transgender woman.[20]

Political career

In 2020, under the name Stephen (Lulu) Schwartz, Schwartz ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in District 3. She came in fourth, with 1,374 votes (4.82 percent of the vote). The winner was Aaron Peskin.[21]

Published works
External video
video icon Booknotes interview with Schwartz on The Two Faces of Islam, February 2, 2003, C-SPAN
  • A Sleepwalker's Guide to San Francisco: Poems from Three Lustra, 1966–1981. San Francisco: La Santa Espina, 1983.
  • Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986. ISBN 0-88738-121-9.
  • Spanish Marxism vs. Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M (with Victor Alba). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988. ISBN 0-88738-198-7.
  • A Strange Silence: The Emergence of Democracy in Nicaragua. San Francisco: ICS Press, 1992. ISBN 1-55815-071-4.
  • From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind. New York: The Free Press, 1998. ISBN 0-684-83134-1.
  • Kosovo: Background to a War. London: Anthem Press, 2000. ISBN 1-898855-56-0
  • Intellectuals and Assassins: Writings at the End of Soviet Communism. New York: Anthem Press, 2001. ISBN 1-898855-55-2.
  • The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. New York: Doubleday, 2002. ISBN 0-385-50692-9.[22]
  • An Activist's Guide to Arab and Muslim Campus and Community Organizations in North America Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 2003 ISBN 9781886442344
  • Sarajevo Rose: A Balkan Jewish Notebook. London: Saqi Books, 2005. ISBN 0-86356-592-1.
  • Is It Good for the Jews?: The Crisis of America's Israel Lobby. New York: Doubleday, 2006. ISBN 0-385-51025-X.
  • The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony. New York: Doubleday, 2008. ISBN 0-385-51819-6.

Notes and references
  1. "About Us". Center for Islamic Pluralism.
  2. E.g., see Schwartz's Intellectuals and Assassins (2001).
  3. P. Janiskee, Masugi, Brian, Ken (2004). The California Republic: Institutions, Statesmanship, and Policies. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 368. ISBN 0-7425-3250-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. Magazine, Folks. "Folks Magazine". Retrieved August 28, 2011.
  5. Abrams, Nathan (2010). "Introduction". Norman Podhoretz and Commentary Magazine: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons. 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4411-0968-2. During the presidency of George W. Bush an idea known as 'neoconservatism' was highly influential. Certainly, many of the ideas implemented by the Bush administration had been articulated over the past two-and-a half decades by neoconservatives..Neoconservatives also held many prominent positions in the Bush administration: figures and advisors such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz; the vice president's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby; National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams.. Stephen Schwartz, Bernard Lewis, Michael Ledeen, and Robert Kagan.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  6. Clarke, Jennings, Gerard, Michael (2008). Clarke, Gerard; Jennings, Michael (eds.). Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations: Bridging the Sacred and the Secular (1st ed.). 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 189. doi:10.1057/9780230371262. ISBN 978-1-349-28608-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. Choudet, Didier (October 21, 2010). "The Neoconservative Movement at the End of the Bush Administration: Its Legacy, Its Vision and Its Political Future". E-International Relations. Archived from the original on January 3, 2021.
  8. Lobe, Jim (June 16, 2010). "Neo-cons lead charge against Turkey". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 22 July 2022.
  9. Schwartz, Stephen (June 3, 2010). "Erdoğan, Qaradawi, Ramadan, Hamas, and Obama". Archived from the original on 9 May 2021.
  10. Schwartz, Stephen (22 October 2016). "Is Iran Ratcheting Up Influence-Peddling in American Universities?".
  11. Abrams, Nathan (2010). "8: After the Fall". Norman Podhoretz and Commentary Magazine: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons. 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. p. 303. ISBN 978-1-4411-0968-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  12. Schwartz, Stephen (2007-02-19). "Why I Chose Islam Instead of Judaism". Jewcy. Retrieved 2014-12-27.
  13. Reidel, James (2002). "Ex-Libris Weldon Kees". The Cortland Review (Fall 2002). Archived from the original on 2019-08-06. Retrieved 2006-03-10.
  14. Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 p. 943
  15. Rauber, Paul (August 30, 1989) "Who Is Stephen Schwartz..." San Francisco Bay Guardian. Page 17.
  16. Merry, Robert W. (2005). Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition. Simon and Schuster. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-7432-6667-3.
  17. Schwartz, Stephen. "Behind the Balkan Curtain Archived 2001-01-16 at archive.today". San Francisco Faith, May 2000.
  18. Austin, Robert C. (2001). "Review of Kosovo: Background to a War". Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes. 43 (2/3): 374–375. ISSN 0008-5006. JSTOR 40870359.
  19. Bacon, Katie (April 1, 2003). "The Real Islam". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
  20. "Our Founder's Transition and Political Candidacy in San Francisco 2020 :: Center for Islamic Pluralism".
  21. City and County of San Francisco. November 3, 2020 Election Results - Summary. (Retrieved November 13, 2020.)
  22. Note: The subtitle on the paperback version was changed to Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism.
Interviews
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