The Tenth Parallel
Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
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4.3 • 16 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A riveting investigation of the jagged fault line between the Christian and Muslim worlds
The tenth parallel—the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator—is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do sixty percent of the world's 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well.
An award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in The Tenth Parallel show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local and tribal issues are often shaped by religious ideas. Above all, she makes clear that, for the people she writes about, one's sense of God is shaped by one's place on earth; along the tenth parallel, faith is geographic and demographic.
An urgent examination of the relationship between faith and worldly power, The Tenth Parallel is an essential work about the conflicts over religion, nationhood and natural resources that will remake the world in the years to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Award-winning journalist Griswold chronicles her travels along the 10th parallel, the line of latitude 700 miles north of the equator and home to many Christian-Muslim standoffs. Griswold does her best to counter the received wisdom of interfaith fighting by astutely pointing out where religion is simply used as a tactic in a nonreligious conflict over land, resources, or the like. As examples of war-rejecters, multifaith, and environmental advocates, the author introduces many organizations and individuals with hopes for peace, such as the Nigerian pastor, who, in addition to working with a Muslim imam to stop fighting between their communities, also distributes green stoves that burn less wood, thereby preventing further deforestation and possibly inter-religious fighting over land rights. The reader also meets Nigerian Christian warriors, quasi-military Filipino Catholic gangs, and Indonesian jihadis who sell herbal cures door-to-door to raise funds. Though not a scholar of Islam, Griswold has a profound grasp of the misinterpretation and manipulation of Islam. Her insight that no single, unified sharia (Islamic law) exists is a conclusion that has eluded more celebrated authors; among other perceptions, she notes that Islam was spread more by intermarriage than the sword. Always maintaining a journalist's objective view, Griswold, a published poet, nevertheless enchants the reader with her lush, flowing prose.
Customer Reviews
Gripping and Important
This book is engrossing to read but it also presents critical current information about what is really going on in terms of both global conflict and within many religious institutions. Eliza Griswold also reports the living historical roots of current phenomena in a way that assists the reader in seeing these happenings as much more than momentary irrationality. The interplay of her own history and personal experience enrich the narrative significantly.
For U.S. Christians finding themselves in conflict within their international church bodies, this is a must-read.
Finding a way forward often depends on knowing where one is. Eliza Griswold provides an absorbing and valuable assessment of where Christianity and Islam are at present - and how we got here.