Opinion Poll Archives - Noah Kennedy

Infographic: New Survey of Palestinian opinion

It can be a startling for Westerners to see a scientific poll of Palestinian residents asking, among other things, if they are in favor of a third intifada, but it is an improvement over the not-too-distant past when far too few people cared what Palestinians thought. When the first intifada erupted in December of 1987 it…

Donald Trump, Theologian

Recently, James Carroll wrote a sensitive piece in the New Yorker (“The Radical Meaning of Pope Francis’s Visit to Juarez”) about the testy exchange between Pope Francis and Donald Trump regarding immigration. Midway through the brief [...]
Kai Bird’s Crossing Mandelbaum Gate

While doing background reading on the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, I came across Kai Bird’s poignant and insightful account of his childhood as the son of American consular officials who served in Israel [...]
George Boole, the Holy Trinity, and the Birth of the Computer

Since it first emerged in the early days of Christianity, the concept of the Holy Trinity— Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three components of a single God-head— has been a head-scratcher for non-Christians and [...]
The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas

The publisher of The Last Palestinian touts it as the first book in English to profile Mahmoud Abbas, the man who succeeded Yasser Arafat as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and has since been [...]
Ze’ev Herzog and the historicity of the Bible

To what extent can we reasonably treat the stories of the Bible as actual historical events? On a recent visit to Tel Aviv, I had a fascinating interview with Dr. Ze’ev Herzog, a distinguished Israeli [...]
Encountering Bible and Sword by Barbara Tuchman

Last weekend I faced a solitary thousand-mile roundtrip drive from the Bay Area to San Diego down the largely featureless California Central Valley, a chore that became a delight as I spent the time listening [...]
Making Moderate Islam by Rosemary R. Corbett

Nobody seemed to care that an upscale Islamic community center was being proposed for lower Manhattan until 2010 when Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post christened it “The Ground Zero Mosque”. Sporting its new sobriquet, the [...]
Fred Donner and the Early Days of Islam

One of the pleasures I’ve discovered in time I’ve spent so far on my current project is meeting interesting people, and also discovering how generous some people can be with their time and expertise. This [...]
The Story of Reason in Islam by Sari Nusseibeh

As a Westerner for whom the intellectual history of Islam is something of a mystery, reading Sari Nusseibeh’s timely and sweeping new book was like swimming on the surface of an unfamiliar ocean. This delightful [...]
The Persistence of Myth

While working on a chapter on Jerusalem during the British Mandate (1917-1948) I ran into one of the private micro-dramas I assume most writers run into and that I learned long ago nobody else is [...]

Opinion Poll

Infographic: New Survey of Palestinian opinion

Donald Trump, Theologian

Kai Bird’s Crossing Mandelbaum Gate

George Boole, the Holy Trinity, and the Birth of the Computer

The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas

Ze’ev Herzog and the historicity of the Bible

Encountering Bible and Sword by Barbara Tuchman

Making Moderate Islam by Rosemary R. Corbett

Fred Donner and the Early Days of Islam

The Story of Reason in Islam by Sari Nusseibeh

The Persistence of Myth