A daily battle is raging along the 10th Parallel – the line of latitude 700 miles north of the equator in Africa and Southeast Asia where Islam and Christianity intersect. In this critical geographical band, religious ideologies clash, often erupting into deadly violence as more than half the world’s Muslims and 60 percent of the world’s Christians compete for the souls of the region’s burgeoning population.
Today’s guest, award-winning journalist Eliza Griswold, spent seven years traveling throughout this region researching the places — like Somalia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines — where Christianity and Islam collide. The result is the book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. It’s now out in paperback.
The daughter of the former presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, she currently is a Guggenheim fellow, and reports on religion, conflict and human rights. Ms. Griswold received the Anthony J. Lukas prize for The Tenth Parallel. She also received a 2010 Rome Prize from The American Academy in Rome for her poetry.
Eliza Griswold is among the featured speaker at this year’s Sun Valley Writer’s Conference, which runs July 21st to 24th. The conference is sold out, but you can find out about several free lawn talks at this year’s event and other information on the conference website, SVWC.com.
