OpEdNews - Diary: A Thousand and One Egyptian Nights

A Thousand and One Egyptian Nights--The book will certainly be an eyeopener to thousands and millions of American Christians who have a uni-dimensional view of living with Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East. I highly recommend it. It, too, is a timely work, i.e. as one watches the changes and intra-religious strife in Egypt this 2011.

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By Kevin Stoda

Recently, I picked up a good non-fiction work by a friend of mine at JUBILEE PARTNERS, an intentional Christian community in rural Georgia. The book reminds us that not only bad news comes from Georgia and there are many good Christian peacemakers and Witnesses living there. (Naturally, Habitat for Humanity comes from Georgia--and some of Jubilee Partners membership helped establish Habitat after volunteering in Africa about 4-5 decades ago.)

This book was published just after the family of Jennifer Drago returned from living and volunteering for three years in Beni Suef in Egypt. The book will certainly be an eyeopener to thousands and millions of American Christians who have a uni-dimensional view of living with Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East. I highly recommend it. It, too, is a timely work, i.e. as one watches the changes and intra-religious strife in Egypt this 2011.--KAS

A Thousand and One Egyptian Nights
by Jennifer Drago
published 2007 (Herald Press)
http://www.jubileepartners.org/

Two years after September 11, 2001, many Christians and others in the west had turned a cold shoulder and a blind eye to Muslims in the Middle East. Jennifer Drago and her family, now back at Jubilee, saw things differently. They responded to a radical call that uprooted them from their life and work with refugees here and planted them among Muslims and Coptic Christians in a traditional and conservative town in Egypt.

Jennifer recounts in the book the challenges and rewards of this three-year eye-opening journey. "It is not only our story but the stories of our neighbors: a blind Christian woman seeking why God made her this way, our widowed housekeeper raising two children and trying to stay financially independent so she doesn't have to marry again, our neighbor who is beaten by her husband who finally abandons her, a Muslim gynecologist and mother of four who not only teaches us about the values of Islam but lives them as well, and many other people who befriended us and whom we came to love and care about."