Social Science Research Council

Geneive Abdo is the religion writer of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune is a major American newspaper with a daily circulation of approximately 700,000 and more than a million on Sunday. The Tribune company owns the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun and many other newspaper and media outlets across the United States.

Ms. Abdo's 20-year journalism career has focused on coverage of the Middle East and the Islamic world. From 1998-2001 Ms. Abdo was the Iran correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian. From 1993-1996, Ms. Abdo was the Middle East correspondent for The Dallas Morning News. From 1990-1992, Ms. Abdo worked as a correspondent for Reuters based in Moscow. From there, Ms. Abdo traveled on assignments to Central Asia, Afghanistan and Georgia.

Ms. Abdo is the author of No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000), a work that documents the social and political transformation of Egypt into an Islamic society. The book is the first to detail the leading figures and events responsible for giving moderate Islamists in Egypt enormous social and political power. Ms. Abdo is the co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First Century Iran (Henry Holt, 2003), a work that explains the theological struggle in Iran among the Shiite clerics and how this struggle has caused political stagnation. Ms. Abdo is at work on a third book about Islam in America to be published in 2005 by Basic Books. This work will explain the changing identity among American Muslims as they struggle to remain true to their faith while deciding to what degree they will integrate into American society.

From 2001-2002, Ms. Abdo was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. That year, Ms. Abdo also received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim fellowship. Ms. Abdo has received research grants from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Ms. Abdo's commentaries and essays on Islam have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Washington Quarterly, The New Republic, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, and Middle East Report. She has been a commentator on Bill Moyers Now, National Public Radio, the BBC, the Jim Lehrer News Hour, CNN and other radio and television services.