Lulu Schwartz
Lulu Schwartz (born Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, September 9, 1948) is an American Sufi journalist, columnist, and author. She has been published in a variety of media, including "The Wall Street Journal". She is the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Islamic Pluralism. In 2011–2012 she was a member of Folks Magazine's Editorial Board. She has been an adherent of the Hanafi school of Islam since 1997. Her criticism of Islamic Fundamentalism, especially the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, has attracted controversy. She has also condemned the Islamic Republic of Iran stating that American  academia is under threat of infiltration by radical Islamist state agents of Iran. Early life. Schwartz was born in Columbus, Ohio to Horace Schwartz, a Jewish independent bookseller. Her mother, the daughter of a Protestant preacher, was a career social services worker. Schwartz later described both of her parents as "radical leftists and quite antireligious", her father a "fellow traveller", her mother a member of the Communist Party. She was baptized in the Presbyterian church as an infant. The family moved to San Francisco when she was young, where her father Horace became a literary agent. She attended Lowell High  School She became affiliated with Leninist communism until 1984. Labor activism and literary career. After college, Schwartz became a member of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific. With others, she founded a small semi-Trotskyist group FOCUS. In 1985, the S.U.P. commissioned Schwartz to write "Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific" as part of its of 100th anniversary commemoration. The "San Francisco Bay Guardian" wrote of Schwartz in 1989: "As he himself readily admits, Schwartz has made a lot of enemies over the years as he performed a series of dizzying ideological leaps : from the Industrial Workers of the World to meeting with Oliver North and the Outreach Group on Central America in the basement of the White House, from minuscule Trotskyist sects meeting in North Beach cafes to serving as a U.S. press representative for a Contra leader. In the 1990s, Schwartz spent a decade as a staff writer for the "San Francisco Chronicle". She was a member of the local union at the "Chronicle", a branch of the Newspaper Guild. At the end of 1997, she converted to Islam. In 1999, Schwartz left the "Chronicle", and moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia and  Herzegovina, where she lived for the next 18 months. Schwartz supported the Iraq War. On March 25, 2005, Schwartz launched the Center for Islamic Pluralism. The center is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., with Schwartz as executive director. In 2017, Schwartz came out as a transgender woman Political career. In 2020, under the name Stephen (Lulu) Schwartz, Schwartz ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in District 3. She came in fourth, with 1,374 votes (4.82 percent of the vote). The winner was Aaron Peskin.