A Midwesterner in the Mideast, Taylor Luck tells personal stories on a global scale. Currently a Middle East correspondent at The Christian Science Monitor, Taylor’'s career spans 17 years across the Arab world. His narrative journalism blends reporting, analysis and storytelling to breathe humanity into the geopolitical trends shaping the region. He reports “from” communities rather than “on” them, to elevate voices policymakers and media outlets often overlook. From Morocco to Oman and everywhere in between, Taylor writes where the personal and the political meet in the Middle East.
Prior to becoming The Christian Science Monitor’s Middle East correspondent in 2014, Taylor served as a special correspondent for The Washington Post, covering Jordan, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the reign of ISIS. He also covered the Arab Spring, Jordan and the Arab Gulf as a correspondent at the German Press Agency (dpa). As a freelancer, his bylines appeared in several publications including The Guardian and The National. Taylor began his career in 2007 as a local news editor and reporter at The Jordan Times, Jordan’s English-language daily newspaper. Based in Amman, Jordan, he has lived in the Arab world for most of his adult life.
Taylor has chronicled well-known events: Israel-Hamas wars, the Iraq war , Arab Spring revolutions, the Syrian war, the rise of ISIS, UN climate negotiations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the geopolitical rise of Saudi Arabia. But he revels in bringing to life lesser-known, but no less important, stories: the trials of Jordan’s last nomadic Bedouin, the innovations of Cairo’s ‘Garbage City’ residents, North African mystic Sufis’ battles against extremism.
He specializes in providing a ground-level view of the global stories impacting the region such as climate change, revolutions, geopolitical power-shifts and US foreign policy. By focusing on the universal values driving people and events, he aims not only to add insight that delves deeper than the headlines of the day, but to break down the barriers separating readers from the people of the Middle East whether they be clerics, refugees, tribesmen or Tik-Tok influencers.
As a Muslim writing for a church-affiliated newspaper, Taylor has a unique perspective on the strong common bonds binding the three Abrahamic faiths. This perspective drives his writing on religion; Taylor has documented Islamic revival movements, the Hajj pilgrimage, Christian-Muslim interfaith harmony, Jewish communities in North Africa, and the at-times contentious status of Christian and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.
Taylor is also a veteran political analyst specialized in the Levant and Arab Gulf states. He has published pieces in several think-tanks and risk analysis firms based in Washington, DC and the Arab Gulf. A recognized commentator on regional affairs, Taylor regularly appears on local and international news outlets. He has been interviewed in English and Arabic by Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, Fox News, NPR, Times of Israel and Radio Al Balad, among others. In 2023, Taylor was an inaugural Moment Institute Middle East Fellow. Taylor currently serves as a Global Fellow at The Wilson Center.
The Chicago native shares his time between his adopted home of Amman, Jordan, and the Arab Gulf. Taylor also claims to brew the meanest cup of coffee this side of the Hejaz. He’ll pour you one, if you can catch him.