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What is it about Muslim terrorism and northern Virginia? Five men — ranging in age from late teens to mid-20s — from the suburbs near here were arrested in Pakistan and authorities are questioning them about links to terrorism.
Given that 30 Rock has cemented its place as a critical darling*, I imagine this joke from last week’s episode was rather cutting:
The church-state junkie in me really does not know where to begin when it comes to evaluating the mainstream media coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case pitting the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco against the campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society.
I’m generally a bit frustrated with how the Western media covers Islam. Just this weekend I caught a bit of venerable PBS travel writer Rick Steeve’s special on Iran. Say what you want about that nation’s terrible government, Iran is a large and beautiful country. The scenes of mountains and ornate 17th Century domes looked pretty glorious in HD.
Steve already looked at some of the media coverage of the story about Switzerland banning the construction of minarets on mosques. For those of us accustomed to First Amendment-protected religious freedom, the vote probably comes as a shock and disappointment. Nairobi reader William Black wrote about a couple of the problems he saw in the coverage. He was disappointed with the vote saying that, as a Christian, he sees no reason to fear Muslim voices in the marketplace of ideas or Muslim presence in his neighborhood. And he worried that this vote would set a dangerous precedent for limiting the freedom of other religious groups in Europe.
I haven’t been following Swiss politics, so the headline on top of page A6 of Monday’s New York Times, “Swiss Ban Building of Minarets on Mosques,” was surprising, as was the lengthy (800+ words) article:
I was having a private conversation the other day, soon after the Fort Hood massacre, with a specialist in issues of religious freedom and, in particular, Jihadist persecution of moderate Muslims and various religious minorities in predominately Muslim lands.
On Sunday, I looked a bit at a Newsweek article by religion editor Lisa Miller. Her piece took a position I largely agree with — that there’s no need to say that accused Ft. Hood gunman Hasan is either mentally unstable or an Islamic terrorist. (Although, as I pointed out yesterday, there hasn’t been much evidence of diagnosable mental illness compared to the evidence mounting regarding terrorism.) But I had some issues with how well she made her case.
The Washington Post has a story alleging that Major Nidal Hasan had stepped up his communications with a radical, American-born Muslim cleric in Yemen in the months before he killed 13 people at Ft. Hood. An FBI-led task force had obtained the emails between late 2008 and June 2009 but they were not forwarded to the military, for some reason. Some were sent to the FBI’s headquarters but they apparently weren’t considered terribly worrisome:
