Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I’ve always felt plenty of guilt — I blame my Catholic and Jewish roots — for not feeling more persecuted for my Christian beliefs in the United States. But in many corners of the world Christians get all the persecution they can handle.
Saudi Arabia isn’t high on anybody’s list for a religious freedom award. But last year there were some hopeful signs for religious liberty advocates when the king dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who had condoned killing owners of television networks that broadcast immoral content. He had also appointed a female deputy minister and changed the makeup of a body of religious scholars — who issue fatwas — to give more moderate Sunnis representation.
On the surface, a recent report by the San Antonio Express-News on an atheist student organization urging classmates to trade in religious texts for pornography seems harmless enough.
Before we look at the journalistic essay that has me so hot and bothered, let us pause and read two crucial passages in a document that used to be dear to the heart of old-fashioned liberals — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This cornerstone of human-rights work was proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.
Last week, Sarah looked at media coverage of Jihad Jane, the Pennsylvania woman who was arrested in a terrorism plot case. And now we learn of Jihad Jamie, another American woman involved in the same alleged plot. The early coverage of Jane left unanswered major questions about how she converted to Islam. Let’s look at the coverage of Jamie Paulin-Ramirez.
I’ve let this story percolate for a little while. Still, the story of the three NorCal cousins accused of shooting a man they believed to be gay with a BB gun has gotten only touch-and-go coverage, mainly from the San Francisco Chronicle and the Associated Press.
Last week, I was pretty hard on a New York Times report about the latest round of quote, “ethnic,” unquote violence in Nigeria. This story was very light on the details when it came to describing the role that religion plays in a nation that is, literally, divided by faith.
I was reading this Washington Post story about how “some” Muslims don’t want to fill out U.S. Census forms for fear of how the federal government will use that information.
This week we’ve seen two major stories on “gendercide.” That’s the phenomenon of some 100 million plus females having been aborted through sex selective abortion. One appears in the Christian Science Monitor and the other in The Economist.
