Islam-Muslims

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Religious freedom rally round-up

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We heard a few comments last week about NPR’s coverage of various nun issues. Some thought it was one-sided or too shallow but I was intrigued by this report claiming that NPR devoted 14 minutes on Friday to support of nuns who’ve been criticized by the Vatican for failing to uphold Catholic teaching. I wondered how many minutes were devoted to religious freedom rallies that were held nationwide on Friday. And while I’m not sure if I’m doing the Google thing correctly, I think it looks like zero minutes. NPR did throw an Associated Press story up on the web site, but I can’t find anything else.


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What? Face-eating man who might be religious?

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A friend sent me the bizarre news about the naked man shot to death while he was chewing off a homelessman’s face and said “Sound like demons?” linking to Mark 5. Yeah, so I’m guessing your average reporter knows next to nothing about demons, but I was curious to see how it would play out in the media.


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When worlds collide: Scientology and the Nation of Islam

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The Tampa Bay Times reports the Pinellas County Florida Board of Education has revoked the license of a charter school that uses a religion-based curriculum after its students tested poorly in the state-wide FCAT exams (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test).


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Why don't we know more about Abdo's motivation?

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When I came across this Associated Press story about the trial of a Muslim U.S. soldier accused of planning to bomb Fort Hood troops, I had to go back and check out our analysis of stories from when then the news first broke last year. It’s instructive. In the breaking news, we looked at how the soldier, Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, was identified as well as how his religion was put in context with other aspects. For instance, he’d recently had his efforts to be given conscientious objector status held up because he’d been caught with child pornography.


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Sweet reasonableness and censorship in Jakarta

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The Jakarta Post — Indonesia’s chief English-language newspaper — has run two articles on the conflicts within Islam percolating in Java. The articles give a crisp account of the disturbances amongst the various religious groups; but there appears to have been a sharp swing in the authorial voice between the first and second story. I feel the fell hand of self-censorship at work in these reports.


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Fighting forced marriage in Scotland

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I’ve been kind of bummed out with news recently. With all the bloodshed in Nigeria (read this excellent Associated Press report about a pastor who was killed by Muslim extremists as he prepared communion) the bombing in Kabul right after President Obama signed a pact in Afghanistan, what the Chinese government is doing to the family and friends of Chen Guangcheng and all the torture in North Korea, sometimes the news is just hard to handle.


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