Islam-Muslims

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AP scores a hit with scoop on ISIS' destruction of Iraqi monastery

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Back in 2004, I got to visit a monastery and orphanage for boys that was in Al Qosh, a town about 31 miles northeast of Mosul, the modern Iraqi city that is across the Tigris from what was once Nineveh. The chapel, the old stone walks, a lovely fountain inside an enclosed courtyard; the whole place was a serene, beautiful spot. The tomb of the Old Testament prophet Nahum was nearby.

It was just one of several irreplaceable monasteries and holy spots in an area that goes back more than 25 centuries to the days of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. Recent years have brought true catastrophe in the form of the conquering hordes of ISIS that, among other violations, destroyed the tomb of Jonah in Mosul in 2014. So maybe it should not be a huge surprise that some time in the past 18 months, ISIS destroyed Iraq’s oldest monastery. As the Associated Press describes it:

IRBIL, Iraq -- The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites.
For 1,400 years, the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship recently for US troops. In earlier centuries, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches and prayed in the cool chapel. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance.

Now satellite photos obtained exclusively by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists -- St. Elijah’s Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out. …


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Why shout 'Allahu Akbar!' when killing other Muslims? Did journalists answer that question?

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The stories have become tragically familiar. A band of jihadists enters a school or some other public facility somewhere in the Muslim world and massacres a large number of people. Mainstream media offer readers a few numbers and a heart-tugging human detail or two.

The latest nightmare unfolded this week in northwester Pakistan. As I read several news reports, a familiar detail was repeated time after time. This led to a question in my mind, one that I think some journalists need to ponder: "Why would radical Muslims shout 'Allahu akbar!' as they massacre other Muslims?"

In other words, if the basic goal in these stories is to provide the "who, what, when, where, why and how" facts, why not pursue the "why" issue? Some of the stories I read took at shot at this ultimate question and others did not.

The first story I saw was in USA Today. This is as close as it came to talking about this "why" issue:

Basit Khan, a computer science student, said he heard the terrorists through the fog and saw them in classroom buildings.
“They were chanting Allahu Akbar (God is great) when they started firing,” Khan said. “There were attackers in the stairwell and we had no arms to counter them. In the Pashto Department and Computer Science blocks, I saw at least three attackers.” ...

And later there was this:

A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack, the Associated Press reported. Mansoor was the mastermind behind the deadly December 2014 attack on the Peshawar school.
A spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan, however, disowned the group behind the attack. The spokesman, Mohammad Khurasani, said Wednesday’s attack was “un-Islamic” and insisted the Pakistani Taliban were not behind it. Such statements among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions, tje AP reported.
Khurasani said the Taliban “consider the students in the non-military institutions the future of our jihad movement” and would not kill potential future followers.

That was that.


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Raise your hand, if you know the definition of 'blasphemy' in modern Pakistan

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One of the toughest issues in reporting about any complex subject -- take religion for example -- is knowing how much background material needs to be included in a story for readers to be able to grasp the basic issues surrounding a piece of news.

So before we get to the actual event covered in this international-desk piece from the New York Times -- "Boy’s Response to Blasphemy Charge Unnerves Many in Pakistan" -- let's jump ahead to the background material. I thought this section of the story was especially strong, since the reporter had very few paragraphs to spare in a relatively short story.

By the way, this passage ends with what I considered a major piece of tech news, one worthy of its own story.

Blasphemy is a toxic subject in Pakistan, where a confusing body of laws has enshrined it as a potentially capital offense but also makes it nearly impossible for the accused to defend themselves in court. Even publicly repeating details of the accusation is tantamount to blasphemy in its own right.
Such cases almost never make it to court, however. The merest accusation that blasphemy has occurred has the power to arouse lynching or mob violence.
The governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2011, after Mr. Taseer criticized the country’s blasphemy laws and defended a Christian woman who had been falsely accused under them. The assassin is a national hero to many devout Pakistanis: His jail cell has become a pilgrimage site, and a mosque was renamed to honor him.

And that tech story?


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Fighting Boko Haram: 'Ghosts' haunt otherwise fine New York Times report

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Applause for the New York Times for keeping an eye on Nigeria, which has been struggling for years with Boko Haram terrorists. But the clapping is a bit muted because of the religious "ghosts" in the latest story.

As the most populous nation in Africa -- the Times puts it at 190 million -- Nigeria can be seen as a bellwether for the rest of the continent. And rather than a dry recital of official stats and statements, the 1,370-word Times story captures the dread under which many Nigerians live:

DAKAR, Senegal — A sense of fear nags at Hauwa Bulama every time she leaves home.
She worries that suicide bombers might be lurking at the vegetable stand where she shops for her six children. They could turn up at the hospital where she takes her relatives. Any woman in a hijab could have a suicide belt under her clothes, she fears. The frequent public announcements to avoid crowded areas in her northern Nigerian city only heighten her anxiety.
"You are always afraid," said Ms. Bulama, who lives in Maiduguri, a frequent target of the ruthless Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram. "When you take your child to be immunized, you don’t know who is seated next to you. You don’t know who is hiding what."
For Ms. Bulama and countless others in northern Nigeria and across the Lake Chad region, the victories scored by President Muhammadu Buhari’s multinational campaign against Boko Haram since taking office in May have mattered little to their daily lives.

The article acknowledges that the government of President Buhari has killed many Boko Haram fighters and shrunk their areas of control. An international fighting force, which includes Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon -- with armored vehicles from the United States -- has pushed back and scattered the terrorists. Buhari has even boasted that "technically we have won the war."

Yet the conflict has created more than 2.4 million refugees, the Times reports. The 200-plus schoolgirls kidnapped in 2014 are still missing, a clear sign of poor intelligence gathering. And the suicide bombings have continued -- two more in the last two weeks.

The newspaper praises Buhari for replacing ineffective army commanders and moving headquarters into the battle zone of northeastern Nigeria. But rebuilding the military will take money, something in short supply in the wake of the slump in oil prices.


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Do we need more Muslim journalists? Religion News Service says 'yes'

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   One thing I learned over several decades of reporting was to share as little of my personal convictions or private life with folks in the newsroom. Sometimes it was used against you. I will always remember my editor at a Florida newspaper was convinced I was a crypto-conservative because a certain article gave five more lines to quotes by Republicans than to Democrats. I told her that those five lines were devoted to a quote from then-President Reagan and in my mind, anything said by a sitting president didn’t belong to either side of the aisle.

            That was the kind of bean counting that used to go on. We were even discouraged from posting bumperstickers on our cars that might hint at bias. If you were found to have any religious sympathies, watch out. I’ll never forget one hapless reporter friend whose degree from Regent University (founded by Pat Robertson) caused him to be shut out of religion reporting jobs at two major newspapers. He was more than qualified, but the taint of Christian fervor was too much for the editors.

            But these days, some outlets want their reporters to have a personal brand and a point of view. Still, I was surprised to see the following Religion News Service story on the dearth of Muslim reporters:


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Blessed are the Himalayas; more on China's religious and cultural repression

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Blessed are the Himalayas; more on China's religious and cultural repression

Three years ago I visited the Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan. It's a spectacularly beautiful place, with thick oak, pine and bamboo forests blanketing a soaring topography, the green mountainsides capped by scores of jagged, snowy peaks.

These mountains, along with strict tradition-bound government policies, have allowed Bhutan's religiously rooted culture to remain, to this day, relatively free of outside cultural influences.

Bhutan is wedged between China to the north and India to the south. Land access from India is easy, via subtropical lowland roads, and diplomatic and trade relations between the two nations are strong.

China's a very different story. Himalayan peaks more than 20,000-feet-high make land travel between the two nations virtually impossible. For the Bhutanese, that's been a blessing.

That's because, historically and to this day, the Himalayas have impeded expansionist China's desire to push southward. Energy and resource-hungry modern China would love to harvest Bhutan's forests and abundant hydroelectricity power, the latter now largely exported to India. (Bhutan has no formal diplomatic relations with China, or, for that matter, the United States.)

Were China to succeed it would undoubtedly mean the collapse of Bhutan's carefully preserved Vajrayana (Tibetan-style) Buddhist culture. Bhutan, in effect, would go the way of the nation of Tibet and the region known as Xinjiang.

Xinjiang? More in a minute.


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Jew attacked because of his kippah -- why do few media want to know what that is?

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Why wear a kippah? What does the Jewish skullcap mean?

In France, one meaning is "walking target," as an attack on a Jewish teacher in Marseilles shows.  

The brutal machete attack has prompted a public debate among Jewish leaders over whether to stop wearing the traditional headgear in public. Beyond that, however, media accounts seem to lose interest.

Here are some of the horrendous details, as reported in the International Business Times:

A teenager who attacked a Jewish teacher with a machete in France claimed he acted in the name of the Islamic State (Isis/Daesh) group, authorities said. Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin confirmed the stabbing was anti-Semitic and involved some degree of premeditation.
The victim, a 35-year-old teacher at the Franco-Hebraic Institute in the southern city, was on his way to work on 11 January when the boy of Turkish Kurd origins charged him from behind.
The youth, who will turn 16 next week, first slashed the man's shoulder and then went after him as he fled. The teacher eventually fell on to the ground and fought off a second attack using his arms, legs and a holy book, Robin said.
The assailant dropped the weapon and ran away before being caught by police some 10 minutes later. Upon arrest he invoked Allah and IS also telling officers that "the Muslims of France dishonour Islam and the French army protects Jews".

You could hardly ask for stronger religious angles in a news story: jihadism, anti-Semitism, marking an enemy by his religious garb, use of a holy book as a shield. Even the machete recalls the half-dozen hacking attacks on secular bloggers in Bangladesh.

But like IBTimes, most media ignored or downplayed the religious facets. They didn’t even ask about the "holy book" used as a shield by the teacher. Among the very few that did was Yahoo News; it says the book was a Torah, a collection of the first five books of the Bible -- the basis of Jewish law and theology.

More typical is the account by the BBC:


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Why is it so important to certain Muslims to practice beheading?

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Why is it so important to certain Muslims to practice beheading?

TERRY’S QUESTION:

What is it with Muslims and beheadings? Where does that (tradition) come from?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Islam has no hesitation about capital punishment when proper legal procedures are observed and death is hudud (mandatory) under Sharia (religious law). Traditionally this covers such infractions as murder, adultery, homosexual activity, political rebellion, and apostasy, including (under the strictest regimes) conversion to a different religion.

Beheading has a long human history, but what’s remarkable in the 21st Century is its continued use by certain sectors of Muslims while, as the question implies, much of the world regards it as repugnant. Today’s terror sects demonstrate that decapitation remains singularly effective for striking fear into the hearts of subjects and for expressing contempt toward victims. The current “Islamic State” caliphate, a.k.a. ISIS, proudly posts its bloodthirsty videos for another purpose, inspiring excitable youths to join its revolt against traditional religious authorities and attack despised fellow Muslims and non-Muslims.

We also have official incidents -- minus video publicity -- such as Saudi Arabia’s mass execution January 2 of 47 alleged terrorists and political dissidents. The event included beheadings, including of a popular Shia activist, along with deaths by firing squad. Such executions are not unusual for the kingdom. By media accounts, it decapitated some 1,100 defendants in 1984-2004, and at least 57 in 2014 alone, for crimes ranging from drug-running to religious apostasy. Several Muslim regimes that formerly used this method of execution have abandoned it. That leaves Saudi Arabia as unique, and especially noteworthy because it purports to preserve pure and authentic Islamic practice.


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In gripping 13 stories, Crux charts sweeping worldwide persecution of Christians

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For several months now, Crux, the Sunday religion magazine published by the Boston Globe, has been putting out a series of well-researched pieces from all over the world on the new Christian martyrs mostly written by John L. Allen. There have been 13 stories posted to date, many of them in the final days of December.

One of the most interesting stories was on the new martyrs of Latin America.

When one thinks of that continent, thoughts of fast-growing Pentecostal churches or the homeland of the current pope spring to mind. What most of us don’t think of are the folks in El Salvador and Colombia who are caught in the middle of the wars between left-wing and right-wing death squads. The carnage is enormous and tragedy is that the deaths are so common, few journalists report on them any more.

What’s sad is how rare these stories are. Not since Mark O’Keefe’s five-part series on Christian persecution worldwide that ran in 1998 in the Oregonian has there been anything like it. I also noted Crux's series this past spring, so this is a quick check-in to see how their coverage has progressed. Click here to see tmatt's original post at the start of the series.

Here’s how one article starts:

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador/BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- When two Colombian women, a mother and a grandmother, were shot to death within a month of one another in early 2013, there was tragically little on the surface to make their deaths remarkable. They became merely the latest casualties of a decades-long civil war that’s left 220,000 people dead.


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