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So evangelical leaders are front and center in a public relations campaign launched this week. Editors and reporters are giving the campaign heavy coverage because the evangelical leaders are surprising them by calling for reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times story yesterday hit the major points:
Andrew Sullivan has been unrelenting in his criticism of The New York Times for calling the Muhammad cartoons “callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.”
I spent most of the day on the move from Wheaton, Ill., to downtown Chicago and then on to Grand Rapids, Mich. Thus, I am only now — late at night — getting to some of the major stories of the day.
Political events in the Muslim world have taken a decidedly extremist turn. As we’ve said repeatedly on this site, those in the Western world must understand the Islamic world if a Clash of Civilizations is to be avoided. Some would say this is inevitable, but I would prefer the optimistic viewpoint and hold that this clash is avoidable.
One of the more interesting aspects of the controversy about Muslim cartoons is the decision of the vast majority of news outlets here in the States not to publish them.
With Danish and Norwegian embassies in flames this weekend, it is clear that Muslim outrage over a Denmark newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad is not going away. We previously highlighted some of the issues involved, namely that Islam forbids rendering Muhammad in visual media and the obvious tension between Western values of freedom of the press and a Europe with a growing Muslim population. Yesterday Terry covered the stateside media treatment. But this religion and media story is causing such an international crisis that I feel compelled to point out a few other things.
I’m waiting for some smart person out there to dissect Bono’s sermon Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast for its theological implications and political ramifications.
I was surprised that Peggy Noonan did not do much with the echo of the “ending tyranny” theme in President Bush’s State of the Union address, the almost messianic theme that had been so controversial in the 2005 address.
Washington Post reporter Peter Slevin found a Republican he likes. He profiles former Senator John Danforth and his campaign to reduce the influence of the religious right.
