Politics

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'Aides said' is the key: Why it was so hard to say ISIS is guilty of 'genocide' against Christians

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If you are looking for the Washington Post story about the remarks on ISIS and "genocide" by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, don't look through the 50 or so stories promoted on the front page of the newspaper's website. This story wasn't that important.

You're going to need a search engine to find it. To save time, click here to get to this headline: "Kerry declares Islamic State has committed genocide."

But that headline doesn't capture the real news, since no one has been debating whether the Islamic State had committed "genocide" against the Yazidis. That was settled long ago. So the real news in this story was the declaration that that the word "genocide" also applied to members of the ancient Christian churches in this region, as well as other religious minorities.

Why did this step take so long? And why wasn't this an important story to the editorial masters of Beltway-land? Actually, you can see clues in a crucial passage way down in the Post story. Hold that thought, because we will come back to that.

First, here is some key material up top:

After months of pressure from Congress and religious groups, Kerry issued a finding that largely concurred with a House resolution declaring the Islamic State guilty of genocide. The resolution passed 393 to 0 on Monday night
Kerry said a review by the State Department and U.S. intelligence determined that Yazidis, Christians and Shiite groups have been victims of genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing by the radical al-Qaeda offshoot, a Sunni Muslim group also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, its Arabic acronym.
“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians; Yazidis because they are Yazidis; Shia because they are Shia,” Kerry said in a statement he read to reporters at the State Department. “Its entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology.”


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Message from Madison conference: Religion news is struggling, but still surviving

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Religion reporting, as you no doubt know, is under even more stress than the news outfits that have been dumping the specialty in recent years. So those who attended the Reporting on Religion Conference this week showed not only an idealism about the Godbeat; they also showed courage and determination.

About 200 people -- students, journalists, religious leaders and speakers including myself -- converged on Madison, Wisc., for a broad variety of topics. Things like the kinds of cuisine from different lands. And the broad scope of social changes in America, highlighted by people's deepest thoughts and feelings? And finding a way to get attention for issues that don’t strike sparks but still speak to our deepest questions.

Madison itself embodies the tensions of religion in American public life. The city is home to the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical ministry to college campuses. It's also home to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, famous for its opposition to institutional religion.

The conference, however, was held at a sacred space: Upper|House, a combination lounge, study center and worship site at the University of Wisconsin. With comfy booths, hanging couches and a crescent-shaped amphitheatre, Upper|House served as an apt cosponsor of the conference, along with the Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions.

The 15 speakers contributed a variety of understandings of the religion-news craft. Among them:

* Besheer Mohamed, despite his job at the number-crunching Pew Center, said that "Sometimes, a trend is better than a perfect question." For instance, people may mean different things by "evangelical," but fewer want to so label themselves than in 2007.


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Sunday morning in Palm Beach: What happens when, and where, for Citizen Donald Trump?

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A decade or so ago, I lived in West Palm Beach, Fla., and taught at a campus on the other side of the Intercoastal Waterway from the famous, and infamous, world that is Palm Beach.

Now, the people who live in this enclave of big money tend to talk and, no surprise, one of things they love to talk about is people with money and how those people spend their money. A central question is whether the person being discussed is "old (inherited) money" or "new money."

The key: Those "new money" people (think Rush Limbaugh) have to graciously earn respect from the many Palm Beachers with old money, don't you know.

During the years I was there, I heard local folks say one thing over and over about Donald Trump, whose profile on both sides of the Intercoastal was, well, YYHHUUGGEE. Trump, folks agreed, was the ultimate example of "old money" who kept acting like "new money." This was not a compliment.

I pass along this observation because of that New York Times feature that ran the other day describing the life of the billionaire GOP front-runner through the eyes of a man who would certainly know the fine details -- the man who for decades served as the butler at Citizen Trump's Mar-a-lago estate in Palm Beach.

Anthony Senecal, now semi-retired, has to know the details of Trump's life, tastes and habits inside out. In light of the obsessive news coverage of Trump's life and beliefs during this campaign, what question would any reporter be SURE to ask if granted an interview with this butler?

Let's see if we can spot the God-shaped hole here. But first, the overture:


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Muslims are pretty much like the rest of us: RNS steps lightly through new survey

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Despite the furor by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz over Muslims, those believers are pretty much like other Americans, according to a Religion News Service story on a new survey of various kinds of believers.

With this piece, RNS' Cathy Lynn Grossman shows her talent once more for turning survey numbers into timely news copy. She also proves her nimbleness: Just the other day, we shared a stage as speakers for the Reporting on Religion conference in Madison, Wisc.

Right in the lede, Grossman plugs in the survey results with the presidential primaries:

(RNS) This election season, Muslims face a slate of Republican candidates who demand curbs on immigration and compete over how tough they’d be on Islamic terrorism, if elected.
But a new survey finds U.S. Muslims are looking at American society and its future much the same as their non-Muslim neighbors. Like non-Muslims, the economy is their top concern. They are engaged in community life and share similar attitudes on several significant issues.

The article is upfront about the Muslim source of the survey and, through the main researcher, the motives:


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Politico paints a nuanced portrait of John Kasich's Christian faith, but not a definitive one

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On a road trip across the Midwest, I'm staying at a hotel overlooking Progressive Field, home of the Cleveland Indians.

Sadly, we're still a few weeks away from baseball's Opening Day, so that King James guy is the only game in town tonight.

Well, him and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who enjoyed his best night of the 2016 presidential race Tuesday, winning his home state.

As I checked in, this was the banner headline on the newspaper lying on the front counter:

Kasich makes good in Buckeye State

On the religion news front — that is what we do at GetReligion, right? — a Politico magazine piece on Kasich's Christian faith has been generating a lot of social media buzz the last 24 hours or so. 

Much of that buzz has been extremely positive.

Given the positive reviews, I was excited to read the Politico piece, particularly after previously critiquing ghost-filled major media reports on Kasich's faith.

 


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House says (393-0) that Christians are victims of ISIS genocide, but key voices are missing

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Clearly, "bipartisan" has to be the last adjective any journalist would use to describe the current political climate in the United States.

Thus, a 393-0 vote on a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives is an eyebrow-raising moment, no matter what issue is involved. In this case, it's crucial that the issue is linked to the Islamic State and its hellish massacres of religious minorities in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere -- including Orthodox and Catholic flocks that have lived and worshiped in these lands since New Testament times.

ISIS has destroyed ancient monasteries and churches, has razed or looted irreplaceable ancient libraries and sacred art. It has become rational to consider that Christianity may be wiped out in the region in which it was born.

So here is my question: Yes, this is a political story. But, for most readers, is this JUST a political story? Here is the top of the Associated Press "Big Story" report:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ratcheting up the pressure on the Obama administration, the House has overwhelmingly approved a resolution that condemns as genocide the atrocities committed by the Islamic State group against Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria.
The non-binding measure, passed Monday by a vote of 393-0, illustrated the heavy bipartisan support for action on Capitol Hill. Secretary of State John Kerry is leaning toward making a genocide determination against the Islamic State and could do so as early as this week, when a congressional deadline for a decision has been set.
But the Obama administration officials have cautioned that a legal review is still under way and said it is likely Kerry will not meet Thursday's deadline.


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Fasting for Ted Cruz: GOP presidential contender's appeal raises spiritual and political questions

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With crucial primaries in Ohio and Florida today, the lead front-page story in the Dallas Morning News concerns Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's prospects.

The Morning News reports:

GLEN ELLYN, Ill. — Ted Cruz’s future hinges on contests Tuesday in Ohio and Florida. He’ll almost certainly lose both states.
The key is whether Donald Trump wins. If he knocks out John Kasich and Marco Rubio in their home states, it will set up the two-man contest for the Republican presidential nomination that Cruz has craved for months — but it also might pad Trump’s delegate lead so much that the Texan can’t capitalize.
Polls show Kasich in a close fight and Rubio in deep trouble. Stumping in Tampa on Monday, Trump declared that if he wins Ohio and Florida, “It’s pretty much over.”
Most analysts agree, though Cruz vows to soldier on.
Trump has won a majority of the contests already. He’s collected more than a third of the delegates needed to secure the nomination on a first ballot.
The Cruz camp remains convinced the senator has a shot not just of forcing a floor fight at the Cleveland convention in July, but also of winning enough delegates beforehand to clinch the nomination.

The politics are definitely interesting. But it was a different, smaller Cruz story -- this one on Page 9A of the Dallas newspaper -- that tingled your friendly neighborhood GetReligionista's spidey sense. The headline on that one:

Fast for Cruz, prayer team urges in email

And the subhead:

Candidate ignores query on whether he was forgoing food

OK, obviously this, too, is a political story. I mean, that's the case with any news report about someone running for president, right? I get that. But isn't there a potential -- even a need -- for the Morning News to address the religion angle, as well?


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Fighting radicalism: Los Angeles Times offers glossy look at new Muslim efforts in Sweden

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It's one thing to light a candle rather than curse the darkness. It's another thing to ignore or gloss over what could very well be darkness. The Los Angeles Times comes close to the latter in its feature on Muslim efforts at peace in Malmo, Sweden.

The article begins with the three-year-old Islam Academy, which attempts to make young students not only better Muslims, but better Swedes.

In other words, this is a madrasa with a difference:

Like other madrasas, as Muslim religious schools are known, the academy teaches the Koran, traditional Sunni Islamic spirituality, sharia law and Arabic.
Unlike many, it also teaches secular topics. Among them: the Swedish language, nature and sports activities, and social responsibility. The last of these includes interreligious dialogue, especially with the Jewish community.
"All our education programs have the effect of immunizing our youth against radicalization," said Barakat, a 34-year-old imam, who was sitting in his office above the academy's prayer hall dressed in a pale, ankle-length robe and skullcap.

The story, which was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, continues with a briefing on Malmo, the point of entry for most immigrants to Sweden. "About 20% of Malmo's 300,000 people are Muslim, making it one of the most Muslim cities in Western Europe," the Times says.

But the Rosengard district, where many of the Muslims finally settle, is the focus of this story. Rosengard was the site of riots in 2008 and 2011. Many outsiders regarded the area as a "no-go zone," hazardous for non-Muslims.

Clearly, the goal of this Los Angeles Times piece is to change that image:


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Mirror-image news: So 1,800 Catholics show up for solemn, holy rite at Planned Parenthood ...

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It's time for another round of the religion-beat exercise that your GetReligionistas call the "mirror-image game." The goal is to look at the coverage, or lack of coverage, of a news event and then try to imagine the coverage that would have resulted with a few details of the story switched around.

Yes, the "mirror-image" debate of all time would be the shouting matches about mainstream news coverage, or lack of coverage, of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. People have been studying aerial photos and videotapes of that gigantic march for decades, trying to imagine the coverage it would receive if that many marchers were on hand for a cause on the cultural left (think "War on Women").

Now, this "Got News?" item focuses on a Catholic march, literally, around and around a Planned Parenthood facility near Denver. What made this march different was that it focused on a specific, holy rite called a "Eucharistic Procession (or Corpus Christi procession)," in which worshipers march behind a "monstrance" (images here) containing a large host that has been consecrated as the Body of Christ.

In other words, this was not a rowdy demonstration. Here is the top of the National Catholic Register report about this recent event:

A powerful, solemn scene unfolded at Planned Parenthood in Stapleton, Colorado ... as Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila led some 1,800 Catholics in a Eucharistic procession seven times around the abortion center.
“It was truly a moment of grace, a moment of blessing, a moment of praying to our Lord that hearts may be changed,” Archbishop Aquila said. “It was wonderful to see how many turned out today.”

The liturgical nature of the event is crucial to this story:


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