, , , , ,

Boko Haram atrocities get taut, fierce coverage from New York Times

, , , , ,

When confronted with repeated viciousness, it's tempting to grow weary and turn away. But the New York Times has done the opposite with its coverage of the atrocities by Boko Haram:

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — They came in the dead of night, their faces covered, riding on motorcycles and in pickup trucks, shouting “Allahu akbar” and firing their weapons.
“They started with the shootings; then came the beheadings,” said Hussaini M. Bukar, 25, who fled after Boko Haram fighters stormed his town in northern Nigeria. “They said, ‘Where are the unbelievers among you?’ ”
Women and girls were systematically imprisoned in houses, held until Boko Haram extracted the ones it had chosen for “marriage” or other purposes.

The feature is 1,500 words, but it's written in taut, fierce, fast-reading fashion, told largely through the eyes and ears of refugees. The sourcing is astonishingly thorough, with direct quotes from at least 14 refugees plus the governor of Borno, the state where Maiduguri is the capital.

While it would be hard to check their stories -- Boko Haram leaders often don’t show their faces, let alone allow interviews -- the accounts dovetail into a systematic, brutal picture:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Your weekend think piece: Do you know, when you see yarmulkes, how to read between the lines?

, , , ,

OK, it's flashback time.

Remember when you were in high school, on in college, and you could walk the halls of your school, or gaze around the cafeteria, and pretty much know who was who just by one or two items of their clothing? You know, to cite one obvious example from my generation of Texas guys, little golden alligators and boat shoes vs. leather vests and boots?

I love reading pieces that take this kind of inside-baseball knowledge of people and symbolism and tell me something new about life on the religion beat. Thus, I want to point readers toward a fascinating little think piece at The Forward that ran under the headline: "Show Me Your Yarmulke: Everything You Wanted To Know About Jewish Headgear."

The thesis and some crucial background information:

... You can tell a lot about a Jewish male by the type of yarmulke (also referred to as a kippah, or in Hasidic Yiddish, kapl) that he wears. ...


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Crucifixion, beheading, stoning and now burning alive? What does this mean?

, , , , , , ,
Crucifixion, beheading, stoning and now burning alive? What does this mean?

Despite the ancient examples of capital punishment in the Bible, in modern times there’s been broad moral concern in Christianity and Judaism on whether it should ever occur.  

If legal, then what methods are proper?  Under secular law in the United States, hanging, firing squads and electrocution have given way to lethal injection, supposedly more humane though recent foul-ups raise questions about that.

Islam is unambiguous in endorsing executions for “just cause” (Quran surah 17:33). But what about the methods?

The Islamic State claimed religious sanction when it burned alive, proudly and on camera for all to see, Jordanian prisoner of war Muath al-Kasaesbeh, supposedly because this fellow Muslim was  an “infidel.”

In a good Reuters follow-up, doubly datelined from Dubai and Amman, Muslim religious figures denounced this form of execution. Sheik Hussein bin Shu’ayb, head of religious affairs in southern Yemen, declared that the Prophet Muhammad “advised against burning people with fire.” And Saudi Arabian cleric Salman al-Odah said “burning is an abominable crime rejected by Islamic law, regardless of its causes.” He added, “Only God tortures by fire.”

The most striking quote came from the grand sheik of Cairo’s venerable Al-Azhar University, Ahmed al-Tayeb, who said the pilot’s executioners deserve to be “killed, crucified or to have their limbs amputated.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Same-sex wedding cakes: Journalistic framing again comes into play

, , , ,

Here. We. Go. Again.

The culture war of cakes again makes for a sticky headline, this one courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:

Should religion gives businesses an excuse to not serve gay couples?

The top of the Times' story:

There is strong support for gay marriage in the United States, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, but there is even stronger support for allowing businesses to deny services to same-sex couples on religious grounds.
Americans favor same-sex marriage by 44% to 39%, with 15% having no opinion, according to the poll published Thursday.
It also found that 57% of respondents said they favored a religious exemption, and 39% said they were opposed. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The question has taken on more urgency in recent weeks after a string of legal battles in New York, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Illinois and New Mexico.

Here's the journalistic issue, related to framing: Is "deny service" or "refuse service" really the right way to describe what occurs when a baker declines to make a cake for a same-sex wedding?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Who is calling who a 'crusader'? Obama enters a minefield at the National Prayer Breakfast

, , , , , , , , , ,

There is an old saying in baseball that "nothing good ever follows a walk."

In the world of religion, that's how I feel about references to the Crusades and the Inquisition. (Oh yeah, and comparing public figures to Adolf Hitler.) We are talking about very complicated and controversial historical subjects, here. It's hard to turn the Crusades and Medieval theological disputes (yes, some leading to combat) into modern one-liners.

President Barack Obama and his speech-writing team are learning about that right now, after he used the Medieval C-word in his address at this year's National Prayer Breakfast. Here is a key early slice of The Washington Post report:

... At a time of global anxiety over Islamist terrorism, Obama noted pointedly that his fellow Christians, who make up a vast majority of Americans, should perhaps not be the ones who cast the first stone.
“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Some Republicans were outraged.

Note how the piece immediately turns this into a political story. That's refreshing, isn't it?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , ,

The Daily Beast tells of ex-gay Michael Glatze's conversion -- but to what?

, , ,

Michael Glatze was gay. Really, really gay. The Daily Beast wants to settle that firmly before looking at a film on his life.

At least before dropping the bomb on Glatze's conversion to Christianity:

He was serving as the managing editor of XY magazine, a popular gay San Francisco-based publication that dispensed invaluable advice to men on how to survive young and gay. He was fascinated by queer theory and disturbed by Christian fundamentalism. He was in a loving relationship with fellow XY editor, Benjie Nycum. On the weekends, the two would go out to raves and enjoyed being gay and liberated. They even shared a home with a third man they’d picked up during a brief stay in Nova Scotia. Glatze and Nycum eventually left XY and started the non-profit Young Gay America, aimed at shaping the lives of gay youths for the better, before launching the magazine Young Gay America (YGA), which was awarded the National Role Model Award from the gay organization Equality Forum. The two lovers toured the country filming Jim In Bold, billed as the first major documentary to tackle the suicide epidemic among gay teens.
And then—out of the blue—Glatze became a born again Christian and renounced his homosexuality.

If only the Beast showed as much interest in Glatze's new life as a Christian -- a pastor, no less, as numerous websites report.

"Gay No More: The Story of Michael Glatze" is pegged on the premiere of the biopic I Am Michael, at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The Beast gets interview time with director Justin Kelly and actor James Franco, who plays the title role. And it digs rather deep into clips.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

There Pope Francis goes again: Madonna of the rabbit

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pope Francis’ remark about Catholics breeding like rabbits is a joy.

Just when I reach the point of indifference and exhaustion with religion reporting, the pope breathes life into journalism. He makes me laugh. What a grand fellow he is, and a misunderstood one.

The casual comment given to the press during his flight home from Manila has sparked great press interest. One might have heard the rabbit remark from Ian Paisley and other hard-nosed Protestants a generation ago. Today such comments are heard in the last bastions of anti-Catholic prejudice: the faculty lounge and press room.
 
Reuters has a nicely written report on Francis and rabbits, which summarizes the story and the difficulties of reporting on Pope Francis. He combines high and low culture in his comments, mixing pastoral and theological categories, church and secular language. The problem for reporters is discerning into which category to place his words.
 
The Reuters piece begins:

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) -- Catholics should not feel they have to breed "like rabbits" because of the Church's ban on contraception, Pope Francis said on Monday, suggesting approved natural family planning methods.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Deseret News editorial: Religion news is real news -- so there

, , , , , , , ,

As I mentioned earlier this week, GetReligion turned 11 on Feb. 2 and I noted that with a salute to the late journalist and pastor Arne Fjeldstad, the leader of The Media Project that backs this weblog, who died earlier this year. I also mentioned a major religious literacy conference for journalists and diplomats -- fittingly called "Getting Religion" -- held recently in England.

I wrote a pair of "On Religion" columns (here and here) about that conference that, among other voices, quoted Dr. Jenny Taylor, the founder of the Lapido Media network. I mention that because one of those Universal syndicate columns ("Ignore religion's role in real news in the real world? That's 'anti-journalism' ") let to something that I don't think I have ever seen before.

That would be a major editorial in a daily newspaper that warns the press not to ignore religion news. No, really.

The newspaper in question is The Deseret News in Salt Lake City, which is, of course, not your normal daily city newspaper. I should also mention that, as of a year ago, former GetReligionista Mark Kellner has worked in that newsroom helping produce its expanded religion-news coverage.

So here is that editorial.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Temptation, two Timothys and the Los Angeles Times' take on a pastor to California lawmakers

, , , ,

In 2001, while serving as religion editor for The Oklahoman, I wrote a Saturday column on a group of lawmakers involved in an unusual endeavor:

I hid my jewelry and locked my wallet in the car. I had gone to a scary place — the state Capitol — to investigate a tip from Rep. Lance Cargill, R-Harrah.
If the shenanigans that my wife's former Harrah High School classmate reported were true, I figured our readers needed to know.
Cargill told of after-dark meetings involving 15 to 20 legislators. The lawmakers, he confided, assemble most Monday nights in an area living room.
They devour sandwiches or fried chicken. Then they loosen their ties, roll up their sleeves and get down to business.
The business of Southern Gospel singing, that is.
I regret to inform you that this undertaking entails no dark, smoky rooms and no money changing hands, although the gatherings were opened to Capitol lobbyist Jeff Applekamp when the politicians learned he could play a mean bass guitar.

Those who follow Oklahoma politics may recall that Cargill later served as speaker of the state House. He resigned as speaker in 2008 after failing to file personal income tax returns and repeatedly paying property taxes on his law office late. Perhaps he was too busy belting out Gospel tunes?

But seriously, I was reminded of the Oklahoma Capitol crooners when I read an in-depth Los Angeles Times story this week on a pastor who aims to deliver California lawmakers from temptation.


Please respect our Commenting Policy