A serious look at the Dalai Lama?

November 16, 2005 By

dalai lamaI wasn’t sure what to make of the media coverage surrounding the Dalai Lama’s visit to the nation’s capitol. Here The Washington Post has him speaking on the hot button issue that is science, which from a man in his position as a worldwide religious leader, is not only a great way for the Dalai Lama to break into the headlines, but also an interesting cultural twist. Here’s what he had to say:

His talk focused on how he developed his interest in science as a boy in Tibet, within a closed and isolated society, and on his view that morality and compassion are central to science. He pointed out in his prepared text, for instance, that although the atom bomb was great science, it created great moral problems.

“It is no longer adequate to adopt the view that our responsibility as a society is to simply further scientific knowledge and enhance technological power and that the choice of what to do with this knowledge and power should be left in the hands of the individual,” he said.

“By invoking fundamental ethical principles, I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry. Rather, I am speaking of what I call ‘secular ethics’ that embrace the key ethical principles, such as compassion, tolerance, a sense of caring, consideration of others, and the responsible use of knowledge and power — principles that transcend the barriers between religious believers and nonbelievers, and followers of this religion or that religion,” he said.

Here in The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Dalai Lama discussed a “convergence of religion and science” in Palo Alto, Calif. Here’s a snippet:

Instead of a conflict between faith and science, this was a virtual love fest.

William Mobley, director of the Neuroscience Institute, put the conference together because he said both neuroscience and Buddhism strive to alleviate suffering.

“Both pursue knowledge about the brain and mind,” he said. “They just go about it differently. I think we have something to learn from each other.”

The Dalai Lama, one of the most ardent supporters of science among religious leaders, often says that if science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, then Buddhism must change accordingly.

The mainstream media love this guy. He can speak their language and understands what hot-button issues to steer around and what issues to declare he is firmly for or against. Here’s to the first mainstream journalist who will take a critical look at exactly what the Dalai Lama is teaching.

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Filed Under: Religion, Science, World, World Religions

Prison time for Bible printing

November 10, 2005 By

bibleThis Reuters story on the sentencing of a Protestant house church minister, wife and brother to prison terms for printing 200,000 copies of the Bible is setting off something of a firestorm as China’s regulation of religion comes under the microscope. This article has already triggered stories in The Washington Post and The Washington Times mentioning that President Bush is paying the country a visit in a few days.

Cai Zhuohua, 34, was arrested in September 2005 and was sentenced to three years in prison. His wife will be in jail for two years and the brother for 18 months. Cai’s sister-in-law cooperated and didn’t receive any prison time. According to the article, the crime was printing Bibles and other religious publications. And here’s why:

In atheist China, printing of Bibles and other religious publications need special approval from the State Bureau of Religious Affairs. Bibles cannot be openly bought at bookshops in a country long criticized overseas for intolerance of religion.

Sounds like a simple case of China cracking down on religious freedom, which is supposedly in China’s constitution, but people are only allowed to worship at official churches. Probably doesn’t sound like much freedom to the majority of us, does it? Through a friend of mine, a Catholic priest in Northeast China said that you can find a Bibles in a few commercial bookstores and at both Protestant and Catholic churches’ bookstores, and that a lot of what happens in China regarding the state’s control of religion depends on the location.

National Review‘s Jason Lee Steorts filed a more thorough report back in April:

Last September, the pastor of Yang’s church, Cai Zhuohua (his real name), was arrested. Police from China’s Security Bureau searched his home and a neighboring building that housed a printing press. The owners of the press had cooperated with Cai to print some 230,000 Bibles and religious tracts. The police confiscated all of these materials and arrested two young women who were working at the press. They were later released, but remain under watch.

Cai’s wife, who was not with her husband at the time of his arrest, fled to a coastal province, but was caught shortly thereafter. Her older brother and his wife were also arrested. They, along with Cai, are still being held incommunicado. The only members of the pastor’s immediate family to avoid arrest were his four-year-old son and his 70-year-old mother, who are currently being cared for with donations from church members.

corner bibleThe day after Cai was arrested, an underground seminary associated with his church was also raided. More than 20 policemen surrounded the seminary and arrested its students. (Yang, who was enrolled at the seminary, happened to be away at the time, and thus escaped.) Beijing’s Public Security Bureau held the students for three days, fined them a hefty amount, and sent them to their home provinces for punishment by local authorities. Yang suspects their punishments have been severe, although he has no way of contacting them.

In deference to fairness and balance, the Post tries to give the state’s reason for persecuting Cai:

Speaking in an interview in July with Ta Kung Pao, a pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong, China’s top religious affairs official said Cai illegally published 40 million Bibles and other Christian books and illegally sold 2 million of them.

“Objectively speaking, religion is a breakthrough point for Western anti-China forces to Westernize and split China,” said Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs. But he said that did not mean all religious problems should be considered “infiltration,” adding “there is no so-called persecution of religious people” in China.

Zhang acknowledged his client published Bibles without the government’s permission, but denied Cai sold any of them, saying that he distributed them for free.

“Although he didn’t get permission from the Bureau of Religious Affairs, this was nonprofit, private proselytizing behavior, and it did no harm to society,” Zhang said. “He may have violated regulations, but not criminal law, and I don’t think he should have been convicted.”

Have you ever seen a more tortured explanation from a government official? Why is the Post using this guy’s quotes about there being no “so-called persecution of religious people”? It’s clearly a bunch of nonsense.

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Filed Under: Books, Politics, Religion, World

Religion stories (plural) in France

November 9, 2005 By

MapofOutbreaksofViolenceinFranceAbout a year ago down in South Florida, I did a Scripps Howard column about young American Jews visiting Israel. One of the young people I interviewed was a 28-year-old cheeseburger devotee who was only hours away from her flight to Tel Aviv. She had made the decision to move to Israel for good.

As always, there was all kinds of interesting material from these interviews that I did not have the space to use. My weekly column is very tightly formatted — plus or minus 10 words.

I asked her if she was worried about finding work once she got to Israel. Did she have something lined up?

She laughed and said she had no worries whatsoever. She said she planned to continue her work in real estate and, “besides, I speak French.”

I replied: “French?”

Yes, she said, French. Behind the scenes, Jews from France were starting to do their homework in Israel — preparing for the day when their synagogues and homes would start to go up in flames and they would have to move. They wanted to be prepared.

She didn’t mention Jews worried about their automobiles.

That is just one story, and there are millions like it as the tensions build on both sides in the changing Europe. Events there are, no doubt, being caused just as much by fierce secularism and native racism as they are the tensions between moderate and radical Islam. Few would dispute that.

In fact, since I raised questions about one of her stories the other day, let me go out of my way to point out the following passage in an excellent report from the front lines by Molly Moore of The Washington Post. This is a major chunk taken from her story that ran with the headline “France Beefs Up Response to Riots.” This material begins only four paragraphs into this report.

While many French leaders depict the rioters as simple criminals, political and social analysts and many French citizens see the fires that are burning across the country as reflecting a growing identity crisis in a nation where social policies have not kept up with rapidly changing profiles in religion, race and ethnicity.

“France is in a social and economic crisis,” said Michelle Rosso, a 43-year-old music teacher from the town of Bagnolet in the northern suburbs of Paris, where the unrest has been most intense. “It’s similar to the U.S. civil rights movement in the ’60s. The integration policies of this country clearly do not work.”

Most of the rioters are the French-born children of immigrants from Arab and African countries. A large percentage are Muslim. Their parents’ generation was invited to France as laborers who were expected to return home but didn’t. The new generation is coming of age in the midst of France’s worst economic slump in years and during a time when many in the country, which is culturally Christian but officially secular, are increasingly fearful of the growth of Islam inside its borders.

At present, the country has an estimated 6 million Muslims, most of African descent. The fear of losing France’s traditional white European identity fueled French voters’ rejection of the proposed European Union constitution last summer and has heightened French opposition to admitting Muslim Turkey into the E.U.

In short, says one activist: “The French social model is exploding.”

In my opinion, Moore hits all of the right notes in this tense, yet compact, section of a hard-news story. The religious elements in this story are placed in some meaningful context — on both sides — and she does not deny the role of racism and economic strife.

Contrast this with this Los Angeles Times report that seems to go out of its way to avoid the religious elements of this continent-shaking story. Read it for yourself.

GetReligion readers who are interested in a roundup of religion stories linked to the riot can go here (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan), where you will find links to all kinds of disturbing reports. Hopefully, this “French Intifada” list will continue to be updated. That’s a radical metaphor, but it does seem that the fires are going to rage on for some time.

Note: The graphic featured above is from The Telegraph and has appeared on several news blogs.

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Filed Under: Islam, Judaism, World

Ghosts in the fires of Paris

November 4, 2005 By

newsflash is paris burningAs my colleagues here at GetReligion would tell you, about once a week or so I sent around a frustrated note on top of a news story or two linked to the conflict between the extremists that many now call Islamists and other religious believers, from Jews to Christians, from secular Muslims to Western Muslims.

These stories are drenched in religion, yet it is religion that is woven into ancient and modern conflicts that now involve politics, ethnic clashes, economics, blood fueds and many other factors. How can reporters separate the threads?

The religion ghosts are clashing, on both sides, but journalists hesitate to name or explain them. Has anyone out there seen an MSM story that really explains, for the average reader, the Sunni vs. Shiite vs. Kurd divisions in Iraq? Were reporters supposed to have explained that in each and every 700-word wire service report about the new Iraqi constitution?

Do we have too name the ghosts over and over? So a Palestinian bomber blows himself up at a sandwich stand in Israel and people are killed and injured. Was it just any old sandwich stand? Does the story have to tell us that it was a sandwich stand popular among Jews? Do we need to know the religious makeup of every victim list? Or have we reached the point where we are supposed to simply assume that we know?

There are too many questions.

Right now, I am frustrated with much of the coverage of the riots in the Paris suburbs. At the very least, this is a story that represents a violent new stage in debates about the future of the European Union.

It is a story linked to the fading of one faith and the rise of another on the continent. It is a story about high birth rates and low birth rates. It is a story about religious liberty and threats to religious liberty — on both sides. It is a haunted story. But is it truly a story about a clash between religious groups, between different visions of culture and civilization? When are thugs merely thugs? When are police just police?

Here is how Molly Moore of The Washington Post started a typical story about the rioting. There are dozens of stories like this in print today. You can watch them on the news broadcasts tonight. Can you hear the eggshells underfoot?

PARIS, Nov. 3 — The street rampage of angry youths continued to expand across immigrant-dominated suburbs of Paris Thursday, with gangs attacking commuter trains, elementary schools and businesses in an eighth night of violence, according to local police officials.

French government leaders met in emergency sessions for a second day but again failed to agree on how to stem the violence.

Angry youths. Immigrant-dominated.

Rock-throwing gangs attacked two trains linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle Airport, dragging out a conductor and smashing windows. Other attackers torched a car dealership, supermarket and gymnasium in violence in at least nine impoverished towns and communities populated primarily by immigrants and first-generation French citizens. A large percentage of the area’s population is Muslim.

So you are the editor: Is that last sentence too early or too late? Should journalists name the ghost? Should journalists strive to minimize the religious elements of the story? If so, what is the journalistic motivation for doing that?

I am frustrated and I openly admit that, in this case, I do not know what reporters should be doing.

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Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, World

A newsworthy one-year anniversary

November 2, 2005 By

MachetesOnce again, let me share an angry parable (with a timely tweak). Some of you don’t think it’s appropriate and I know that. But I do. So here goes (with a hat tip to Pat Sajak, of course).

Today is the one-year anniversary of one of the most shocking events in the history of American pop culture. I am referring, of course, to the shocking murder of filmmaker Michael Moore. It took place shortly after the release of his film Submission, which set out to prove that President Bush and his White House are totally controlled by the radical Religious Right.

In broad daylight, on a city street, Moore was attacked and slashed to death by a fundamentalist Christian, who shouted that Moore deserved to die because of his blasphemy and sins against unborn children. As a final symbolic act, the fundamentalist stabbed the fimmaker one last time, using the blade to pin to his chest a copy of a Four Spiritual Laws pamphlet.

Total fiction, of course. But how would this story be covered by the mainstream press? Do you think we would see MSM coverage of this event on its one-year anniversary?

I think we would.

This brings me, of course, to the one-year anniversary of the murder of Dutch filmmaker, political gadfly and liberal icon Theo van Gogh. If you search for his name today at Google News, you will find some coverage of this story — in the foreign press. I read about this story again, of course, in The Wall Street Journal. For some reason, this act of terrorism remains a “conservative media” story on this side of the Atlantic. The essay by Francis Fukuyama (“A Year of Living Dangerously: Remember Theo van Gogh, and shudder for the future”) begins this way:

One year ago today, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh had his throat ritually slit by Mohamed Bouyeri, a Muslim born in Holland who spoke fluent Dutch. This event has totally transformed Dutch politics, leading to stepped-up police controls that have now virtually shut off new immigration there. Together with the July 7 bombings in London (also perpetrated by second generation Muslims who were British citizens), this event should also change dramatically our view of the nature of the threat from radical Islamism.

This sounds, to me, like a newsworthy topic.

Now that you think about it, so does this story, which I first read about through another commentator on the political right, sort of. That would be Andrew Sullivan. The pope is talking about it, too. That’s two very sharp, and diverse, guys.

Once again we are talking about a shocking crime — the beheading of Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia. Alas, this appears to be a conservative news story, too. If you want information you need to go to foreign news sources or to Christianity Today. An online news story by reporter Deann Alford informs us:

In what one Indonesian human rights activist describes as the latest attack in an ongoing terror campaign against Christians of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, three teenage girls en route to school through a cocoa plantation were beheaded Saturday morning, apparently by Muslims. …

Two of the girls’ heads were found near a police station five miles from the village of Poso. The head of the third was left in front of Kasiguncu village’s Pentecostal Church of Indonesia (GPdI), eight miles from where the bodies were found in the cocoa plantation.

Read these stories and weep. Or don’t read them. I wish you could pick up your local newspaper and have that choice.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Islam, World

Fred Phelps in the European news

October 26, 2005 By

fred phelpsOh to be back in London right now. Or even Paris.

Europe’s Sky News is reporting an undercover “investigation” on highly controversial religious leader Fred Phelps. With reporting like this in Europe on religion in America, Europeans will be loving us about as much the Israelis appreciated their Roman rulers. The problem in this case is that you can’t really fault the Sky News report for overly hyping the basic facts in the story.

A peek at Phelps’ website makes the Sky report seem tame, and his Wikipedia article confirms the belief system portrayed in the article, which follows:

The Sky Report has secretly filmed one of America’s most controversial Christian ministers praising the London bombings.

Fred Phelps says that terrorist outrages and natural disasters such as Hurricane Rita are examples of God’s wrath against countries such as America and Britain for tolerating homosexuals and homosexuality.

Fred Phelps, who set up the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, told our undercover reporter about the attacks, which killed 52 people:

“Oh I am so thankful that happened. My only regret is that they didn’t kill about [a] million of them. England deserves that kind of punishment, as does this country (America)”.

This is just great. Phelps and his 150 followers (about 90 percent are related to him in one way or another) are now the face of American fundamentalism (a much-abused term, I might add). But according to Wikipedia, even fundamentalists don’t like this guy.

And it gets worse:

Phelps made news just last month when the Daily Telegraph reported that the Swedish royal family were consulting lawyers after discovering that he had made outrageous claims about their sexuality on the internet.

Several members of the Westboro Baptist Church congregation were planning to visit Sweden — placards in hand — ready to spread their message that Sweden is, “a land of sodomy, bestiality and incest”.

I remember how The Washington Post Magazine handled a profile of perennial candidate Lyndon Larouche a year ago. Rather than hyping the craziness of Larouche and his campaigns, it took a very thorough look at the organization and showed it for what it is and how dangerous it can be.

Sky News is doing us all a disfavor in this report. Sure, Phelps has made outrageous comments, but he by no means represents any serious group of Christians or Americans. While you can’t ignore people like this, because there is an obvious news angle for the European broadcasters, this type of reporting does not qualify as quality journalism.

(Note: my criticism in this piece is on the media coverage, not Phelps, who we’ve written about here and here. People can say what they want to say, in my humble opinion, so try to keep comments focused on the Sky News report, not Phelps and his group.)

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Filed Under: People, Religion, Social Issues, World

Trading conflicts over lulavs

October 17, 2005 By

palmI have long been an admirer of Chris Lee’s work in The Washington Post. As a reporter who deals primarily with the complex issues surrounding government agencies, Lee has a way of explaining intricate issues and spotting an unusual story that highlights key issues that others would overlook.

The story by Lee in today’s paper is no exception. As an extra bonus for GetReligion readers, he begins his story on trade negations with Egypt regarding the shortage of palm fonds, also known as “lulavs,” with a verse from the Old Testament: Leviticus 23:40. Here is the heart of the story:

Jews have had complaints about the Egyptian government since they were enslaved by pharaohs. But now Congress and the State Department are getting involved.

A shortage of palm fronds, or “lulavs,” has threatened to interfere with the celebration of Sukkot, a week-long Jewish festival that starts at sundown today and is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles.

Egypt has been the chief provider of lulavs. But several weeks ago Agriculture Ministry officials there announced that they were limiting the cutting of palm fronds this year because the practice hurts the trees’ ability to produce dates, a culturally and economically important crop in Egypt. The news upset many Jewish groups in Israel and the United States, and in turn set off a diplomatic scramble to persuade the Egyptians to relent, with the promise that more environmentally friendly ways would be sought to obtain the lulavs next year.

As expected, members of Congress are getting involved and the U.S. government is attempting to avoid an international incident over what are to most people a bunch of plants. I think Lee played up the ancient Egypt vs. the Jewish slaves a bit too much, but the connection was probably too irresistible to avoid.

The holiday is a harvest celebration and also commemorates the biblical 40-year period during which the Israelites — who escaped from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago — were wandering in the desert, dwelling in temporary huts.

According to the Bible, Jews are called upon to bind together a lulav and branches from myrtle and willow trees. Together with an “etrog,” a bumpy, yellow-skinned citrus fruit similar to a lemon, the items make up the “four species” used in blessings during the holiday ritual.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Chanan Tigay has a much more thorough report that is undated on Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent website that could have been the impetus for Lee’s story.

Date palms typically have 15 to 20 healthy green leaves at any one time. The removal of leaves should be limited to the dead and dying brown leaves located at the trees’ base, he said.

The Encyclopedia Judaica translates the Hebrew word lulav as “a young branch of a tree” or “a shoot.” The lulav is one of the arba’ah minim — or four plant species — that are joined together and shaken on Sukkot. The others are willows and myrtle, which are bound to the lulav with strips of palm; and the etrog, or citron, which is held beside the lulav as it is waved.

As to be expected, niche publications will give an issue much more thorough coverage and lack the strict space limitations existing at larger more mainstream publications like the Post. No harm done — the Internet is a wonderful thing and resolves those problems for those who are interested.

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Filed Under: Judaism, World

Old ghost in the Iraqi vote

October 16, 2005 By

mosqBagd2I don’t know about you, but every now and then I get two emails and, because I read them back to back, they become connected. This happened today, when I reached Jackson, Tenn., to visit Union University. I thinned out the deluge of email from the previous day or so and then started reading.

The Iraqi vote, of course, is one of the biggest stories out there today. I read the main Washington Post piece and, to my way of thinking, there was something missing. If the White House is going to be excited about this election and its impact on something that can be called a “democracy,” then I want to know about the impact of this vote on issues such as free speech, women’s rights, religious liberty and other related topics.

It may not be fair to read this story and let it stand alone, without taking into account other Post stories from the recent past. Still, read it and tell me what you think. Early on, we are told:

The strong overall turnout in the west, however, raised the possibility that the disempowered Sunni minority could defeat the draft charter, which endorses a loose federal system with a weak, religiously influenced central government. Many Sunnis fear the draft would bring the breakup of Iraq into ethnic and religious substates, and make permanent their loss of power to the Shiite Muslim majority after the toppling of Hussein. …

In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush said that the referendum dealt “a severe blow to the terrorists” while sending a message to the world. “Iraqis will decide the future of their country through peaceful elections, not violent insurgency.” Bush said the referendum was “a critical step forward in Iraq’s march toward democracy.”

The religion element is there, but quickly vanishes. We learn valuable information about the strong turnout, the threat of violence, the potential political impact of the votes and other topics. But if religion is at the heart of these issues, what happened to that information? How will the vote and this new constitution affect basic human rights?

At that point, I opened another email. Click here to read a fresh Freedom House release on the vote. Then read the Post report again.

I don’t know about you, but I want the excellent reporters at the Post to answer some of the questions raised by the Freedom House activists.

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Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Social Issues, World