The anti-Semitic focus of French terrorism

October 11, 2012 By mollie

You may recall media coverage regarding a kosher market in a suburb of Paris that was bombed last month. There’s been a development in the case. Here’s the New York Times piece “French Investigators Find Bomb-Making Materials“:

French police officers investigating a group of young Islamic radicals have uncovered bomb-making materials and weapons, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We are clearly and objectively facing an extremely dangerous terrorist cell,” Mr. Molins said in the statement, adding that it was necessary to “avoid the risk of a terrorist attack in France.”

We learn a bit about the detention of 12 suspects and the significance of the haul the police found, including potassium nitrate, sulfur, saltpeter, pressure cookers, headlights and guns. Then:

Most of the arrests were made on Saturday in a number of cities across France and the police said then that some guns and ammunition had been found. In Strasbourg, one suspect, Jérémie Louis-Sidney, 33, fired on the police and was shot dead. Mr. Louis-Sidney was believed to have been the leader of the cell and to have been radicalized in prison, where he served two years for drug trafficking. His DNA was found on the pin of a low-powered grenade used to attack a Jewish kosher market in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles last month.

It’s interesting that Louis-Sidney was said to be “radicalized” in prison. I also wonder if he converted to Islam there. I heard he did, although it’s not entirely clear from this article. And then I wonder if he changed his name at that time or did not. While we frequently hear about people changing their names, it’s not always required or even encouraged. That, in itself, would be a great topic for a stand-alone story. It’s also possible, of course, that the individual did change his name but did not do so legally.

Here’s another interesting part:

Jewish leaders have expressed concern that Islamic extremists have made them targets in the wake of mockery of the Prophet Muhammad in an excerpt from a film made in America and in cartoons published in a small French satirical newspaper. The police said on Saturday that they found a list of Jewish institutions and their addresses when searching the homes of the detainees.

Obviously there is some targeting of Jewish institutions by this alleged terror cell. While anti-Semitism is a common trait among Islamic radicals, I wonder if there is something particular going on here. I can’t forget the horrible terrorist attack last year against Jews in Toulouse.

This paragraph provided an intriguing hint of a major religious issue in this story:

Manuel Valls, the interior minister, said there were several hundred radical Islamists in France who were capable of acts of terrorism, and that the country’s prisons were breeding radicalism. France has as many as six million Muslim residents, more than any other country in the European Union. But spokesmen for French Muslims say that the lack of religious education in the schools and the shortage of imams in the country leaves some French-born Muslims ignorant about their faith.

Sounds intriguing, but very vague, eh? How is this shortage of imams quantified? How are “French Muslims” organized in such a way as to have a spokesman? Are there particular issues on which the spokesmen says the terrorist cell are ignorant? Obviously the vast majority of French Muslims are living in peace with their Jewish neighbors. Why is that? How, specifically, do they differ from these terror cells? This might be a good opportunity to just highlight one particular way that Muslims in France disagree with this terror group. Sometimes I wonder if we assume too much ability to fill in the blanks with a readership unfamiliar with contested aspects of Muslim thought.

It’s a good story, written with an economy of words. It lays out the major issues at play. I do think some follow-ups would be helpful or interesting on some of these questions.

Grenade image via Shutterstock.

Some religious denigration is better than others

October 9, 2012 By mollie

Back when the Obama administration was still claiming that they believed the assassination of the United States ambassador to Libya was in response to a YouTube video, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

“The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”

In President Obama’s statement on Stevens’ murder, he used this line:

“While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.”

The media seemed oddly incurious about the idea that our leaders were saying that the U.S. rejects efforts to denigrate religious beliefs (and they were only mildly more interested in this claim back during the early days of Terry Jones’ media stunts or when similar statements were made during the previous administration). Media outlets more or less printed the claims and didn’t even realize that many Americans believe that the First Amendment means the government has no business rejecting efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Even more, they believe the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to do just that. Free country and all that. You can stand on the corner and distribute your poorly written anti-Calvinist tracts all you want.

What was particularly odd about the coverage was that, for instance, the Associated Press previously reported that Clinton had been in a crowd that had given a standing ovation to the “Book of Mormon” play. The same play that won a Tony for Best Musical, I believe. Do we reject efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others! Or do we give these efforts standing ovations and awards? I’m so confused! (And I’m not even going to get into any of the other religious liberty battles being fought against government entities.)

All this to say that I was intrigued by media coverage of just the latest effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Here’s how the Inquisitr covered it:

In the clip for American Horror Story: Asylum, Jessica Lange appears as a sinister nun at particularly dark and dreary mental institution during the 60s. “Here you will repent for your sins to the only judge that matters,” she says while leaning over a patient strapped to hospital bed. If the embedded promo is any indication of things to come, then this season looks to increase the sex and violence by several intense notches…

If you want to see more of Jessica Lange as a sadistic nun at a very creepy mental institution, be sure to tune into the American Horror Story: Asylum premiere on October 17.

Entertainment Weekly is so excited about the premier that it ran on the cover of the magazine.

But I haven’t seen any questioning of the anti-Catholic bigotry in this TV show in the mainstream media. Just in this piece in America magazine by James Martin, S.J. He goes through his enjoyment of EW prior to reading its article on the show and adds:

Anti-Catholicism (especially in grotesque portraits of sisters and nuns) has a long history, is alive and well, but is often overstated by some sensitive Catholics. And of course it’s quite subjective. One person’s good-natured ribbing is another person’s offensive stereotype. But it’s always a good thought experiment to imagine the lines about, say, Lange’s sadism rendered with another religious or ethnic group. Instead of nuns, substitute “rabbis” or “imams,” or “Muslims” or “Jews,” or “African-Americans” or “gay men,” in that sentence. So reread those lines about the spanking with those groups in mind. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

How does that sound? Do you think it would make it past many network execs or the editors at EW? Well, maybe, but should it?

Of course Hollywood is an equal opportunity offender. A new movie called “The Good Doctor,” opened this weekend, starring Orlando Bloom as a wicked physician who poisons his patients. (Bad Legolas.) So Catholic sisters aren’t the only vocations to have their reputations besmirched. It’s as fair for filmmakers and TV producers to feature the occasional mean priest, bad bishop, and silly sister as it is to feature crooked cops, devious lawyers and messed-up parents. And Hollywood even turns on its own: check out the brilliant “Episodes” starring Matt LeBlanc as an addled, well, Matt LeBlanc.

But that a sadistic, slutty, screwed-up Catholic sister is the centerpiece of a show’s entire season on a mainstream network is depressingly retrograde, especially when real sisters are trying hard to be seen as women worthy of dignity and respect. It’s a lazy trope and an offensive one, too. And I’m always amazed that editors and writers and producers and screenwriters and photographers don’t see that.

Father Martin’s piece is all an interesting critique I’m more interested in the media’s curious decisions to avoid talking about the fact that we denigrate religious beliefs — sometimes in incredibly high-profile ways — all the time in this country. There’s been a general problem with the media coverage of what happened in Benghazi, Libya, but most of that is political or relates to approaching that story politically. But there are, of course, some overlap issues with religion news.

I think the only mainstream outlet article I saw that even critiqued the administration’s line on free speech in recent weeks came from the New York Times, and while it was certainly good, it didn’t get into the religion angle.

Protecting the rights of atheists, skeptics, and believers to criticize and denigrate the religious beliefs of others is a huge issue in this country. While we’ve seen some hypocrisy in how denigration of religious beliefs has been covered, have you seen any good articles exploring this vital First Amendment issue? If so, please pass them along.

Get hexed? From our ‘no comment’ department

October 8, 2012 By tmatt

Let me be honest with you. I am not sure how to start this post.

After all, I could simply say “click here” and send GetReligion readers to the Washington City Paper item in question and that would be that. In fact, I think I’ll do that in a minute.

But I honestly think there is a story here — a religion-news ghost beyond the obvious ones — and I’ve been searching for a way to put that into words. Here’s what I have come up with.

Several years ago, I went to the Czech Republic to speak to the broadcasters there who work in Afghanistan and in other Muslim-majority lands in that region. The key question: Why do American journalists keep insisting that there are “moderate” Muslims and “fundamentalist” Muslims in spite of the fact that Muslims in the region do not think in those terms?

Anyway, I spend several days in the company of a veteran Czech journalist known for his work in public broadcasting. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the nature of religious belief and unbelief in the post-Soviet era.

The bottom line: The Czech Republic is now one of the most secular nations in the world. However, there’s a twist in this story. As the number of people committed to traditional religious belief and practice has declined, the number of people whose worldview includes strong beliefs in superstitions — such as hexes and omens — has risen. Sharply. Today, the Czechs are among the least religious and the most superstitious people in Europe and in the world at large.

With that, let’s look at the following bizarre item from here in Beltway-land, concerning a statement by Sally Quinn of The Washington Post and it’s On Faith project:

At a New York panel Monday on spirituality earlier this week, Quinn recalled how she used her psychic powers in the world of southern magic (emphasis added):

What we really believed in and practiced was voodoo, psychic phenomenon, Scottish mysticism, palm reading, astrology, seances, and ghosts. And I have many, many stories about those, real stories. And that—those things were my true religion, aside from dances. Aunt Ruth was psychic, my aunt Maggie was psychic, and I’m psychic. We actually put hexes on people and they really worked. It was actually really scary and I finally stopped when my brother who has a PhD in religion from the University of Chicago and is a theosophist and a practicing Buddhist told me I had to cut it out because it would come back at me three times. Anything that I did later that was troublesome I kept thinking, I brought this on myself, I should never have put a hex on her.

First, a reminder that Quinn is a columnist for a major American newspaper. Second, huh?

Don’t count on Quinn for an explanation, though. At least not yet. “I’m saving it all for my book!” she writes in an email. “But be careful what you write anyway. ….”

Uh, OK.

Now, let’s try discussing this as a JOURNALISM topic.

So, thumbs up or thumbs down. Who thinks this is a topic — broadly defined, as opposed to defining it as belief in hexes among Beltway mavens who are atheists-turned-Episcopalians — worthy of coverage in the mainstream press?

Church, Lone Star State and #RNA2012

October 5, 2012 By Bobby Ross Jr.

As Mollie mentioned, the GetReligion team — which mostly hangs out together in cyberspace — has assembled in human form at the Religion Newswriters Association annual meeting in Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington, D.C.

Mollie, George, Sarah and I already have convented a brief, impromptu GR meeting where laughing was the primary agenda item. (By the way, Sarah did an excellent job this morning on a panel dubbed “50 Shades of Evangelicalism: Diversity Among Young American Evangelicals.”) So far, I have not seen tmatt — he may be teaching or something this morning (or perhaps he’s off worrying about his Orioles having to face my Rangers tonight).

Much to my surprise, the first person I recognized when I arrived at the convention hotel was Carla Hinton, who succeeded me 10 years ago as religion editor for The Oklahoman. We both live in Oklahoma City, so it’s ironic that we had to travel 1,300-plus miles to run into each other at the elevator. At breakfast this morning, I sat next to Jeremy Weber, news editor for Christianity Today, who edits my freelance pieces for that fine publication. Suffice it to say that I’m enjoying seeing old friends and meeting some Godbeat pros for the first time.

If you watched this morning’s session on religious freedom (carried live by C-Span.org) and spotted a middle-aged dude with a balding head and a blue polo shirt with a Christian Chronicle logo, that was me. For details on that discussion (and other RNA sessions), I’d recommend following the #RNA2012 hashtag on Twitter. In a roomful of journalists, you can imagine that there’s a lot of smartphone tapping, laptop clicking and assorted other “live tweeting” going on.

Speaking of religious freedom, I posted earlier this week on a clash in an East Texas town over high school cheerleaders displaying banners with Christian messages at football games. The New York Times reported on the Texas case today, so I wanted to revisit that topic.

The top of the Times story:

KOUNTZE, Tex. — The hand-painted red banner created by high school cheerleaders here for Friday night’s football game against Woodville was finished days ago. It contains a passage from the Bible — Hebrews 12:1 — that reads: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

That banner, and other religious-themed signs made by the high school and middle school cheerleading squads in recent weeks, have embroiled this East Texas town in a heated debate over God, football and cheerleaders’ rights.

School district officials ordered the cheerleaders to stop putting Bible verses on the banners, because they believed doing so violated the law on religious expression at public school events. In response, a group of 15 cheerleaders and their parents sued the Kountze Independent School District and its superintendent, Kevin Weldon, claiming that prohibiting the students from writing Christian banner messages violated their religious liberties and free-speech rights.

The Times piece doesn’t till a whole lot of new ground. However, as I read the story, I kept wondering if it would elaborate on the “law on religious expression at public school events.” I wanted to know: What law?

To its credit, the newspaper tackles that crucial question:

Mr. Weldon and school district lawyers said his decision to prohibit the messages was based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, which established that prayers led by students at high school football games were unconstitutional and had the improper effect of coercing those in the audience to take part in an act of religious worship.

While testifying on Thursday, Mr. Weldon — he and school board members had been subpoenaed, though Judge Thomas later nullified those subpoenas — said two lawyers he contacted, a district lawyer and a lawyer for the Texas Association of School Boards, advised him to prohibit the students from writing Bible verses. But he said that he supported the cheerleaders and that, as a Christian, he agreed with their religious viewpoints. …

One of the lawyers representing the students and their families, David Starnes, argued that the cheerleaders’ Bible-themed banners were protected private speech, not government-sanctioned speech, and that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not apply in this case because it had nothing to do with prayer. Cheerleading practice as well as banner-making occur after school on campus, and the squads are led by students, though adult advisers monitor and assist them. No school funds are used to purchase the banner supplies.

I could say more, but the noon hour has passed on the East Coast, and I don’t want to miss the next session — or the lunch that goes with it. I’m sure my fellow GetReligionistas will be sharing much more from #RNA2012. Stay tuned.

Hundreds of Godbeat journalists hit the Beltway

October 4, 2012 By mollie

The Religion Newswriters Association annual conference is being held over the next few days here in the Washington, D.C. area. The entire GetReligion team will be in town (even the Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc, the co-founder of this operation) to talk shop and most of us will be around for at least some portion of the three-day RNA run.

For some of us (OK, me) it’s a first-time event. Others are old timers at this conference.

Suffice it to say lots of laptops will be fired up for this one. Bloggers will blog, tweeters will tweet.

I’ll be hitting some of the pre-conference panels today, which include the following topics and speakers:

What Should the Boundaries Be on Reporting on Religion and Presidential Politics: Bill Keller, The New York Times; Melissa Rogers, Wake Forest Divinity School; David Campbell, the University of Notre Dame; Amy Sullivan, writer and editor; Moderator: Professor Shaun Casey, Wesley Theological Seminary

Religious Freedom and the Presidential Election: Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter; Joanna Brooks, scholar and author; Melinda Henneberger, The Washington Post; Jerome Copulsky, Prof. American University; Moderator: Professor Michael Kessler, Georgetown University

Overview of Religion in the Election of 2012: Sally Steenland, Center for American Progress; Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J., Georgetown University; Valerie Cooper, University of Virginia; Arsalan Iftikhar, Editor, The Muslim Guy; Moderator: David McAllister Wilson, Wesley Theological Seminary

Bill Keller! Yes, the former New York Times head man.

The pre-conference “Faith & Politics” is, I believe, organized independently of the Religion Newswriters Association by Wesley Theological Seminary, in case you were wondering about their speaker selection or topic areas.

Anyway, we’ll be pretty busy over the next couple of days seeing old friends and meeting new ones and learning from the various speakers that have been brought together. We will all do our best to update you on the most interesting panel discussions and speakers and other events that happen.

Blaming Islamists for a journalist’s kidnapping

October 3, 2012 By mollie

When I first read that journalist Austin Tice had gone missing from Syria after August 11, I was worried about how the story would play out. The good news is that we have an update and he appears to be alive. But the plot really thickens from there.

Tice has been captured but it’s unclear by whom. A couple of days ago, a video clip appeared that showed Tice being forced to march in rugged terrain and recite a Muslim prayer. Gasping and frightened, he says “Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus,” as he rests his head onto the arm of a captor. You can watch the clip above.

To learn more about what’s so weird about this story, I recommend David Kirkpatrick’s very helpful write-up in the New York Times of what we know — and don’t know — about Tice’s situation. Headlined “Video Seems to Show American Journalist Being Held by Islamists in Syria,” we learn:

The 47-second video, with the headline “Austin Tice Still Alive,” shows frightening scenes of masked gunmen jerking Mr. Tice along a trail through low hills. One captor holds what looks to be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Mr. Tice kneels, and the men force him to repeat in clumsy Arabic the prayer that Muslims traditionally recite before dying. Mr. Tice then says in English, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus,” sounding breathless and frightened. Then he lowers his head, and the video ends with him, unhurt, resting his head on the arm of a captor.

Several analysts said that the video appeared to be staged and that it lacked the customary form and polish of jihadist videos. The men hid their faces, and no group was identified claiming responsibility for Mr. Tice’s capture or the video, which was originally posted on YouTube by an unknown user instead of on a jihadist Web site, as militant groups prefer.

In the video, the call-and-response of “God is great” seems unpracticed and out of sync. The captors are dressed in freshly pressed Afghan dress never seen before among Syrian rebels. And it was unusual for Islamist militants to force Mr. Tice, a non-Muslim, to recite a Muslim prayer for a video.

Now, it would definitely help if these “analysts” were better sourced. The clear implication of these anonymous claims is that the Syrian government is holding Tice and trying to make it appear as if their enemies are. But we have no idea who these analysts are, much less what their expertise or affiliations are. I don’t really have any reason to doubt these claims, and I actually trust Kirkpatrick more than I do many other reporters, but some more substantiation would be wise, I think. Here’s more on the implication:

The Facebook posting declared, “The American journalist Austin Tice is with the Nusra Front gangs and al Qaida in Syria,” a well-known group of Islamist Syrian opposition fighters. But the group releases its own videos through its own channels, and if this clip had been produced by a militant opposition group, it was unclear why it was being disseminated on pro-Assad Web sites.

Also, I would like a bit more explanation about whether it is unusual for Islamist militants to force Muslim prayers for video. It seems that forced conversions and forced prayers aren’t unheard of when it comes to journalists kidnapped by Muslim extremists, to give a few examples that pop randomly into my head here, here and here.

But all that said, some helpful context to a complex and scary situation involving a brave reporter who is in some serious trouble in Syria. And a good use of the word “seems” in the headline. It introduces the doubt without saying more than is known.

Sometimes there is less to a religion angle than first appears — or, at least, that the religion angle is more complex.

Crazy Charlie: His cartoons are insane

September 29, 2012 By geoconger

In this week’s podcast Issues Etc. host Todd Wilkin and I discussed two of my recent GetReligion stories: “Charlie Hebdo’s Muhammad Cartoon Crassness” and “Foggy Bottom’s ‘pantywaist protocol pussy-footers’.” Starting with the press coverage on the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and consulate in Benghazi, the articles (and our discussion) moved on to the vexed question of how the Western media reports on blasphemy in an Islamic context.

I argued the early coverage on the Middle East stories was uneven. There were some great stories from the Washington Post, New York Times and other outlets from their reporters on the streets of Cairo. I also singled out for praise a CNN story that put the issue of blasphemy in context for an American audience — answering the question why the “Innocence of Muslims” movie would be so offensive.

The domestic reporting on the embassy attacks was not as strong. In my opinion, stateside reporters seemed to view this incident through the lens of the Presidential election campaign. They parroted the State Department’s claims the riots were spontaneous reactions to to the YouTube video — even though the same papers’ overseas reporters were writing there was evidence the riots were scripted and pre-planned, awaiting a suitable provocation.

The second story about the cartoons satirizing Muhammad as a gay porn star in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo reinforces the disconnect between the domestic and overseas reporting. The assertion that this was spontaneous, or some sort of religious flash mob, has not been borne out by the responses to the French cartons. The Charlie Hebdo cartoons are obscene, while the “Innocence of Muslims” video is dumb. The French government closed 20 embassies in the Muslim world in fear of attacks, yet nothing so far has happened (either in Metropolitan France or abroad).

Other European magazines have joined Charlie Hebdo in printing Muhammad cartoons. The German magazine Titanic pictured depicts Germany’s former “First Lady” Bettina Wulff, being threatened (or defended) by an armed Muslim. Is it Muhammad?

The Spanish magazine El Jueves last week published its Muhammad cover showing a line up of men in Islamic outfits. The cover says: “But how do they know which one is Muhammad?”

Writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hilmar Klute argued the Muhammad cartoons and videos — and the responses they have generated have become rather tiresome.

Seldom has satire been so much in the public spotlight as it has these days. Seldom have satirical drawings and cover pages in Germany and especially in France caused such a great stir. And rarely have so many supporters and opponents of satire popped up with a number of somewhat outrageous claims and warnings. Günter Wallraff wants to flood the European media with anti-Islamic cartoons to ensure that the “demonstration of liberty” – and he really means it – is not just the concern of a few friends of freedom.

This vibrant audacity is, in truth, the quivering anger of an over-excited neo-bourgeoisie that believes that the liberal order can be toppled by crazed Islamists and that we can also defend our open society with art. Sharpened quills versus the scimitar.

This is a pity because satire, precisely at a time when there’s so much material, has seldom been as mediocre as it is today. The mediocre craftsmanship of Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, Charb, is not the problem here. What’s sad is the intellectual laziness behind all these sensationalist pictures, photo-montages and jokes.

My sympathies lie with Mr. Klute. There is an air of unreality and lack of intellectual and moral seriousness about this controversy. Those who lived in the New York area in the 1980s will certainly remember “Crazy Eddie”. The discount electronics chain ended each of its high power, high volume advertisements with the tag line: “His prices are insane!”.

At times I feel Crazy Eddie has returned, but this time round he is peddling politics.

Oh, for a follow-up question to Justice Thomas

September 19, 2012 By tmatt

Anyone who has ever tried to do media criticism knows that it is so, so easy to complain about the work of others, especially when you do not know all of the factors that led to a particular story being reported, written and edited in a particular way.

This is why you will rarely see your GetReligionistas criticize reporters — repeat, reporters — by name. We prefer to attribute whatever is published or broadcast to the news organization as a whole. Thus, I will talk about a story produced by the “Washington Post team” instead of pinning that story on the reporter whose byline is at the top.

People who have never worked in mainstream newsrooms often question why we do this.

Why? Well, any experienced reporter knows what its like to turn in a perfectly balanced, fair-minded story and then have the copy desk — perhaps because the amount of space in that day’s paper changed — cut off the final third of your piece, leaving it shamefully unbalanced.

Also, there is no way to know if a reporter begged editors for additional time to conduct interviews that would provided needed balance in a piece, or perhaps to run down needed background material, and was denied the opportunity to do so. There’s no way to know if a reporter made a particular error or if that error was edited into the piece by someone else. There’s no way to know if a reporter had fantastic material that she or he wanted to include in a story, but editors simply said, “No way.” Perhaps the reporter asked fantastic follow-up questions, but was denied the chance to put the results into digital ink.

I thought about these realities when reading the recent New York Times piece about a rare public appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas in which he consented to answer some rather probing questions about the law, race and, yes, his faith.

At least twice in this piece I found myself wanting to scream, “A follow-up question, a follow-up question, my cyber-kingdom for a follow-up question!” Let’s see if GetReligion readers have similar responses.

First, a word of background: People who have followed his career may or may not know that the young Thomas was a Catholic, then for a decade or so was active as a conservative Episcopalian — the church affiliation of this wife, Ginni Thomas. However, in the late 1990s he returned to Communion with the Church of Rome, although there have been reports that he frequently attends Anglican services with his wife, as well.

Early on in this particular interview, Thomas noted that when he was young he found himself part of a minority inside a minority in a strange land. He was an African-American Catholic living in the Deep South. That information preceded this fascinating passage:

The occasion for the interview was the Constitution’s 225th anniversary and the publication of a new book called “America’s Unwritten Constitution.” Its author, Akhil Reed Amar, a law professor at Yale, questioned Justice Thomas for more than an hour.

When Professor Amar mentioned that there are, for the first time in history, no Protestants on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas changed the subject.

“We’re all from the Ivy League,” he said. “That seems to be more relevant than what faith we are.” (Justice Thomas is one of six Catholics on the court. The other three justices are Jewish.)

Oh, if only Amar had asked if — from Thomas’ point of view — this remark actually represented a change in the subject.

Might the justice have meant exactly what he said? In other words, when describing the true religious affiliations of those on the court, perhaps it is more accurate to note that they are all from the Ivy League, as opposed to saying that they are either Catholics or Jews. Are all of the Catholics on the court, for example, practicing members of the same church, when push comes to shove?

That passage led directly into the following:

(Thomas) did say that religion played an important role in the nation’s founding and in his own life.

“I grew up in a religious environment, and I’m proud of it,” he said. “I was going to be a priest; I’m proud of it. And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.”

Oh, for another follow-up question — which may or may not have been an option for the Times team. I mean, I think there is a good chance that Justice Thomas is not interested in being interviewed by anyone from the Times, a stance that is common among many traditional Catholics these days.

This Times story, of course, connects Thomas’ anger with the the sexual-harassment storm that surrounded his confirmation to the court. That may be true, but that is a matter of interpretation, not basic reporting. One thing is clear: It would have been very interesting to know (a) the sources of anger that trouble this justice and (b) how his faith helps him cope with them.

The result is a fascinating story, yet one that remains thoroughly haunted by questions that were not asked and, thus, were not answered.