As friendly fire rained down on a handful of Army Rangers trapped on a desolate Afghan mountain, Corporal Pat Tillman heard one of his comrades begging God to save him. Tillman, a former NFL player who was the most famous enlisted man in the United States Army, told the soldier to stop praying and stay focused. The soldier lived; Tillman was not as lucky. But it's emblematic that, even facing death, Tillman remained rooted in the grievous here-and-now rather than the great hereafter.

“The Tillman Story,” a new documentary about the Army's attempt to cover up the circumstances of Tillman's death and his family's search for the truth, is a riveting testimonial to the power of personal integrity. Tillman was not a religious man: At his funeral, his younger brother Richard emphatically stated that Pat did not believe in God. But he did believe in honor, commitment and collegiality—all traits that help explain why he enlisted and then remained in the Army even after he began questioning the war in Iraq.

Amir Bar Lev, the filmmaker, brings a journalist's perspective to the story. Interspersing talking heads with footage of Pat's football career, the Tillman family, Army videos and news coverage, he teases out the mystery of Tillman's last minutes and the family's all-out campaign to discover what happened. Tillman emerges as an exemplar—a Renaissance man who read widely, conversed easily and displayed grace and prowess on the playing field. He was kind, thoughtful and self-possessed. His main weakness seems to have been on over-fondness for the F-word.

Bar Lev uses Mary “Dannie” Tillman to frame her son's story. It's her hard-won right. Mrs. Tillman spent several years investigating the tragic events of April 22, 2004—reconstructing redacted Army documents and tracking down Pat's Army buddies. Her determination to discover the truth was driven, in large part, by the Army's attempts to use her son as a patriotic symbol for the war effort.

At the heart of the story, then, is one person's fight against an institution bent on twisting reality to serve its own ends. That the institution, in this case the U.S. military, can exert control over the mainstream news media makes the tale all the more poignant for those who believe that journalists are compelled to tell truth to power.

But such lofty ideals have small chance of success when powerful, well-organized interests have the resources and influence to shape media narratives. While the government and the military can appeal to patriotism and national security, religious organizations can conjure God—and greenbacks too—to ensure their will is done. This is the chilling theme of “8: The Mormon Proposition,” another new documentary that shows how the media was manipulated to promote a political agenda.

In this case, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) were concerned enough about same-sex marriage that they decided to enter the political arena to fight it. (The film asserts that same-sex marriage undermines the church's theology by endangering its conception of the afterlife.) After organizing a successful campaign in Hawaii—where the LDS purposefully allowed other, less controversial groups to lead an anti-gay marriage coalition—it seized on California as the next battleground. Even before gay marriages were legalized by California's supreme court, Mormons had begun to gather like-minded groups in support of a ballot proposition to limit the definition of marriage to the union of a man and woman.

Unlike “The Tillman Story,” which artfully uses music, archival footage and eye-catching cutaways to underscore its points, “8: The Proposition” misses no opportunity for heavy-handed shtick. There are many shots of cash registers, stacks of money and bills changing hands. The litany of the LDS' sins—bankrolling much of the “Yes on 8” campaign, obscuring its part in the coalition, producing misleading commercials—is damning enough without the cheesy music, grainy footage and cartoonish spokesmen. Put simply, the Mormons spent a lot of money to insinuate their religious agenda into the California state constitution. That this egregious violation of church/state separation could occur is justification enough for the movie.

Although both films expose the ability of large and powerful institutions to impose their will on society, they also reveal the news media's complicity in this process. Most people I know become journalists because they want to “do good”—whether by informing the public, unmasking bad guys or recounting the deeds of unsung heroes. But there's a limit to how much they can accomplish given the industry's current commitment to profit, power and entertainment. Newspaper executives don't want to take on the military or upset powerful religious constituencies; they want consumers to buy the paper so they can promise those eyeballs to the businesses that buy the ad space.
 
Filmmakers like Bar Lev and Reed Cowan—who wrote, directed and produced “8: The Mormon Proposition”—are our new muckrakers. Like their early 20th century antecedents, they're holding up a mirror to institutions that, in our name, are undermining our democracy. And at the same time, they're providing a model for what journalism could and should do not just to survive but to flourish in these uncertain times.

Diane Winston

by Ali Mir

Islamist, orthodox, jihadist, conservative, Islamism, hardliner, Moslem, extremist, insurgent, fundamentalist, freedom fighter, infidel, moderate, liberal, progressive…blah, blah, blah.

All of these words mean nothing and everything at the same time—a testament to the power and mutability of language in the media, specifically when it comes to the words we use to describe Muslims and Islam in the contemporary world.

The potency and slipperiness of this kind of journalistic shorthand is apparent in a recent article from the Associated Press that was picked up in the World section of the Los Angeles Times. The headline reads: “Indonesian militant gets 8-year jail sentence for twin hotel bombings.” This piece is a treasure-trove of over-used and under-defined jargon—Islamist, militant, extremist—that tells a poorly contextualized story and thereby plays to readers' assumptions instead of informing them or challenging their prejudices.

So what is an Islamist? According to Princeton University's WordNet, an Islamist is either “a scholar who knowledgeable in Islamic studies” or “an orthodox Muslim.” So an “Islamist” is someone who most likely knows a great deal about Islam and probably adheres closely to its tenets. (Note: there is no mention of terrorism, violence, hatred or intolerance in this definition).

The Indonesian man who was sentenced to eight years is described as an “Islamist militant.” What is a militant?  An “activist (a militant reformer).”

So the individual in question is a fervent Muslim scholar with weapons training?  How much Islamic knowledge and learning does he actually have? Does he have a degree in Islamic Studies from Harvard, or is he a sheikh (religious scholar)? How religious is he in terms of his practice of Islam? Perhaps he is just a man that happens to identify as a Muslim who was recruited to commit violent acts in exchange for money or to retaliate against perceived threats to his family or community. The article fails to provide these details, leaving readers to clarify the ambiguity with their own biases. 

Finally, what is an extremist?  Not surprisingly, I learn he or she is a “person who holds extreme views.” By this definition, many people are extremists. The two most extreme Muslims who come to mind are Osama bin Laden (for obvious reasons) and Ayaan Ali Hirsi, who says that Islam is “not just ugly but monstrous” and that “the Christian leaders now wasting precious time and resources on a futile exercise of interfaith dialogue with the self-appointed leaders of Islam should redirect their efforts to converting as many Muslims as possible to Christianity.”

Hirsi, a self-proclaimed former Muslim and current atheist, calls for the destruction of Islam through religious conversion. Sounds pretty extreme to me, but I am hard-pressed to find her consistently described in the Western news media as an extremist, hatemonger, bigot, racist and advocate for the subjugation of over one billion Muslims worldwide.

The aforementioned AP article is part of a broader news media trend toward sloppy (or nonexistent) contextualizing when it comes to Muslims and Islam. A recent piece on CNN refers to “radical Islamist groups” and “Islamic radical groups” committing “un-Islamic” acts of violence and intimidation. Even in absolving so-called “radical Islamists, Islamic militancy and Islamist rule” from responsibility for the current ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan, Reuters still uses a series of equally vague, undefined terms that muddy facts instead of clarifying them. The BBC reports that a terrorism suspect “was ordered to be electronically tagged and live in the Midlands to keep him away from Islamist extremists in London.” So this suspected terrorist was to be kept away from ardently religious Muslim scholars? Thanks BBC, I feel so… informed. 

In these and other mainstream news outlets I am unable to find examples of similar stock-phrases referring to Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism that carry the implication of something inherently negative or dangerous in those traditions. On the other hand, as we have seen, there are many journalistic stock-phrases that associate Islam with violence, oppression and subjugation. A critical question to ask is whether this state of affairs represents the actual experience and attitudes of the majority of Muslims in the world or, rather, the willful ignorance of the non-Muslim press and the audiences they serve. 

Are there no positive stories to tell about Islam or Muslims worldwide? As a Muslim born and raised in the U.S. who works with and for Muslims in the U.S., I know many important stories that are simply not being told.

So what does all of this mean? The short answer is that the use of reactionary language in place of context is simply lazy journalism. But there is more at stake than that conclusion implies. These hollow phrases fail to portray Muslims as human beings or to accord Islam the same stature as other global faiths. They also perpetuate the infantile (and self-fulfilling) construct of a so-called “Clash of Civilizations.”   

Journalists pride themselves on being informed so that they can inform others. Many of them might renew that sense of mission by taking a close look at the language—and assumptions—they bring to their coverage of Muslims and Islam.

Ali H. Mir is currently the Director of Muslim Student Life at the University of Southern California Office of Religious Life and a 2010 NewGround Fellow. Ali is a graduate of the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development. As a private environmental consultant, Ali has over seven years of  experience within the policy framework of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Before Israel's punitive attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, Haneen Zoabi was a little-known Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset. But her presence on the Mavi Marmara, the flotilla's lead ship and site of the raid that left nine activists dead and several dozen wounded, changed all that.

Zoabi has become a living symbol of the gap between Israeli and Arab perceptions of that fateful May day. To many Israelis, including her fellow parliamentarians, Zoabi is a traitor. But for Arabs, as well as for others who wish to see the Gaza blockade lifted, she's a testament to the need for change.

This March, during a reporting field trip to Israel, my journalism class met with Zoabi. We spent an hour in a cramped Knesset office listening to her litany of concerns: her constituency lacks not just material resources but also political equality. Zoabi, a former schoolteacher, is a member of Balad, an Arab nationalist party that opposes Israel's status as a Jewish nation. She has, nevertheless, excelled in its system. At 41, Zoabi is the first Arab Israeli to receive a master's degree in communications from Hebrew University; the first educator to establish media courses in Arab schools; and the first Arab woman elected to the Israeli parliament.

The class met with Zoabi to discuss the confluence of religion, politics and gender in the Arab-Israeli conflict. We spent nine days interviewing activists, politicians, religious leaders and citizens in Israel and the West Bank to better understand—as well as to report and write about—issues that, in the American press, often seem unmoored from historical and sociological contexts.

During and after our visit, students wrote short, impressionistic pieces (which we labeled blogs) as well as news features and long-form narratives. The work has been available in different outlets but today, in trans-missions, we can share all of it on the Israel-Palestine Project, a site that students built expressly for this purpose.

In a time of industry cutbacks, this kind of intensive international reporting experience is more important than ever. Journalism students need to know there is a great need, as well as a deep hunger, for in-depth, incisive and informed coverage of global issues. Even as news outlets cut back on foreign bureaus and specialty beats such as religion, geopolitical realities call out for journalists who are attuned to the nuances of faith communities' perspectives, regional history and the complexities of fault-lines such as race, ethnicity, gender and class.

Also needed are journalists willing to tell the stories of everyday citizens, unheralded heroes, obscure politicians and abrasive activists. You can find stories like these in our Israel-Palestine project. Discover an Israeli professor who penned a new narrative of his country's contested history; a gay couple challenging the state's surrogacy laws; and the travails of Palestinian university students eager for an education.

But students in the USC Annenberg class did more than cover important, if under-reported, stories. They developed multimedia pieces that drew on photographic, online, radio and video skills—and they faced the entrepreneurial demands that increasingly define the profession. They posted their work on Neon Tommy, USC Annenberg's award-winning online news site, but they also sent their work to online publications that could provide wider dissemination.  For some, dealing with the possibility of rejection was as daunting as negotiating a foreign country.

Two students, John Adams and Tara Graham, created Checkpoint, an online site that features the stories of Israel's non-Jewish citizens. Among those profiled is Haneen Zoabi, whose passionate politics had impressed the students months before the Gaza action brought her to international attention. Today, we debut Checkpoint—a notable accomplishment of USC Annenberg's online program.

Since May, news about Israel and the Palestinians has, justifiably, focused on the issues raised by the flotilla. But as our reporting demonstrates, the region's infamous knot of religion and politics entangles all aspects of the region's culture and society. We offer our work as an example of how much more can be and should be done to illuminate the people, issues and ideas  often overlooked by mainstream news outlets that are already stretched to the limit.

Diane Winston

by Andrea Tabor

During a trip to New Orleans in 2008, I heard lots of stories about Christian relief workers who descended on the city in the wake of Katrina. The “church ladies” came by bus, by plane, by car—into the most dangerous and flooded areas of the city, dispensing food and supplies. Some stayed for as long as a year.

The outpouring of goodwill made for great headlines: “With FEMA floundering, 'church ladies' take relief matters into their own hands.” From carpentry to social work, religious groups were largely responsible for the immediate relief efforts in the city.

With a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, though, the media has been largely silent on religious relief efforts. Save for one blip on the radar—BP donated $1 million to Catholic Charities in conjunction with Second Harvest Food Bank to provide food and counseling to families impacted by the spill. It seems that the oil spill disaster, which has now lasted well over 40 days and 40 nights, isn't prompting the same response.

Where are the church ladies?

Some would say Katrina was clearly an “act of God,” not the result of a brazenly risk-taking corporation tapping into natural resources for financial gain.  Instead of an outpouring of charity, a “serves them right” attitude towards BP is common among Americans.  So instead of church ladies in food trucks, the religious response is that of an “arm's-length prophet”: I told you so.

This column by Christian minister Rev. Chuck Freeman seems typical of coverage of the religious angle. Freeman argues, “Part of me wants the results of the oil spill to be so utterly devastating to fish, fowl, flora, and finances that it puts us on a new path…perhaps in the long haul, this is our only hope of being 'brought back to the Lord.'”

The situation in the gulf is more complex than this hands-off approach suggests. A fisherman was quoted in Vanity Fair saying, “Hurricanes we know how to handle—buckle down for a few days and then deal with the damage. But this … Every day is a guess.” Cleanup efforts for Katrina were the result of carefully laid plans. Many churches in the surrounding areas have relief buses loaded and ready during hurricane season, prepared to feed victims in the wake of a disaster. On the other hand, getting on the ground to help wildlife in the gulf requires at least a 4-hour HazMat training course from OSHA.

In this response, Episcopal Rev. Fletcher Harper argues that the silence in itself has meaning.  Still, the end of his column sounds more defeatist than hopeful: “Nothing can undo the suffering that this oil spill is creating.” Harper suggests that policy changes are the best way to respond to the spill.

Is the religious community–the same folks who fearlessly canoed into the flooded streets of New Orleans—feeling helpless in the face of this new disaster? Can they do nothing to save the region's fishing industry, small family businesses and wildlife impacted by this disaster? That seems doubtful.

Religion Dispatches offers a story of a priest in New Orleans who met with BP officials last month. He suggested using his church as a training center for cleanup volunteers. The plan fell apart, and BP missed out on a lot of volunteer labor.  I suspect there are a few more fighting church ladies are out there. The mainstream media should find them; their gumption would still make for a great headline.

Andrea Tabor graduated from USC Annenberg in December 2008 with an M.A. in Broadcast Journalism. She continues to write for Trans/Missions and works full-time as a content manager for Internet Brands, where she oversees the publication of thousands of online articles each month across multiple websites.

by Don Lattin

Northern California's latest attempt to re-invent journalism, the Bay Citizen, went on-line May 26, and as someone who covered the Godbeat in that neighborhood for 25 years, I was happy to see an entertaining religion story prominently displayed on Day One.

The story was headlined “At Episco Disco – The Sacred and the Profane – a young priest puts on the best party in town.” Four days later, over the Memorial Day weekend, the Sunday “Datebook” section of the San Francisco Chronicle (where I used to cover the religion beat) devoted its cover to a broader piece titled “Night Church – Places of worship get social with after-hours yoga, art, music and more.”

The Bay Citizen is a regional, on-line news hub started with $5 million in seed money from philanthropist Warren Hellman. It is brought to you by the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and the New York Times, which will feature some Bay Citizen stories on its Friday and Sunday print editions in Northern California. The original plan had been for this regional news hub to produce radio and TV content as well, but those pieces of the new-media puzzle fell off the table when KQED (which runs the two leading public radio and television stations in this media market) pulled out of the partnership.

These two stories on the Episcopal Church's latest attempts to draw in the young and the hip reveal some of the strengths and weaknesses of old (Chronicle) and new (Bay Citizen) media. Reyhan Harmanci, the Culture Editor/Writer at the Bay Citizen, focuses more on the Episcopal priest who runs these monthly art and music happenings inside Grace Cathedral, the neo-Gothic jewel that crowns the city's Nob Hill neighborhood. Harmanci, a former rock critic at the Chronicle, doesn't put the event in the broader context of  the post-denominational church's efforts to reach out to people who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” The best thing about this piece is the on-line presentation of video and music, which gives us a sense of what it's like to be at one of the events.

The Chronicle story, written by staff writer Meredith May, is a better piece of journalism. She uses less space to set the scene and quickly broadens the story to report on other efforts by Bay Area churches and synagogues to “take the fear factor out of church and to embrace young people's religious fluidity.” May, who is not a religion specialist, scores points by referencing a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a survey showing us that this event is part of a fundamental reshaping of the American religious landscape.

The story in the Sunday Datebook (a popular tabloid-sized Chronicle insert known by most readers as “the pink section” because of the offbeat color of its newsprint) was graced with six fantastic color photos by two of the newspaper's best staff photographers, Michael Macor and Carlos Avila Gonzales. And the Chronicle, unlike the Bay Citizen, remembered to be reader-friendly and give us the date and time of the next Episco Disco event.

News done well is good news indeed.

Don Lattin is a veteran religion reporter. He is the author of Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge and, most recently, The Harvard Pschedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age in America. He can be reached through his web site.

by Gordon Lynch

Beyond the raw facts of the bruised and bloodied bodies, and the grief of those mourning the loss of loved ones, the unfolding story of the Israeli navy's assault on the Gaza aid flotilla has wider symbolic significance. Public opinion and political action are not shaped by pure rationality, but by the meanings that we make about social and political life. Particularly significant are those narratives about public life which draw on sacred forms and which cast political actors in the terms of the sacred and the profane.

As with public narratives that emerged through the news media during Operation Cast Lead, its military assault on Gaza in 2009, the Israeli government is once again portrayed as profaning core sacred forms of Western modernity – human rights and the sacrality of the care of children – as well as the institution of international law which upholds these sacred forms. In this context, the comment by the Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, to a BBC journalist that the flotilla crisis was a “bad story” for Israel reflects both an insensitivity to those grieving loved ones killed in the assault and an accurate perception that the wider social and political significance of the crisis lies now in the way it is framed through public media.

As we have seen in the hours and days following the assault, the political significance of such sacred drama has meant that the conflict has moved from the decks of the boarded ships to various media spaces in which the narrative of the Israeli assault as a profanation of sacred values is being constructed and contested. This conflict is not merely symbolic. The confiscation of activists' cameras, mobile phones and laptops during their detention, attempts to hack the website of the Jerusalem Post, and the damage done to a BBC building in Manchester during a protest earlier this week, are all symptomatic of the physical ways in which people seek to control or attack public media spaces.

In previous centuries, church altars and the visual and material interiors of church buildings were the physical sites in which battles over competing sacred narratives were fought. Today those battles take place on websites, news bulletins and discussion shows, and even through the buildings and hardware of broadcasters. This poses particular challenges for journalists working on the Middle East conflict who find themselves subject to intense pressures from different lobby groups, their impartiality questioned and their ability to present a clear narrative hampered by PR strategies intended to make it difficult to judge events until the news cycle has moved on to a new story.

Shaping the public narrative about such conflict through the media has become a dominant reality for political life. As the media scholar Ron Jacobs has commented, “Groups who find themselves continually polluted through media narratives, to the extent that they wish to engage with that public audience, must continually act from a defensive and reactive position.”

In recent years this has increasingly been the position faced by the Israeli government as its military actions in the Lebanon war of 2006 and Operation Cast Lead, and its on-going policies in Gaza and the West Bank have come under increasing criticism from international institutions. Lessons learned from the media coverage of attacks on civilian areas during the last Lebanon war have meant that the Israeli government now has a sustained policy of trying to control media coverage of its actions, reflected in its policy of banning journalists from entering Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. In the current drama this has meant blocking communication signals from the Gaza aid ships, preventing media access to activists to allow the Israeli narrative of the assault to be presented first and confiscating activist recordings that might provide evidence that contradicts the official Israeli account.

Such attempts undoubtedly have some success. Both the police beating of Rodney King and the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G-20 demonstrations in London demonstrate the power of amateur film footage to challenge official accounts of violence by state institutions against civilians. We can similarly imagine what the impact would have been in the past few days had media footage of the moments in which Israeli commandos actually shot and killed activists been made available.

But despite attempts by the Israeli government and military to control the unfolding sacred drama, the accounts of events by activists will nevertheless provide material to enable audiences to imagine what happened on the ships in ways that undermine the official account. This may not be true, though, for those who still regard such Israeli interventions as legitimate actions of self-defense undertaken by a liberal and democratic society. For them, the IDF film footage may be enough to convince them that the IDF had no choice, and that the deaths were a consequence of premeditated acts of violence by “ultra-violent” activists. How could it be otherwise? How could Israeli commandos have fired on so many civilians?

The British public have similarly gone through such moments of denial over profane acts of official violence and negligence, often wittingly or unwittingly abetted by the media. How could British paratroopers have shot Irish civilians on Bloody Sunday if they weren't armed terrorists? How could the police control of the soccer crowd at Hillsborough lead to the deaths of 96 people if it were not the consequence of unruly and uncivilized fans? How could police marksmen shoot an unarmed man at point-blank range on the London underground if he were not clearly carrying a bomb that he was about to detonate?

As we have learned – often only after many years of official obfuscation – the truth is that state institutions do act, at times, in ways that profane our most sacred values. Attempts to portray the dead and wounded activists on the Gaza aid ships as solely responsible for their harm is just another example of the denial of such uncomfortable realities. But despite the denial, and despite the efforts to manage the narration of the sacred drama of the Gaza aid ships as a legitimate military operation, there is a growing sense that a tipping point may soon be reached in which it becomes increasingly difficult for the Israeli government to defend its policies against the moral backdrop of the sacred and the profane. One can only hope, if so, that this shift in our attention – both journalistic and academic – does not come too late for the suffering people of Gaza.

[An earlier version of this blog was posted at the Ekklesia website.]

Gordon Lynch is Professor of Sociology of Religion and Director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author, most recently, of The New Spirituality: Progressive Faith in the Twenty-first Century.

by Rhonda Roumani

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author of Infidel and a staunch critic of Islam, is back on the interviewing circuit with a new book titled Nomad: from Islam to America. Few people send the blood pressure of Muslims soaring the way Ali can. A self-avowed atheist, she blames Islam for the problems facing the Muslim world and Muslim women, in particular.

Ali's personal story is harrowing and is definitely worth telling. The “problem” with Ali is how the news media cover her. She has slowly become the public face of “Muslim women,” often to the exclusion of others who have compelling narratives of their own and who offer a more nuanced understanding of the debates taking place both within the Muslim community and outside it. In short, the real problem is that journalists often fail to place Ali (and a few others like her) in context for a general audience that has a limited understanding of Islam and Muslim communities.

Last week, two articles appeared in the New York Times on Ali: a book review by Nicholas Kristof and an interview by Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Magazine. Kristof's review skillfully puts Ali in context, whereas Solomon's Q&A only helps to prop up Ali's biases.

“If there were a 'Ms. Globalization' award,” Kristof writes, “the title would be given to Ms. Ali since she has managed to outrage more people in more languages than any other author to date.” Then he goes on to say that even though her new memoir may antagonize even more people, he actually enjoyed reading it. He describes the complexity behind Ali's writing and her persona:

Since Hirsi Ali denounces Islam with a ferocity that I find strident, potentially feeding religious bigotry, I expected to dislike this book. It did leave me uncomfortable and exasperated in places. But I also enjoyed it. Hirsi Ali comes across as so sympathetic when she shares her grief at her family's troubles that she is difficult to dislike. Her memoir suggests that she never quite outgrew her rebellious teenager phase, but also that she would be a terrific conversationalist at a dinner party.

Solomon, on the other hand, offers no nuance in her Q&A. Her interview feeds into Ali's controversial rhetoric by actually adopting it. Solomon asserts that Islam needs a “reform branch” that would “reconcile an ancient faith with modern ways” and then remarks that the mosque is nothing more than a “men's club.” Who needs a controversial interview subject when the interviewer herself provides the sound bites?

Ali and a handful of critics like her in the media spotlight (e.g. Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani) have become de facto spokespersons for all Muslim women. Journalists need to look for other Muslim women to join the debate. Only in that way can we begin to really challenge some of our own notions about Islam, feminism and Muslim women. Here are just a few options: Fatemeh Fakhraie, editor-in-chief of Muslimah Media Watch; Manal Omar, author of Barefoot in Baghdad; Edina Lekovic, communications director at the Muslim Public Affairs Council; and Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab American Network of New York. There are surely others—and it's our job as journalists to find them.

Rhonda Roumani is a freelance journalist who has covered Islam and Muslim-related issues both in the U.S. and abroad. She has worked as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and her articles appeared in a number of other publications, including the Washington Post, USA Today, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, the Daily Star, Bitterlemons.org and Beliefnet.com. She has also appeared on radio and television shows such as CNN International, NPR's “All Things Considered” and the Washington Post Radio. Before turning to freelancing, Roumani worked as a reporter for the Beirut-based Daily Star, where she covered Syria and other regional issues.

by Richard Flory

'Tis the season for university graduation ceremonies and the accompanying competition for the most famous—or perhaps infamous—commencement speakers. On May 15, Jerry Falwell's Liberty University scored on both counts when Fox News personality Glenn Beck delivered the commencement address to the class of 2010 and, in return, got an honorary “Doctorate of Humanities” degree.

Beck was predictably reduced to tears upon receiving the honorary doctorate from Liberty. And while he won a standing ovation from the 28,000 people in attendance at the graduation ceremony, off campus, Beck's presence was a source of commentary and controversy among conservative Christians and the news media alike. Much of the buzz crackled with speculation about the meaning of the blossoming relationship between political players with apparently incompatible religious views—Beck, a Mormon, and Liberty U, an intellectual redoubt for fundamentalist Christianity.

In response, spokespersons for Liberty pointed out that the school has historically invited commencement speakers who did not necessarily share its fundamentalist Christian perspective; indeed, a glance at the list of commencement speakers over the last several years bears out this claim. The roster includes former Nixon speechwriter and game show host Ben Stein in 2009, Newt Gingrich in 2007, John McCain in 2006 and Karl Rove in 2004.

What these speakers have in common isn't their religious beliefs but their identity as key players in the Republican political ranks. That is, their status as well-connected conservative cultural and political insiders was more important to Liberty than their orthodoxy on theological matters. Which makes the choice of Glenn Beck—a television personality—much more interesting than whether his Mormonism jibes with Liberty's fundamentalism.

The week after Beck's address, Jerry Falwell Jr. appeared on Beck's show twice, along with the president of Westminster Seminary, an evangelical school in Philadelphia, to discuss the founding fathers and the supposed un-Christian and communist roots of “social justice” movements. Beck, who claims to be neither a Republican nor a Democrat, has a large following on radio and television, and of the seven books he has released since 2007 (yes, seven!), five of them have hit number one on the New York Times best-sellers list.

The media juggernaut that is Glenn Beck far exceeds any of the other Liberty U commencement speakers over the last several years, yet unlike Rove or Gingrich or McCain he is not an establishment conservative. His speech at Liberty, and the appearances of Jerry Jr. on Beck's show, suggests that both the university and Beck may be charting a new course for conservative Christians politics.

While the news media have focused on the strange religious bedfellows angle of Beck's gig at Liberty, perhaps the larger—and more interesting—story is why Falwell chose an apparent outlier like Beck to speak at his university's commencement, while his father favored establishment Republicans.

As the midterm election season heats up, keeping an eye on the relationship between conservative Christians and charismatic figures like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin—as well as how this relationship affects the Republican Party—bears watching. Will evangelical and fundamentalist Christians move away from the Republicans and toward Tea Party candidates or other independents? Or will they continue their longstanding alliance with establishment Republican politics? With an audience of millions each week, Beck is in a good position both to comment on and influence these evolutions.

Richard Flory is associate research professor of sociology and senior research associate in the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He is the co-author of Growing Up in America: The Power of Race in the Lives of Teens (Stanford, 2010) and Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation (Rutgers, 2008).

So many blogs, so little time. Last night's Lost finale may have done more for mainstreaming religion than Mitch Albom's bestsellers. All around the Internet—from forums and blogs to MSM sites and academic journals—musings on faith, redemption and the power of love are suddenly de rigueur. Here's one good wrap-up of first-wave critiques, but also check out Brent Plate's excellent overview for Religion Dispatches. Plate revels in Lost's religious mash-ups and pop-culture mixings because the show's ultimate meaning is key: “Whether Locke or Shephard or Austen are saviors or demons does not matter. The hero is the community, the living together.”

A scholar of religion and media, Plate argues that Lost is a rich text to mine. I'm hoping to do that when I teach a course on religion and television this fall. Lost's allusions and synergies, however inaccurate and improbable, can prompt discussion on the gap between institutional faith systems and the everyday messiness of lived religion. But just as the Dharma initiative, the Smoke Monster and the statue of Tawaret spur us to plumb religious traditions, the characters' conflicts speak to students whose moral compasses have been set by odd admixtures of Sunday school, adult exemplars and lessons learned from talking lions and plucky hobbits.

Like any classic narrative, Lost is open-ended, its characters capaciously complex and its themes epic. What is the good life? How do we find meaning? Why are we here?  A TV series has concluded, but the conversation, now in this most current iteration, never ends. In fact, new media have made it possible for fans to exegete endlessly. Some critics have derided fan involvement; in fact, New York Times critic Mike Hale opined that “populist biblical commentary” derailed the show. But long before there was an Internet, viewers gathered at bars, in classrooms and around water coolers to talk about what happened in their favorite show. After all, the essence of good storytelling is eliciting the desire to parse, probe and ultimately make the story your own.

More religion in television: the Los Angeles Times examines the Christian connection on American Idol. Kudos to Scott Collins whose piece this weekend illumines why and how so many Idol finalists come from African-American congregations and suburban mega-churches.

Music is central to worship services, and soloists are comfortable with large crowds. But churches don't measure success simply by stage presence and musical talent. Performers also must pack enough emotional wallop to convince listeners that grace is amazing and Jesus' blood saves. Once they can do that, beguiling Simon Cowell is easy.

Collins also notes that many of Idol's most fervent viewers come from the same backgrounds as the shows performers.  Ratings are high in the Bible Belt because religious conservatives consider Idol a (mostly) positive alternative to an otherwise perverse television landscape. Neither Fox nor Idol producers may claim credit for the symbiosis between the show and this audience segment, but it's definitely been an important source of talent and support. (Collins does not mention what, if any, effect Ellen DeGeneres has had on religiously conservative viewers, although ratings have been down this year.)

According to the news media, Lost now defines religion on television—it's the new standard by which future shows will be measured. But as Collins points out, there are many other ways that religious themes, actors and audiences engage with the small screen. American Idol is just the beginning.

Diane Winston

by Courtney Bender

On Sunday night, Rima Fakih became the new Miss USA. She will soon compete in the Miss Universe Pageant and promote the Miss USA “platform” of “increasing awareness of breast and ovarian cancers.”

“For two years [Trump's] managed to wrap a boring, anachronistic beauty pageant around America's most roiling political issues” one journalist notes. Indeed. There should be nothing particularly newsworthy about a pageant started in the 1950s to promote a line of swimsuits – and now a money-making venture for Donald Trump. But rising above the fray also seems anachronistic. Last year Carrie Prejean's sex tape and support of Proposition 8 revivified the culture-wars debates. And this year. Well … what is the story exactly?

Reading the coverage of Rima Fakih is a bit like going down the rabbit hole. There is not one story but rather a half-dozen. Most seem like old chestnuts, and at first glance each seems to have limited relation to the others. There is, of course, the story of the hometown girl inspiring others. Fakih says, “I want Michigan to know that my title should be a significant symbol that Michigan is going to go right back to where it was.” And there is, related, the story of the immigrant made good: Fakih is the first immigrant to win the title, an “Arab-American” and “Lebanese-American” who, as the AP reported, symbolizes “a victory for diversity” during an age of stereotyping.

Because she is from Dearborn, Michigan and also Muslim (or possibly half-Muslim, or perhaps a “Muslim who celebrates Muslim and Christian holidays”) there are of course other stories as well. She is a cultural bridge. She is a weapon. Or she is a terrorist – her family connected to Hezbollah. Or she is a Muslim whom Hezbollah rejects because she shows too much skin. Or she is the most recent opportunity for humorists to show how crazy Americans “wing-nuts” are in their attempt to link her to terrorism.

But before we get distracted with those Muslim and Lebanon stories, let's remember that there is also the story of this beauty pageant's quite forthright embrace of the objectification of women, and perhaps their exploitation. So there are pictures from  a pole-dancing competition and commentary on connections between swimsuit competitions, underwear modeling and soft porn. An NPR commentator grouses, “The decline and fall continues.”

But wait. This is also a story about another sort of immigration – the illegal kind. Miss Oklahoma, the first runner-up in the pageant, was asked about Arizona's new immigration law, and gave a diplomatic answer. But the story circulates that she lost the competition (to an immigrant!) because her answer was “un-PC.” Fox News weighed in: “Conservative answer = Points lost. Liberal Answer = Brownie points.”
 
One might think that this multiplicity of stories shows the happy complexity of the event as well as journalists' ability to report it in many ways. We might rejoice that it's not just one story. But on second look, it appears that the stories resonate with one another more than we might expect.

Illegal immigration in Arizona is linked to fears of “Arab” and “terrorist” infiltration; Western women's exploitation and objectification is linked to controversy over the burqa. And so on. No one has to mention these common subtexts, but their influence is there, just beneath the surface.

We might ask – as I do – if each of these stories “has legs” insofar as it trades on these fears and stereotypes and amplifies those aspects of the other stories. There might be little that's truly newsworthy about Rima Fakih's coronation, but the stories about her in the national (and international) coverage bear closer attention. Whoever figures out how to put a name to the resonances that have eluded capture this week will help us better understand the way our religious and social anxieties shimmy across the stage – and in the news media.

Courtney Bender is an associate professor of religion at Columbia University. She is the author of the forthcoming The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago, 2010) and Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver (Chicago, 2003) as well as the co-editor (with Pamela Klassen) of After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagements (Columbia, 2010).