by Don Lattin

It's been nearly a month since Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” gunned down 13 soldiers and civilians at the Fort Hood Readiness Center. Looking back at four weeks of news coverage and commentary, it seems to me that this saga has become an example of the “narrative” getting in the way of the story.

Everyone has their own narrative to explain why this happened and what it all means. To some, Hasan is a Muslim “terrorist” inspired by global Islamist jihad. To others, he's  “just crazy.” Is Hasan a symbol of a U.S. military on the verge of a stressed-out psychological breakdown? Or is he a textbook case of political correctness run amuk–of a society so concerned about offending Muslim sensibilities that it allowed a ticking time bomb to explode.

O'Reilly pontificates on Fox. Rachel and Keith mock O'Reilly on MSNBC. Is anyone else getting tired of this?

The echo chamber sounds on this blog, too.  Writing four days after the Nov. 5 shooting, Zain Shauk asks why the media didn't use the “terrorist” label to describe Jason Rodriguez, who opened fire at the Orlando offices of his former employee the day after the Ft. Hood slaughter. Then, writing here one week after the shooting, Dalia Hashad questions why the news media didn't dissect the religious and ethnic identity of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech student who gunned down 32 people back in 2007.

The answer to both those questions is obvious. The news media and the pundits didn't talk about Cho's and Rodriguez' religious views because they had nothing to do with the motivations of those two shooters. In the case of Major Hasan, it was instantly clear by his own proclamation that religion had something to do with his decision to open fire at Ft. Hood.  Actual reporting over the next two days made it clear that the Muslim major was indeed motivated by his understanding of Islam. Not only that, Hasan had met, emailed and was apparently inspired by one of the most notorious Islamist hate-mongers on the Internet: Anwar al-Awlaki. (Check out the Dallas Morning News reporting on this.)

Those are facts, but at the same time, it's easy to make too much of those facts. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was guilty of that sin in his over-the-top column published over the weekend, which he tellingly titled “The Narrative.” Diane Winston, writing in this space, and Sharmine Narwani, chiming in on the Huffington Post, were right to call him out on that, opining that there are plenty of mythological narratives to go around.

OK. Fine. Now let's stop worrying about the narrative.  Let's stop worrying about whether we should label Nidal Malik Hasan a “ruthless Muslim terrorist” or a “tragically misunderstood, persecuted Muslim.”  Let's get back to the story, which involves some old-fashioned reporting to figure out what really made this time-bomb tick.

James Dao and his New York Times colleagues Scott Shane and James C. McKinley Jr. have given us a pair of solid, well-written stories based on actual reporting. At a time when hyperventilating bloggers (Q.E.D.!) and talking heads dominate the culture of news media, their hard work reminds us what being a journalist is really all about.

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 the forthcoming book, 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.

Lots of scary things in Sunday's New York Times, including a rise in food stamps, bank resistance to helping troubled homeowners and a horrific detention center at an American base in Afghanistan. But nothing, not even news of Med Grow Cannabis College, was as scary as Tom Friedman's column.

“America vs. The Narrative” was not meant to be a revealing look at the mainstream media's myopia. But it's easy to see why I and hundreds of other readers saw it that way. Friedman's target was “the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11.” According to this narrative, “America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand 'American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy' to keep Muslims down.”

I cannot evaluate the truth of Friedman's claim of the narrative's saliency or its role in Major Nidal Hasan's attack on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. But I can challenge Friedman's focus when equally scurrilous narratives fog Americans' perceptions of religion and politics—and when journalists bear responsibility for circulating, if not promoting, them.

But don't take my word for it; see what a few of Friedman's 688 readers had to say:

• “Is it a surprise that the uneducated of the Moslem world buy the Narrative, considering the way the Narrative of Limbaugh and Palin is bought by their American counterparts?” Jim S from Cleveland.
• “I have no doubt that the Narrative you describe exists among a certain group of Muslims. In fact, I have seen and heard it myself. But what you fail to understand is that you have a Narrative too. According to your narrative, America is morally and politically superior to the Muslim world, and has a right to export (read: force) its values to them.” ORS from the UK.
• “Pretty ironic that Tom Friedman would complain about The Narrative in a paper that is guilty as any other for promoting it.” Jen Conley from San Diego.

Is it possible to tell a story without promoting a narrative? According to journalistic ideals, it is—or it should be if a reporter is fair, balanced and objective. But web-based access to a wide range of sources as well as first hand information demonstrates that even the best-intentioned reporter always writes first from her own perspective and then follows a narrative that has been vetted by her corporate masters. (How could it be otherwise? What American news outlet would allow a story that promoted Communism as a social good or that posited theocracy as a worthwhile political goal? Of course our journalists stick to narratives that assume American democracy, free markets and religious pluralism are the natural, normal and summum bonum of human existence.)

Given such constraints, I'd expect more self awareness among pundits like Friedman. (Then again, Glenn Greenwald might say I am delusional for such expectations.) I'd also like to see journalists confronting the limitations of their narratives and experimenting with ways to circumvent them.

Diane Winston
 

I played hooky Friday to catch a 9:15 a.m. screening of “New Moon”—with, to my surprise, a theater full of women over 40. I hadn't expected so many of my contemporaries, much less my mother's, but when Jacob tore off his shirt, revealing those much-heralded abs, all became clear. A collective gasp, redolent of a deeply felt nostalgia, burst through even—or perhaps especially—the most wizened lips. However willing the spirit, the flesh remains weak.

New Moon, according to reporters and religionistas is either a slick case for abstinence or a screed against feminism, but I see it as something both more and less. More than a sexual parable, it's a disquisition on souls. Both Edward and Jacob are more concerned with Bella's salvation than she is, suggesting that monsters—those who have lost the possibility of receiving God's grace—may appreciate its value more than a human being who takes it for granted. And less an argument on women's roles, the movie is more a meditation on  manliness, pitting urbane, cosmopolitan vampire aesthetes against half-naked man-boys from the rez. It's secular humanists versus fundamentalists, which makes Team Jacob's appeal all the more delicious.

Would there were similar excitement for less commercialized instances of religiously dappled art. Last week I saw Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan at the Asia Society. Pakistan is all over the news, but it's difficult to penetrate beyond reports of military and political strife to get a sense for the texture of daily life. The exhibition's 15 artists offer insights into fraught and shifting notions of gender, sexuality, religion and violence in an array of colorful and arresting pieces. What appears to be a red-and-grey rendering of an intricately woven rug is, on examination, a collage of tiny photographs depicting dead animals in bloody slaughterhouses. A series of miniatures looks to capture religious figures in pensive moods. But deciphering images of beards, barbells and camo socks elicits a second question: Just who are these men and women?

The pressures of journalism have always militated against deep thinking and complex analysis; there was never enough space or time to do justice to a story. But the problem has worsened as the industry slips into free-fall. “New Moon” eclipsed box-office competitors, so reporters race to wrote about abs, teen angst and abstinence. Religion is just more grist for the mill. But one of the pieces in Hanging Fire puts religion and gender relations in a helpful cross-cultural perspective—and finds a point of contact in “New Moon.” In soulful shots and tense cutaways, the movie makes much of Bella's reliance on Jacob to help her rebuild and ride a motorbike. Adeela Suleman, a Pakistani artist, cuts to the chase: she creates motorbike helmets for women made of brightly colored cooking pots. Bella, who knows her way around a kitchen, could definitely use one.

Diane Winston

J. Terry Todd

Sarah Palin returned in full force this week to promote her just-released Going Rogue—and to use media appearances to settle scores with “the media” for its treatment of her during the 2008 campaign.

She was in the flesh at Newsweek (which featured a picture of Palin in running shorts on the cover), on the couch with Oprah, getting chatty with Barbara Walters and cozying up with Sean Hannity for an hour-long love-in.  Playgirl's decision to run pictures from Levi Johnson's photo-shoot on its website only added to the excitement.

Where is religion in Going Rogue?  That question was missing in most of the interviews and press reports, which tended to home in on the political score-settling that adds spice to this 413-page book.  But a number of bloggers have taken up the question. In her On Faith blog at the Washington Post, Sally Quinn is intent on defending against what she calls “Sarah Palin's Rogue Christianity.”

In his God and Country blog at U.S.News, Dan Gilgoff gets closer to the heart of the matter. Gilgoff tags Going Rogue as “Christian literature,” “written as much for Christian readers as political junkies.” He predicts the book “will help establish Palin as much as a Christian figure as a political one.”  

Astute, but still not on target. Seeing any kind of separation between Palin's politics and her religion is to misunderstand her as well as her particular appeal. She is a Christian political figure—or a right-wing political Christian—who's also a mom and an Alaskan moose-hunter to boot.

Still, Palin's careful not to scare the swing-voters. As Tara Graham observed in The Scoop during the heat of last year's campaign, Palin soft-pedaled her Pentecostal past, preferring to describe herself as “non-denominational.”  “Apparently,” Graham wrote, “someone's been playing a game of Pentecostal dodge-ball.” In Going Rogue, someone's still playing that game.

To wit, Palin seems almost defensive about her attendance at Wassila's Assembly of God, saying, “There weren't many churches in our small town” and “my family would eventually worship at a nondenominational Bible church.” This caginess is most conspicuous when Palin describes her high-school conversion. She says it was the beauty of the natural world that led her to “put my life in my Creator's hands as I sought my life's path.” In much of evangelical literature, this would be a come-to-Jesus moment, but Jesus-talk is surprisingly absent in Palin's account of her epiphany and scarce in the rest of the book.  

The most prominent ethical theme in Going Rogue—guaranteed to appeal to social conservatives of all religious persuasions—is Palin's anti-abortion politics. When McCain's call came in August of 2008, Palin was at the Alaska State Fair on a family outing with Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. They elbow their way through crowds to visit the Alaska Right to Life booth, “where a poster…featured the sweetest baby girl swathed in pink, pretend angel wings fastened to her soft shoulders.”  It was a picture of Piper as an infant!  “A staunch advocate of every child's right to be born, I was pro-life enough for the grassroots RTL folks to adopt Piper as their poster child, but I wasn't politically connected enough for the GOP machine to allow the organization to endorse me in early campaigns.” Right then, McCain's call comes. The rest of the story unfolds from there.  

The narrative that Palin and purported ghostwriter Lynn Vincent have created conveys Palin's inability (or is it refusal?) to compartmentalize her life—to keep politics here, to put religion over there and to shelter her family from the public gaze. Her identity isn't religious or political or maternal—it's all three rolled into one. It's the scrambling of these boundaries that makes Palin a rogue—and perhaps a harbinger of things to come.   

J. Terry Todd is Associate Professor of American Religious Studies at Drew University and director of Drew's Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict. The author of many articles on religion in 20th-century America, Terry is especially interested in religious conflicts over family life and sexuality, and how Christian ideas and practices shape U.S. politics and mass media.

by Brie Loskota

In last weekend's New York Times, science writer Nicholas Wade argued that new discoveries in archeology and evolutionary biology might allow us to bridge the gap between religion and science.  Religion, he notes, has historically provided cohesion to help societies sustain themselves as well as conquer others.  He argues that religion may be hard-wired into our DNA, like the ability to learn language, and has evolved alongside major cultural developments like the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture.  

Religion has been reduced to psychological dysfunction by Freud, a tool of social control by Marx and a by-product of social reality by Durkheim.  Wade reduces it to a function of evolutionary biology.  He suggests that in terms of its social value religion is neither positive or negative; rather, it is a neutral force that can be used by societies for either good or ill, like nuclear technology.  Yet, if religion is a function of biology—only the stuff of alleles and nucleotides—then there must be a genetic reason for it.  Does that eliminate the possibility that it could also be a reflection of something supernatural, or even divine?

The challenge of understanding religion is to explore it in all its complexity—as a phenomenon not easily reduced to biological hard-wiring, social mirroring or economic control.  What is lost in reductive analysis is the nuance and range of religious belief, practice, experience and institutional forms.  Religion is constantly being reshaped.  It provides a way to create links to the past and help believers in the modern world to make sense of their experiences.  Whether you believe in an otherworldly heaven or a this-worldly Nirvana, religious life is anchored in social reality, and its expression is shaped by the very values—whether beneficent or not—that it helps to determine and enforce.  The heart of the matter isn't that religion is either bad nor good but that it is both.  Exploring the relationship between religion and violence, resolving moral conflicts and negotiating competing ethical claims requires us to move beyond reductionism.

So finding a “god-gene” is unlikely to provide us with common ground between religion and science as long as the debate is fought among partisans who believe there can be only one correct answer to questions leading to ultimate truth.  Reconciliation, if it is possible, will only happen when we're willing to bridge the gap between truths that we think cannot exist simultaneously.

A recent piece by David Masci at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that Americans bridge this gap every day because we highly value both “religious commitment and scientific achievement.”  This suggests a couple of questions that merit further exploration: What degree of cognitive dissonance can be tolerated by post-modern humans, both religious and irreligious?  Do all the pieces of the puzzle have to fall neatly into place, or have we evolved to a state where seeming contradictions can be appreciated without being resolved?  

Sometimes reporters need to pay attention to religion's function in a given situation, like the role religious institutions played in the Proposition 8 ballot measure in California.  Other times, they must take seriously religious belief, rituals and experiences as sources of individual identity and collective consciousness—and perhaps even ultimate meaning—beyond their mere social function. That's the ground where the richest stories can be mined.

Brie Loskota is Managing Director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She also serves as the program officer for the CRCC Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative, a program that seeks to spur new research on one of the world's fastest growing religious movements.

by Lynn Clark 

This month ABC premieres the first four episodes of the much-anticipated V, a remake of the popular 80s sci-fi miniseries that now stars Elizabeth Mitchell as an FBI agent and Scott Wolf as a vain TV anchorman seducing and seduced by an alien.

V joins a large cadre of paranormal entertainment: Topping the current box office returns is “The Fourth Kind,” the faux-documentary that purports to chronicle alien abductions in remote Nome, Alaska.  November also offers generous helpings of ghosts (see the surprise blockbuster “Paranormal Activity” or SyFy Network's new Ghost Hunters Academy), vampires and shape-shifters (which you'll see only by elbowing your way through the OMG crowd wherever “New Moon,” the second installment in the Twilight saga, is screening) and even a comic chronicle of the U.S. Army's attempts to harness psychic powers (“The Men Who Stare at Goats“).

Religion's not the main reason for our interest in paranormal, but it's often found in the background—watch for abandoned church buildings, ineffectual rituals, religious authority figures and purgatory-like mythologies. So why are stories about haunting, vamping, invasions and conspiracies so popular right now?  One response to that question is that these stories reflect a post-9/11 shift in how we see ourselves and our relationship to knowledge and power.
 
Take V. The Chicago Tribune's Glenn Garvin says it's a comment on Obamamania. I think the show's significance is even broader than that. Yes, it's about our desire to trust leaders and to invest them with superhuman qualities. But it's also about the American tendency to trust gut reactions over a careful parsing of the evidence, and in that sense it's also a comment on the Bush legacy and the appeal of by-the-seat-of-your-pants pundits like Bill O'Reilly. 

The populist expression of this collective characteristic plays out in V as a suspicion of any kind of well-meaning authority, as what seems like placid kindness can turn out to be sinister.  That wariness-tending-toward-paranoia is a consequence of the failure of religious and other institutions to help us: Instead of employing religious rituals in the charge against evil (see “The Exorcist“), Father Jack (Joel Gretch) follows the FBI agent's lead: “Don't trust anyone,” the FBI agent tells the priest. 

V also says that even our enchantment with science and technology —so much a part of both the ghost-hunting and conspiracy genres—can turn out to be a problem, for we no longer have a corner on those resources: the bad guys can harness science and technology too, and use them to devour us.

It would be easy for journalists to write about the popularity of the paranormal as a simple horse-race to win ratings and box office returns.  But a more interesting story is how myths of the paranormal and supernatural have shifted—from a fear of being consumed (think Bram Stoker's Dracula) to the fear that we're being duped misguided, un-gifted or otherwise rendered inferior. At its heart, our interest in the paranormal is about coming to terms with the fact that we have less control over things than we thought we did.  This also means we need to be extra suspicious of anyone who jumps a little too quickly at the chance to define reality for the rest of us.  It's post-9/11 paranoia, but it recognizes that the source of our problems might be not be “out there” but right here in our midst.

Lynn Schofield Clark is Associate Professor and Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver. She is author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Oxford University Press, 2005) and has written on Lost fandom in Small Screen, Big Picture (Baylor University Press, 2009).

by Dalia Hashad

When the story on the shootings at Fort Hood broke, I tried to resist getting drawn into the whirlwind of irresponsible coverage, most of which seemed to deliver the direct or subconscious message that to find the explanation for one man's violent actions we needed to look no further than the fact that he was a Muslim.

But like most media-addicts, I find the allure of 24-hour cable news coverage irresistible.  Normally, I'm of the Anita Dunn perspective when it comes to Fox News. In other words, I don't regularly watch biased TV-journalism, but in the aftermath of the shootings, I decided to check in with the network to measure the tenor of anti-Muslim bias. 

What did I see? While images of the tragedy flashed on screen, Geraldo Rivera warned of religious war:

An Arab goes crazy.  Kills Americans on American soil…America in a constant state of war…against Muslim groups that attacked the U.S. … and war with the two Muslim countries threatening us…

In the typical style of many journalists covering the story, Geraldo arrived at two conflicting conclusions:  He denounced generalized blame of the Muslim community and simultaneously indicated that Islam played a key role in the shootings.  Referring to the vocal faction of the American public that holds Muslims responsible en masse for most of the violence we see in the world, Geraldo opined, “Amazing.  If it wasn't a Muslim, they wouldn't be generalizing.” Then just a few moments later he said that America had so far endured “eight years of war against radical Islam,” thereby tying Hasan's actions to his religion.  Later, one of Geraldo's guests remarked, “There is something that happens in…Muslim countries that creates terrorism.”
  
In the minds of many Americans, only in the case of Islam does a single follower's criminal actions or mental illness–or the conjunction of both–indict an entire religion.  In every major outlet, news commentators and journalists were quick to suggest that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's problem was religious, not psychological or criminal.  (David Brooks' notion that Islam was somehow overlooked in a rush to therapize Hasan's rampage is simply baffling.)

Contrast this with one of the deadliest shooting sprees in U.S. history. Two years ago, Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 people to death and injured 50 others at Hasan's alma mater, Virginia Tech.  In that instance, there was no reflexive focus on Cho's religion or ethnicity as the possible reason for his violent outburst.  (And there has been no media coverage of why these two killers both came from Virginia Tech.)  Based on the news reports that followed the Virginia Tech shootings, most people would not have been able to identify Cho's religious identity–or even to say whether he had one. 

In that instance, the media accepted as self-explanatory the conclusion that mental illness was the culprit. And just a few months ago, George Sodini walked into an L.A. Fitness facility and shot 12 women before turning the gun on himself.  Again, religion didn't figure into the media analysis of Sodini's actions.  Instead, a hatred of women related to mental illness took center stage.
 
While the media focuses, directly or indirectly, on Islam as the explanation for a lone man's criminal behavior, we are missing several more salient questions:  Why isn't there more scrutiny of our overstretched military's failure to screen out mental illness and criminality from among their ranks?  How is this story related to unease and even disgust among American civilians as well as military personnel in the face of two unending wars?  How is it that the Army permitted someone as unstable as Hasan to counsel soldiers, live on a military base, and receive a recent promotion and deployment to Afghanistan?  The fact that Hasan slipped through these cracks–or gaping holes–should give us pause to consider how many individuals the military is sending overseas without appropriate screening and support.  Fort Hood, Fallujah, Haditha, Abu Ghraib–there is a connection here, all right.  But it has nothing to do with religion.

Dalia Hashad is an attorney specializing in human rights and civil rights.  She has also been a host and co-executive producer of “Law and Disorder,” a weekly talk radio program.

by Zain Shauk

Hours after a gunman killed 13 and wounded 30 at a U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, reporters and news anchors were still piecing together information about what appeared to be a mass murder. But as journalists got word of the identity of the suspected shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, terrorism became a topic of discussion.

With little more confirmed than the suspect's name and Muslim faith, broadcasters and reporters explained that it was not clear whether the event was an act of terrorism. As more details emerged, journalists confirmed that there were stronger links between Hasan's faith and his alleged violent acts, with several eyewitnesses reporting he shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire. Others who knew Hasan claimed he had belligerently preached about his faith and had opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do Hasan's alleged religious proclamation, supposedly fervent beliefs and subsequent acts of violence validate discussion of terrorism? And when do journalists decide that an act of violence qualifies as terrorism?

To be fair, most reporters did not refer to Hasan's suspected actions as outright terrorism, although many did state that authorities had not ruled it out as a possibility. But if terrorism, as described by Merriam-Webster, is “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion,” then don't we have to know what Hasan was trying to accomplish before we can justify using the term? More importantly, would terrorism have entered the discussion if Hasan were not Muslim?

The importance of that question became apparent a day later, when a gunman named Jason Rodriguez opened fire at the Orlando offices of his former employer. Speculation about whether the event was an act of terrorism was not prominent in media reports.

But with news of Hasan's background just hours old, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly did not oppose the characterizations of his guest, retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, who declared, “This was an Islamist terrorist act.”

This came after the network's Shepard Smith, having heard only Hasan's name, had this exchange with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R, Texas):

Smith: We've been given a name, as well, and, quite frankly, I'm not comfortable going with it 'til it's given to me by the United States military, and they say, 'This is who it is.' Unless we get it separately. But the name tells us a lot, does it not, Senator?

Hutchison: It does, Shepard. And that's why it's a very sad situation.

The following morning, National Public Radio reporter Daniel Zwerdling explained that Hasan's former colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center would meet in the hallway and wonder, “Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird?”

Other descriptions of the incident alluded to Hasan's faith as a possible motivation for the shooting, even though authorities had not zeroed in on it.

Since 9/11, virtually all of the acts of violence that American media describe as terrorism are committed by Muslims with extremist beliefs. Does that mean that all acts of violence by Muslims should be treated as possible terrorist acts, regardless of whether a religious belief has inspired them?

Coverage of the Fort Hood shooting illustrates a growing willingness among members of the news media to connect violent Muslims, regardless of their crimes or motivations, to terrorism. One means of addressing this problem might be to improve journalistic standards related to descriptions of terrorism or terrorists. The widely cited Associated Press Stylebook currently has no guidelines on the subject. And while the Society of Professional Journalists has guidelines on coverage of wars and terrorism, they do not include significant discussion about what should be described as terrorism or who qualifies as a terrorist.

The urgency of this need for professional clarity and precision is apparent in a potentially inflammatory reference from the New York Times. According to Times reporter Michael Moss, members of Major Hasan's religious community said Hasan felt “increasingly let down by the military and deeply conflicted by his religion.” Moss includes a quotation from Duane Reasoner Jr., whom Moss describes as “an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood.”

“He said he should quit the Army,” Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you're not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

While the Quran includes at least one verse that can be translated in this way, it was not clear why the Times included the reference without adding context or explanation, either in the form of narrative elaboration or from additional sources. Many Americans already have questions about the teachings of Islam and its perceived propensity to influence violent extremism. The Fort Hood incident, combined with widespread descriptions of Hasan as a “devout Muslim” have likely not helped to change that perception. Journalists should know that presenting a single source as an authoritative voice for an entire faith guarantees a slanted understanding of religious belief.

Times writer Michael Moss, reached by email, said he included the quotation from Reasoner as an explanation for why Hasan wanted out of the Army. In hindsight, Moss said, he found nothing wrong with his approach and would include the reference again.

“In this case, on a fairly tight deadline, I didn't think about adding a line saying some scholars have a different interpretation of the Koran,” Moss said. “But now as I think about it, I'm still thinking it was not necessary, and that our readers know that the Koran, as the Bible and other religious books, is open to varied interpretation.”

Perhaps. But saying as much in the article would have ensured that the writer and his readers were all on the same page.

An unqualified quotation from a source like Reasoner could further damage Americans' already fragile perceptions about Islam said Jihad Turk, religious director of the Islamic Center of Southern California.

“To quote a person's citing such an inflammatory verse without further context is irresponsible and doesn't live up to the standards of good journalism,” Turk said.

Scriptural references, when taken out of the widely varying religious contexts in which they're understood, can leave readers with a narrow and potentially misleading understanding of a faith. The same is true for acts of violence that we often too easily describe as terrorism. When journalists are reporting on an evangelicals' beliefs about the Bible and homosexuality or a Muslim's beliefs about military service and the Quran, context isn't irrelevant. It's everything.   

Zain Shauk is a Los Angeles-based journalist and a graduate of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

By Judith Weisenfeld

On November 26, audiences in New York and Los Angeles will have the opportunity to attend the premiere of The Princess and the Frog, featuring Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), Disney's first animated black princess. The various trailers and teasers at the film's web site indicate that the movie's story will focus on the aspirations of strong-willed Tiana to open her own restaurant in 1920s New Orleans.  Disney is using its latest romantic fairy-tale musical as an occasion not only to broaden its racial horizons, but also to reassert its commitment to hand-drawn animation.  

Disney's announcement that it planned to create a black princess drew a range of excitedly positive as well as sharply critical responses, with some reporters, bloggers, and members of the general public expressing little confidence in the racial sensitivity of the studio that gave us Song of the South (1946), or in the company that still features a ride based on the film at its theme parks. Other controversies during the new film's production included negative audience response to the princess' original name (Maddie) and work as a chambermaid, both of which were interpreted as signifiers of slavery. The racial indeterminacy of the love interest, Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) of the fictional country Maldonia, has also generated strong response, with some wondering why a black man – even an animated one – was not fit to be a prince.

Those interested in religion and media should stay alert for responses to the film's villain, Dr. Facilier (Keith David), a Voodoo “witch doctor,” and the Voodoo priestess version of a fairy godmother, in the character of Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis).  The New Orleans setting provides reasonable justification for the choice to root the magic required of such fairy tales in the historically-specific context of Louisiana African American religious history.  At the same time, the history of representation of black people in American popular culture has been deeply reliant on visual and narrative associations between “primitive” religious practices and racial backwardness, and “voodoo” has often served as a simple short-hand for such cinematic arguments.  

In recent weeks, press coverage has turned away from controversy to focus on the pre-release success of Disney's marketing of the character, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's story on the unexpected demand for Princess Tiana Halloween costumes. The October 26 welcome of the character to Disney's theme park was a splashy affair that garnered coverage as well.
 
It would be unfortunate if, once the film is released, the press focused only on the story of Tiana as “princess” and failed to be attentive to the film's rendering of African American religious practices.  There is a story as well, perhaps, in a musical stage show at Disney World called “Tiana's Showboat Jubilee.” According to a Disney press release, selected guests at the park will be able to don choir robes and shake tambourines during the “entertainment spectacular.” Is the opportunity to participate in a live-action version of one stereotype – happy, naturally religious black folk with their faces turned heavenward – meant to offset the on-screen deployment of another?  The commercial success of Disney's first black princess should not blind us to ubiquitous popular-culture conflations of religious behavior and racialized essence, particularly when they involve representations of African-American religious life.

Judith Weisenfeld is Professor of Religion and Associate Faculty in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author most recently of Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949 (University of California Press, 2007).