Islamic sect has appealing message for U.S. politicians but has global enemies

By Dan Merica ("CNN," July 7, 2012)


Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/37679/?&place=north-america

Washington, USA – You’ve almost certainly never heard of him, but Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad drew some serious star power at a recent Capitol Hill reception in his honor.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Republican Sen. John Cornyn were among the many lawmakers who showed up to meet Ahmad, a Muslim leader who was in town last week on a rare U.S. visit from London.

At a time when the United States is struggling with its views about Islam – as Islamists gain power in the Middle East and with ongoing concerns about Quran-citing terrorists – it’s not hard to see Ahmad’s appeal to both parties. As he said in his Capitol Hill speech, he has “love for all, hatred for none.”

It’s a sentiment that Sen. Robert Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, echoed in introducing Ahmad, praising the “leadership you have shown to tolerance and to peace.”

It’s not just Ahmad who espouses his can’t-we-all-get-along read on Islam. The 61-year-old is the spiritual leader of the global Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, whose friendliness toward the West and whose criticism of other Muslims has earned the sect allies at the highest level of the U.S government, even as it faces mortal enemies in other parts of the world.

CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories

Unlike most Muslims, Ahmadis believe that the 19th century founder of their sect was the metaphorical Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

It’s because of that belief that Sunni and Shiite Muslims do not regard Ahmadis as true Muslims. The rift has provoked Egypt to charge Ahmadis with blasphemy, Saudi Arabia to deport them and Pakistan to pass a law that designates Ahmadis as non-Muslims.

Persecuted abroad

On a sweltering recent Friday, a long line of people sat patiently in a mosque on the outskirts of Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington. Despite the heat and humidity, they seemed happy to be there, waiting for a chance to meet the leader of their faith.

Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, who leads an international Ahmadi community is the sect’s fifth Khalifa, or leader. The group claims tens of millions of followers around the world, but outside experts say the number is smaller, in the millions.

For Ahmad and his followers, their relatively small sect is the real face of Islam, which has more than a billion followers around the world.

“It is time that we, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, should give the real and true picture of Islam,” Ahmad said in an interview inside the Silver Spring mosque. “I will always be talking about peace. That peace is not from myself or some new teaching but it is the true, real teaching which I gather and get from the holy Quran.”

That emphasis, says Ahsanullah Zafar, the leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, is rooted in a belief that the only jihad worth practicing is against one’s own self – a jihad of self-improvement. The word jihad is often translated as struggle or war.

“Even more important than prayer, which we talk about a lot, is how you behave as a human being,” Zafar said. “It is not physical fighting that accomplishes anything. It is dialogue and the progressivism that leads somewhere.”

Founded in 1889, the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect is the only Islamic group that believes that a second prophet has come, in the form of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Ahmad lived at a time of great religious upheaval, said Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University.

“In India, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad said that he has the message of the renewal of Islam,” Ahmed said. “Slowly it began to build momentum - it is a kind of spirited, modern version of Islam.”

Ahmed characterized the makeup of the Ahmadis as “very scholarly, very prominent leaders in Pakistan.”

But when the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political party in Pakistan, began to push the country to a more orthodox view of Islam in the 1970s, the Ahmadis were cast out.

Jamaat-e-Islami argued that the Ahmadis did not conform to a key tenet of Islam – the finality of the prophet Mohammed. “That is the elephant in the room for the Ahmadis,” said American University’s Ahmed. “The Ahmadis say that there are two kind of prophets. One is the lawgiver. Then there are messengers who come with a message and not necessarily a new book.”

In light of the crackdown, many Ahmadis began to leave Pakistan, some as religious refugees. Large numbers of Ahmadis now live in Germany, England, Ghana, Canada and the United States, where the Ahmadis claim tens of thousands of followers.

But persecution persists.

In 2010, almost 100 people were killed when two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, Pakistan, were attacked by men armed with hand grenades and AK-47s.

In the U.S. government’s 2012 International Religious Freedom Report, the plight of Pakistan’s Ahmadis was front and center.

“Among Pakistan‘s religious minorities, Ahmadis are subject to the most severe legal restrictions and officially sanctioned discrimination,” reads the report. The same report outlined violence against Ahmadis in Indonesia, where it said that at least 50 Ahmadiyya mosques have been vandalized.

A unique view of Islam

Harsh treatment in various corners of the world has instilled a deep Ahmadi appreciation for life in the United States.

“In America, all these small Muslim communities are flourishing, they love being in America,” said Ahmed. “They are 100% Muslim and they are 100% American.”

Ahmad, the Ahmadis’ current leader, was in the United States for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s annual convention, which drew 10,000 to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, last week.

“Wherever I go I have one goal … to meet my people,” Ahmad said.

But he was also here to meet politicians and journalists. For the Ahmadis, the scrutiny of American Muslims in the decade since 9/11 has been treated as an opportunity to discuss beliefs and answer questions.

Many in the community came out in favor of Rep. Peter King’s, R-New York, insistence last year on holding congressional hearings on radicalization within American Islam, even as other Muslim groups blasted the hearings as anti-Muslim.

“If the government thinks that congressional hearings will improve homeland security and help expose those exploiting Islam, I assure full cooperation. I, too, aspire to have a more secure America,” wrote Kashif N. Chaudhry, the director of an Ahmadi youth program in the United States, in a New York Times letter to the editor.

Chaudhry was hardly the only Ahmadi Muslim to speak up.

“You need to be with other people, you need to talk about your ideas and in that conversation and discussion, new things arise,” said Zafar. “It is like throwing the seed and putting water on it, you need the seed and you need the water for it to sprout.”

“We need to come together with the people around us in the United States, we need to do that and see how it flowers,” he continued.

The split between the Ahmadis and other Islamic sects is also apparent in how Ahmad, the sect’s leader, talks about extremists.

“Nowadays, Islam is being targeted only because of so-called Muslim groups who claim themselves to be Muslims but are not following the true teachings of Islam,” Ahmad said, speaking of what he calls “fundamentalists Muslims.” “If it is that Islam that is being portrayed by those orthodox Muslims, then I don’t think there is any chance in spreading Islam.”

Using terms like “so-called Muslims,” to refer to some outsiders has not endeared Ahmadis to other Muslims. Leading Sunni and Shiite groups are reluctant to even talk about the Ahmadis.

CNN contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, two major Muslim groups, and neither responded to requests for comment.

A future in America

Zafar, the leader of the Ahmadis in the United States, said his sect is looking to grow.

The group has an organized media operation and operates three 24/7 satellite-television channels under the name Muslim Television Ahmadiyya International.

The initial purpose of the channels was to broadcast the sermons of the Khalifa, but it also provides other programs in different languages. The Silver Spring mosque is surrounded by large satellite dishes that beam the shows around the world.

In addition to satellite television, the Ahmadis run Islam International Publications, a publishing outfit.

Many Ahmadis are concerned about the version of Islam being portrayed in the media, which they say is too focused on the radical elements of Islam and not focused enough on peaceful Muslims.

“Right now there is a caricature of Islam,” said Zafar. “The biggest challenge I believe in the United States is for Muslims to get out of that image of extremist behaviors which are so popular in the press.”

Ahmed of American University sees the future of the Ahmadis as a bridge between Islam and the West.

“On the American side, they [the Ahmadis] are acting as a positive bridge to Islam and the Americans need that right now,” he said. “And then for Muslims, if they do link up and join mainstream Muslims, they are able to give Islam a link to the world and also help them work out these polemics that are tearing the world apart.”

For now, Ahmadis are stuck in between those two worlds.

Islam appears to spread in Haiti, a country where Christianity and Voodoo hold sway

By (AP, October 10, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38280/

Port-au-Prince, Haiti – School teacher Darlene Derosier lost her home in the 2010 earthquake that devastated her country. Her husband died a month later after suffering what she said was emotional trauma from the quake. She and her two daughters now live in tents outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by thousands of others made homeless and desperate by the disaster.

What's helped pull her through all the grief, she said, has been her faith, but not of the Catholic, Protestant or even Voodoo variety that have predominated in this island country. Instead, she's converted to a new religion here, Islam, and built a small neighborhood mosque out of cinderblocks and plywood, where some 60 Muslims pray daily.

Islam has won a growing number of followers in this impoverished country, especially after the catastrophe two years ago that killed some 300,000 people and left millions more homeless. A capital where church attendance is so prevalent that the streets echo with Christian hymns on Sundays now has at least five mosques, a Muslim parliament member and a nightly local television program devoted to Islam.

The disaster drew in aid groups from around the world, including Islamic Relief USA, which built 200 shelters and a secondary school with 20 classrooms.

"After the earthquake we had a lot of people join," said Robert Dupuy, an imam or Islamic spiritual leader in the capital. "We were organized. We had space in the mosques to receive people and food to feed them."

Derosier said she was drawn to the religion's preaching of self-discipline, emphasis on education and attention to cleanliness. The constant washing, she said, helps her and other Muslims avoid cholera, the waterborne illness that health officials say has sickened nearly 600,000 people and killed more than 7,500 others since surfacing after the quake.

"This is a victory for me," the 43-year-old woman said about her post-quake conversion. The former Protestant spoke in the tent-filled courtyard of her home, her face framed by a clean, black head scarf. "It's a victory that I received peace and found guidance."

In part, the Muslim community's growth can be attributed to the return of expatriates who adopted the faith in the U.S., said Kishner Billy, owner of the island's Telemax TV station and host of the nightly program "Haiti Islam."

Billy and some others believe that Islam's Haitian past goes back before the country's independence in 1804, and that a Jamaican slave and Voodoo priest named Boukman who led the slave revolt that ousted French colonizers was actually a Muslim.

"Islam is coming back to Haiti to stay," said Billy, who says he converted from Christianity 20 years ago. "Future generations, my sons and daughters, will speak about Islam."

There are no firm statistics on the number of Muslims in Haiti, just as there are no reliable figures for many things in the country, including Port-au-Prince's exact population.

A 2009 study by the Pew Research Center on the world's Muslim population estimated that Haiti had about 2,000 devotees. Islamic leaders in the country insist the figure is much higher and growing.

Islam is hardly unknown in the Caribbean; countries such as Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname and Guyana have significant Muslim populations. Many of those nations have strong roots in countries such as India and Indonesia where Islam is widespread.

The ancestors of Haitians, by contrast, were brought largely from non-Muslim areas of Africa. Haiti's French colonial rulers also imported their Christian beliefs.

The recent growth of Islam, as well as other new religions, shows Haiti is modernizing and becoming more pluralistic, said Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"Inroads made by Islam (and by extension, by Mormonism and Rastafarianism) tell me that Haiti is very much a product of this century, subject to all winds, ill-winds and otherwise, that blow over the Caribbean nation-states," Bellegarde-Smith wrote in an email.

Rosedany Bazille, a 39-year-old teacher who converted several months after the earthquake, said she had felt rudderless before embracing the religion and was looking for a way forward.

"Islam can put people on the right path and show them who's God," she said.

Some Haitian Muslims belong to the Nation of Islam, a U.S.-based branch of the religion that preaches black self-determination. Some local members converted while serving time in U.S. prisons before being deported back to Haiti. The group's leader, Louis Farrakhan, visited the country for the first time last year.

The decision to convert has made some targets of discrimination.

The Haitian government doesn't recognize Islam as an official religion, nor does it honor Muslim marriages. Wearing the skullcaps or flowing head scarves typical of the religion can draw stares and finger-pointing. Derosier said her neighbors gossip that she's evil.

Voodoo, a blend of West African religions created by slaves during the colonial period, has long been a popular faith in the country, with elements followed even by some of the 85 percent of the population who claim Christian beliefs. Voodoo was once so commonly embraced that the notorious dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier used it to terrify and control the masses.

Most Christian Haitians identify themselves as Roman Catholics. A priest, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected president in 1990 by opposing the hereditary dictatorship that continued with Francois' son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

With so much still wrong in Haiti, the need for Islam couldn't be greater, said Billy. Two months ago, he launched his live talk show to educate his compatriots about his adopted faith.

"Haiti has gone astray. It can't produce anything," said Billy. "Right now Haitians just want a visa to go the United States, to Canada. They don't want to stay in Haiti."

With a tapestry of Mecca and praying crowds as a backdrop to his TV show one recent evening, Billy and his co-host Ruben Caries invited watchers to send questions about Islam via text messages.

Billy's BlackBerry buzzed with missives, including this one in Creole: "M vle vini Muslim" — "I want to be a Muslim."

Factbox: Islam in West Africa

By (Reuters, June 28, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/37611/

Al Qaeda-linked Islamists declared on Thursday they had secured full control of Mali's desert north from separatist rebels with whom they had temporarily joined forces to seize territory earlier this year.

Separatist Tuareg-led MNLA rebels and armed Islamist groups, swept through northern Mali in March and April and declared an independent state of "Azawad" in the north after routing the regular troops, in disarray after a March 22 coup in the West African country.

The Tuareg separatists said they wanted an independent secular state while the Islamists said their objective was to impose sharia or Islamic law across the whole of Mali, which mostly follows a moderate form of Islam.

The relationship between the state and Islam differs significantly across western Africa, in part because of variations in the complex interaction between Islam and ethnic politics.

Here is a look at Islam in a few West African countries:

OVERVIEW:

- Islam arrived in sub-Saharan West Africa as early as the 8th century, travelling with Arab traders from North Africa. The Muslim merchants brought trade and goods to exchange for gold and facilitated trade by introducing concepts such as contract law and credit arrangements. They were valued also for the literacy they brought, which African rulers quickly discovered could help them administer their kingdoms.

- It was not until the Middle Ages that Islam really began to flourish with the conversion of some of West Africa's most powerful rulers. The Islam they practiced, however, would not be recognized by the purists; it combined Islamic beliefs and aspects of traditional African religions.

- Today, countries to the north of the region such as Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali and Niger are predominantly Muslim. To the south of the region, in countries such as modern Ghana, Muslims are in the minority.

NIGERIA:

- Countries in the middle, notably Nigeria, are split, with their northern regions being largely Muslim and the south largely Christian. Nigeria's 160 million people are roughly divided between Muslims and Christians, who mostly live side by side in peace.

- However tension between the two communities has been a part of the landscape of Nigerian politics since independence in 1960 and problems have been exacerbated recently by the election of Goodluck Jonathan as president. He is a Christian southerner, and in the eyes of many Muslim northerners it was a northerner's turn to rule.

- The shadowy Islamist sect Boko Haram has attacked Christians, possibly hoping to trigger a religious conflict.

SENEGAL:

- A religious, economic and social force with no real parallel elsewhere, Senegal's Brotherhoods are a pillar of the moderate Sunni Islam espoused by over 90 percent of the nation who co-exist with minority Christians and others.

- Far removed from Islamist insurgents like Boko Haram, the Brotherhoods accept Senegal's secularism and do not use their influence to press demands for sharia.

- Despite an awkward cohabitation between Islam and French colonizers from the late-1600s, the religious chiefs, or "marabouts", grew in stature. By the 19th century, the two biggest Brotherhoods of today - the home-grown Mourides and the Tidianes from Morocco - were firmly established in Senegal.

- Their deep-rooted pacifism is one factor why there is little local sympathy for al Qaeda, despite its establishing bases in neighboring Mauritania and Mali. In 2001, Senegal's marabouts condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic.

MAURITANIA/MALI

- In Mauritania throughout the 1990's, political liberalization allowed Islamists to participate in elections as participants and the Tawassoul party became a significant minority moderate voice. However there are more hardline Salafi activists in poorer areas.

- Islam, introduced to Mali in the 11th century, has always been practiced in a rather moderate, tolerant form, with leeway given to practitioners of Islam mixed with traditional African religions and to those who favor African religions in a purer form.

- However Bamako has accused the Tuaregs of lending support to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) by sharing their desert expertise and navigational skills, opening up their trade networks. It would be impossible for AQIM to operate in northern Mali without some sort of acceptance by the Tuaregs, some Sahel researchers have said.

- AQIM had its roots in Algeria's Salafist movement, but has pushed south into the lawless Sahel region in recent years where it funds operations by collecting kidnap ransoms and by siphoning off the West African drugs trade. AQIM has established an operating base for itself in the Sahara desert - spanning northern Mali, Niger, Mauritania - by exploiting the vast expanses, official corruption and weak militaries in the region.

U.S. military instructor suspended over Islam course

By David Alexander (Reuters, June 20, 2012)




Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/37537/?place=united-states

Washington, USA - An instructor who provoked debate in his classroom of military officers by suggesting the United States was at war with Islam has been relieved of teaching duties at a military college and the course ordered redesigned, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

The course at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, part of the U.S. National Defense University, had been offered since 2004, according to Colonel David Lapan, spokesman for the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Lapan said "institutional failures in oversight and judgment" resulted in changes to the content about two years ago that resulted in inappropriate materials being introduced.

These materials included one slide that asserted "the United States is at war with Islam and we ought to just recognize that we are (at) war with Islam," Pentagon officials said in April when they launched a review of the course in response to a student complaint.

The instructor was a U.S. military officer. Lapan declined to identify the instructor by name, citing privacy requirements.

Discovery of the course material embarrassed the military at a time when U.S. officials are trying to mend ties with the Muslim world following a spate of incidents in Afghanistan, including the burning of copies of the Koran and pictures showing U.S. soldiers posing with corpses of Afghans.

Lapan said an inquiry found the initial course content in 2004 was fine but "over time bad decisions and poor judgment was exercised in how the course was modified."

"The inquiry recommends the course be redesigned to include aspects of U.S. policy and reduce its reliance on external instruction," Lapan said in a statement.

"The elective course's military instructor has been relieved of his instructor duties until his permanent change of station, which was previously planned for 2012," the statement said.

It was not immediately clear how many students at the college for top military officers had taken the course over the past two years, but Lapan said there were no plans to offer new training to update them on U.S. policy toward Islam.

Lapan said the instructor used provocative statements about Islam in an effort to stimulate thinking and debate in the classroom.

"It was meant to be something ... to stimulate discussion and challenge people's beliefs," Lapan said. "The flaw was that it didn't clearly define that it was meant to be provocative."

The inquiry also recommended a review of actions by two civilian employees at the staff college to see if disciplinary action was merited because of their failure to exercise proper oversight, Lapan said. Administrative counseling was recommended for a second military officer, he said.

Lapan said the course content was considered inappropriate because it failed to include U.S. government policy on countering extremism and "the material on Islam ... was presented almost all in a negative light."

"It was not focusing on certain radical elements of Islam that do provide a threat but instead painting all of Islam in a negative light," he said.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered the review of the course on Islam and military education in general after a soldier complained about the content of the course entitled "Perspectives on Islam and Islamite Radicalism" at the college in Norfolk, officials said.

Islam's ability to empower is a magnet to black British youths

Abdul Haqq Baker ("The Guardian," August 19, 2013)

A seminar was hosted last month by Christians Together in England to consider ways to "stem the flight of black British youths to Islam and radicalisation". In an unprecedented move, Muslims were invited to attend – and they did. Together, both faith groups discussed the reasons why a growing number of young black people are choosing Islam in preference to Christianity. According to this morning's BBC Radio 4's Today programme, one in nine black Christian men are converting to Islam.

Following in my father's footsteps, I was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Sunday mass regularly as a child. I also attended a Roman Catholic secondary school – initially a cultural shock as I found myself the only black student among a predominantly white class. The religious focus of the school was, however, a refreshing contrast to my urban, street background. Teachers and students were more serious about God than at my previous schools. A student was not considered "nerdy" or "odd" due to their religiosity. I was therefore able to excel in religious studies and was successful in my final O-level exam.

During these lessons, the more we learned about religion, the more we questioned and challenged particular concepts, particularly relating to Christianity. Questions about the concept of the trinity – the Godhead being three in one – caused many debates as some of us; myself and others did not find this logical or feasible. Our religious studies teacher became exasperated by persistent questions on this topic, and arranged for the local priest to attend and address the question. His explanations did little to remove our doubts in this very fundamental and important area of faith.

I recall one particular lesson where we were doing Bible studies and I queried why we, as Christians, failed to prostrate in the same manner that Jesus had in the garden of Gethsemane prior to his arrest. I was unable to identify any relationship between Jesus's prayer and ours as his Christian followers. However, the Muslim prayer most closely resembled Jesus's.

After leaving school, I lost contact with most of my school friends. I also abandoned many aspects of Christianity and instead submerged myself into the urban street culture of my local friends and community – we would make our own religion based on the ethics and beliefs that made sense to us.

The passivity that Christianity promotes is perceived as alien and disconnected to black youths growing up in often violent and challenging urban environments in Britain today. "Turning the other cheek" invites potential ridicule and abuse whereas resilience, strength and self-dignity evokes respect and, in some cases, fear from unwanted attention.

I converted to Islam after learning about the religion's monotheistic foundation; there being only one God – Allah who does not share his divinity with anything. This made sense and was easy to comprehend. My conversion was further strengthened by learning that Islam recognised and revered the prophets mentioned in Judaism and Christianity. My new faith was, as its holy book the Qur'an declares, a natural and final progression of these earlier religions. Additionally, with my newfound faith, there existed religious guidelines that provided spiritual and behavioural codes of conduct. Role models such as Malcolm X only helped to reinforce the perception that Islam enabled the empowerment of one's masculinity coupled with righteous and virtuous conduct as a strength, not a weakness.

My personal experiences are supported by academic research on the same topic: Richard Reddie, who is himself a Christian, conducted research on black British converts to Islam. My own studies revealed that the majority of young people I interviewed converted from Christianity to Islam for similar reasons to me.

Islam's way of life and sense of brotherhood were attractive to 50% of interviewees, whereas another 30% and 10% respectively converted because of the religion's monotheistic foundations and the fact that, holistically, the religion "made sense" and there were "no contradictions".

My research examined whether such converts were more susceptible to violent radicalisation or more effective at countering it. The overwhelming conclusion points to the latter – provided there are avenues to channel these individuals' newly discovered sense of empowerment and identity towards constructive participation in society, as opposed to a destructive insularity which can be exploited by extremists.

Many Muslim converts – not just black British ones – will confirm the sense of empowerment Islam provides, both spiritually and mentally. It also provides a context within which such individuals are able to rise above the social, cultural and often economic challenges that tend to thwart their progress in today's society. Turning the other cheek therefore is never an option.

Hispanic Islamic Converts Find Comfort In God And Latino Culture

By Zuania Ramos ("The Huffington Post," September 11, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38057/

She left behind everything she learned as part of her Catholic upbringing in a Hispanic family to convert to Islam. She now ensures that her body is entirely covered by clothing when she goes out and lives her life by the strict structures of her new religion.

Kalene Santana, a 19-year-old of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, says she "lives and loves in Spanish, obeys the laws and pays her taxes in English and worships her god in Arabic." And no matter how big of an adjustment her conversion to Islam has been, Santana is willing to face the challenge head on in order to live proudly in two spheres she says identify her as a woman: Hispanic culture and Islamic culture.

She's not alone. This is also the case for the former Delma Oliveras, now known as Zainab Ismail since her conversion to Islam three years ago. Ismail, the director of Nadoona, an Islamic organization that dedicates itself to health education, is of Puerto Rican origin and said she feels spiritually fulfilled since leaving her Christian roots behind and converting to Islam.

"About 15 years ago I met a Lebanese friend who introduced me to Islam and the Qur'an. But back then I didn't want to hear about it," Ismail says about her initial encounters with the religion she now embraces. "I was born and had my first communion in the Catholic church, but I didn't feel a connection to God. After a time, I began yearning for that connection and one day, in my car, I had this deep holy feeling that I was ready to convert (to Islam)..."

From that moment onwards, the conversion process was uninterrupted.

"They taught me how to pray, how to do things, and in almost no time I began practicing the faith."

Before converting, Santana had had few encounters with Islam or other Muslims.

"I had two uncles who converted in the 90s. They never pushed me or tried to teach me too much, I just knew they were Muslims. At my Catholic church they would ask me what I was and I would say that I was born into a Catholic family, but did not feel Catholic. After school, instead of hanging out, I would go on my computer and search for answers to my questions. I learned what Islam was and I made the decision."

And although there are fundamental differences that separate the traditional beliefs held by many Hispanics from the approximately 40,000 Hispanic Muslims who reside in the United States today, according to the Islamic Society of North America, there are also similarities within their roots that these Muslims treasure as common ground. Hispanic Muslim customs include a touch of creole folklore and culture, especially in food, and speaking Spanish and family values are prized above all. Ismail said these customs are so rooted in Hispanic Muslim households that they can be easily seen in any reunion celebrated by members of this group.

But following the established religious laws of Islam can be a culture shock for Hispanic Muslims. This is especially true if one takes into account the fact that Islam emphasizes humility and conservative values, characteristics that are not always in line with Hispanic traditions. For example, there are Hispanic communities across Spain, the Caribbean and Latin American countries which value free-spirited individualism, feminine sex appeal, and the playful-yet-charged interplay between the sexes.

For these women, however, covering their bodies to adhere with the guidelines of Islam is not as big of a challenge as being misunderstood by those around them due to their conversion.

"My mom is very passive and cool, raised Catholic, but not very religious. For her, my adoption of the hijab and changing my clothing to looser-fitting clothes was the biggest thing about my conversion because it became something external and not internal. She still has a tough time understanding why I have to cover my body parts and how that represents modesty."

Ismail who is the daughter of a pastor in the Pentecostal Church who does not support her decision to leave the religion in which she was raised, has felt the conflict between faith and tradition in her own home. She said it has been difficult to face the reality of starting her new life as a Muslim without support or guidance from her family.

"I try not to discuss those things with my dad. In Islam parents are given the utmost respect and you're never supposed to argue with them, and that's the deepest thing for them. I just pray for my parents..." she admits.

But without any support from her family, it was difficult for her to begin her new life.

"Not having Muslim family members is the hardest part. I've been married for two years and I have a Lebanese husband, but he was raised here," she explains. "Not having someone while you're in the process of being married to ask about how to be a good wife is hard..."

Santana said she feels confused about her identity sometimes, adding that she looks to find herself in the faith she professes and that she tries to distance herself from the experiences she lives at home and out in public.

"I've gone through several phases. Being a Muslim, I would go to the mosque, but would not wear a hijab, and I would continue to go out to parties. During those days, sometimes I wouldn't even think about the fear of God... I've been confused, 'What do I want to do? I want to have fun, but I'm different.' I've done a lot of searching about my identity and how I identify myself to others. The most difficult thing is walking down the streets because people who don't understand have a lot of questions. You have to really know what you believe in," Santana said.

Facing prejudice and stigma about their hijabs and their religion in a city like New York -- where suspicions surrounding the Muslim faith and it's connection to the September 11 terrorist attacks persist -- can be demoralizing for any new convert, but this is not the case for these two Muslim women who are adherents to moderate Islamic sects.

"I was there, near the World Trade Center. I worked half a mile away from there and I saw the second airplane (hit). Back then I was not a Muslim and it was a tragedy. I knew a lot of people who died that day," Ismail said. "...But just like Christians, in Islam there are sects. There are 63 sects and the people associated with that tragedy are from extremist sects. You can't place the blame on all Muslims because of the acts of extremists."

Beyond the stereotypes, Santana said she is focused on continuing to grow her spiritual life and her studies, which she hopes to pursue in marketing, anthropology and communications. She added that she is still waiting to find her partner, who she hopes will share the same faith as her.

"It's very important for me to have a husband who is a Muslim. It's a lifestyle...," she said. "There are so many details, that if you marry a person who is not of the same faith, it would just not work out.

Ismail follows the same path and said that personal improvement, as well as her marriage, will continue to be her first priority.

"The number one thing is that I am married by God and nothing comes before that. Thinking of God first, thinking that God is watching what I'm doing... I treat people a lot better now then before I was a Muslim. I'm a different person. I thank God that I'm a better person now."

U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

By Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman ("Wired," May 10, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/37275/

Washington, USA - The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light. Danger Room received hundreds of pages of course material and reference documents from a source familiar with the contents of the class.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently ordered the entire U.S. military to scour its training material to make sure it doesn’t contain similarly hateful material, a process that is still ongoing. But the officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.

For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion.

“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation (.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies. “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”

Dooley could not be reached for comment. Joint Forces Staff College spokesman Steven Williams declined to discuss Dooley’s presentation or his status at the school. But when asked if Dooley was responsible for the course material, he responded, “I don’t know if I would classify him [Dooley] as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward.

That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material. In the same presentation, Dooley lays out a possible four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” (It’s an especially ironic suggestion, in light of today’s news that Saudi intelligence broke up the most recent al-Qaida bombing plot.)

International laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant,” Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.”

Dooley’s ideological allies have repeatedly stated that “mainstream” Muslims are dangerous, because they’re “violent” by nature. Yet only a few of al-Qaida’s most twisted fanatics were ever caught musing about wiping out entire cities.

“Some of these actions offered for consideration here will not be seen as ‘political correct’ in the eyes of many,” Dooley adds. “Ultimately, we can do very little in the West to decide this matter, short of waging total war.”

Dooley, who has worked at the Joint Forces Staff College since August 2010, began his eight-week class with a straightforward, two-part history of Islam. It was delivered by David Fatua, a former West Point history professor. “Unfortunately, if we left it at that, you wouldn’t have the proper balance of points of view, nor would you have an accurate view of how Islam defines itself,” Dooley told his students. Over the next few weeks, he invited in a trio of guest lecturers famous for their incendiary views of Islam.

Shireen Burki declared during the 2008 election that “Obama is bin Laden’s dream candidate.” In her Joint Forces Staff College lecture, she told students that “Islam is an Imperialist/Conquering Religion.” (.pdf)

Stephen Coughlin claimed in his 2007 master’s thesis that then-president George W. Bush’s declaration of friendship with the vast majority of the world’s Muslims had “a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine.” (.pdf) Coughlin was subsequently let go from his consulting position to the military’s Joint Staff, but he continued to lecture at the Naval War College and at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. In his talk to Dooley’s class (.pdf), Coughlin suggested that al-Qaida helped drive the overthrow of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. It was part of a scheme by Islamists to conquer the world, he added. And Coughlin mocked those who didn’t see this plot as clearly as he did, accusing them of “complexification.”

Coughlin titled his talk: “Imposing Islamic Law – or – These Aren’t the Droids Your Looking For!”

Former FBI employee John Guandolo told the conspiratorial World Net Daily website last year that Obama was only the latest president to fall under the influence of Islamic extremists. “The level of penetration in the last three administrations is deep,” Guandolo alleged. In his reference material for the Joint Forces Staff College class, Guandolo not only spoke of today’s Muslims as enemies of the West. He even justified the Crusades, writing that they “were initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.”

Guandolo’s paper, titled “Usual Responses from the Enemy When Presented With the Truth” (.pdf), was one of hundreds of presentations, documents, videos and web links electronically distributed to the Joint Forces Staff College students. Included in that trove: a paper alleging that “it is a permanent command in Islam for Muslims to hate and despise Jews and Christians” (.pdf). So was a video lecture from Serge Trifkovic, a former professor who appeared as a defense witness in several trials of Bosnian Serb leaders convicted of war crimes, including the genocide of Muslims. A web link, titled “Watch Before This Is Pulled,” supposedly shows President Obama — the commander-in-chief of the senior officers attending the course — admitting that he’s a Muslim.

Dooley added the caveats that his views are “not the Official Policy of the United States Government” and are intended “to generate dynamic discussion and thought.” But he taught his fellow military officers that Obama’s alleged admission could well make the commander in chief some sort of traitor. “By conservative estimates,” 10 percent of the world’s Muslims, “a staggering 140 million people … hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit” to Islam. He added, “Your oath as a professional soldier forces you to pick a side here.” It is unclear if Dooley’s “total war” on Muslims also applied to his “Muslim” commander in chief.

After the Pentagon brass learned of Dooley’s presentation, the country’s top military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, issued an order to every military chief and senior commander to get rid of any similar anti-Islam instructional material. Dempsey issued the order because the White House had already instructed the entire security apparatus of the federal government — military and civilian — to revamp its counterterrorism training after learning of FBI material that demonized Islam.

By then, Dooley had already presented his apocalyptic vision for a global religious war. Flynn has ordered a senior officer, Army Maj. Gen. Frederick Rudesheim, to investigate how precisely Dooley managed to get away with that extended presentation in an official Defense Department-sanctioned course. The results of that review are due May 24.

Ironically, Dooley and his guest lecturers paint a dire picture of the forward march of Islamic extremism right as its foremost practitioner feared its implosion. Documents recently declassified by the U.S. government revealed Osama bin Laden fretting about al-Qaida’s brutal methods and damaged brand alienating the vast majority of Muslims from choosing to wage holy war. Little could he have known that U.S. military officers were thinking of ways to ignite one.

Most French see Islam too influential in society: poll

By (Reuters, October 25, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38422/

Paris, France - An increasing majority of people in France believe Islam plays too influential a role in their society and almost half see Muslims as a threat to their national identity, according to a poll published on Thursday.

The survey by pollster Ifop in Le Figaro newspaper showed that 60 percent of people believed that Islam was "too important" in France in terms of its influence and visibility, up from 55 percent two years ago.

It found that 43 percent of respondents considered the presence of the Muslim community as a threat to their national identity, compared with just 17 percent who said it enriched society. Forty percent of those questioned were indifferent to the presence of Islam, Le Figaro said.

"Our poll shows a further hardening in French people's opinions," Jerome Fourquet, head of Ifop's opinion department, told the newspaper.

The struggle of secular France, whose people are mainly Catholic, to assimilate the largest Islamic population in Europe was thrust into the spotlight in March when Muslim Mohamed Merah, went on a shooting spree in southwest France that killed three Jewish children, a rabbi and three soldiers.

"In recent years, there has not been a week when Islam has not been in the heart of the news for social reasons: the veil, halal food, for dramatic news like terrorist attacks or geopolitical reasons," Fourquet said.

The prevalence of halal food and rising immigration - particularly from Islamic north Africa - were hot topics in the campaign for the presidential election as Nicolas Sarkozy sought to appeal to voters of the far-right National Front.

Sarkozy eventually lost to Socialist Francois Hollande but a contender to lead his conservative UMP party, Jean Francois Cope, put Islam back on the agenda this month by suggesting Muslim youths were tearing pain au chocolat pastries from children's hands during Islam's fasting month of Ramadan.

The publication of the poll also came after a far-right group occupied a mosque in the western city of Poitiers at the weekend and issued a "declaration of war" against what it called the Islamisation of France.

Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the French Muslim Council (CFCM), said fear of Islam was being stoked by political manipulation of concern over immigration and fears the growing Muslim population could lead to the imposition of sharia law.

"Islam has left the spiritual sphere to become a political subject," he said, in response to the poll. "Attempts to associate marginal practices with mainstream Muslim religion fuels the rejection of every aspect of Islam."

The survey, carried out on October 15-18 on 1,736 people, showed a growing resistance to the symbols of the Islamic faith. Some 43 percent of those questioned were opposed to more mosque building, up from 39 percent in 2010.

Sixty-three percent opposed Muslim women wearing the veil or Islamic headscarves in public, compared with 59 percent two years ago. Sarkozy's previous conservative banned the wearing of full-face veils.

California Muslims Feel Cold Front

By Tamara Audi ("The Wall Street Journal," September 14, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38075/

Los Angeles, USA - For decades, Muslim migrants drawn to Southern California have largely found the region to be welcoming as they built new mosques in the state's rural eastern valleys and urban centers.

But in the past few years, tensions have percolated between the region's growing Muslim communities and local right-wing evangelical groups. A small but vocal number of loosely connected Christian activists have protested at Mosques and Islamic events, saying they feel threatened by the spread of Islam in the U.S.

Two people with alleged connections to the anti-Islam movie that may have sparked deadly protests in Libya live south of Los Angeles—Nakoula B. Nakoula, who has identified himself as a Christian from Egypt, and who law-enforcement officials say they believe was the film's producer; and Steve Klein, a Christian anti-Muslim activist prominent in the region, who has said in media interviews that he served as a consultant on the film.

The tensions here mirror other flash points nationwide, like protests over Manhattan's so-called 9-11 mosque, and Florida pastor Terry Jones's Quran-burning. Hate crimes against Muslims have increased nationwide in the last several years, Federal Bureau of Investigations statistics show.

Southern California's anti-Muslim rhetoric has been quietly on the rise, Muslim advocates here say, culminating in the violence apparently set off by the locally produced "Muhammad Movie Trailer."

Both men allegedly involved in the anti-Islam movie appear to be part of a small, vocal anti-Islam movement in Southern California that incorporates evangelical Christians, a small number of Copts, or Egyptian Christians, and a few other Arab Christians, those tracking the groups say.

Media for Christ, a Christian group based just north of Los Angeles that appears to be run by Copts and other Arab Christians, filed for the permit to make the movie, according to city and filming officials. Its website features writings and video in Arabic and English that are highly critical of Islam.

Unidentified women who answered the phone at Media for Christ said they had no knowledge of the movie.

The Coptic church in the U.S. has condemned the movie, and said the Coptic church, a mainstream religion founded in Egypt that is one of the oldest Christian groups in the Middle East, has no connection to it.

"The film is totally inappropriate and shocking and this person did not secure permissions from the church," said Father Joseph Boules of the St. Mary & St. Verena Coptic Orthodox Church in Anaheim, Calif. Mr. Boules said he is concerned about Muslim retaliation against Christians in Egypt, but not in the U.S.

Muslim leaders here say they have far more friends here than enemies—pointing to numerous religious leaders from Jewish and Christian congregations who work with them and have defended them publicly against protesters.

But some Muslims say they have also been surprised by the level of anger and tactics of protesters, many of whom say they oppose the spread of Sharia, or religious Islamic law in the U.S. These protesters have also blamed Muslims for religious violence in the Middle East and attacks on Christians. And some say they fear Muslim communities in the U.S. will create havens for Muslim extremists and terrorism here.

During a 2010 protest to stop a mosque from being built in Temecula, about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles, protesters shouted and carried signs that read "No More Mosque in America" and "Allah Not Here." Some protesters shouted "Take our country back" and "Build a church in Saudi Arabia first," according to online videos of the protest.

Some of those opposed to the mosque included one of its would-be neighbors, a Baptist church. On the church website, officials said their primary concern was that the mosque's site, adjacent to their property, was unsuitable for the size of the planned structure. But church officials also cited attacks on Christians abroad by Muslim extremists as reasons for their concern about Islam in general.

"It is our stand for religious freedom that causes us concern when we see the growing influence of the more radical elements in Islam, and the principles embedded in Sharia law which seek to give prominence to the expression of Islam and seek to replace the American Constitution and our Bill or Rights," the pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church wrote on the church's website in 2010.

On Friday, Pastor William Rench of the Calvary Baptist Church said the violent reactions of Muslims to the film underscored his concerns about Islam.

"There are thousands of offensive videos and films that attack Christianity and you don't find the same reaction with Christian people as we see in the Muslim world," he said. "I don't intend to retaliate against anyone or chop anyone's head off, or if they offend me by saying profane and vulgar things about my faith."

Mr. Rench said he has a cordial relationship with the leaders of the Muslim congregation next door, and views them as practicing a "more liberal, moderate" form of Islam.

Mahmoud Harmoush, the mosque's imam at the time, said a few protesters followed him to city hall where he was making a presentation, and then followed him to a local synagogue where he was invited to speak. "At one point, [protesters] started following me to every speech I made," he said.

"We have some pockets of extremists here, just small numbers," he added. "But the level of animosity we saw was great."

City officials last year gave the mosque permission to build.

This past August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil-rights group, asked federal officials to investigate who left pigs' legs outside the site of a planned mosque in Ontario, 40 miles east of Los Angeles, calling the incident a hate crime. Muslims are prohibited from eating pork and consider pigs unclean.

"In the past few years, we've seen an uptick in the rhetoric against Islam," said Munira Syeda, spokeswoman for the American-Islamic council. She said her group urged Muslims here and abroad not to react to the anti-Islamic movie.

Law enforcement officials in Southern California said Thursday that they were providing extra security for people involved in the film. But aside from hordes of reporters outside homes and offices, there seemed to be no threats to their security or threats of retaliation.

Mr. Klein, the anti-Islamic activist who said he consulted on the movie, recently warned in a video of Islamic suicide bombers coming over the border from Mexico and Canada to infiltrate the U.S. He didn't respond to numerous requests for comment.

Alarm about the spread of Islam and what that might mean for the U.S. has coincided with rising numbers of Muslims in the U.S.

There were 2,106 mosques in the U.S. last year, up 74% from 2000, when there were 1,209, according to a report released this year by the Hartford Institute of Religious Research and a coalition of religious organizations. California has the second-highest number of mosques in the nation, 246, with nearly half of them in Southern California. New York has 257.

There are about 2.6 million Muslims in the U.S., according to a 2011 Pew Research Center study. That number is projected to grow to 6.2 million Muslims by 2030, according to the study.

Mr. Harmoush, the former imam of the Temecula mosque, has since started a new mosque in the area. Right now, the congregation is small and meets in a small rented space. "No protests or anything so far," he said. "We'll see what happens if we try to build something."

The quiet Muslim revolution in Europe

By Ari Varon ("Haaretz," October 10, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38283/

Given the headlines in the past weeks surrounding the film “Innocence of Muslims” and the publication of caricatures of the Prophet of Islam in France, you might think that when, a few weeks ago in Paris, I presented my research on the various ways Muslims living in Europe are integrating European and Islamic principles within their identity, I would be issuing a warning about Europe’s demise by the hand of radical Islam. But I did not. In contrast to the stereotypes paraded by the mainstream media, I have found that Muslims throughout Europe are engaged in significant and sincere efforts to integrate into European society, while at the same time remaining faithful to Islam - and many are succeeding.

Throughout Europe there is an intense, dynamic and genuine intra-Islamic debate by Muslims on how to fully integrate into Europe. The debate covers different degrees of commitment to Islamic practice, from the most secular across the spectrum to the most religious. The core discussion focuses on how to retain a strong Muslim identity while remaining a loyal citizen of the state.

There are a variety of ways that Muslim intellectuals are balancing Islam-state relations in Europe. For example, the Swiss political scientist Tariq Ramadan suggests that Muslims embrace equally both the Islamic and secular national aspects of their identity. The German professor of international relations Bassam Tibi suggests a pluralistic interpretation of Islam, where all aspects of religious practice are relegated to the private not public sphere. The intra-Islamic debate between those two intellectuals, and other Muslim scholars, is intensifying both in their public exposure and impact on social issues as Muslims continue to mobilize socially and politically.

During the past few years, many governments in Europe have initiated processes to streamline the relationship between Muslim organizations and the state. Both religious and secular organizations participate in the dialogue of what it means to be Muslim in Europe. However, the organizations that tend be represented vis-à-vis government are usually religious institutions with organized constituencies; it is more challenging for secular Muslim organizations to mobilize significant constituencies, thus they suffer from under-representation and wield less influence in the dialogue with the state.

One of many examples of this trend is France. The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) was founded by the French government in 2003 as the representative body of mosques and religious organizations. CFCM is based on the model developed to organize Jewish, Catholic and Protestant constituencies in France and provides an institutional framework for the state to interact with Muslim organizations.

While this is a good start, there is still plenty of room for improvement. The head of the CFCM is the elected representative of the various organizations, but is not the direct representative of France’s Muslim population, consolidating more 'representative' power in his hands than the more horizontal leadership of other faith blocs. In addition, because of CFCM’s religious focus, a variety of non-religious Muslim organizations are forced to mobilize separately, outside of this framework. In order for their formulation of a non-religious Islamic identity in Europe to be heard, governments must work out how to incorporate these organizations into the official dialogue.

But we cannot ignore the extreme voices of Europe's Muslim communities. Radical Islam very definitely exists in Europe. It is a serious issue, and one that is worthy of the bulk of the public debate it consumes. Government institutions and relevant security apparatuses need to accelerate their efforts to eradicate this extremism not least through determined policing (see the latest French police operations in Strasbourg in the wake of the Sarcelles grenade attack), but also by limiting extremist opportunities to proselytize. The moderate Muslim community has a role as well to play in eradicating that interpretation of Islam. However, while organizations supporting a radical, political and violent interpretation of Islam dominate the headlines, a 2010 PEW report on Muslim networks in Europe concludes that relatively few Muslims officially subscribe to this fundamentalist message.

For the first time in Islamic history, Muslims are in the midst of developing a locally-based Islamic-European identity. This process will take years, if not generations. It is important to identify the participants in this debate in order to strengthen the moderate voices and sideline the extremists. Of course, the difficulty lies in correctly identifying to which tendency participants belong between those interpretations and in preventing the extremists from overshadowing the influence of moderates

The main focus of inter-Muslim debates and discussions in Europe focuses on how - not if - to integrate further in social and political terms into their country of citizenship. To promote the influence of moderate Islam, more time, funds and effort are needed by individuals, organizations and governments to advance the social and political integration of the Muslims within society. Moderate Islam’s social and political leaders agree they must play a larger role in the process of mediating extremism and integrating Islamic and European principles into their identity, and to a growing extent they are, at least at a local level – the head of the CFCM was broadcast widely on national television denouncing the violence of the anti-film protests.

Jews in particular should recognize the parallels between the religious-national identity integration of Muslims in contemporary Europe and the process of creating a Jewish identity in Europe that accommodated loyal citizenship that started in the 18th century – the Jewish 'enlightenment' movement, or Haskalah. It could be argued that Muslims in Europe are involved in an expedited process similar to the Jewish 'reformation' in European history.

European governments, and also the Jewish communities of Europe, can support the 'identity integration' of Muslims in Europe on several fronts: First, by recognizing that it is happening; second, differentiating between extreme and moderate interpretations of Islam; third, promoting the cooperation between Jewish and moderate and secular Muslim organizations; and fourth, explicit popular support – including the Jewish communities within each country - for government efforts to indentify and promote programs funding pro-integration sections of the Muslim community.

Muslims in Europe are only at the beginning of the process of forming a self-defined identity in Europe, but the process has started and it is us to us, amongst others, to show them our support.

Ari Varon researches the formation of a contemporary European Islamic identity. He is in a joint Ph.D. program between Tel Aviv University and Sciences Po, Paris.

Egypt refers man who tore Bible to trial

By Sarah El Deeb (AP, September 25, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38167/

Cairo, Egypt - Egyptian prosecutors referred to trial Tuesday a well-known radical Islamist who tore up an English copy of the Bible during a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against an anti-Islam film produced in the United States.

The case against Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah is a rare example of Egypt's blasphemy laws — often condemned by rights groups as restrictive of freedom— used against someone who allegedly insulted a religion other than Islam.

Abdullah, also known as Abu Islam, was filmed during a protest outside the embassy two weeks ago as he stood before the crowd and ripped up the holy book. "Next time I will urinate on it," he says in another video. Both videos were posted online.

The subject of the protest, the film "Innocence of Muslims," has enraged many Muslims for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester. At least 51 people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, have been killed in violence linked to protests over the film, which also has renewed debate over freedom of expression in the Middle East, U.S. and in Europe.

Contempt towards "heavenly" religions — a term usually taken to include Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — is punishable by up to five years in Egypt. But lawyers and rights groups say the definition of contempt of religion is vague and has been used frequently against critics of Islam only, not other faiths.

In the wake of the anti-Islam video, many clerics and politicians in Egypt have called for an international law criminalizing contempt for religion. Egypt's new government, headed by Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, may be under pressure to show that it is applying Egypt's contempt law evenhandedly.

Critics say the recent moves are a retreat from freedoms gained during the uprising against Morsi's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. The contempt of religion laws were also used under Mubarak.

A prosecution official said Abdullah's son and a journalist who interviewed him afterward were also referred to trial. The official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Abdullah is known for having put together a new Islamic TV channel that is run primarily by women veiled from head to toe, with only their eyes showing. He is a frequent guest on other television channels.

He told The Associated Press he is not guilty of contempt to religion because he targeted the book of a specific group of Christians who have offended Islam.

"I had always wished to go to court to explain to the world that there is no such thing as the Bible. Every church in the West has its own holy book," he said.

He said his trial begins Sept. 30. The other two defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.

Another Egyptian, a Coptic Christian who had questioned both Islam and Christianity on his social networking pages, has also been referred to trial, which begins Wednesday, on charges of contempt to religion. Alber Saber was originally arrested in the wake of the anger of the offensive film, and accused of sharing it online.

The prosecutors didn't find the film on his web pages, but still prosecuted him for contempt. Another Coptic Christian was sentenced to six years in prison last week for insulting Islam and the president on his Facebook page.

"There seems to be a direction toward restricting freedoms," said Ahmed Ezzat, a human rights lawyer who is defending Saber.

Religion in the News: Islam and Politics Dominate Religion Coverage in 2011

By ("The Pew Forum," February 23, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/36942/

USA - The biggest religion stories of 2011 involved tensions over Islam and questions about faith in presidential politics, especially Mormonism, according to an annual review of religion in the news by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Events and controversies related to Islam also dominated U.S. press coverage of religion in 2010. However, coverage of some stories faded in the past year, notably coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, which received much more media attention in 2010.

Compared with topics such as politics and the economy, religion does not typically receive a lot of attention from the mainstream news media, and 2011 was no exception. When religion did make news, it was often because of accusations about extremism or intolerance. For instance, among the biggest individual stories of 2011 were a controversial congressional hearing about the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism and the fallout after a Florida pastor staged a Koran burning. And one of the top religion and politics stories of the year centered on an incident in which a Texas minister called the Mormon faith a “cult.”

The discussion of religion in social media in 2011 was quite different than the coverage in the traditional press. None of the top religion-related subjects among bloggers in 2011 was a top story in traditional media outlets. While the presidential campaign and political incidents involving Islam captured the attention of the traditional press, bloggers focused on such topics as the Rapture predictions of a Christian radio host and science and religion. Bloggers also tended to cover religion in a less sustained way than the mainstream media.

These are among the findings of a new study that examines news coverage in a broad range of mainstream media sources, as well as in blogs and on Twitter, from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2011.

Among the key findings of the study:

Religion accounted for 0.7% of all mainstream media coverage studied in 2011, down from 2.0% in 2010. In the 52 news outlets monitored throughout the year, including the evening TV news programs, newspaper front pages, top cable news programs, top news websites and top radio programs, religion received about as much coverage as race/gender/gay issues (0.8%) and immigration (0.7%).

Islam has become a bigger part of the media’s focus on religion in recent years. Six of the top 10 religion stories in 2011 were about Islam. This continues a trend first seen in 2010, when four of the top five religion stories involved controversies related to Islam. In 2007-2009, by contrast, Islam-focused stories generally accounted for a much smaller share of the coverage.

Viewed from another angle – the specific religious faiths on which media coverage focused – Islam again ranked at the top. It was the subject of nearly a third (31.3%) of the religion ”newshole” – the amount of space and time devoted to religion news online, in print, on television and on the radio – in 2011. This was nearly three times the amount that focused on Catholicism (11.3%) and more than three times the amount that focused on Mormonism (9.6%).

While a variety of stories about Islam collectively accounted for the biggest share of media coverage about religion in 2011, the largest single storyline involving religion was the presidential election campaign. The campaign accounted for 13.1% of all religion coverage studied. But while it ranked first for the year, coverage of religion in the presidential election was down considerably from four years earlier, in the run-up to the 2008 election, when campaign news made up 23.8% of 2007 religion coverage.

An analysis of the past five years of religion coverage suggests that interest in religion tends to be heavily event-driven, at least at the top of the media agenda. In 2008, for instance, Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States accounted for about 37% of all religion coverage during that year, though the visit itself lasted for only six days in April. And 82.3% of the stories about the visit were published or broadcast within that six-day window.

Users of another social media platform, Twitter, gave less prominence to religion in 2011 than they had the previous year. Only during one week in 2011 did a religion-focused story appear among the top five stories discussed on the micro-blogging tool. (Interest was triggered by a BBC report on a group of scientists who predicted that religion was headed for extinction in certain parts of the world.)

This examination of religion coverage in the media is built from two separate areas of research. The study of traditional news sources analyzed nearly 46,000 stories from newspaper front pages, home pages of major news websites, the first half-hour of network and cable television news programs and the first half-hour of radio news and talk shows. (For details, see the methodology.) The content of new media was analyzed separately by aggregating and coding a sample of blogs, tweets and other sources monitored by Tweetmeme, Technorati, Icerocket and Twitteruly, which track millions of blogs and social media entries. (For details, see the New Media Index methodology.)

Religion Coverage Overall in 2011

Overall, religion received somewhat less media attention in 2011 than it did a year earlier.

Of the entire universe of news content analyzed by PEJ on an ongoing basis, religion-related issues and events accounted for 0.7% of the total “newshole” or amount of space and time devoted to news online, in print, on television and on the radio in 2011. That was down from 2.0% in 2010.

PEJ monitors 25 different general topics in the news. At the top of the list in 2011 were government agencies/legislatures and politics/elections, followed by U.S. foreign affairs and the economy.1 Religion ranked 22nd, receiving about the same level of attention as immigration, transportation and race/gender/gay issues. By comparison, coverage of science and technology, the environment and education slightly outpaced coverage of religion this past year.

Most of the religion coverage in 2011 (74.6%) dealt with stories that took place in the U.S. Less than a sixth of the coverage (15.2%) had an international focus, while 9.1% of the coverage had both domestic and international dimensions.2 The coverage of domestic stories was slightly higher in 2011 than it was in 2010, when 70.3% of religion coverage was focused on domestic topics.

Top Religion Stories of the Year

Tensions With Islam Are Becoming a Bigger Story

Six of the top 10 religion stories in 2011 focused at least in part on Islam – the highest number since PEJ and the Pew Forum began monitoring religion news in 2007. Nearly one-third of all religion coverage focused on Islam or Muslims in the U.S. or abroad. In 2010, four of the top 10 religion stories focused on Islam, and these stories accounted for 47.9% of religion coverage. Prior to that, Islam had appeared less often among the top 10 stories of each year and accounted for far less coverage: three of the top 10 stories in 2007 (3.9% of coverage), two of the top 10 in 2008 (2.2% of coverage) and one of the top 10 in 2009 (2.0% of coverage).

Congressional Hearing on Radical Islam

The top Islam-related story of the year was the congressional hearing organized by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on the subject of radical Islam in the U.S., accounting for 9.4% of religion coverage. It was the No. 2 religion story overall, behind the presidential campaign.

King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, announced the hearing in December 2010. He later defended his decision to single out American Muslims, arguing that radical Islam posed a special threat to national security. “[U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder is not saying he's staying awake at night because of what's coming from anti-abortion demonstrators or coming from environmental extremists or from Neo-Nazis. It's the radicalization right now in the Muslim community," King told CNN.

The March 10 hearing included testimony from supporters of King’s premise as well as critics, among them Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim members of Congress, whose emotional defense of the patriotism of American Muslims was recounted by many journalists.

The media coverage of the hearing characterized it as emotional and combative. A March 10 New York Times story said the hearing was “attacked by critics as a revival of McCarthyism, and lauded by supporters as a courageous stand against political correctness.” A Washington Post headline about the hearing declared: “Plenty of drama, less substance.”

Nonetheless, for a single congressional hearing, the King event was a big story, filling 5% of the newshole – the total space and time devoted to news coverage – for the week of March 7-13, enough to make it the fourth-biggest story of the week.

Polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that Americans were moderately interested in the hearing. During the period March 10-13, 18% of those polled said that they were following the story closely. By comparison, 15% said they were closely following the presidential campaign at the time and 52% said they were closely following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Anti-Muslim Sentiment

The third-biggest religion storyline of the year involved anti-Muslim sentiment that was not tied to any particular event. Some of these stories articulated anger or distrust of Islam, while others included defenses of the faith. Collectively, they made up 6.7% of all religion coverage in 2011.

Stories about anti-Muslim sentiment often found a home on cable TV talk shows. For example, the Feb. 2 edition of the Fox News program “Hannity” featured Imam Anjem Choudary, co-founder of the Islamist organization al-Muhajiroun, in a shouting match with Sean Hannity, the program’s host, over sharia law.

On Feb. 3, MSNBC host Chris Matthews played a clip of conservative commentator Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, speaking about the influence in the United States of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Gaffney suggested was a serious threat to domestic security. After watching the clip, Matthews expressed indignation. “Isn’t this what it’s about – pure, utter fearmongering?” he asked.

Coverage in this category also included stories about attempts by groups in Tennessee and elsewhere to counter the perceived threat of sharia law.

9/11 Commemorations

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 provided the media with an opportunity to reflect on the experiences of Muslim Americans since the attacks. Collectively, these stories accounted for 4.2% of religion coverage for the year. That made it the fifth-biggest religion storyline of the year.

Some of the coverage was triggered by a Pew Research Center poll that found that more than half of Muslim Americans (55%) say life has been more difficult for them in the years since the attacks.

Other stories explored ways that Muslims are trying to improve their interactions with fellow Americans. According to a Los Angeles Times story from Sept. 3, “The decade since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon has seen a shift in the way many American Muslims negotiate their delicate position as a minority group associated, fairly or unfairly, with the perpetrators of the deadliest acts of terrorism in the nation’s history.”

Violence Sparked by Koran Burning

Another major Islam-focused storyline in 2011 was the plan by Florida pastor Terry Jones to stage a Koran burning. The story first surfaced in 2010 but culminated in March 2011 when Jones carried through on his threat. The act itself, however, received far less coverage than Jones’ prior talk about it, amounting to 3.7% of religion coverage for the year, down from 14.5% in 2010 when the pastor first threatened to burn the Islamic holy book. “It’s like people forgot about us,” Jones was quoted as saying in a Washington Post story on April 2. Not everyone ignored the incident, however. The event incited violence in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of more than a dozen people, including United Nations workers. That made it news again in the United States.

On the April 4 broadcast of “NBC Nightly News,” anchor Brian Williams raised some questions about “this incident, which no one in this country knew about.” To one of NBC’s foreign correspondents, Williams asked, “We didn’t know this Koran had been lit. …. How did it then explode into violence overseas?” The correspondent went on to discuss the strength of the overseas intelligence operation of the Afghanistan insurgency, which presumably found out about the Koran burning before many Americans did.

For the year as a whole, the Koran burning episode and its aftermath were relatively small components of religion coverage, receiving about a quarter of the media attention that Jones’ threat had garnered in 2010, when it first became something of a sensation.

International Stories Focusing on Islam

Two stories among the top 10 focused on Islam and foreign affairs.

One of these, which made up 3.4% of the religion coverage, had to do with the so-called Arab Spring revolutions that swept countries including Egypt and Libya in 2011. In Egypt, for instance, a component of the coverage of these protests focused on religion, particularly on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the plight of Coptic Christians.

A May 30 New York Times story described fears among Egyptian Christians in the wake of the revolution. “The revolution has empowered the majority but also opened new questions about the protection of minority rights like freedom of religion or expression as Islamist groups step forward to lay out their agendas and test their political might.” Such stories appeared throughout the year on the front pages of major national newspapers.

The other major foreign story of the year involving religion related to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (1.7% of the religion coverage). A Washington Post story from May 2 focused on the ritual aspects of the death and burial of bin Laden after he was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan and his remains were disposed of at sea. A “CBS Evening News” story from May 4 explored reactions to his death by members of a Muslim family in Dearborn, Mich., a city with a high concentration of Muslims.

Other Top Stories

Campaign Coverage Focuses on Romney, Mormonism

As noted above, the single biggest religion storyline of the year was the U.S. presidential election campaign, which accounted for 13.1% of religion coverage.

More than half of the coverage of religion and the campaign focused on a single Republican presidential candidate – former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith. One incident in particular drew a lot of media attention.

On Oct. 7, Texas evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry, himself an evangelical, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. In his remarks, Jeffress implied that Romney’s faith should be a concern for voters. After the event, Jeffress spoke to reporters about the matter, calling Romney’s Mormon faith a “cult.”

As NPR reported, “The Mormon religion, and the dim view of it held by so many evangelical Protestants, has mostly been below the radar so far in the 2012 presidential race,” but “Rev. Robert Jeffress of the First Baptist Church of Dallas opened a closet that had stayed pretty much closed until now….”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper challenged Jeffress during an interview, saying “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does – they consider themselves Christian, and on their website they say they accept Jesus Christ as their savior, as their redeemer, and they say, ‘each of these titles points to the truth that Jesus Christ is the only way by which we can return to live with our heavenly father.’”

Jeffress maintained his position, but added, “I think it’s better to have a non-Christian like Mitt Romney who embraces biblical values than to have a professing Christian like [President] Barack Obama who embraces unbiblical positions.” He cited Obama’s position on abortion as an example.

While the bulk of attention to Romney’s faith in 2011 clustered around the Jeffress incident, some of it lingered later into the fall. After a Pew Research Center poll revealed skepticism among some GOP primary voters about Mormonism, CNN’s Erin Burnett asked on her Nov. 23 broadcast, “Is the Mormon issue going to hurt [Romney] again?” to which CNN analyst David Gergen responded, “We’ve wondered why Mitt Romney has had a hard time breaking out as a front-runner, which typically Republican front-runners do. This poll suggests that in the mix – I don’t think the driving force, but in the mix – there is the question of Mormonism.”

While there is no clear connection between media coverage of Romney’s faith and attitudes of the public toward Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has called on the U.S. media to resist letting others speak for it. At a December Poynter Institute for Media Studies event for reporters on the subject of religion in the election, church spokesman Michael Otterson made a direct plea to those in attendance on the eve of the primaries: “Engage us directly. Include us in your sources. While you obviously will have multiple sources, please allow us to define our own beliefs and practices.”

Over the course of the year, some stories focused on which candidate would gain the most backing from evangelical voters, and some described aspects of the Mormon faith as journalists acquainted readers with Romney’s biography. Occasionally, Islam and Catholicism appeared in campaign coverage, too. But the Jeffress controversy was by far the single biggest religion story in 2011 campaign coverage, echoing some of the patterns that emerged in the 2008 campaign, when religion coverage spiked whenever there was a controversy involving a religious leader or cleric.

(For his part, Obama was the subject of little religion-related campaign coverage in 2011, just as was the case in 2007, during the run-up to the 2008 election. While half of 2007 religion-related campaign stories focused on Romney, just 5% focused on Obama.)

Westboro Baptist Church Ruling

On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the First Amendment protects the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to conduct anti-gay protests at military funerals. News about the group comprised 4.4% of the religion coverage studied, making it the fourth-biggest religion storyline of the year.

Many of the news reports noted that the court ruling was controversial, pleasing civil libertarians but angering others, including veterans and their families. The church, based in Topeka, Kan., had become notorious for protesting at funerals of soldiers as a way of drawing attention to its position against homosexuality. During the week of the Supreme Court ruling, the church accounted for 78.5% of all religion coverage.

The ruling was closely followed by the public, with 24% of Americans saying they were following it closely, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That was about the same percentage that said they were closely following the heated discussion about the federal budget deficit (26%).

Catholic Priest Abuse Scandal

The scandal over sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests received less coverage in 2011 than a year earlier, though it continued to be one of the larger ongoing stories of the year (No. 6 overall). In total, 3.9% of the religion coverage studied related to the subject, down from 18.8% in 2010.

In 2011, 29% of the religion coverage that focused on the Catholic Church was about the sexual abuse scandal. Much of the media narrative centered on the Philadelphia archdiocese’s suspension of 21 priests in March as part of a sex-abuse investigation. A grand jury report in February had accused the archdiocese of covering up the abuse.

The rest of the coverage of the Catholic Church focused on a range of topics, including the steps being taken to declare Pope John Paul II a saint and the Vatican’s adoption of new media technology.

Religion and Education

Rounding out the top 10 was a mix of unrelated stories about the intersection of religion and education. Collectively, these stories accounted for 2.1% of the religion coverage in 2011.

Coverage of Specific Religious Traditions

Another way of looking at religion coverage is to assess which religious groups received the most attention from the media. Here again, Islam featured prominently, accounting for 31.3% of coverage studied. That was nearly three times as much coverage as Catholicism received (11.3%) and somewhat more than was devoted to Protestantism (20.1%), including evangelical Protestantism, mainline Protestantism and African-American church traditions.

The Mormon faith was the subject of 9.6% of religion coverage in 2011, most of which focused on politics, as discussed above.

Themes in 2011 Religion Coverage

Still another way of examining religion coverage is to parse stories according to the broader themes they raised. All religion stories are included in this examination (a total of 302), whether they were part of continuing storylines, focused on a single event or were feature pieces.

A quarter of the coverage (25.0%) focused on religious beliefs and practices, touching on many different faiths. Nearly equal in attention was the theme of religious violence and extremism, which was found in 21.6% of the coverage studied. The vast majority of these stories focused on concerns about extremism in the Muslim community.

Another theme was religious tolerance, which accounted for 9.0% of the religion coverage and also included many stories dealing with Muslims. Other themes receiving significant attention were church-state issues (14.6%) and religion and politics (16.8%). And 4.1% of the coverage focused on religion-related scandals.

Religion Coverage by Sector

Does one medium cover religion more than another? This was not the case in 2011, at least when religion rose to the top of the news agenda – the front page of newspapers, the top stories online, the nightly newscasts and top cable shows. There was little variance between the media sectors, though overall, newspapers were somewhat more likely to cover religion, while the network news programs were least likely to do so.

The religious dimensions of the 2012 presidential campaign got the most airtime on cable, where the subject accounted for 22.2% of the coverage that related to religion in 2011.

Five Years of Episodic Religion Coverage

PEJ and the Pew Forum now have five years of content analysis data about religion in the news. That time frame is enough to look beyond the events that drive news coverage in a particular year and to provide some sense of structural patterns about how the U.S. mainstream media – at the top of its news agenda, at least – treats the subject of faith.

A few conclusions emerge. In a country that is highly religious, the subject is not a major focus of the news. In the 60 months studied, the percentage of stories on religion in any given month rarely fluctuated above or below 1-2% of the space online, in print, on television and on the radio. Another conclusion is that religion tends to make news when it engenders controversy. Deeper questions of faith and its meaning are not, typically, news. Rather, much of the coverage is event-driven. The two biggest religion stories over the past five years were the intense controversy over plans to build an Islamic center, including a mosque, near the World Trade Center site, and Florida pastor Terry Jones’ announcement that his church would burn a Koran. The third-biggest story during that time was a visit by the pope to the U.S.

Religion as a topic generally receives so little attention at the top of the news agenda that these momentary events often account for a large share of all the attention given to faith in the press.

For instance, Benedict’s six-day visit to the United States in April 2008 accounted for 37% of all religion coverage that year. More than 80% of the stories were published or broadcast within a six-day window around the pope’s visit.

In 2010, similarly, the Park51 Islamic center and mosque controversy was the No. 1 religion story of the year, accounting for more than a fifth (22.7%) of all religion coverage. Nearly three-quarters of the stories about the subject (72.4%) were published during a two-week period in August, after Obama gave a speech supporting the efforts to build the center. Arguably, the story was as much about presidential politics as about religion.

In 2011, this cycle was less pronounced but still noticeable. King’s congressional hearing on Islam accounted for 9.4% of the year’s religion coverage (it was the No. 2 religion story, after the U.S. presidential campaign). More than 90% of the coverage was concentrated in one week in March. (King held another hearing in June with a focus on the radicalization of Muslims in American prisons, but that event barely registered in the media.)

Religion in Social Media

As with traditional media, religion received less attention in social media in 2011, particularly in blogs. Overall, religion was among the top five subjects covered in the blogosphere for only five weeks of the year.3 That is about half the number of times religion appeared among the top five weekly topics in 2010 (12 weeks) and 2009 (11 weeks).

For the three years that PEJ and the Pew Forum have conducted such tracking, the discussion of religion in social media generally has aligned with the coverage in mainstream media. That was not the case in 2011, however. None of what emerged as the top religion stories in the mainstream media were hot topics in the blogosphere during the year.

The subjects that moved bloggers included the Judgment Day prediction by Harold Camping, head of the Family Radio broadcast network. Camping predicted that Saturday, May 21, would be Judgment Day and the Rapture would occur, transporting faithful Christians directly to heaven and leaving behind others on Earth to suffer through the Tribulation, as some Christians believe is prophesied in the Bible. When the day came and went, many bloggers characterized Camping's followers as naïve. But a number of religious bloggers also discussed the incident with more sympathy for Camping, and a few commentators also said they felt badly for those who had devoted so much time and energy to the cause.

The second-biggest religion story in the blogosphere, as measured on a week-by-week basis, was a July 18 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that discussed the “psychological mechanisms behind faith.” The op-ed was the second-most linked to story in the blogosphere for the week of July 18-22, accounting for 17% of blog attention.

Twitter users did not focus very much on religion in 2011. In only one week during the year did a story about religion rise to the ranks of the top five most-tweeted topics, and that was during March 21-25, when the future of religion was much discussed on Twitter. It was instigated by a BBC story about a team of researchers who studied census data worldwide and predicted that religion is headed for extinction in such countries as Australia, Canada and Ireland.

About this Study

The Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life made use of two primary data sources for this study. The analysis of mainstream media coverage of religion relies on data from PEJ’s News Coverage Index content analysis (see the methodology). Analysis of new media treatment of religion uses data from PEJ’s New Media Index content analysis (see the methodology).