Ira Rifkin

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Once again: Cover the values built into globalization, not just the financial stories

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Once again: Cover the values built into globalization, not just the financial stories

Perhaps our most damaging limitation as humans is our inability to see past the tip of our collective nose. We constantly fail to fully consider the likely consequences of our actions, no matter how much past experience we have to draw on.

Instead, we -- which is to say those of us who think we have something to gain -- repeatedly drink the Kool-Aid in anticipation of the short-term gains promised by some elite pushing for our buy-in for whatever they're selling.

Such is the case with globalization. It has economically benefited many but left many more economically floundering, psychologically bewildered and emotionally irate in its wake. No wonder it's at the center of the American presidential campaign.

We hear a great deal from the presidential candidates about international trade deals and the loss of jobs to nations with cheaper labor or to advancing technology (witness the journalism trade). We hear about the pluses and minuses of the global migration of economic and political refugees. These are all hallmarks of the Age of Globalization.

Here are three recent analytical pieces detailing globalization's role in the Clinton-Trump presidential campaign. Click here. Then click here. Finally, click here.

What's missing from these pieces? As GetReligion readers, the answer I'm seeking should be obvious.


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A corny Jewish joke, Japanese rent-a-monks and why context matters in journalism

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A corny Jewish joke, Japanese rent-a-monks and why context matters in journalism

Indulge me.

Let's say that you're at a Jewish funeral home service. Some 75 mourners fidget in the pews as a rabbi -- a freelancer hired just to lead the service and a stranger to the deceased -- begins.

"At times like this it's customary to say something nice about the dearly departed," says the rabbi. "Since I didn't know Gantza Turis, I turn to you, his family and friends, to say some comforting words. Who will start?"

Silence, as all eyes avoid the rabbi's.

"I know it's hard to speak at a time like this, but please, someone, stand up and say something nice about Gantza," the rabbi implores. More uncomfortable silence follows. Twice more the rabbi urges the mourners to speak. Twice more no one does.

Finally, visibly upset, the rabbi says, "Look, I'm not going to continue until someone says something nice about Gantza. I'm serious!

At which point a short, elderly man with a hint of a Yiddish accent (picture Mel Brooks wearing a tan zippered windbreaker circa 1975) rises in the back row and blurts out, with a sweeping hand motion, "His brother? Worse!"

Get the old joke? No? Well, sorry; explaining it will just deepen my comedic hole. Ask a friend.

No matter. It's a favorite of mine; classic Borscht Belt stand-up.

Besides, it's punchline underscores the first serious point of this post. Which is ...


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Are traditional Christian and Jewish beliefs responsible for Brexit and survival of ISIS?

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Are traditional Christian and Jewish beliefs responsible for Brexit and survival of ISIS?

Here are two examples -- one Christian, the other Jewish -- of religion's staying power and influence over the entirety of Western culture. They're presented as reminders of why journalists need a working knowledge of religious history to fully connect the dots in today's bleeding world.

I came across the first example not long after the game-changing 9/11 Al Qaeda terrorist attacks. The second's an essay I read just recently.

Let's begin with journalist and author Robert D. Kaplan's "Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos." I consider Kaplan one of the more interesting journalistic minds working today.

His book struck me as fascinating, prescient (in hindsight) and disturbing.

My fascination stemmed from its emphasis on the enormous influence that bedrock religious concepts still exert today over critical societal actions. They're there, taken for granted but subliminally directing us. This is so even if we fail to consider, as individuals or even -- tsk, tsk -- as journalists, the importance of these civilizational building blocks.

It was prescient because of what it said that relates to the quagmire we face as a nation today in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It was disturbing because it challenged my liberal American impulses about the limits of ethical warfare.

Oh. And, yes, I agree. "Ethical warfare" may just be the ultimate oxymoron.

Kaplan concluded that to defeat non-state terror organizations that play only by their own brutal rules required a radical change in the military tactics of Western nations, by which he meant those historically and culturally Christian.


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Is ISIS a reliable source on its treatment of Christians? Sure, because terrorists don't lie

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Is ISIS a reliable source on its treatment of Christians? Sure, because terrorists don't lie

Nod your head affirmatively if you agree that journalists are only as good as their sources, no matter what the story. Seeing nothing but affirmative head bobbing in GetReligion land, I'll now ask my follow up question:

Who or what constitutes an authoritative and trustworthy source?

Does the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) qualify as a trustworthy source in stories about how the terrorist group treats Christians in its self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq?

No way, you say? An absurd proposition? An even worse idea than taking as unquestionable truth the preposterous pandering of a certain presidential candidate (feel free to name your favorite political villain)?

Agreed.

But wait. It seems some international news outlets, western politicians and UN diplomats may not be as careful about this as we're trying to be. That, according to a recent essay in The Spectator, the nearly 200-year-old British news and culture weekly that leans right.

Here's the top of the Spectator piece, penned by Luke de Pulford, a member of the British Conservative Party's human rights commission.


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The two Denmarks and how coverage of Muslim immigration both divides and links them

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The two Denmarks and how coverage of Muslim immigration both divides and links them

Two recent stories out of Denmark published in The Guardian and The New York Times are good examples of the bedeviling complexities connected to the issue of Muslim immigration in the small Scandinavian nation, and how it's covered by international news media.

But the complexities can only be fully appreciated if you read between the lines of both news pieces -- which is what all serious news consumers should do anyway. Remember, your average news story nearly always fails to include all relevant contributing factors. So provide them yourself to the degree you can.

In short, take nothing you read or hear in the news at face value. Think critically. There's always more to the story.

Here's what I mean, starting with The Guardian story, the first of the two pieces to be published. It's about the Miriam Mosque, the first Muslim house of worship in Denmark to feature a female imam, or prayer leader.

Actually, it has two female imams. Here's a chunk of the story:

The Mariam mosque opened informally in February, and it took six months of further preparation before the first Friday prayers could be held. “We’re still in a process of learning. We’re on a journey and we’ve only taken the first step,” said [Imam Sherin]  Khankan.
Even so, the past few months have seen five weddings at the mosque, and three more are in the pipeline -- including some inter-religious marriages, frowned upon by traditional mosques. There have also been a couple of divorces, one of which was conducted after prayers on Friday.


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New York Times explains Saudi Wahhabism in depth (What's Uber got to do with it?)

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New York Times explains Saudi Wahhabism in depth (What's Uber got to do with it?)

The New York Times has published another in its "Secrets of the Kingdom" series on Saudi Arabia, this time delving into the Saudi monarchy's complicated political/religious pact with Wahhabi Islam.

The ultra-conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam has had quite a widespread impact on global Islam, and by extension, the non-Muslim world -- as I've noted here before.

This installment of the intermittent series -- which I've touted previously -- offers up no real secrets to those who pay serious attention to the Middle East. Still, the piece and the series in general -- a package of in-depth backgrounders picking apart different aspects of Saudi domestic policy and external influences -- strikes me as akin to a public service.

It's a highly readable primer for the uninitiated, and a detailed reminder for those of us who think we know something about the Saudi leadership's duplicitous ways. While not written by religion journalists, the series provides material every religion journalist should know.

Just how pervasive has the Saudi influence been? Here's a block from the new Times piece addressing this:

Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian terrorism expert who has advised the United States government, said the most important effect of Saudi proselytizing might have been to slow the evolution of Islam, blocking its natural accommodation to a diverse and globalized world. “If there was going to be an Islamic reformation in the 20th century, the Saudis probably prevented it by pumping out literalism,” he said.
The reach of the Saudis has been stunning, touching nearly every country with a Muslim population, from the Gothenburg Mosque in Sweden to the King Faisal Mosque in Chad, from the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles to the Seoul Central Mosque in South Korea. Support has come from the Saudi government; the royal family; Saudi charities; and Saudi-sponsored organizations including the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization, providing the hardware of impressive edifices and the software of preaching and teaching.


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Burkinis, Ghazala Khan and the overlooked issue of female religious free choice

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Burkinis, Ghazala Khan and the overlooked issue of female religious free choice

You should by now be familiar with the burkini brouhaha, and French officials' (all of them male, as far as I can tell) unconvincing claims that they're acting in the public good by trying to help liberate Muslim women from Muslim male-imposed dictates about allowable female beachwear.

Frankly, I think its a ridiculous overreaction to the very real problem of Islamist terrorism that has France on edge and desperate to find a successful strategy to assimilate (or at least pacify) it's growing Muslim population.

It has made for some strange bedfellows, though. Many journalists who are normally harshly critical -- and rightly so -- of the horrible treatment of women in some Muslim-majority nations have opposed the burkini bans put in place by several French beach towns, and backed by Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Journalistically, this issue underscores the complexity of balancing respect for religious tradition -- or religious freedom -- in an age of Western secularism. Put another way, as the French seem to be doing, it's about preserving local social norms (scanty female beach wear) in an age of globalized (Muslim) population movements.

These overlapping complexities can be downright confusing for journalists unschooled in the importance of religious traditions to individual and group identity. At the same time they're what, for me, make the religion beat so intellectually compelling.


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Israel, Saudi Arabia and claim that once land is Muslim, that land is always Muslim

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Israel, Saudi Arabia and claim that once land is Muslim, that land is always Muslim

The Jewish state of Israel and the Sunni Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia have a complicated relationship. Official diplomatic relations between the two are non-existent. Yet unofficial contacts not only exist but appear to be thriving

Why? Because for all the bad blood between them, both consider Shiite Iran the greater threat. It's one of those enemy-of-my-enemy hookups.

Israel would love the relationship to play out officially and in public as a grand sign to the world of its desired acceptance as a sovereign Jewish nation in the heart of the Muslim Middle East.

The Saudi monarchy has a more complex agenda, however.

Whatever it's political goals, the Saudi royals also must mollify their nation's ultra-traditional religious establishment, the staunch support of which has allowed the descendants of King Abdulaziz Al Saud to rule over the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula since the nation's founding in 1932.

Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam, containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad. Because of the kingdom's centrality to Islam, religious backing is critical to the ruling family's continued reign.

Problem is, those religious leaders show little willingness to compromise their rigid Wahhabi Muslim theology for the sake of earthly political considerations.

Here's an example of how the game is played.


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Following up on World Vision's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week in Gaza

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Following up on World Vision's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week in Gaza

In 2014, World Vision (WV) noted with pride on its website that Mohammed Khalil El Halabi had been named a United Nations humanitarian hero for his work leading the international evangelical Christian mega-charity in Gaza, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

A year later, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), a right-leaning Israeli think tank, produced a lengthy white paper on WV's work in Gaza. It asserted that WV promoted "an anti-Israel narrative in order to obscure the role of Hamas in creating a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. By serving as a conduit of misinformation about the Arab-Israel conflict, World Vision increases its income as it assists Hamas in its propaganda war against the Jewish state."

Neither the WV web post or the JPPA report received meaningful news media attention. That's as you might expect. In-house employee praise or white papers by groups with an obvious dog in the fight -- particularly those right-of-center on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- tend to gain little traction with mainstream journalistic professionals.

Here's what does receive attention: Last week, Halabi was charged by Israel with being a Hamas agent who diverted significant WV funds to the Sunni Islamist Palestinian group that the United States and other nations have labeled a terrorist group.

Click here to read how the New York Times handled the story. Click here to see how The Guardian played it.

WV is based in the Seattle area, so let's also see what the hometown newspaper did. Lacking its own international resources, the Seattle Times fell back on the time-honored journalistic slight-of-hand of having a staffer add a local veneer to a rewrite of wire reports. Been there, done that.

There are several journalistic points to be made here. But first a bit more on WV's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week (thanks, Disney.)


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