Mollie Hemingway

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Shaving Nidal Hasan's irreligious religious beard

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I hope you’re having a day that enables some thoughtful reflection on this anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. It’s a day that changed many of our lives and is the main reason why I became interested in religion writing. Eleven years ago, I knew very little about Islam. The more I study it and read about it, the more I realize how little I know and how much I have left to learn. And the battle against Islamic terrorism continues, as this story about the trial of Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan shows.


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Pod people: Civil (religion) wars

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On this week’s Crossroads podcast, host Todd Wilken and I discuss coverage of some of the religion battles at or near the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. We also talked, briefly, about coverage of the Pakistani Christian girl who was charged with blasphemy and the imam who was charged with setting her up.


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Cardinal Dolan's benediction makes news

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I could not have had more fun watching the conventions. Before they began, if someone had asked me which convention would have the more dramatic religious stories, I would have picked the Republican one in a heartbeat. What with Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and his evangelical base and all that. But it turned out that all the interesting religion news action was over in Charlotte, where the Democrats gathered.


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Is God absent from the Democrats' platform?

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So I watched all of the Democratic National Convention’s first night last night and it included quite a bit of God talk. In fact, the speakers were far more likely to discuss God than at the Republican Convention — one even mentioned making the sign of the cross — even if they were also discussing abortion, which was the theme of the first part of the evening.


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Surprising twist in Pakistani Christian child's blasphemy case

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A few weeks ago, we looked at coverage of the arrest of an 11-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan on blasphemy charges. She’d been accused of burning pages of the Quran. We had discussed the slight American coverage of the story, compared to interest in English-language press elsewhere. We also noted that there was a failure to talk to people who supported the blasphemy charge against the child.


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Sometimes a Romney religion joke is just a joke

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The last night at the Republican convention was one that included a ton of religion. While some of the networks didn’t cover all of the speeches, there were multiple testimonies from people who talked about Mitt Romney’s life as a Mormon. They gave truly interesting testimonies about how Romney had interacted with them in their lives. One liberal Mormon I follow on Twitter joked, saying, “Y’all just went to Mormon church.”


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