Islam

On Thursday, the al Qaeda spinoff group the Islamic State seized numerous towns in northern Iraq that are home to much of the country’s minority Christian population, sending tens of thousands of them fleeing further into the Kurdish-dominated region to avoid the unforgiving and deadly extremist group. When it came to the major broadcast networks covering this story on their Thursday morning…

On MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry program on Saturday, Dean Obeidallah injected race into the debate inside the U.S. over the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict: "You saw a poll last week, young people 18 to 29: only 25 percent think it's justified what Israel is doing; 50 percent said, no. People of color, same numbers...It's really the Obama coalition versus white conservatives. That's the only…

In a surprising segment, CNN’s New Day discussed the role of the media in the Israel-Hamas conflict and whether they are providing proper context regarding the two sides. In an interview with co-host Kate Bolduan, guest Lee Habeeb, columnist for National Review, slammed the media for its biased coverage of the issue. In fact, in a recent piece for NRO, Habeeb went so far as to claim that the…

On Friday, both ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today ignored the news that Meriam Ibrahaim, a Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death in Sudan for converting from Islam to Christianity and marrying a Christian man, fled Sudan with an Italian diplomat on an Italian jet to Rome Thursday and received a blessing from Pope Francis in a private meeting at the Vatican. Meanwhile, CBS This…

ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover the dire situation of Christians in Iraq, particularly after ISIS's takeover of the key city of Mosul. The Islamic extremist group drove most of the Christians out of the city, and issued an ultimatum to those who remained: covert to Islam, pay a hefty tax, or face death. Refreshingly, the New York Times spotlighted the crisis…

New York Times international reporter Katrin Bennhold followed up her previous whitewashed story on Islamic extremism in schools in England with an update headlined "Report Cites ‘Aggressive’ Islamic Push in British City's Schools," which thankfully lacked the tone of mockery that marred her first report. In June, Bennhold tried to make the UK government investigation sound ludicrous and…

Dear Guardian, thanks for making this easy! Rarely are a media outlet’s prejudices and blinkered sense of moral equivalence more in evidence than in two stories on the left-wing British newspaper’s site. Exhibit A: A 461-word July 19 story picked up from the AP. Boko Haram killed more than 100 people when the Islamist group entered a town in North Eastern Nigeria on July 20. They “attacked…

CBS put on an anti-religion jeremiad early Thursday morning on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: a feminist musician who likes “wearing and making something Satanic since music is so not right now.” Piano-banging rock singer Kristeen Young made her late-night TV debut, accompanied by Foo Fighters stars Dave Grohl and Pat Smear. She sang the song “Pearl of a Girl” that criticizes Islam,…

As many as 90,000 of France’s 350,000 Jews – more than one fourth – were murdered in the Holocaust, within living memory. So when Jewish synagogues and businesses are attacked in Paris by mobs chanting “Death to the Jews,” (on Bastille Day, no less) it ought to be news. Not to the U.S. broadcast networks – at least not when the mob is Muslim. In Paris on Sunday, three Jews were hospitalized…

If you’re choosing one person who best represents America’s journalistic establishment, it’d be hard to top Steve Coll, a former Washington Post reporter and managing editor who’s now dean of Columbia University’s journalism school; a member of the Pulitzer Prize board; and a staff writer for the New Yorker. On Wednesday, Coll posted a piece on the New Yorker’s website in which he argued that…

The scene: a network newsroom in Manhattan, editorial meeting for the June 24 evening broadcast. “Hey, what about this story of Meriam Ibrahim? Looks like Sudan released her and then rearrested her.” “Meh, another African Christian condemned by Muslim fanatics to death for her faith, yada, yada, yada. We need something really important, that cuts right to the fundamental conflicts and…

Who was Anwar Al Awlaki and why did the U.S. government kill him in a 2011 drone strike, despite his U.S. citizenship? The latter question has been answered with the court-ordered release of a Justice Department memo justifying the action. Awlaki, held “operational and leadership roles” in Al Qaeda in Yemen and “continue[d] to plot attacks intended to kill Americans.” The first question –…

The "Memo from Birmingham" in Monday's New York Times, "Reading, Writing and Allegations," by reporter Katrin Bennhold, partially whitewashed the problem of Islamic separatism and possible tolerance for extremism at a high school in Birmingham, England. Bennhold, playing lightly over allegations against Park View School, strove to make a recent UK government investigation sound ludicrous and…

An American teenager, along with two Israeli teens, has been kidnapped in Israel. “[T]wo jihadist groups had posted claims of responsibility for kidnapping the teens,” according to The Washington Post. Israel is in an uproar as the government tries to find them. But in America, the broadcast networks are breathlessly covering the new movie “22 Jump Street.” In fact, ABC, CBS and NBC have…