By Alex Thurston

The secession of South Sudan in July 2011 posed an existential question for (North) Sudan: what will be the political and cultural basis of the nation, which is in some ways a new country itself?

In December 2010, shortly before the referendum on Southern secession, President Omar al Bashir gave his answer:

“We’ll change the Constitution,” he said in a televised speech. “Shariah and Islam will be the main source for the Constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language.”

Bashir reiterated this promise in October, adding, “Ninety eight percent of the people are Muslims and the new constitution will reflect this.”

Bashir’s call for a consolidation of the state’s Arab-Islamic identity is calculated to appeal to the base of Islamists who brought him to power in 1989, many of whom continue to support the ruling National Congress Party (NCP). But it sits poorly with a number of groups in the new Sudan, including many Muslims. Efforts to use Islam as the basis of political power have a long history in Sudan, but past attempts to impose Bashir’s brand of political Islam have also hit major resistance. The many forces opposed to his regime have their own ideas about the country’s future.

Numbers never tell the whole story–which is why liberal pleas to rely solely on science and facts carry so little weight.

Internet years are like dog years.  Way back in 2003 when The Revealer was founded as a joint project between NYU’s Journalism Department and The Center for Religion and Media, we placed a more traditional emphasis on educating future journalists about how to report about religion: with links to academic and reporting resources, explicit examples of how journalists get religion right and wrong, and by debunking hypocritical or imbalanced, precious or erroneous reporting.  While our emphasis on that aspect of our mission has varied over the past eight years, we’ve always paid close attention to what tools institutions use to school journalists in religion’s means and ways.

For instance: there’s a cool new online course about Islam, created by Washington State University and Poynter News University.  Designed by Lawrence Pintak (who will be speaking at an event co-sponsored by The Center for Religion and Media on October 5th), the course is meant:

as a tool for journalists who want to be accurate in educating their audience about the religion and culture of Islam, Muslim communities in the U.S., and the distinctions between Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists.

Smart and necessary!  But that’s not what the Culture and Media Institute (CMI, part of Brent “that’s indecent!” Bozell’s family of non-profits) has to say about the project.

In Peter King’s world, the battle has only two sides and only one winning strategy.

by Amy Levin and Abby Ohlheiser 

Lately media outlets have been telling us what Americans believe, from how much we think we should be taxed, to how much we like Muslims. Even how (much) we believe in God. What Pew or Gallup haven’t capitalized on yet is Americans’ obsession with terrorism.  How many of us believe in it—as a great danger to society, for instance—or how do we collectively define it—say, as a feature of particular world regions or cultures? Not unlike past eras when Americans developed their own definitions of Marxist, Communist, fascist, or anarchist (not anything good, mind you), in our current era we confidently call individuals with non-conformist, “subversive” ideologies “terrorist.” Sure, there is a technical definition for the word, but like any of the above descriptions, the more we use terrorist, the more obscure its meanings become. Why are certain political institutions reconstructing the definition of terrorism? Which forms of power succeed in remolding the word’s transformation?  What are the implications of invoking terrorist discourse?

Steering the bandwagon on exposure of terrorist threats, Rep. Peter King (R-NY3) is but one of the the media’s returning bedfellows on the fear-trafficking topic of homeland security.  Like any politician’s platform, there’s more to King’s efforts than meets the eye.  Given the context–-the killings in Oslo by suspect Anders Breivik–of last Wednesday’s third round of hearings on Muslim radicalization it is perhaps not surprising that much of the time was spent discussing things other than the stated topic of the day, the threat of Al Shabaab in the US.

“In short, every place where Osama bin Laden fled had either perpetrated or tolerated world-class violations of religious freedom and other human rights.” — Leonard Leo and Don Argue at The Hill

Howard Fineman gets off on the new military brute, brain and brawn of Democrats:

“By calmly and meticulously overseeing the successful targeting of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama just proved himself — vividly, in almost Biblical terms — to be an effective commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States.”

Far be it from us to support gay-bashing, censorship or breaking the law, ahem, but this little piece from the increasingly paranoid Examiner does a fine job of equating all travelers from Mexico to San Diego as terrorists of one kind or another:

The Los Angeles Times reported on January 27, 2011 that Tunisian-born imam Said Jaziri was arrested earlier this month near San Diego while trying to illegally enter the country.

Jaziri is known for leading protests in Canada against the famous Danish Mohammed cartoons; for proclaiming homosexuality a disease; and for spending time in a French prison for assaulting another Muslim.

News reports do not indicate that Jaziri is a proponent of violent Islamism; but his arrest reminds us that porous borders are dangerous, because not only Mexicans just seeking work are illegal aliens. (See “Hezbollah smuggling people into U.S. through Mexico.”

(h/t Abby Ohlheiser)

NYPD cops-in-training recently were shown an instructive film, the Village Voice reports.  “The film is called The Third Jihad. It is 72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs. All of this is sandwiched between a collection of somber talking heads informing us that, while we were sleeping, the international Islamist Jihad that wrought these horrors has set up shop here and is quietly going about its deadly business.”

Narrated by a Muslim doctor who hopes to salvage his faith from terrorists, produced by Clarion Fund, “an independently-funded non-profit organization that produces and distributes documentaries on the threats of Radical Islam,” and only one of a suite of films aimed at enforcing “National Security Through Education,” The Third Jihad reminds me of the End Times movies we’d watch during Bible Camp when I was a kid, curled up in my seat, too scared to go to bed for fear that I would be snatched away and harmed or left behind, all alone.   You can watch The Third Jihad, check out the Clarion Fund advisory board, and order their upcoming (protested) feature, Iranium, here.

(h/t Jessamy Klapper)

In his review of Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad:  The Rushdie Affair and Its Aftermath, Dan Margolis argues that tolerance for other faiths and cultures — multiculturalism — has prevented liberals from successfully working for or even believing in absolute human rights.  Posted at Guernica:

Of course, most Muslims are not terrorists, so the question arises: Who becomes a terrorist and why? We know that most of these people have been well off, at least middle class, and well educated. According to Malik, the separation foisted by multiculturalism provided fertile ground for identity politics, mixed with a culture of grievance, to grow into jihadist terror. Young people in the “Muslim community,” instead of fighting racism—how could one fight against inequality when the whole idea of a cohesive society was out the window?—found themselves fighting against their parents’ version of Islam; in short, the rebelled by becoming more pious, more “Islamic” than anyone else.

by Joshua M. Z. Stanton

When John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, fear-mongers raised the specter of his dual loyalty. Would he really serve American interests or merely be a pawn for the Vatican? After all, he was a Catholic. Church doctrine, it was whispered, could co-opt the person designated to uphold America’s laws and Constitution.

Letters to Michael Getler, Ombudsman for PBS, after show host Tavis Smiley said that Christians were as responsible for a comparable number of terrorist attacks in the US as Muslims:

“I am ashamed that PBS would sponsor the uninformed or outright lying as was perpetrated by Tavis Smiley on his recent program. In stating that Christians murder more people that fundamentalist Islamists, and that the do so on a daily basis, and attributing post office and Columbine massacres to Christianity is . . . Sinful.” — Mike Ship, San Antonio, TX