Category: Media

While the filmmakers behind the anti-Islam film, ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ may not have intended to cause protests and violence across the Muslim World, they did clearly intend to perpetuate Islamophobia. And while their film may not have succeeded in directly doing so, it seems as if the subsequent violent protests may be helping them achieve their aim. So as protests in the Muslim world continue, more Americans may become disillusioned with our involvement in the region. But what does that mean for Muslim Americans, here in the United States? Answering that question is Hussein Rashid, professor of religion at Hofstra…

The audiotape of Malcolm X’s 1961 address in Providence might never have surfaced at all if 22-year-old Brown University student Malcolm Burnley hadn’t stumbled across a reference to it in an old student newspaper. He found the recording of the little-remembered visit gathering dust in the university archives.

Been a long time since I’ve agreed so unconditionally with anyone as I do with Miss Piggy in this clip.

Hollywood Writer Extols Black Woman’s Perspective : NPR. One of the most powerful writers and producers in Hollywood is black, female, middle-aged and Muslim. Mara Brock Akil produces, along with her husband The Game — one of the biggest hit TV shows on cable. Last year, the couple collaborated on the film Jumping the Broom.

Explaining Islam to the public « The Immanent Frame. The expectation that Islamic studies scholars were prepared to “cover” the Islamic tradition and speak to its beliefs and practices on a normative, global basis was stressful for many of us. The idea that we could speak with authority about the practices of 1.4 billion people who speak dozens of languages and have inhabited the planet for the last 1400 years is absurd, of course. Like other academics, Islamic studies scholars are trained in certain fields of knowledge; in the best of programs, they are trained to be exceedingly careful about…

Via the BBC, Hans Rosling examines the correlation between income growth and life expectancy in 200 countries over the last 200 hundred years in an amazing animation. Take a look: [From 200 Years In 4 Minutes]

The Free Speech Blog: Official blog of Index on Censorship » Who was hijacked, the students or the journalists?. For years I have been teaching journalism students two things which often sit together uncomfortably: that journalism is mostly about news — men biting dogs and planes that crash — and that it is about describing the world as it is, about bearing witness to truth. But how true was the march coverage when it concentrated on the activities of the minority?

Guest Voices: Should we fear Islam? – On Faith at washingtonpost.com. At a time when our nation is seeing a rise in intolerant behavior, crossing every cultural line, whether based on race, religion or sexual orientation, we seem simultaneously stuck with a national news media that is preoccupied with conflict and controversy when we desperately need one that weighs facts and reports fairly. A recent national news program reinforced these concerns. Let me explain what I mean.

It’s a good, basic criticism of associational strategies in new stories. I do, however, take exception to the fact that Fox is the only guilty of this. They may be the most inelegant, but they are not alone. Why I Don’t Watch Fox News « Et cetera. I don’t try to assess whether or not news channels and newspaper companies are biased, because there is no question that they are all biased towards one thing or another. It is virtually impossible to be completely objective in any kind of news story. It is not, however, virtually impossible to provide good…