No Oscar for Hirsi Ali?

The murder of filmmaker Michael Moore left Hollywood shaken and outraged.

A fundamentalist Baptist cut the liberal icon's throat in broad daylight on a New York City street after the release of "Submission," his movie with actress Susan Sarandon that attacked the Religious Right for oppressing women. As a final symbolic act the killer used his knife to pin an anti-abortion tract to Moore's chest, with an explicit warning that Sarandon was next.

All of that is fiction, of course.

Still, it's interesting to contemplate how the media would respond if a crime like this did occur. Would reporters rush to cover an address by Sarandon if she ventured into public to berate the fundamentalists? Would Hollywood find a way to honor her during the Academy Awards for her stand against religious tyranny and for artistic freedom?

Moore and Sarandon are alive and well. However, the Dutch feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali remains in hiding after the 2004 murder of her artistic partner, the brash and profane filmmaker Theo van Gogh. The duo's "Submission" linked verses in the Koran with violence against women and then showed the holy words written on the skin of semi-naked actresses.

A Dutch-born Islamist decided to retaliate. Before killing van Gogh on a street in Amsterdam, Muhammad Bouyeri was known for translating a 14th century tract entitled ?The Obligation to Kill Anyone who Insults the Prophet.? He shot van Gogh 15 times and slashed his throat before impaling on the body a five-page letter threatening Hirsi Ali, who had been elected to the Dutch parliament a year earlier.

Hirsi Ali has continued her writing and political work as best she can. She also risked a recent public appearance in Berlin to rage against Muslims who have marched and rioted to protest those 12 Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammad.

"I am here to defend the right to offend," said Hirsi Ali, a native of Somalia who fled to the Netherlands as a refugee. "Shame on those papers and TV channels who lacked the courage to show their readers the caricatures in the cartoon affair. These intellectuals live off free speech but they accept censorship. They hide their mediocrity of mind behind noble-sounding terms such as 'responsibility' and 'sensitivity.'

"Shame on those politicians who stated that publishing and re-publishing the drawings was 'unnecessary,' 'insensitive,' 'disrespectful' and 'wrong.' ... Shame on those European companies in the Middle East that advertised 'we are not Danish' or 'we don't sell Danish products." This is cowardice. Nestle chocolates will never taste the same after this, will they?"

For her Muslim critics, the Berlin speech merely confirmed that Hirsi Ali is a "loyal slave" of her new European masters," according to Al-Jazeera commentator Ali Al-Hail, a media professor at the University of Qatar. As an apostate Muslim, she has been telling lies about Islam in exchange for a "fistful of Euros" so she can fill "a gap in her starving abdomen," he said.

Nevertheless, it's important to note that few Western liberals have rushed to defend or praise Hirsi Ali, he said, via email. Her press coverage has been thin.

"The American left has been so silent since the assassination of Theo Van Gogh," said Al-Hail, who recently taught as a Fulbright scholar at Simpson College in Iowa. "I have also observed this silence. As to why? Probably, probably, the American left is sympathetic to Muslims over the current crises."

Hirsi Ali is convinced that her usual allies are afraid. This crisis, she said, has underlined the "widespread fear among authors, filmmakers, cartoonists and journalists who wish to describe, analyze or criticize intolerant aspects of Islam. ... It has also revealed the presence of a considerable minority in Europe who do not understand or will not accept the workings of liberal democracy."

While it is wrong to stereotype Muslims, Hirsi Ali stressed that she believes the prophet Mohammad made mistakes – especially on women's issues, gay rights, free speech and the separation of mosque and state.

Thus, she said, "I think it is right to make critical drawings and films of Muhammad. ... I do not seek to offend religious sentiment, but I will not submit to tyranny. Demanding that people who do not accept Muhammad's teachings should refrain from drawing him is not a request for respect but a demand for submission."

Moral climate change in Britain

One of the demonstrators was a small child with a placard that said, "Whoever insults the prophet kill him." Another marcher wore a suicide bomber costume.

Other signs in London said: "Behead those who insult Islam," "Europeans take a lesson from 9/11" and "Prepare for the REAL Holocaust." The organizer of the Feb. 3 event told the BBC that he looked forward to the day when "the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street."

But what stunned British writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft was something else he saw while blitzing through news reports about the waves of fury inspired by those 12 Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammad.

"Not only did the police make no arrests" during the London demonstration, even though it "openly incited murder; they actually sheltered the fanatics," he noted, in a Slate.com essay. "Two men who tried to stage a peaceable counterdemonstration were hustled away for questioning. A working-class Londoner ... was told in violent language by a cop to get back in his van and go away."

This raises a disturbing question: Have British citizens lost the ability to exercise their free speech rights in public defiance of demands by many Muslim clerics and politicians for limitations on the freedom of the press in the West?

It's hard to answer this kind of question right now because a "moral climate change" has destroyed England's certainty that some things are right and some things are wrong, said Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, in a speech last week in the House of Lords. Thus, civic leaders cannot agree on the meaning of words such as "freedom" and "tolerance" and religious faith is seen as a threat instead of a virtue.

"The 1960s and 1970s swept away the old moral certainties, and anyone who tries to reassert them risks being mocked as an ignoramus or scorned as a hypocrite. But since then we've learned that you can't run the world as a hippy commune," said Wright, a former Oxford don who also has served as Westminster Abbey's canon theologian.

"Getting rid of the old moralities hasn't made us happier or safer. ... This uncertainty, my Lords, has produced our current nightmare, the invention of new quasi-moralities out of bits and pieces of moral rhetoric, the increasingly shrill and polymorphous language of 'rights', the glorification of victimhood which enables anyone with hurt feelings to claim moral high ground and the invention of various 'identities' which demand not only protection but immunity from critique."

Instead of focusing on the cartoon crisis, Wright described other signs of legal and moral confusion in British life. Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example, sent painfully mixed signals after last summer's suicide bombings. His government leaned one way when it tried to ban efforts to "glorify" terrorism. Then it leaned the other way with legislation that would ban the promotion of "religious hatred."

Wright stressed that it will be dangerous to pass laws that attempt to replace, amend or edit religious doctrines that have shaped the lives of believers for centuries. But politicians seem determined to try.

Thus, Birmingham University forced the Evangelical Christian Union off campus and seized the group's funds because it refused to amend its bylaws to allow non-Christians or atheists to become voting members.

Thus, Wright noted that police have shut down protests in Parliament Square against British policies in Iraq. Comedians – facing vague laws against hate speech – are suddenly afraid to joke about religion. And was there any justification for government investigations of the Anglican bishop of Chester and the chairman of the Muslim Council of Great Britain because they made statements critical of homosexuality?

Public officials, said the bishop, are trying to control the beliefs that are in people's hearts and the thoughts that are in their heads. The tolerance police are becoming intolerant, which is a strange way to promote tolerance.

"People in my diocese have told me that they are now afraid to speak their minds in the pub on some major contemporary issues for fear of being reported, investigated, and perhaps charged," said Wright. "I did not think I would see such a thing in this country in my lifetime. ... The word for such a state of affairs is 'tyranny' – sudden moral climate change, enforced by thought police."

Bono sings an old song, again

It was a room full of religious believers – Republicans and Democrats – who were used to praying together and even hearing guest speakers quote the scriptures.

Bono looked around, studying the faces through his blue rock-star sunglasses. Reaching out to the sick and the suffering in Third World nations is not a matter of charity, he said. It is a matter of justice.

U2's charismatic lead singer kept returning to this theme. Forgiving Third World debt is a matter of justice, not charity. Leaping legal hurdles to provide drugs to parents and children with AIDS is a matter of justice, not charity. The issue is whether people of faith will do what God wants them to do.

"I am a believer," said Bono. "Forget about the judgment of history. For those of you who are religious people, you have to think about the judgment of God."

The man that many call "St. Bono" – some with a smile and some with a sneer – was not speaking into a microphone during this gathering back in 2001 and there were no television cameras present. In fact, the doors were closed and this conference room in the U.S. Capitol contained a small circle of staff members from key offices in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

For years, the rock star has talked about his faith in media interviews. Then, a few years ago, his work with DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa) pulled him into small prayer meetings in Washington, D.C., on college campuses and in other settings across America. When asked what he was up to, Bono gave a simple answer: The path into the heart of America runs through religious sanctuaries.

Eventually, this path led to the 54th National Prayer Breakfast, where the big rock star with the equally big messianic complex talked openly about his faith and what he believes is his divine calling to use his celebrity clout to help the poor. But this high-profile Feb. 2 sermon merely represented a change in venue for Bono, not a change in his message.

Bono has been singing this song for more than a decade and there is no sign that he will quit any time soon.

Speaking at the same breakfast, President George W. Bush said the key is that the singer has been willing to move beyond inspiring words into practical actions.

This reminded the president of an old story about a Texas preacher whose sermons kept inspiring a man in the pews to leap up and shout "Use me, Lord, use me." Finally, the preacher confronted him and said, "If you're serious, I'd like for you to paint the pews." The next Sunday, the man leaped up during the sermon. But this time, said the president, he shouted, "Use me, Lord, use me, but only in an advisory capacity."

What is different about Bono, said Bush, is that "he's a doer. The thing about this good citizen of the world is he's used his position to get things done."

On this day, the singer's message ranged from the book of Leviticus, with its year of Jubilee in which the debts of the poor are forgiven, to the Gospel of Luke and the moment when Jesus begins his ministry with the cry, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor."

The bottom line, said Bono, is that humanity can pass its own laws, but these laws can clash with the higher, eternal laws of God. When government budgets and medical patents clash with the life-and-death needs of the poor, believers have to ask themselves what their faith requires of them.

"While the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject," said Bono, with the president seated a few feet away. "That?s why I say there is the law of the land and then there?s a higher standard. And we can hire experts to write them so they benefit us – these laws. ... But God will not accept that. Mine won?t. Will yours? ...

"Let?s get involved in what God is doing. God, as I said, is always with the poor. That?s what God?s doing. That?s what he?s calling us to do."

So a reporter walks into a church (rimshot)

It's a law. Whenever the Vatican issues a papal encyclical, journalists have to figure out what the pope was trying to say.

To do this, we contact scholars, politicos and clergy for background information and edgy quotes. Thus, a reporter recently called Father Richard John Neuhaus of the journal First Things to discuss Pope Benedict XVI's "Deus Caritas Est (God is Love)."

During this interview, Neuhaus referred to the pope as the "bishop of Rome." The reporter then said, "That raises an interesting point. Is it unusual that this pope is also the bishop of Rome?"

(Cue sound: One comedy-club rimshot.)

Writing in his online journal, Neuhaus noted that the journalist later said, with "manifest sincerity, 'My job is not only to get the story right but to explain what it means.' Ah yes, he is just the fellow to explain what this pontificate and the encyclical really mean. It is poignant."

Wait, there's more. Another time, an "eager young thing" from the same national newspaper called to discuss a political scandal. Sadly, Neuhaus said, corruption has "been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden.?

There was a long pause and she asked: "What garden was that?"

Neuhaus isn't alone in noticing that reporters often veer into a mental ditch when covering religion. In a scathing Books & Culture essay entitled "Religiously Ignorant Journalists," sociologist Christian Smith of the University of North Carolina said he is tired of calls from journalists who don't know that Episcopalians are not "Episcopals" or who confuse evangelicals with "evangelists" or even, God forbid, "evangelicalists."

Why, he asked, do newsroom managers allow this?

"I find it hard to believe that political journalists call Washington think tanks and ask to talk with experts on background about the political strategies of the 'Democrizer' or 'Republication' parties, or about the most recent "Supremicist Court" ruling," said Smith. "So why do so few journalists covering religion know religion?"

Anyone who talks to people in pulpits and pews knows that many – especially in conservative sanctuaries – believe they know the answer. They believe that most journalists are biased against religious people.

Neuhaus, however, is convinced that the problem is even more basic than that. Journalists work hard, he said, but they are "not always the sharpest knives in the drawer." Most are the products of journalism schools that, according to Neuhaus, are intellectually second rate or worse.

While he knows of "notable exceptions" of bias and malicious intent, the priest said he has "been led to embrace something like an Occam's razor with respect to journalistic distortions: Do not multiply explanations when ignorance will suffice."

These are fighting words for journalists. As a professor, I must confess that many if not most of my student journalists in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities have come from the honor rolls. I have also had the pleasure of knowing more than my share of brilliant women and men who are professional religion reporters.

Yes, if would help if more editors hired trained, experienced professionals to cover the religion beat. And it would help if Neuhaus and other clergy who belittle the craft of journalism urged their own colleges to emphasize journalism education, thus adding to the intellectual diversity in newsrooms. Religious leaders could praise and support postgraduate seminars such as those offered by the Pew Forum and the Poynter Institute that help journalists learn more about religion and improve their reporting skills.

But mistakes will be made.

Just this week, Newsweek served up an instant classic in the journalistic genre of "laugh to keep from crying" miscues about religion.

The story concerned the success of the debate team at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. At the moment, the team is ranked No. 1 in the nation (Harvard University is No. 14) and Falwell tried to explain that the debaters were, in their own way, involved in a kind of ministry to the culture.

Alas, the reporter mangled a crucial metaphor.

Thus, the story now ends with this correction: "In the original version of this report, NEWSWEEK misquoted Falwell as referring to 'assault ministry.' In fact, Falwell was referring to 'a salt ministry' – a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says, 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' We regret the error."