Covering Islam in America

Here's a pretty great interview from ReligionWriter.com, an impressive blog run by Andrea Useem, a religion writer and American convert to Islam. The interview subject is my pal Terry Mattingly. Andrea and Terry talk about the difficulties of reporters writing about Islam in America. Excerpt:

RW: But to go back to the idea of religion “ghosts” being important in all stories, doesn’t that pose a problem? If an editor in Omaha says, “Yes, 9/11 is a story about religion,” and then dispatches a reporter to a local mosque to write a story on Islam and terrorism, then the reporter walks in with a template, looking for a way to connect a local Muslim community with international terrorism.

Mattingly: Of course a lot of Muslims feel attacked; they feel like reporters are constantly asking, “Explain to us why they did this.” At the same time, they feel just as attacked when you ask a factual question, like why were there some Muslims celebrating on 9/11? That’s a “When did you stop beating your wife?” question. But it’s a question that has to be asked.

There is a crisis in American journalism of being able to quote Muslims of different levels of Muslim belief who will critique each other: Reporters just don’t feel they can do it. What’s the journalistic solution? “Let’s call some Muslim experts.” So now a faculty member at Georgetown is explaining what is or isn’t Islam, which to me is almost like a form of cultural imperialism–

RW: But what choice does the journalist have? If a journalist goes into a mosque, and an American Muslim says, “Anybody who commits an act of terrorism is not a Muslim,” the journalist can’t just report that, right? Because the truth is, that American Muslim has no right to “fire” someone from being Muslim, at least no more right than al-Qaeda has to say that American Muslim isn’t Muslim. So the journalists themselves have to make sense of the Muslim world, and the Muslims they are interviewing often can’t do it for them.

Mattingly: You have to report that there is radical disagreement, and there is no central authority. The thing is, Osama believes there is a central authority.

RW: You mean he sees himself as the central authority?

Mattingly: Himself, and a certain body of teaching. If you want to watch the heads of reporters spin, try explaining the differences between Osama and the Saudis. You look at it on the page, and it looks like they are cut from one piece of Wahhabi cloth.

RW: And yet they are bitter enemies, trying to kill each other.

Mattingly: Exactly. So you ask, “Is this Arab tribalism here?” At some point journalists are just going to check out. They want to say, “Someone tell us who the good guys and bad guys are, and let us get on with our jobs.” But there are some religious issues where you simply can’t do that.

This is where I’m frustrated by what shows up in polls of Muslims: the 9/11 conspiracy thing, “we’re not willing to condemn all acts of violence, because some are justified,” and then you ask: “Which ones?” We’re covering an argument in which the participants themselves are almost afraid to take part. Journalists are great at covering arguments, but how do you cover one that is, A. so complex, B. we don’t understand it, and C., the very people taking part in the debate itself as scared to talk?

The American religious market, including me — especially me — is struggling to get up to speed on the factual material of Islam. For us, these are new stories.

Read the whole thing. Really smart questions, really smart answers. The US media want this to be an easy story to cover, to fit its simplistic template. But it's not.