Archives: Religion

Fact No I: Journalists, by virtue of their job, are a powerful lot. They can give any twist to any story. Fact No II: The issue of Muslims/Islam is so dynamic that you can either project Muslims as a bloodthirsty breed or portray them as hapless victims of an Islamophobic dispensation. Take the two facts together, and you will know what I am driving at. There have been a number of studies about Islamophobia and the media that have found their way into the public domain. Some are accurate, others not. Many are not not based on any data, and are mere opinions of the authors. The...

It’s now the turn of an Indian journalist to be a victim of America’s Islamophobia. Zia Haq, an assistant editor with Hindustan Times, was part of a seven-journalist delegation invited to participate in a week-long technology and farm show that began on August 28 at Iowa in the United States. The US embassy here suspended the processing of his visa on unexplained grounds, and Haq had to drop out of the tour at the last minute. The HT journalist says on his blog that he has been singled out, “All other journalists in the delegation were promptly granted visas…What...

Two months after his right palm was chopped off by Muslim fanatics for allegedly insulting Islam's prophet in a question paper, a lecturer in Kerala has now been sacked by the diocese which runs the college. That's a classic case of what you would call adding insult to injury. Old proverbs wreaked anew. Fr Thomas Malekudy, manager of Newman College, Thodupzuah, where TJ Joseph had been a selection grade senior lecturer at the Department of Malayalam, on Saturday announced the decision to remove him from service after an in-house inquiry. The management felt that he had hurt the...