Moderate Islam

In covering President Obama’s refusal to refer to terrorism as Islamic extremism, CBS and NBC devoted portions of their reports on Thursday night to comments Rudy Giuliani made the day before with NBC reserving a majority of their airtime to attacking the former New York City Mayor for having “set off a war of words” and taking presidential criticism “to another level.” Andrea Mitchell declared…

In their Wednesday night coverage of President Obama’s speech on “violent extremism,” CBS and NBC did the best they could to ignore the criticism surrounding the President’s speech in addition to his conscious and repeated inability to refer to the beliefs of terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda as Islamic extremism.

NBC News took the step of acknowledging on Friday’s Today show that the man accused of killing three Muslims in North Carolina held atheist beliefs after having ignored that element of this tragic story in both their morning and evening newscasts since the first stories aired on Wednesday night. During the program’s 7:00 a.m. hour, newsreader Natalie Morales referred to Craig Stephens Hicks in a…

After making no mention on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, NBC continued its streak on Thursday's NBC Nightly News of ignoring the militant atheism and liberalism of the North Carolina man accused of killing three Muslim-Americans. While none of the three networks have alluded to Craig Stepehn Hicks’s liberal beliefs, what differed from each of the past two network news cycles was that CBS…

On Friday, CBS This Morning reported on news that Duke University had cancelled plans to have a Muslim call-to-prayer projected from the school’s famous bell tower at the Duke Chapel and, while Duke suggested that there were “several factors” that led to the decision, the segment prominently tied it to Rev. Franklin Graham and subsequent threats against them. CBS News correspondent Julianna…

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin attacked Fox News and others on Monday's @ This Hour on CNN for placing "an unfair burden on Islam," particularly in the wake of Islamist terrorist attacks. Shihab-Eldin asserted that those calling on Muslims to condemn terrorism are "not aware of Google; or not paying attention; or perhaps, watching too much Fox News, where hosts constantly are...driving this point home – this…

On Friday's CNN Tonight, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen contended that moderate Muslims were partially to blame to the ongoing threat of Islamist terrorism. Host Don Lemon spotlighted a Tweet from Rupert Murdoch, where the media magnate wrote, "Maybe most Muslims peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer, they must be held responsible." Cohen replied, "I…

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who advised President Obama to shoot down Israeli planes, now argues for the appeasement of radical Islam. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser criticized some of the satire directed at Islam as "unnecessarily nasty" and "extraordinarily provocative."  He said that it was very important "to avoid becoming the number one…

At around 6 p.m. Wednesday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was still wondering: "Is Islam to Blame for the Shooting at Charlie Hebdo in Paris?" ("Shooting?" Singular?) Maybe he still is. This was many hours after it was known that the perpetrators shouted "We avenged the Prophet Muhammad!" and "Allah Akbar!" after completing the Charlie Hebdo massacre of 12 in Paris, and after ISIS…

Today, the world has learned that terrorists with the Taliban, the group of Islamic fundamentalist jihadists who have rained terror on Afghanistan and Pakistan for nearly two decades, "attacked a school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children." The death toll will almost certainly rise as some of the 114 children the BBC has reported are injured fail to survive. But don't ask…

Score one for Joe Scarborough.  The Morning Joe host today unleashed a tirade against the FBI for treating as a case of "workplace violence" the beheading by a fanatical Muslim convert of a fellow worker in Oklahoma.  Scarborough lashed out at the FBI's political correctness in claiming that there was "no indication" that the suspect, Alton Nolen, was copying the recent ISIS beheadings. Said…

Don Lemon returned to the question of whether Islam is an inherently violent religion on Monday's CNN Tonight, as he interviewed Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison and author Reza Aslan. Lemon turned to his two Muslim guests for their take on a recent Tweet by atheist HBO host Bill Maher: "ISIS, one of thousands of Islamic militant groups beheads another. But by all means let's keep pretending all…

Who was Anwar Al Awlaki and why did the U.S. government kill him in a 2011 drone strike, despite his U.S. citizenship? The latter question has been answered with the court-ordered release of a Justice Department memo justifying the action. Awlaki, held “operational and leadership roles” in Al Qaeda in Yemen and “continue[d] to plot attacks intended to kill Americans.” The first question –…

In the media’s wall-to-wall Egypt coverage, one important facet of the ongoing crisis has gotten short shrift: the deadly plight of that nation’s Christians. The three broadcast networks in particular have buried the anti-Christian violence, devoting just 5 percent of Egypt reporting to it since last week. Six days ago, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and deposed President Mohammed Morsi…