Religions 101
[ by Charles Cameron — prone to be wrong himself, for that matter ]
.
The media seems having a hard time of it. Journalists are neither all scholars of religion, nor necessarily religiously inclined, so it’s only too easy for the New York Times to get Easter wrong:
or for AP to manage the same sort of trick with Islam.
**
The New York Times has had time to repent of its sins, and has published a retraction that comes close enough to accuracy for my taste:
An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Christian holiday of Easter. It is the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, not his resurrection into heaven.
The AP needs to make a similar confession. The Hajj is not a pilgrimage directed to Muhammad’s place of birth, but to the Ka’aba — which is indeed in the city where the Prophet was born, but is believed to have been a site of pilgrimage since the time of Abraham, and to have been cleansed of idols by Muhammad and restored to its original purpose as a shrine to the one God.
And BTW, the honorific would be “Hajji” not “Hajii” — FWIW.
**
This is Islam 101, just as the Resurrection is Christianity 101. I’ve forgotten what the numbering system is for remedial classes, but we need them.
Guess I’d best get back to reading Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
June 14th, 2013 at 5:00 pm
Religions 101, continued. From David Brooks’ op-ed Religion and Inequality in the NYT yesterday: