Issue

Religion

Religious faith is central to the lives of billions, a driving force in everything from family structure to relationships within and among the world’s nation states. It is also the venue, and often the source, of conflict.

Religion presents Pulitzer Center reporting on these themes from throughout the world—from the explosive growth of megachurches in Africa and Latin America to intra-Islam schisms of the Middle East, to the self-immolation of Tibetan Buddhist monks and Buddhist soldiers running roughshod over the rights of Burmese Muslims, to the struggles of faith groups everywhere to come to terms with human sexuality.

In some parts of the world, notably China, governments that long suppressed religious expression are now invoking those traditions as part of the solution to environmental and other challenges. Elsewhere, from majority-Catholic Philippines to Muslim Indonesia, religious doctrine on issues like reproductive rights is in uneasy dialogue with the forces of modernization and globalization.

In Religion, we aim for reporting that tackles these tough, core issues—but without the easy stereotypes and caricature that too often make journalism a tool for demagogy. In the Pulitzer Center reporting presented here we seek instead to be a force for understanding.

The Pulitzer Center’s reporting on religion and public policy issues is made possible through the support of the Henry Luce Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, and other Pulitzer Center donors.

 

Religion

August 05, 2008 | Pulitzer Center

All the rooms are full

All the rooms are full at the Bourj Babel Hotel outside of Basra. Every guest is there to visit a family member inside of the US detention facility at Bucca.

At 3:30 AM minivans take them out into the the desert where they wait at the first gate until it opens at 7 AM.

There is no electricity and the town is dark. Oil flares light the sky. Bucca burns on the desert floor like an alien city.

Our driver to Basra was playing this song on the trip.

August 03, 2008 | The Washington Times

Militia Routed, But Fear Remains in Iraq

As the sun came up on a recent morning in the district of Sadr City, Iraqi army troops searched as many as a thousand houses, arresting a dozen suspects and collecting nearly 50 unregistered weapons.

Four months ago, these streets, some too narrow for Humvees, were controlled by the Jaish al-Mahdi, a Shi'ite militia whose name in Arabic means the Mahdi Army, which in 2006 poured out of Sadr City and took over large parts of Baghdad.

August 01, 2008 | Pulitzer Center

The Hospitality of Thieves

Today, the newspapers plant their flags on a mountain of corpses and a city of walls.

She empties her lungs.Capillaries blossom red. Color leaks back into lips.They move, but our ears are still ringing.Brace against the door frame for a secondary blastand pray that it never comes.

For five years, we let the asphalt burn our feet,breathed in the smell of sewage and blood,and waited for     a spring full of tulips,     a black shirt stained with salt,     a red kaffeiya and coal black eyes. . .

In the lobby, he smiles while his hands fidget with the room keys'When I saw him bleeding from his chest,I swear I forgot how to speak - in Arabic and in English. . .my only son. . . I am an old man now. . . he was all I had.'

'They own the land, and now we are their guests on it.'

...

Today, on the edge of Amara.Flies swarm around the desk.He buckles his belt.Prison tattoos curl around his wrist and a shadow clouds his forehead.

Yesterday, on the edge of Falluja.The same room with the same old men.Nicotine teeth, gold watches and pearl handled revolvers.

It is, at least, a safe place to sleep.

After five years, we have lost even this - even the clarity of death.Nothing left but the hospitality of thieves.