Built To Last
A BuzzFeed News investigation based on thousands of satellite images reveals a vast, growing infrastructure for long-term detention and incarceration of Muslim minorities.
Religion serves as the social bedrock of many communities around the globe, while also acting as a source of division and conflict. Pulitzer Center stories tagged with “Religion” feature reporting on faith, its effects on people’s lives, and the role it plays in civil society. Use the Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder to find and create lesson plans on religion.
A BuzzFeed News investigation based on thousands of satellite images reveals a vast, growing infrastructure for long-term detention and incarceration of Muslim minorities.
Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and Kazakhs in China’s far west have been detained in a sprawling system of internment camps. Ex-prisoners detail their experiences inside these camps.
"Skillful means come from the lama, and knowledge comes from the amchi [doctors]. When the two work together as one, we will live a longer life." — Tsering Thinley
"They treated us like an animal," a member of the Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat tells Pulitzer Center Justice Fellow Apoorva Mittal. Indian Muslims have faced a new wave of discrimination amidst the pandemic.
Columbia Journalism School Reporting Fellow Brett Forrest looks at how New York City's Catholic churches have struggled with declining donations during the COVID-19 shutdown.
There are now nearly one million Indian troops stationed in Kashmir—more than at the height of the insurgency in the Nineties. The Muslim-majority region and its residents face a rising tide of Hindu nationalism.
Since Malaysia imposed a Movement Control Order amid the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration raids following strict lockdown orders have affected refugees, asylum seekers, and migrant workers.
A Sikh woman seeks justice after surviving the 1984 violence.
A month into the pandemic that has transformed American life, Callahan, the 130-year-old church’s first female pastor, is navigating how the crisis is transforming the worship experience for her membership.
Ahmadis are constitutionally prohibited from “posing as Muslims,” which leaves the community vulnerable to state-sanctioned and societal persecution in Pakistan.
Historically associated with counterculture movements such as feminism and environmentalism, neopaganism is becoming much more common.
On pilgrimage with Albania's Bektashi, a storied Sufi order that has had to invent or re-invent its traditions after its 20th-century repression in the world's first atheist state.
Returning home after buying two milch cows, dairy farmer Rakbar Khan was lynched by a mob of “cow vigilantes”. His wife seeks meaning in mourning his death, while his perpetrators deny it.
Monika Bulaj is producing a visual atlas of threatened minorities and shared holy places.
Church parishes throughout Ukraine are voting to no longer recognize Moscow's authority as Russia blames the U.S. for meddling in Orthodox affairs, raising tensions ahead of elections.
The Catholic Church is an outspoken opponent of a deadly war on drugs in the Philippines. But in a face-off with President Duterte, the Church is losing ground, forcing its clergy to a crossroads.
On the Tibetan plateau, an unlikely group of nomads, Buddhist monks, and yak-wool artisans have seen their lives change—through basketball. Can they also help change Tibet?
Can a multi-ethnic vigilante group provide much needed trust and security to the conflict-ridden Plateau State of Central Nigeria?
Rio de Janeiro's drug gangs are converting to evangelical Christianity. And in the favelas where they act as governments, their faith is becoming a kind of state religion.
It has been eight years since the end of Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, and Tamil-speaking war widows in the country's north are still seeking justice for wartime violations.
For simply practicing their faith, Ahmadi Muslims are persecuted in Pakistan, but they find strength in numbers in Rabwah, a remote Ahmadi-majority village where victims often relocate.
In The Ballymurphy Precedent, Collum Macrae probes the killings of 10 unarmed Catholics, including a priest and a mother of eight, in the West Belfast housing estate of Ballymurphy in August, 1971.
Krithika Varagur reports on foreign religious and political investment in the Balkans, focusing on Bosnia and Kosovo, which have been affected by both rising extremism and populism.
In 2017, Myanmar’s military targeted Rohingya Muslims in a pogrom of mass murder and rape. We investigate the deadliest massacre of a state-orchestrated genocide, years in the making.
Journalist Ana P. Santos reports from Qatar on how zina laws that criminalize unmarried sex target low-skilled migrant women and send them to prison—along with their babies.
A little-known story of survival during the Holocaust.
Kira Zalan traveled to Sudan to report on radicalization, a problem for many communities in different regions of the African continent.
Journalist Geneive Abdo reports from Egypt, where despite an insignificant Shi'a presence, there is growing alarm among Sunni religious figures about the Shi’a threat.
Europe's extremist Muslim fringe dominates headlines, but progressive artists and activists on the "other Muslim fringe" are at the forefront of efforts to shape the future of Islam in Europe.
More than a billion gallons of raw sewage and industrial effluent pour into the Ganges every day. Can Prime Minister Narendra Modi clean up India's sacred river when everyone else has failed?
Grantee Christopher de Bellaigue investigates the impact of deradicalization programs in the French prison system.
Ross Velton describes how Sri Lanka has become a world leader in the supply of corneas. But what's driving this surprising new export?
Pope Francis encounters the limits of his moral authority in Latin America, where his encyclical on climate change and environmental protection is met with scorn from those who need to be influenced.
A new generation of leaders is in power in Saudi Arabia. Journalist Elizabeth Dickinson travels to Riyadh to find out what the shift means for the Kingdom—and in the broader Middle East.
One hundred years after the Armenian genocide in Turkey, Alia Malek examines how sectarian allegiances are erasing history as she explores the fate of those living in Turkey, Syria, and Armenia.
Kwame Dawes explores what church and faith communities are doing in regards to HIV/AIDS in Jamaica.
How is religion used to foster peace and healing in active conflict societies?
Ellison's multimedia graphic novel, showcasing accused child 'witches' in Nigeria, was nominated for this year's online Drum awards.
The panel explored the fundamental question: "what do we do now about climate change?" and how the religious and moral dimensions of the issue might play a positive role.
Experience aerial photography of our rapidly changing planet and a discussion on religion and climate change.
Inspired by The New York Times Magazine's "Fractured Lands" project, a high school class in Philadelphia, PA presented a multimedia event to educate their community about the Arab Spring.
Callum Macrae's new film The Ballymurphy Precedent probes the killings of 10 unarmed Catholics in the West Belfast housing estate of Ballymurphy in August, 1971.
Anita Hofschneider and Cory Lum and their podcast team were honored for Excellence in Radio or Podcast Religion Reporting at the 2018 RNA Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence, while Krithika Varagur received two honorable mentions.
This week: Nigerian children face abuse at the hands of religious leaders and family members, El Salvadorian gang members find their escape through the church, and what can be seen paddling down a river in Myanmar.
This Week: Nearly one in five children in America suffers from being poor, deportations are straining relations between Australia and New Zealand, and ISIS has undermined faith in Iraq.
Pulitzer Center grantee Kristen Gelineau won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award for Excellence in Reporting on Women's Issues for coverage of Rohingya women and girls raped by members of Myanmar's armed forces.
This week: Scientists investigate the long term effects of chemical warfare on Iranian soldiers, a look into how artistic integrity is maintained inside the Chinese Communist system, and more than 100 people are suing Guam's Catholic Church over accusations of sexual abuse by priests.
American University professor travels to Peru to explore the intersection of religion and climate change.
The following serves as a resource for DC public school teachers working with the District's tenth grade history standards, providing teachers with a list of Pulitzer Center projects in line with...
Students will critically examine the legal, professional and moral obligations of journalists as witnesses to all kinds of human rights violations.
In this lesson, students investigate educational resources using diverse media in order to understand how poetry can be used as a means of communication.
This Masters-level lesson introduces journalism as an important tool for public health students and researchers to communicate complex public health issues in an accessible way for the general...
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 Guernica with current day issues presented by the Pulitzer Center.
This Masters level lesson introduces journalism as an important tool for public health students and researchers to communicate complex public health issues in an accessible way for the general...
This lesson plan and attached classroom resources use international reporting to investigate how Muslim communities in Sweden are preventing radicalization of Muslim youth in their communities.
This lesson plan outlines a project that allows students the opportunity to connect with a contemporary crisis somewhere in the world.
Objective: to allow students to explore the interplay between China’s politics, environmentalism and Tibetan Buddhism. Lesson length: 50 minutes.
Students will explore the potential impact of Pope Francis's call for ecological preservation and contrast trends in China that are prompting Buddhists there to be better environmental stewards.
Students will make connections between history 600 years ago and present problems confronting South American Countries such as Brazil and Peru.
Students will analyze both sides of the mistrust between Iran and the US and will create their own informed opinions of the nuclear negotiations.