Pay Attention When Cultural Beliefs Are Part of Crimes and Courtroom Dramas

Cultural belief systems can provide a motive for committing a crime, shape the rituals for mourning a victim, or explain what's behind a legal conflict. Recognizing how culture and religion can play a part in such events will make you a better reporter.

Here are three examples of what I mean.

In 2000, an Oakland, Calif., man was kidnapped in the Philippines by Muslim rebels. Jeffrey Schilling was a 20-something American who converted to Islam and then moved to the Philippines, where he married a Filipino woman before the Abu Sayyaf rebels abducted him. This was a big national story in the United States, one most reporters covered in a standard way. But my story quoting Schilling after his release in 2001 was headlined, "Man blames religious ideas about marriage for kidnapping.''

As I was standing around at one of many mosque events appealing for Schilling's safe return, I overheard some of his Muslim friends talking. "Oh, these Western reporters will never understand," one said. That piqued my interest. I pestered the friends, asking, "What do you mean?" Finally, after a series of questions, they explained that Schilling had converted to the Shi'a branch of Islam, and the rebels followed a different branch. (At the time, the friends didn't tell me that it was Wahhabi sect of the Sunni branch. The world wasn't focused on Wahhabism at the time - this all happened before Sept. 11, 2001, when the Wahhabist al-Qaida took international stage.)

Still, I knew enough about Shi'a Islam from religion classes in high school and college to understand that it is the religion's minority branch. I called a few scholars of the Middle East and Islam to ask why a Shi'a would be captured by Wahhabi rebels. From what those sources and Schilling told me, there was a religious reason why the Abu Sayyaf rebels kidnapped him: He had married their cousin and impregnated her. As Wahhabis, they didn't consider him - a Shi'a - to be a legitimate Muslim. His marriage to their cousin violated their beliefs, and made him an infidel. The Abu Sayyaf rebels are also affiliated with Al Qaeda.

No one else had this angle the day Schilling arrived home. The reporting lessons to be learned from this example: Listen carefully and be aware of tensions within a culture.

Here's a different crime-related example. The October 2006 murder and funeral of an Afghan mother in Fremont, Calif., ("Hundreds mourn for slain Afghan mother") could have been a standard story about the burial of an Afghan mother of six slain in a horrific daytime shooting in a relatively quiet suburb.

It was a sensational story being covered by plenty of media, including reporters at a well-attended funeral in a park. A white hearse drove up with her body. Police had to herd the crowd to another spot in the park so the hearse could make a U-turn and face the other direction. The seemingly odd inconvenience of making hundreds of people move delayed the funeral for at least 15 minutes. Some non-Muslims were muttering under their breath about the inconvenience.

After the funeral, I approached a group of Muslims and asked why the hearse was moved. They told me that in death, bodies must face toward Mecca, and that the hearse was first parked in the wrong direction. Aaaaaah, I thought. My lede began: "Inside the gray casket in Fremont's Central Park, Alia Ansari's body lay on its right side, facing East toward Mecca, Islam's holiest site." This may not have been a scoop, but it did make for a more interesting beginning than most other accounts of the funeral, and it educated outsiders on Muslim rituals. You also begin to earn the respect and trust of sources for writing about their culture in a sophisticated way.

The funeral yielded another front-page feature, "Afghan elders say family should mourn in private". Bickering had broken out because some Afghan elders in the community thought the public memorial for Ansari was too "showy." They had wanted a more private funeral and resented the fact that outsiders were trying to help and, as they saw it, intervene with their own. For example, the elders resented that a Christian pastor offered his church for a separate public memorial service, and that an American neighborhood activist and Hindu city councilwoman sponsored a "Wear a Hijab Day'' for the community to show solidarity with the slain woman, who wore the traditional Muslim head covering on the day she was killed. Younger Afghans, however, who had lived in Silicon Valley for a while did not agree with the elders' point of view, revealing an intergenerational clash within the same culture.

Culturally sophisticated reporters pay attention to details and ask follow-up questions. Be aware of any intergenerational or intracultural gaps within a community.

My final example comes from a standard press release about blind people suing cab companies in Oakland for not picking them up. Local media were on the story, getting tales from the blind plaintiffs about standing on corners for hours waiting for a ride, and getting pat responses from the companies. I sensed something was missing from the reporting and kept digging. The result was a story headlined, "Cab firm accused of snubbing blind.''

Most cab drivers in the city are from foreign countries, and many are Muslims. From doing research and talking to sources, I learned there is an Islamic mandate against coming into contact with a dog's saliva because it is believed to make a Muslim impure -- the Arabic word is haram. Many blind people have guide dogs, so some Muslims did not want to pick them up. But I didn't think Muslim cab drivers were flatly callous to the blind. It turned out cabbies could adhere to their religious rules -- and transport the blind -- by putting a partition in their cabs. Because there was so much misunderstanding between the cultures, blind people were simply assuming "foreigners" were insensitive to their needs, making the plaintiffs' complaints come across as xenophobic. It made for a good story about culture clash and religious loopholes.

The lesson to learn from this final example -- and with all stories, whatever they might be about: Keep asking why. Does the premise make sense? If it doesn't, keep digging to find out whether culture or religion is shaping what's going on.

Lisa Fernandez is a reporter at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News. She covers everything from crime to community, and believes that a person’s cultural background is often a key motivating factor, but is sadly overlooked by the mainstream media. She has a degree in anthropology from McGill University in Montreal and a master's degree from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. Please submit ideas or stories for Lisa to review.