An annoying habit of mainstream journalism is its tendency to finger-wag and hit you in the face with a we-know-better story. The mother of all finger-waggers showed up on the front page of The News & Observer of Raleigh on Oct. 24.

Spread across four columns of the front page, above the fold, with a four-column photo was a story with this all-caps headline: “MUSLIMS SHARE JOY AT END OF LONG FAST.” The subhead was: “Feast draws Islamic community together, showing its growth and diversity.”

The photo showed local Muslims at an area soccer park, prayer rugs laid out before them, hands clasped in peaceful prayer. So, why this gathering on this day? According to the reporter:

“The occasion was Eid al-Fitr, the happiest day of the Muslim year, when worshippers unite to mark the end of Ramadan — the month-long dawn-to-dusk fast that Muslims undertake to commemorate the time when Prophet Muhammad first received his revelations from God.”

“After prostrating in neat, single-file lines, Muslims hugged, kissed and exchanged the traditional “Eid Mubarak,” or “happy feast” greeting.”

These shining happy people show us what Ramadan means to Muslims. Apparently, it’s a reverent and peaceful holiday, so much so that, if you recall, we were lectured by the world’s Muslims a few years ago not to dare bombing Afghanistan during this oh, so holy period.

Recent events have given the lie to that notion. Ramadan has become the time of year when Muslim terrorists step up their indiscriminate killing of other Muslims all over the world. Quite a contrast to the event held at SAS Soccer Park yesterday.

I have read The News & Observer for 20 years, usually quite closely since I edited as competing paper for much of that time, and I can’t remember a pre-9/11 major front-page takeout of this magnitude on Ramadan or Eid Mubarak. So, why now?

What is The N&O trying to tell its readers? There is no mention in this story of the killings, bombings and beheadings being done in the name of Allah, so I guess the editors see no connection between this story and world events. It’s just a story they would have done even if Muslims weren’t committing mayhem all over the world, I suppose.

But we know why the mainstream media does this kind of thing. It’s their way of saying: Sure, Muslims are killing our soldiers, beheading hostages, treating their women with brutality, but you shouldn’t feel anger at all the other Muslims in the world, especially right here in our back yard. I’m sure they feel that this lecturing story is going to head off all of the seething hate crimes gestating in our community.

Most readers of The N&O don’t hate Muslims at all, I would suspect. They know that all Muslims aren’t maniacal killers. But they’re a little miffed that their newspaper and the peaceful, friendly people depicted in this story had not one word to say about those who are.

Jon Ham vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper Carolina Journal.