Monday, July 30, 2007

Islamic Rage Boy is Hate Speech?



Shakeel Bhat above is now widely referred to as "Islamic rage boy" because of his constant angry demonstrating in favour of various Muslim causes. Given the unrestrained denunciations of Christians, Israel and America that are Mr Bhat's almost-daily output, you might think that the heading on this post refers to Mr Bhat. Sadly, it does not. It refers to a drawing of Mr Bhat that you can see on various conservative websites:

"A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper, is unconvinced. Mr Hooper says: "I find the term Islamic Rage Boy offensive, as would anyone who applied the term to their own faith. It's an Islamophobic product by Muslim-bashers on internet hate sites."

He compares the cartoon to the anti-semitic imagery of 1930s Nazi Germany. "The cartoon is part of an overall growth of anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country. Someone is trying to link Islam with violence and anger and profiting from it."

Source

Mr Hooper must have recently arrived from Mars. The "Someone" who is trying to "link Islam with violence and anger" is any number of Muslim demonstrators and terrorists. And the antisemitic imagery of today comes not from Germany but from Muslim cartoonists. See below for an example:



GM's Corner has more of such cartoons. So, on the one hand we have quite accurate depictions of Mr Bhat and on the other we have grossly distorted depictions of Jews. But it is the accurate depiction that is hate! I wonder when Mr Hooper will denounce his Middle-Eastern co-religionists as Nazis?