He later confronts her and shouts: "Hey, whatever your name is, what are you hiding under your turban?"
She replies that the garment is called a hijab and that it is part of her religion "like the cross you wear".
The girl is then shown standing up for another boy, who is being bullied, and her behaviour is contrasted with that of the boy wearing the cross.
The cartoon story, entitled Standing Up For What You Believe In, appears in the latest issue of Klic!, a quarterly magazine aimed at children in care aged from eight to 12.
Published by the Who Cares? Trust, a charity set up in 1992, it is described on the cover as "the best ever mag for kids in care" and is widely distributed by town halls.
The charity received £100,000 from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, in both 2007 and 2008, and £80,000 this year.
Although the cartoon does not specifically refer to the boy's religion, it has angered Christian groups and MPs who fear it sends out the wrong message.
Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, said: "What about Christian children in care who receive this magazine? How will they feel to see themselves mocked as narrow-minded Islamaphobes.
"It is a clumsy caricature, symptomatic of a culture which says it is OK to bully Christians in the name of diversity."
Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering, said: "I think it is very unfortunate that the lad who is pointing the finger is wearing the cross. You can hardly imagine anyone producing a magazine in which the roles were reversed and it was the Muslim girl who was behaving badly."
But Who Cares? Trust chief executive Natasha Finlayson described the cross as "bling" rather than a religious symbol. She said the charity had received one complaint.
"I am a Christian myself, so when a woman called us to complain, I went back and looked at the comic strip from her point of view," she said. "I am sorry she is upset but I don't share her view."
25 comments:
Have to respectfully disagree, here. I can't get worked up over this nor see why we should. For several reasons:
1) If we're going to get worked up over cartoons we have no right hammering the Muslims for being critical of the Mohammedan cartoons. How some of them expressed it is a different matter.
2) Bling -- I can accept that especially the way the boy wearing it is dressed and wearing it. How many rappers, hip hop artists, celebrities, athletes wear the big ass Crosses not as a symbol of their Christianity but because it's big and shiny and looks cool. When's the last time they were in a church. And these are the folks our kids idolize. How many kids have you seen wearing the big cheap crosses, hat on backwards, pants down around their knees?
3) Has anyone seen the rest of the cartoon? "The girl is then shown standing up for another boy, who is being bullied, and her behaviour is contrasted with that of the boy wearing the cross." So, what is the boy she is defending/ Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, black, Asian? Seeing the whole cartoon could make a big difference in how it is interpretted.
4) "You can hardly imagine anyone producing a magazine in which the roles were reversed and it was the Muslim girl who was behaving badly." Again, the Mohammedan cartoons.
5) It seems to me from the little info we actually have the magazine is trying to teach kids tolerance of each other, instead of belligerance toward one another. Both ways regardless of religious and idealogical difference. As long as that does not translate into tolerance of violence against someone who can really have a problem with that? Do you WANT to teach your kids to grow up and Hate someone just becasue they look or dress differently?
6) Go ahead and sterilize the cartoon. Make it politically correct. See if it still delivers the same message. Just remember, political correctness has destroyed America.
I have children. I teach them to respect Mulim's religion. I also teach them the truth about the thing's many Muslims do.
However, I make it clear that not all people who are Muslim are bad.
You have to be clear about this. Because it is not right to raise and child and send them out into the world with blind hatred.
The Bible says, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God."
I can get with that.
Exactly what I am saying and what I think the article is saying.
Sorry to go soft on you, Shiva. But, this is what I believe, and clearly, MR believes it too.
In fact, I think it is on such principles that the USA was founded.
I have no problem with this cartoon either and agree with both MR and Pasto in their interpretation of the message.
Here is a question to think about, though: If the woman was fully-clad in a head-to-toe burqa instead of a hijab, would the message seem more difficult to accept?
Total,
Totally.
Burqas are, as I have often said, the chains of modern slavery.
Hijabs are just ugly-assed scarves.
Agreed. The burqa removs any vestige of humanity, both for the woman wearing it and the person looking at it. You now see a thing, not a person.
The message would be the same but harder to accept coming from a face and form-less image.
When I was in Paris two weeks ago, I saw some women trying to alter the traditionally unfashionable hijab with a Louis Vuitton-inspired design. Still ugly, but much better. I must say that I admired their efforts. As for the burqa question, I wholeheartedly agree. It would be very difficult for me to percieve a woman in a burqa as simply another citizen trying to advance themselves in life. It's impossible to advance as an individual when you are in physical or metaphorical chains.
Well put, Total.
Sorry,
The Danish cartoons where depicting a truth.
These cartoons are giving a false image.
It is also promotes a big lie, about the hijab being part of her religion.Or are you forgetting it is only recently that it is being enforced.
If this cartoon is to address bullying as the publishers claim, why didn't depict a child with red hair, or freckles, or a child that is fat, or even a coloured child.
It could have depicted 20 Pakistanis with hammers beating the shit out of some white lad.
I am surprised that you have not been keeping up to date with what is happening in the schools in England. It is getting dangerous for non moslem kids, they risk coming home with fractured skulls.
And then that print this multi-culti moslem appeasing bullshit
Now what would happen if the cartoons showed a Muslim child wearing a crescent pendant abusing a Christian girl.
Gotcha.
You make sense to me, Shiva.
Shiva,
When you put it in that context, the message of the cartoon is entirely warped. I honestly had no idea that the attacks on kuffar students in Britain were so prevalant. I have obviously heard of the high-profile cases (i.e. Kriss Donald), but was unaware of such a large-scale problem.
The kid wearing the cross is standing up for his beliefs, but of course that doesn't count. And no, it's not just "bling". It is transparently deliberate caricaturing of a Christian kid as a bigot. And it apparently never occurs to dhimmi fuckwits like this to wonder what a girl that age is doing wrapped up in a burka in the first place. They could be performing FGM on the kid in the middle of the street and that boy would still be "politically incorrect" for objecting. And, as Shiva points out, her brothers could be beating those two boys over the head with hammers and that would be just peachy.
Enablers of Islamization don't need "benefit of the doubt" or "understanding". It has gone way past that point. They need verbally bitch-slapping whenever they open their yaps to chatter about the wonderfulness of Islam. Go check out the cartoons and photos Pam has posted right now on Atlas. I don't see people like the editors of that magazine getting their knickers in a twist over that.
I think I've just been called a dhimmi fuckwit. Ain't that nice. Who knew?
Not you, MR!! I mean the ones who are behind the PC whitewashing of Islam. Teaching kids not to hate people because they "look different" is fine. But the authors of this cartoon and book are evading the whole issue of jihadist Islam by implying that it is an issue of whether a Muslim kid is "nice" or not. Recast it with, say, a Hindu girl in traditional dress. The kid calling her a terrorist now legitimately becomes a racist idiot. There is no rational precedent for associating a sari with terrorism. There is with hijab. These authors use the "innocence" of children to imply that there is no sinister association with an adult woman in hijab. There may or may not be -- depends on how "devout" she is, does it not?
Hollobone is right. No one would dare produce a magazine with a Muslim boy pointing at a little Jewish girl and stating that she should be killed. (Yet that is almost exactly what happened to the daughter of the man who posts the "Breath of the Beast" blog.)
Unfortunately, this would be an innocent lesson in tolerance for children if it weren't for the fact that many of the adults in the religion to be "tolerated" are teaching their kids to hate and seek to submit all the infidels. The kids should not have to suffer because of this. But these authors can't even produce a book that says, ok, adults in this religion are doing bad things but that is not the kids' fault and children shouldn't bully one another because of it. That's why I call them dhimmis. They are too cowed to teach a lesson that adheres to the truth, they have to evade and sugarcoat it.
Meanwhile, what is this kid supposed to think if in a few years he encounters those 20 Pakistanis with hammers? "This is all my fault for not being tolerant?" Sorry, I have to grade this a D.
oh. damn. always a dummy, never a dhimmi. maybe it means I'm more Fatwa worthy, though. I do so want to merit a Fatwa. . .
Having read through the comments, especially yours & Shiva's Revere, I do see your point. And I don't disagree. Especially when you turn it around and make it a Muslim boy and Jewish Girl.
I didn't know that about Breath of the Beast and that's a blog I read regularly.
midnight rider said..
oh. damn. always a dummy, never a dhimmi. maybe it means I'm more Fatwa worthy, though. I do so want to merit a Fatwa
I know that a few years back that Ibloga was deemed fatwa worthy along with my old blog and afew of the other big blogs such as JW and Atlas.
So wear your fatwa with pride
Shiva -- read the rest of my last post. I agree. No argument.
I didn't know we'd been Fatwad. Damn glad to hear it. And I thought they weren't paying attention :)
FUCK THEIR FUCKING FATWAS!
Yup. :)
MR, partway down the left column on the BotB blog is "The Post that Started the Blog" where he relates that incident with his daughter and her friend. It's really chilling.
Thanks for the heads up, Revere. I just read it. And you're right about it.
MR sorry about rubbing the salt in a few comments up.
Shiva -- don't even give it a second thought, buddy. I didn't take it that way. Just wasn't sure if you had seen my whole comment or not.
No offense taken at all.
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