Racism against Muslims

"A rant!? Surely you jest!" I hear you say. Well you smarmy git I have been extremely busy over the past few months failing my University exams so screw you. To everyone else, hello I hope you're having a nice day as I know I have and will over the next few days.

Down to business then and this is a problem that I only realised the extent of very recently. Some of you may have heard about the "Draw Muhammed Day" (apologies if that isn't the correct spelling) which I believe started out on Facebook and then extended itself to Youtube via a few users such as Thunderf00t and TheAmazingAtheist. The purpose of this day, which has now passed, was to make a stand against the attitudes of the Middle-East regarding the depiction of their prophet Muhammed in an episode of South Park and others. They weren't too happy with this and the networks were too scared of extremist retaliation to actually put the depiction on the air. This was seen by many as a breech of freedom of expression and now racists are seeing this as further "evidence" of the apparently ever-growing middle-eastern influences on the West. Many people participated in "Draw Muhammed Day" and as a result of this event, the Pakistani government has blocked Facebook for the remainder of May. It was particularly encouraged by popular youtube user Thunderf00t, who now has gained a reputation as being racist against muslims, to take part in this controversial event.

My personal reaction to the censorship of the cartoon prophet Muhammed and Draw Muhammed day is conflicted. I realise of course that we have to be respectful of other cultures, however, shows such as South Park and Family Guy, for example, have made fun of everyone regardless of condition, race, or faith. Family Guy for example has made fun of all the following: handicaps, Jews, Christians, black people, asians, the British, Americans, mentally challenged people, fat people, transvestites, homosexuals, celebrities and more. South Park's list is very similar. Given that all of these people have been made fun of, why should we make special arrangements for muslims? You can't argue that it is because they have a different culture because we have a different culture to Japan and China and both have featured on both of the aforementioned shows. You can't argue that it is because the prophet Muhammed is a holy figure in the muslim faith because Jesus and God have been depicted in, again, both of the aforementioned shows. You also can't argue that extremists would retaliate against it because let's face it, if they want to bomb us, they will bomb us. They do not need such a petty excuse, though they will no doubt use it, to make an attack on the West.

So I have mentioned muslims and extremists seperately throughout this rant and there is a very important distinction between the two. One, is a sort of everyman, someone who goes to work, gets food on the way home to his/her family and has a nice relaxing dinner. The other is in the minority and plans ways to cause chaos and death among his own people in their hypocritical beliefs. I say hypocritical because, though my knowledge of the Quran is extremely limited, the book of Islam preaches peace and that life is sacred. Extremists are the ones who perform heinous acts across the world and it is the muslims who are suffering racism as a result. As youtube user MannixThePirate has pointed out, the human brain likes to categorise things for information retrieval and once everyone saw the pictures of Osama Bin Laden and found out he was muslim, the less intelligent people put terrorist and muslim in the same category. Of course the more intelligent of us have learned not to judge a group of people based on the acts of a small minority who claim to be a part of that group.

I am ashamed to admit that there are those in Britain who would and have harmed muslims because of their faith and because of their apparent association with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. This small-mindedness is something I thought was only in the very small minority until the recent general election in the UK. The British National Party (BNP), whose leaders have had discussions with former KKK leaders and other racist organisations, obtained 563,743 votes (approx 1.9% of the votes counted) (source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/default.stm). This number may seem small in comparison to other parties (Conservatives obtained over ten million votes and "won") but when you actually think of the number itself relating to the number of votes for racism, it is understandable to get a little worried.

To sum up: depicting the prophet Muhammed in a cartoon shouldn't be censored because of fear of extremist retaliation, because they will bomb us regardless of what we do at this point; there is a massive difference between extremist and Muslim; and there are far too many racists in Britain, 563,743 to be exact.