Woo Hoo!
As expected, not only is the so-called "controversial" Simpson episode far from offensive to Muslims, it has actually earned praise from CAIR.
"The Simpsons and Islam," by Ericka Andersen for Nosh, January 12:
Are the Simpsons being anti-Muslim or are they fighting back against Islamaphobia? According to a Yahoo! news story, "In a forthcoming episode of the long-running show, dad Homer Simpson convinces friends that a Middle Eastern family is plotting to blow up a shopping mall."A spokesperson for The Islamic Cultural Centre & The London Central Mosque said he hoped Muslims take "no notice of the show." That’s a more tame response than I expected, given the backlash from Islamic leaders on things like the Danish cartoons and any kind of negative attention toward the religion. But is the show really "anti-Muslim"? The Simpsons have been making fun of every kind of stereotype there is since their beginning. Christianity has often been the brunt of a joke.
In fact, the show is being viewed in a positive light according to CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations). An IBT article reports:
The letter [from CAIR] said Sunday’s episode "brought to light how Americans can work toward mutual respect and inclusion by getting to know their neighbors." It went on to state: "The episode also builds on the values that have made America the great nation it is - a nation in which citizenship is about finding common ground and building a better society. American Muslims have been doing just that by making daily contributions to our society that often go unrecognized."
I always hoped an episode like this would involve Comic Book Guy ("Worst sura ever!") converting for the 4 wives, and being unable to find one (this would necessarily involve Bumblebee Man dressing up in a burqa). And maybe Dr. Nick as an imam.
Did CAIR see the ending of this episode where Homer offers pork chops (ummm...pork chops) to his new friend and neighbor to seal the deal on marrying off Lisa to him?
I got bored of the Simpsons years ago, but this is truly sad. The Simpsons have really "jumped the shark". Matt Groening must be in his final "fat Elvis" years to have produced something as pathetic and embarrassing enough to earn a CAIR endorsement. What a sellout. Way worse than getting an endorsement from, say, Pat Robertson, which no doubt Groening would abhor. Groening's ignorance of Islam spreads like a bacillus through his propaganda cartoons.
The Simpsons have really "jumped the shark". Matt Groening must be in his final "fat Elvis" years to have produced something as pathetic and embarrassing enough to earn a CAIR endorsement. What a sellout. Way worse than getting an endorsement from, say, Pat Robertson, which no doubt Groening would abhor. Groening's ignorance of Islam spreads like a bacillus through his propaganda cartoons.
Simpson is lucky:
1) He has peaceful Muslims for neighbours.
2) He's a toon. He cannot be killed.
Oh God; Homer, just go away.
Before, you were a boob; when the U.S.A., rich and secure, and sure of itself, could afford boobs(and self-righteous tofu munching Marxist daughters).
But no more.
Go away, please; for the sake of a free world, just go way.
Just another reason to not watch a television show I don't watch.
"American Muslims have been doing just that by making daily contributions to our society that often go unrecognized."
---
Those violent "demonstrations" all over the nation have surely been noticed.
Just another reason to not watch a television show I don't watch.
Posted by: tanstaaf
I don't watch television at all...I saw this Simpson episode on the net, when I was bored and looking movies when I came across it...
It would be a highlight of my life if CAIR gave me an award...Where do you get an application?
2) He's a toon. He cannot be killed.
Posted by: Henrik
LOL, Henrik!
The real point about the Simpsons, and it is not one that anyone involved in its making can deny, is that the convenience-store owner, the Indian, is clearly a Hindu, even though nothing is said, and he could not possibly be a Muslim, for his character, were it to be a Muslim, would be unverisimilar in his easygoing humor, and furthermore, would have enraged Muslim viewers who would, of course, made all kinds of threats.
All those involved in The Simpsons surely know this. They aren't fools. If indeed they have chosen to engage in this kind of feelgood nonsense, in which Homer's idiocy is used to promote the idea that fears of Muslims are groundless and only a fool such as Homer would think othrewise --- then they should be ashamed of themselves. Jihad is a duty, a central duty. Of course one need not participate direclty, and of course one need not participate through terrorism. But there is so much evidence -- including opinion polls taken, for example, in Great Britain -- that a very large number of Muslims in the West do justify terrorist acts right in the Western countries they live in, and we do live at a time of still-tremendous ignorance of Islam, that this Simpson episode is a little like mocking, round about 1939, some American who worries too much about a neighbor, the owner of a German bakery on 86th Street who who admires Fritz Kuhn and thinks all this talk, talk, talk that so unpleasantly criticizes Mr. Hitler for simply "putting Germany back on its feet." Mock that neighbor, go right ahead -- and see if Fritz Kuhn's Bund was really quite so innocuous.
Before airing this episode, why don't those invoved read the Qur'an (or, say, the Calcutta Qur'an Petition), read a few hundred of the best-known Hadith, read the Sira. In other words, why don't they find out what those who call themselves Muslims actually believe, and then ask themselves if they think this country is suffering from an over-abundance of hysteria and quite-unnecessary suspicion, or if, rather, all over the Western world, there is an amazing ignorance of what Islam inculcates, and not nearly enough worry, enough "hysteria" about what is happening, especially in the countries of Western Europe. And why don't they read a little at, say, www.faithfreedom.org, to find out what those who were born into Islam, but have managed to leave it, reveal about both the doctrine, and the practice, of Islam.
'Tain't funny, McGee.
2) He's a toon. He cannot be killed.
Posted by: Henrik
Hah! Tell that to Maude Flanders.
'Tain't funny, McGee.
I believe I haven't heard that expression since my father passed away; thank you Hugh. Really.
Homer Simpson convinces friends that a Middle Eastern family is plotting to blow up a shopping mall
............................
How could anyone except a crude boob like Homer Simpson have such an idea--that Muslims could possibly be responsible for violence at a *shopping mall*?
Well, off the top of my head, there was the Palestinian who blew himself up on the busy street outside the Hasharon mall in Netanya in 2005, killing five. It might have been much worse--the suicide bomber was heading for the mall proper when security guards noticed his suspicious behavior and detained him, calling police over. The bomber detonating himself, killing the security guards and police. The mall had been targeted at least twice before.
In 2007, Bosnian Muslim Sulejman Talovic shot six people at a mall in Salt Lake City before he was taken down. He was screaming "Allah Akbar!" during the attack.
Or last year, when, if it hadn't been for the brave and quick-thinking actions of a highway patrol officer, a Jihadist would have shot up a Burger King restaurant at a mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was assembling his gun and loudly calling for Allah's help in the attack when the officer tackled him.
In October of last year a British convert tried to blow up the Giraffe family restaurant in a mall in Exeter, England. While assembling the bomb in the restaurant's bathroom, it prematurely detonated, injuring the bomber only. The would-be bomber said his actions were to protest Britain's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan--oh, and to decry English louts and their bad habit of drunkenly urinating in doorways.
Just two weeks ago, two Muslims in a mall in Denmark shot two young Israelis who were running a stand selling Dead Sea cosmetics.
I'm sure there are more examples. Maybe not so far-fetched, after all.
The terrible truth is that if we really understood the danger of the Third Jihad, shows like The Simpsons would be the perfect vehicle through which to teach people the sort of basic lessons about the nature of the enemy (combined with plenty of ruthless morale-building satire and ridicule of said enemy), and 'what to look out for', that the cartoons did during World War II.
Homer's original fears are - as Gravenimage's posting above makes clear - NOT unrealistic.
A properly educational and patriotic episode would have a very different sort of storyline - in which, perhaps, that easygoing background character, the Hindu shopkeeper, gets rounded out, as he experiences flashbacks of dark family memories, dating from Partition, of what Muslims do to Infidels (or perhaps he is a refugee from Muslim Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh). It could be he, the Hindu, who first suspects what turns out to be a REAL plot, and tries to warn people. One could, perhaps, have Homer being the first to believe him; and then they BOTH get laughed at by the PC-brainwashed townspeople, and the story proceeds from there.
One could have a highly amusing slapstick sequence in which the skinny Indian shopkeeper and the fat American couch potato go a-spying together; perhaps, with the help of their respective wives, even donning improvised burkas for some undercover surveillance.... Of course, their combined efforts would wake up the town and foil the jihadists, all in - as my mother in law likes to say - the k-nicker of time.
Now THAT would be an episode that would be funny, and instructive, and painlessly and swiftly teach some vital history and information (what it is like to be a non-Muslim in a Muslim country), besides hinting at a US-India citizen-to-citizen alliance against the Jihad.
Of course, the Muslims would howl blue murder.