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Emblematic of the general unserious response in the West to the ideological challenge from the jihadists. You'll notice that the problem all comes from the young man being unable to find a job -- in other words, jihadism is all the West's fault, and the West can put an end to it with the proper welfare and jobs programs.
"Germany Battles Terror in the Classrooms," by Yassin Musharbash in SpiegelOnline (thanks to all who sent this in):
The Interior Ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is taking a new tack in the fight against homegrown terrorism. It's using a comic book -- complete with colorful images and "youthful" language -- to battle nasty jihadism.Creativity is often found in the most unlikely places. Take, for example, a couple of German state domestic intelligence offices charged with tasks such as tracking far-right extremism and terrorist cells. In Baden-Württemberg, they recently constructed a mock Pakistani terror camp for a touring exhibition about Islamism. And their colleagues in North Rhine-Westphalia are no slouches either: They've commissioned a comic book, in which kids talk about Islam, the ideology of Islamism and terrorism. Its hero is a young German named Andi.
[...]
Andi has all the accoutrements needed to mark him as your run-o-the-mill hipster kid -- baseball cap, hoodie and messy hair -- and he has a Turkish girlfriend, Ayshe. Her brother -- and Andi's buddy -- Murat, is going through a bit of a crisis because he can't find a position as an apprentice, and he blames his rejection letters on xenophobia. That makes Murat the perfect prey for the strange new kid on the playground, Harun, with his serious demeanor and steadfast belief in what he's been fed from Islamists. Harun, in turn, beats it into Murat's head that he will be discriminated against because of his religion.
My New Homie, the Jihadist
Huran takes Murat under his wing, and it's not long before he makes some progress by convincing him that he shouldn't have any infidel friends because Islam forbids it. Basketball is taboo, too. And he also needs to make sure that his sister doesn't go to the movies with Andi.
After a while, Harun even takes Murat to meet his favorite sheik, whose sermons are filled with hatred. His preaching goes along these lines: "God has ordered the Muslim to neither associate with nor befriend the infidel!" Huran also shows Murat radical Web sites showing videos of attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. "But a lot of Muslims get killed in those attacks, too," Murat ventures to comment. "They are all hypocrites and liars!" comes the response of the Jihadist sheik. And even if a Muslim were among the dead, he would have died a martyr. What more could a man want?
Of course, after 38 pages, there is the inevitable happy ending: Murat transforms himself from a potential public enemy number one back into a cheerful chap. And, joy upon joy, an apprenticeship position appears out of nowhere, just to hammer home the moral of the story.
Realism and Reality
It's hard to say whether school kids are going to laugh themselves silly while reading this stuff or if their slippery attention can be held. There will be 170,000 copies of Andi's first adventure and Hamburg is also planning to use them. The second issue in the Andi series is set to hit schools soon.
One thing is for sure: the officials have given it a good shot. The story is a bit too short and sweet but, at the same time, it's half-way believable because you can see that a lot of the details are a fairly faithful reflection of reality.
That said, the character of the headscarf-wearing Ayshe is a bit exaggerated and too good to believe: She's friendly, smart, versed in the Koran, pious ... and on top of that she's a rock-solid believer in the tenets of liberal democracy....
Ah, yes, of course, the great Unicorn, the Western Muslim we are all commanded to believe exists in large numbers, but whom virtually no one has ever actually seen.
Posted by Robert at October 31, 2007 7:51 AM
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For anyone reading german: the book is online.
http://www.im.nrw.de/imshop/shopdocs/Andi2_comic.pdf
They have strewn in some explanations on islam and get it (deliberately?)all wrong. Once again they emphasize the difference between islam (peaceful creed)and islamism (political doctrine not rooted in islam). To prove it they trot out "there is no compulsion in religion".
Arrgh!
Posted by: buraq_is_dead![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 31, 2007 8:24 AM
Speaking of comics...
this looks like a job for a REAL SuperHero...
PIGMAN!
lol
Posted by: jcom972 at October 31, 2007 8:31 AM
Ooops, dammit!...let's try that again:
PIGMAN!
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/018181.php
http://www.cafepress.com/fawstin
(I'm still waiting for his trusty sidekick, PORKCHOP)
Battling the evil forces of superjihad!
http://fawstin.blogspot.com/2007/08/enemy.html
at October 31, 2007 8:36 AM
Cmon, here is the real moral of the story.
To german racist kids, " Better treat muslim well and give them whatever they want cause if you don't they will go jihad on you and YOU KNOW WHAT THET MEANS, HUH?" Yes, head chopping, suicide bombings, kidnapping for ransom, will be the result if you don't cave in to your muslim friends."
at October 31, 2007 8:40 AM
"...he can't find a position as an apprentice, and he blames his rejection letters on xenophobia."
"Harun, in turn, beats it into Murat's head that he will be discriminated against because of his religion."
"God has ordered the Muslim to neither associate with nor befriend the infidel!"
So who's the xenophobe - the German or Harun?
The German welcomed Marat into his country while Harun exhorts Marat not to associate with the stranger in whose country he resides.
Muhammad - the father of xenophobia
Islam - xenophobia masquerading (Happy Halloween!) as a religion
at October 31, 2007 8:55 AM
But you are forgetting that the comic book is the new book, and after the comic book comes the audiovisual, and after the audiovisual comes.... nothing. The craze for using comic books to tell the story of the French Revolution, then the history of all of France, then the history of the world, began you-know-where, and it's spreading all over the Western world. It is not merely a question of political sense, but reflects the inability to discuss a matter that is, because of the idols of the age, more difficult to grasp than it ought to be, and requires just a little bit of study with a few unfamiliar, and foreign, terms, and cannot easily be reduced to comic book size.
Not just the content, but the form chosen, bespeaks decline in the West, if not yet, or not yet inevitably, fall.
Posted by: Hugh at October 31, 2007 8:56 AM
A german translation of
Mohammed's Believe it or else!
is warranted here . . .STAT!
Farsi, Spanish, Kurdish, Urdu or Dutch version available here
Posted by: heroyalwhyness at October 31, 2007 9:04 AM
Deutschland unter Alles
at October 31, 2007 9:36 AM
I'm sure this will bring about more cartoon riots, no matter how dhimmi the publication.
Posted by: americanmadestrat at October 31, 2007 9:48 AM
americanmadestrat wrote:
>I'm sure this will bring about more cartoon >riots, no matter how dhimmi the publication.
Thanks for the link, *buraq_is_dead*. I am American but will be able to read it in German. I was going to say, I assume there is no cartoon depiction of The Prophet Mo (PBUH)!
--
Connecticut Yankee
at October 31, 2007 11:05 AM
Piltdown PunkPig and Oat Willie are the nemesis in volume 2.
Posted by: TheOmegaMan at October 31, 2007 11:23 AM
"...German state domestic intelligence offices charged with tasks such as tracking far-right extremism and terrorist cells."
Here we go again. No doubt far-right extremism is PROVEN to be as dangerous as (islamic) terrorist cells. I am realy getting sick and tired of those commie-dhimmis.Drat!
Posted by: Excommie at October 31, 2007 11:27 AM
So the Nordrhein-Westfalen government is using the lowest form of Western culture (a comic book - no, a hip-hop/gangsta comic book) to battle the darkest manifestation of Muslim culture. Nice job defending Europe, people.
Posted by: Winnie-the-Poe at October 31, 2007 11:40 AM
Never espected anything effective from Germany as it is limited by its unacknowledged compromised behaviour in its past when it murdered and stole from its victims.
Germany and islam have much in common (like an affinity to enforced external authority and submission and Christian and Jew hatred - maybe for its freedoms).
Posted by: dgene at October 31, 2007 12:59 PM
I hate to be in the position of defending something so lame as this comic, but it could be worse. In the US, Jihad is not being addressed in the schools at all, so far as I can see.
Most popular cultural responses are even worse. The film Syriana has evil Western oil execs and a heroic suicide bomber. Rendition has sweet All-American Reese Witherspoon's Arab husband as the innocent victim. The villian is not a Jihadist--it's Meryl Streep!
On television you find shows like Aliens in America. I have not seen the show, but from trailers have learned that the good-natured Pakistani exchange student has a lot to teach us benighted Americans.
First, he is victimized by insensitive American students with bad memories about 9/11. Then, he is falsely suspected of terrorism by a hardware store clerk (this guy looks like a real cracker) while innocently buying parts to build a rocket for the school science fair.
In the third episode he helps a slutty American student re-discover her self-esteem through Islamic-style modesty. Finally, he runs into trouble when he innocently names his friend (his American sponser) as the "thing he would most want to take with him if stranded on a desert island". The ignorant and prejudiced students think he and his friend might be gay!
Now, being suspected of being gay really can be a big problem in many high schools. The implication, though, is that this would never have been a problem for him "back home". In reality, Pakistan is one of only eight countries today still retaining capital punishment for homosexuality. Others include Mauritania, Sudan, Afghanistan, the Chechen Republic, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen--all Muslim countries.
All in all, the response in education and the arts to the Jihad threat has been just woeful. Thanks to Jcom for mentoning Bosch Fawstin's soon-to-be-released "Infidel" graphic novel starring Pigman!
Posted by: gravenimage at October 31, 2007 1:00 PM
Hugh,
If what you write is true, that the comic book is the new book, and if that’s where we currently are in our culture, then comics potentially are one of the most potent weapons against Jihad and should be seriously considered as a legitimate form.
The way I see it, regarding comic books and graphic novels as used for polemical purposes, it’s a start, if they’re guided by the truth and serious artistic ability, and not like this state-sponsored German propaganda comic.
A seriously entertaining counter-jihad comic book can, ideally, interest those who may not normally pick up a non-fiction book on Jihad, which could then possibly lead one who has been made interested through the story towards further, serious study. That the majority of work in most mediums is crap doesn’t damn the individual mediums themselves.
Full disclosure, I’m working on just such a book, thanks to jcom972 & gravenimage for mentioning it.
at October 31, 2007 4:09 PM
There are comics, and there are comics.
Consider Art Spiegelman's "Maus" which is a straight recounting of how Spiegelman's father survived the Shoah. Paradoxically, the effect of telling the story cartoon style, transforming the various groups into mice (Jews), cats (Nazis), pigs (Poles) and friendly dogs (the American liberators of the death camps), is very powerful.
Then there's 'Persepolis' - the graphic novels, and the animated film produced from them; a Persian woman's grim representation of Khomeini's Iran.
As for comics - anyone here familiar with Herge's "Tintin" books? In "The Land of Black Gold" he has a go at wealthy and arrogant oil sheiks.
Then there are the 'Asterix' books.
Imagine if a team of brave people were to take Bat Yeor, or Andrew Bostom, or Spencer's The Truth About Muhammad, and use them as the source for graphic-novels, with the production values of Spiegelman's, Herge's or Goscinny and Uderzo's work- to tell the truth - in vivid, hardhitting language and goodquality artwork, whether in the semirealistic style of Herge or the comic exaggerations of the Asterix material - about Islam, and the history of the Jihad, and of Dhimmitude?
Imagine a graphic novel, no holds barred, rivalling Japanese manga at its most vivid, telling the story of Charles Martel on the Loire annihilating a Moorish army, or the siege of Malta and the heroism of the Knights of St John, or the victory at Vienna in 1683, or the tale of the Martyrs of Otranto. Or the exodus of the Jews out of the Ummah to Israel, and to other places, in the 1930s through 1950s. You wouldn't get away without an 'M' rating - and you could state on the covers that all the most dramatic and horrifying stuff is strictly, flatly true. And give a short bibliography at the back, referring to a few useful websites, and the 'PIG to Islam and the Crusades', etc.
Where are the artists and writers who will team up to give us some samizdat of this nature?
Disney did a good job in WWII but they're not going to step up to the plate, this time around.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 31, 2007 6:40 PM
Hey ...I have an idea! The next project could be a muder mystery. It would revolve around the honor killing of the headscarf-wearing Ayshe. Lots of elements here for a great sequel.
Posted by: solomonpal at October 31, 2007 8:53 PM
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