More than a little pissed off
Shahdin Farsai
So here is the deal: I am a little (no, not a little, a lot) pissed off with the weak commentary on the Danish cartoon issue by the SFU students in the Peak Speak section from February 6. My dear readers, let me first make this clear, we are all fish swimming the waters of invisible Anglo-Saxon culture that is currently the dominant force in the world, so it is no surprise to me that all these students (who are all white, just look at their photos and last names!) would be ignorant to the fact that these cartoons are very similar to, say, an anti-Semtic cartoon because look around you folks, we are living in Non-Muslim Friendly Times!
I challenge The Peak to ask a more ethnically diverse group of SFU students their opinions on the whole matter, and then you will find more critical commentary. Why is Opinions Editor Dock Currie blind in his opinion piece to the damn context of this whole thing. These are Western liberal values of free speech that are blabbed about, but do you guys not see the racism underlying these cartoons? How would North America react if tomorrow I printed Jesus Christ up in flames on the cross, or perhaps Moses with dynamite sticks stuffed in his ears in The Vancouver Sun? (Sacrilegious, isn’t it?) I am sure the response would not be favorable from the Christians and Jews around the world.
Back to the lame commentary from all the Peak Speak students. Geez, folks . . . you are in an institution that forces you to be crazy analytical freaks and the one thing you guys cannot critique is your own biased Western views?
Why don’t I refresh some of the comments for you. Ted Meredith said, “Allow people to say what they want to say, so whatever.” Maria Sadner said, “It doesn’t really matter to me, I really don’t care.” Sam Oliphant said, “No comment.” Weak, weak, weak. Not one of the students straight-up said, “These cartoons have crossed the line into racism!” Buddy, the whole idea of freedom of speech is so irrelevant at this point, where persecution of Muslim peoples is becoming more prevalent in our Anglo-Saxon countries. For example, the riots in Australia between the Aussies and Lebanese community, and the numerous anti-Muslim acts in the Land of Hypocrisy (aka the U.S.). Let us here at beautiful SFU not become blind like the uninformed mass consumers of misleading media.
And to conclude let me remind you as Dave Weatherall did in his opinion piece [“Muslim cartoons highlight the need for more ethical publishing decisions,” February 6, 2006] that Denmark is not the most ethnically diverse place and in fact a hot bed of Eurocentrism, where the small Muslim community there is an easy target to vent their anti-Muslim sentiments. I will leave you with this thought: We, the human race, just do not seem to learn from our pathetic mistakes in history. If we continue to allow such disgusting “expressions of freedom” circulate, we are only falling back closer and closer to the tolerating and, more scarily, to the acceptance of racism. Hitler would be proud of the Danish cartoonist, wouldn’t he?