Blasphemlicious
JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure, an anime series based on a manga by the same name, is currently under fire from the Middle East for having a villain in the show read the Holy Koran while plotting the death of the protagonist.
Rather stupid if you ask me.
[ Source: JapanProbe | Itai-News ]
The original scene in the manga did not show the contain of the book. Since it is unlikely that anyone working on the show can actually read Arabic, someone probably decided to copy and past the text from a randomly-selected online source without knowing that it was an extract from the Koran.
Though it’s not their fault, Shueisha, the publisher of the manga, has posted a public apology of their website in both English and Japanese, with the Japanese version being notably shorter. Personally I wouldn’t apologize for such triviality, especially if the mistake wasn’t even my own, but then again I don’t run a multimillion-dollar company.
Not Terrorists
I just find it absolutely hilarious (in a sad way) that the companies involved have received death threats for supposedly depicting Muslims as terrorists. Sort of like, “How dare you say that our religion is violent? I’ll blow your company up and kill your family!” Oh irony.
This was probably a simple mistake on the part of some anonymous underpaid animator, but even if it weren’t, it’s really no big deal. The fact of the matter is that some Muslims are indeed terrorists, therefore it makes perfect sense to have Muslim terrorists appear in an fictional Arabic setting. I mean, some white folks are serial killers, and we have no problems with casting Caucasian actors as horror movie antagonists. It doesn’t have to be a general statement about an entire community of people, and it often isn’t. I’m pretty sure at least a few anime villains have quoted or alluded to the Bible before.
If anything, the tendency to over-react in such situations does more to reinforce the violent stereotype of Islam than anything else. The same with most angry protests really. As much as I may (or may not) sympathize with their cause, watching people burn effigies (whether it be Bush, Osama or Dalai Lama) and scream their lungs out simply extinguishes any desire on my part to be associated with what they stand for.
Relativism
Frankly, I think in our blind pursue of political correctness, we often overlook just how frightening extremism and radicalism in religion can be. When someone incurs the wrath of radical Islam, we are quick to denounce him as “culturally insensitive” or “ethnocentric”, among other convenient labels, placing all the blame squarely on the often unwitting offender. It’s a reverse knee-jerk reaction.
Few people pause to consider the flip side of the coin, for it seems almost a given that once religions are criticized (unfairly or not), it becomes perfectly acceptable for the believers to do whatever they fancy in seeking “justice”. And if the offender-turn-victim happens to have his life taken from him in the process, he can look forward to many a posthumous “serves you right” lecturing from his supposedly more worldly peers. (Assuming afterlife does exist.)
I find this quite a sad state of affairs, but I guess that describes the entirety of the human condition since 200,000 years ago. (2.5 million if you consider the entire homo genus as humans. Or 6,000 if you swing that way.)
P.S. Marina is Jewish.
Same thing when Denmark posted those drawings of the prophet in their papers. “We are not violent extremists, and to prove it we will kill your cartoonists and news editors, and their little dogs too!”
Embassies were burned, among other things.
Said editor of the first paper to publish them is currently in hiding under police protection, and will likely remain so for the rest of his life.
marina is jewish? noo it cant be. isnt something like this under fire at kanokon for bein really ecchi? about lil kids watching it or something
I agree with you on every count.
I think you are wrong. Although it indeed it is in a way over-sensitivity, people in general do get worked up when you associate stereotypes or refer badly to things that are happening currently.
What I am trying to say is that people will get upset for example if next episode of Geass has Zero causing earthquakes in China and laughing his head off at their deaths. This can be easily called over-sensitive, but in reality is it?
Many Muslim people feel isolated and afraid because a small minority commit terrible acts. This “Islamaphobia” does more harm than good and is increased by references in popular media like this which infers that they are murderers.
Thats where you should have stopped. Political correctness does more harm than good, especially when dealing with irrational things like religion.
Muslims in general are that way… The will say all kinda of crap about Christianity, but say anything negative about their religion and Bam! You’ve insulted their whole ancestery, their mother , their goats and kids… get ready for a Jihad…
The cute thing is that christianity, islam and judaism is essentially the same thing. Its just practiced by different groups of people with exactly enough meaningless differences to go to war over.
Religion = Truth.
Lying != Truth
Lying = Bad
Speaking against religion = lying = bad.
That’s basically how it is in their minds. The trick, of course, is that one of these 4 statements is wrong, which invalidates the entire proof.
The solution is love. With love, there is no us vs. them. There’s only us. For this, I refer you to Danbooru for more blasphmliciousness.
Nice way to miss the entire point of my post.
I wouldn’t say that Muslims in general are that way because most people can tell how trivial such arguments are. If they have faith in their personal beliefs, then why should it matter to them? For most people, it doesn’t.
Seraphim, you are way off course, but since you want to talk about it that way…
In Code Geass, hundreds if not thousands of Britannia soldiers have died thus far. Britannia is portrayed as evil and fascist, its people are rich, apathetic and often cruel. Britannia can be seen as an allusion to the UK and USA.
Are you, as a Brit, offended? Even if you are, are you prepared to send death threats to Sunrise? And perhaps even carry out that threat? Are there any British or Americans who will even consider doing that?
The fact is that Islam has a problem with extremism, and these extremists, a small minority as they may be, are very overly sensitive to such trivial perceived blasphemy. I don’t think that is a healthy position to take, and I certainly don’t think it is something that we should condone just because it is politically correct.
I mean seriously, what if I made a movie about the Ireland conflict and show a bunch of Catholic terrorists? Am I saying that all Catholics are terrorists? No, and only nutcases would think that I am.
There’s no reason to be so damn sensitive. It’s like people are so desperate to show that they are well attuned to foreign cultures that their brain stops functioning the moment religion enters the discussion.
Abit random and off-topic, but where did you get that picture and are there more of it?
I like this kind of eye-candy.
You ruined whatever point you had. Oversensitivity means people get offended when they shouldnt, but thats on their own heads and is no reason to pander to their strange ideas.
padpod: No idea. It’s in my image folder and I probably got it from somewhere months ago.
Err you still missed it DM
“you associate stereotypes or refer badly to things that are happening currently.”
Britain and America are not currently stereotyped/portrayed or viewed in that way. China is currently viewed as a place where an earthquake has happened. Making improper allusions to it will be complained at. Muslims are currently viewed and stereotyped as Murderers and terrorists. Making improper allusions to this is IMO still wrong, no matter what way you twist it.
Yes it is over-sensitivity because it doesn’t hurt them. But it is still wrong because everyone is over-sensitive in their own way. There are many people who would go very angry if you portrayed an Animé where the main character is a WW2 Nazi and he hunts down Jews and it is portrayed as the right thing. People shouldn’t get upset because it is a work of fiction; BUT THEY DO. Recognising that fact is essential to doing the right thing.
Yes well tell me this… how much does pop culture, science, etc insult Christian? Quite a bit… Do we have a nation of Christians ready to kill over it? No… A cartoonist makes an image of Mohamed and the whole muslim world is up in arms… that’s a fact… The level of overly sensitivity between the two is enormous.
America kinda is. Where have you been the last 7ish years?
That’s just one of the reasons why I’m staying a freethinker.
Im a dane. My granpa helped the resistence back in the day, including our most famous group. And i wanna see that flick.
The war is over and its time to realize that Hitler was a human, and that the Nazis believed every bit as much as our current troops over east do that they were doing the right thing.
Seraphim:
You claim that everyone is overly sensitive in their own way. That is patently false. I for one wouldn’t kill anyone over some silly perceived insults. I think there are many others who feel the same way. You are being an apologist here.
Your hypothetical scenario is a strawman. It is an extreme situation that is designed to offend people, and it does not prove your point. I will agree with you that people are justified to feel offended if you made an anime glorifying the Holocaust. But that is in no way related to the current discussion.
In this specific case, a Koran was on screen, just as a Holy Cross may be seen on screen numerous times in Hellsing. It does not say anything about Islam, except that people in Arab countries actually have copies of Koran in their possession. (How shocking.) This is a stupid thing to offended by, and rationality has clearly jumped the shark if people can justify getting so worked up over this silliness.
Let’s see…
Has anyone been killed by Christian extremists over Bible Black yet?
I once heard there was a porn movie with Jesus as the star. Dont think anyone was killed over that either.
Official religious council followed by the majority like MUI in Indonesia, Al Azhar in Egypt or Vatican wouldn’t issue death threat outright because insult, but will demand explanation and take legal action. But some independent organization would.
In case of Islam, those who threaten with death whoever insult Islam apparently lack of understanding in Islam.
In time of Prophet Muhammad, there’s a bedouin who take a leak inside Mosque Nabawi, prophet companions got angry and intended to kill the bedouin. But The Prophet understood that the bedouin didn’t realize he has done something wrong. Prophet Muhammad only give him thorough explaination of what he done wrong and did not punish him. Now any competent Islamic organization will remember this story when someone insult Islam.
I think it’s the same with Christian that teaches “when you’re hit in one cheek give the other one”. Or any other religion except Haruhiism perhaps :)
What make me sad is many people especially those who never interract with muslims only look Islam in “Death Fatwa Issuers” not the peaceful majority.
Less radical muslims have issues too. There have been more than a few cases of honor killing among muslims in my country, and supposedly the largest percentage of crime today is done by muslims as well.
The last part could just be a case of difficulty adapting, or simply propaganda. But the first part has no excuse.
It’s about education, the less educated will be easily attacted with radical propaganda/tradition. The educated will be critical of propaganda/tradition.
For example, i heard a million times that whatever you say about Jesus you’ll be fine. Now I dare those who said that to go to Flores island Indonesia and prove it there. Let see if you can get out of the islan alive.
My point is there are more educated christian than educated muslims.
Main point is, no one deserves to die over something as minor as this. Unjustified killing is all it’s going to be in the end, although some sensitivity on the producing sides would be good too.
ALLAH STRIKES BACK!!!!!!!!!!!
Wait did anyone actually die or were death threats issued?
Because if its just death threats then I will kindly remind people that some people sent Death threats to Hideo Kojima when he initially said he wasn’t gonna do MGS4.
People send death threats all the time to people when they get offended or sad. Its silly, irrational yes, but means nothing.
Although my WW2 hypothesis is extreme, my china earthquake one is not. If that situation were to happen, I would expect people to complain. IIRC a pokemon episode was banned because of an earthquake too.
BTW Is there really nothing that you are especially sensitive to?
Gaah…why must you all be oversensitive of other religion being oversensitive…does not that make you guys same as them? This things usually happens if you include religions…have you guys ever heard about some people protested that Anime is evil(partly due religion insert)?? Or about Harry Potter and Golden Compass being a too of anti-Christ? Make mistake, even though is was not intentional? It’s normal to apologize….
The part you are missing, sera, is that these people will carry out their death threats. They are not disgruntled emoing teen fans, they are crazy people with guns and money.
The people formerly known as Spartans complained over how their ancestors were portrayed in 300.
The people formerly known as vikings did not complain about how their ancestors were portrayed in The 13th Warrior.
Some people, some groups of people, and some entire countries are just hypersensitive for no good reason.
It’s about power imbalances. One side can basically do what it wants to the other with impunity.
Think about the n-word. Part of the reason for its power is that there is no insult that blacks can use against whites that is even close to the same amount of power as “nigger”. And the reason that it was able to gain so much power as an insult was because of power relations between blacks and whites in America.
While they have been stirred up by opportunists for their own ends, the recent Muslim outrages like the Prophet Muhammed cartoons are the same way. There’s a massive power imbalance between the West and the Middle East, and there’s nothing that can be comparable to something like blaspheming Muhammed. Additionally, due to the West’s power over the Middle East for the last 200 years, they’ve been able to define the Middle East. Not only does it piss off people that have been trying to be able to define themselves (rather than have a definition pushed on them) for the last 40-50 years or so, but it also aggravates tensions because it creates the threat of pushing back all that work.
The word you are looking for is nigger. Its ok, it wont bite.
And for the record im glad my country gave the middle east the finger when they came demanding apologies, all the while they were burning our embassies and flags and killing people.
Its not about power balance, its about crazy people doing atrocious things and being completely unreasonable.
The fact that I wouldn’t fly off the handle and try to kill someone for an insult isn’t because I’m more reasonable. It’s because of the fact that there are no insults or symbols or anything that anyone could use to demean or threaten me in an extreme way. Even someone posting a comment on my blog like “I’ll murder your family” would mean nothing to me because there’s no history behind it. A swastika on a house however would give the same message, but also put some seriousness on it.
That I all said, I lol’ed when Iran tried to have a Holocaust denial cartoon contest to try to piss of Europe, and while some countries in Europe got angry (but not Denmark, seeing how they actually give a crap about their freedom of speech and don’t have an imperialist past to be ashamed of), a bunch of Jewish cartoonists entered comics.
(Also, rofl the ad on the page right now while I’m writing this is for a Muslim dating service.)
Its not that you are necessarily reasonable, its that religious people are crazy.
The reasons for being religious are the following: Fear, ignorance, and insanity (substitute delusional if you are the PC kind).
Fear is hard to do something about, but keeping our troops out of other peoples countries would go a long way. Better social security in the applicable countries is also important (im looking at you, USA, among others).
Ignorance is fixable with education.
And we can show them how to build and maintain padded cells to fix the last problem.
That’s ridiculous! I hate how sensitive people can be about stuff like this. As if just because they are a Muslim, and someone “falsely” represents a Muslims, this means that person was attacking them personally. Everybody uses stereotypes all the live long day (whether purposely or accidentally), but that is just the way the world works.
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You nearly did something of the same, DM.
A radical friend of mine alerted me of a Menclave-subbed (not even sure of this fact!) G00 ep that had “one of the characters with an Arab name being translated as having the title Rasul”, in Islam, Rasul means Prophet, and Muhammad was the last one.
While I didn’t watch that ep, and also knowing he likes to overact, I ignored his sentiments but I think he had put this case to other extreme friends of his and is seeking action against “this disgraceful ignorance of Islamic portrayal”.
Though he’s targeting Sunrise for this and not the fansubbers. *rolls eyes*
all religions need to understand more of each other..amen..
Id say that religion needs to disappear, but thats not a bad second option.
Problem is that religious people dont care about understanding things, least of all other religions. They cant be reasoned with because they are not sane under any secular definition. The best method to fighting religion i have found is to simply ignore the nutjobs.
You guys are wrong with education, Osama comes from an extremely wealthy family and he became one of the most hardcore radical Muslims in the world.
Same goes for the dirty animals that bombed London, they went to top of the line private schools.
Education has nothing to do, when you read your unholy book and it says Christians and Jews are pigs and monkeys and that non Muslims have to submit or die then you clearly have a problem.
Christianity is bashed pretty badly today and you never see Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) go around chanting death threats, burning flags and embassies and rioting like crazy ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!!. In fact only Muslims have done that.
Cynical speculants have it that Osama is a scarecrow propped up by the US government. Whatever the case he is irrelevant by now. Iraq is a vassal state and it will remain that way by the looks of things.
Bush is not as stupid as people think. Iraq is a mess, but that is probably intentional. They cant walk away as things are now (i still think they ought to do just that). They have a mess on their hands, but its a mess that supplies them with oil, and they get to pretend they are knights in shining armor at the same time.
Oh, and christians kill people too. Take a gander into the mind of a highly religious nutjob. http://www.armyofgod.com/PHill_ShortShot.html
Its not that you are necessarily reasonable, its that religious people are crazy.
Guner,you’re an atheist aren’t you?
“Christianity is bashed pretty badly today and you never see Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) go around chanting death threats, burning flags and embassies and rioting like crazy ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!!. In fact only Muslims have done that.”
Bush is Christian. ’nuff said.
@Caedite:
“Christianity is bashed pretty badly today and you never see Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) go around chanting death threats, burning flags and embassies and rioting like crazy ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!!.â€
instead they went on a several hundred year campaign of religiously backed racial genocide, repeatedly.
the first time was called “the expansion of the roman empire” and the second was the crusades, add to that the inquisiton and what they did…don’t even get me started on northern ireland, where catholics and protestants were shooting and blowing eachother up on a regular basis
and lets not forget the puritans…who nearly wiped out the american indians and continued the act of slavery for another generation
hitler was also christian (as well as raised by roman catholic parents) and we all know what he went on to do
plus theres what the brittish settlers did to the aboriginals in australia in the name of god and the queen, look up “the stolen generation(s)” to get what i’m talking about here
shall i mention the ku klux klan whilst i’m at it?
this is more like a thread about religion now. etchy topic
What gave it away?
But seriously, being religious is not rational. Its something that happens for people who have some kind of problem and/or are crazy.
On which note, so was Hitler. And both of them used religion and patriotism to gain the publics support.
Not that pouring cold water on all your passion is my hobby, but since I’ve been in Japan for five days all religions have started to look equally ridiculous and dangerous to me taken more seriously than a certain very low threshold.
Too bad it’d take a few more centuries before all the religious leaders gather and declare their religions null and void. I’d loved to see the faces of the faithful then. Sigh. (Arthur C Clarke was a great man.)
I don’t hold any particular feelings for any group of people, culture or idea just because I am supposed to be the “same” as them. I like to recognize that I am my own individual.
Seraphim, you are telling me that creating entertainment out of a deadly earthquake is equivalent, in terms of its degree of insensitivity, to the depiction of a well-known historical book in an anime, in the hands of a person of clearly isn’t Arab though the story takes place in an Arabic setting.
I would say that your example may hold some water if we were talking about the Danish cartoons here, because that was clearly drawn with provocation as one of its goals. But to say that all religious symbols are off-limits to entertainment is to remove a huge part of human society from a medium that is supposed to tell its story, and the obsessive compulsion to do so seems to exist in a limited number of social groups.
I am appalled by the leeway certain groups receive from society at large, and I am opposed to such special treatment.
The way I read the original post was
“read the Holy Koran while plotting the death of the protagonist.”
Now you are saying he was just holding the book. The way it was written made me think that the animé was inferring that the person got ideas, influenced or was inspired to murder the protagonist by reading the book. If so how can anyone actually tell me that they wouldn’t realise they were being offensive. The same way that now if Geass was to do an earthquake in china (despite them having written the plot beforehand) that they wouldn’t realise that it would cause offence.
Guner, stop being an idiot. If you actually knew anything about Hitler then you would have known that he was privately quite anti-Christian.
Maybe he spent his private time petting kittens too. Doesnt matter. He professed to be christian so we must assume that he was, and he used religion as a manipulative tool to control the masses. These are the facts.
Figured i should comment on this.
Religion is a holy cow to most of the world. But if we are ever going to get rid of it, or at the very least coexist with it, we need to stop being so damn sensitive about it and stop practicing self-cencorship.
These drawings were made to see how free our free speech really is, knowing that some people would feel stepped on. These two things must necessarily go hand in hand considering what the topic is.
My angle on it is that my country has proven that we are the least religious country in the world. Given how well things work over here (the reason nobody knows much about us is that we dont have meaningful problems, we dont make for interesting news), i consider that a good thing.
You guys miss the damn point, yes we in the West had the same issues with our main religion that is Christianity LIKE A THOUSAND YEARS AGO, the fact is that Muslims today BEHAVE like we both did in time of the Crusades.
LMAO and on the Crusade subject you need some schooling, first off most of the middle east was Christian since it belonged to the Byzantine Empire, our boy Muhammad was born 570 years after the Jesus. Muslims were the ones that began expanding from the Arabian Peninsula taking Byzantine territory like Egypt and Syria. This is what prompted Alexios I Emperor of the Byzantine Empire to ask Pope Urban II for help. Muslims were the ones that struck first and were the cause of the Crusades. I am from Spain so don’t BS me with the Inquisition, it would have never happened if Muslim have never invaded Spain since there would have been no reason for it.