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by Daniel Pipes
October 3, 2005
updated May 28, 2007
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I noted in my column this week, "Enforce Islamic Law in Canada?" that "efforts to integrate Muslims into the West [often] upset a benign status quo" and gave as one example the banning of Santas, Nativity plays, Christmas carols, and Bibles so as not to offend Muslim sensitivities. Here I will catalogue other proscribed items as they come to my attention.
Piglet's problems. |
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Representation of pigs: The benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, instructed employees that all pig-related novelty items are henceforth banned from its offices, so as not to offend Muslim staff. This includes pig toys, porcelain figures, calendars, and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. There's no mention of piggybanks, but presumably those must go too. The edict came down after a Muslim complained. Councillor Mahbubur Rahman endorsed the ban: "It's a tolerance of people's beliefs."
Pig stories: In March 2003, Head Teacher Barbara Harris at Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School in Batley, West Yorkshire, banned books containing stories about pigs, out of a desire not to offend the Muslim children who make up about 60 percent of the school's pupils. Harris issued a statement: "Recently I have been aware of an occasion where young Muslim children in class were read stories about pigs. We try to be sensitive to the fact that for Muslims talk of pigs is offensive." She sent a memo to staff saying fiction books containing stories about pigs should be removed from classrooms but the books "remain in the school library and there is nothing to stop our younger children having stories such as ‘The Three Little Pigs' in small groups." March 15, 2007 update: Students ages 7 to 11 from the Honley Church of England Junior School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, were to perform in a theatrical version of the "Three Little Pigs" story in June, with no less than 250 children from 63 schools involved. Renamed the "Three Little Puppies," for fear of offending Muslims, the early nineteenth-century tale will otherwise be produced as scheduled. Curiously, Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain branded the change "bizarre," condemned the move as misguided, and said such decisions turn Muslims into social "misfits." Mohammed Imran of the Hanfia Mosque and Educational Institute noted that "According to the Koran, it's forbidden to eat pork or touch a pig, but there's no ruling about talking about them or singing about them." March 17, 2007 update: Hold the presses – "Three little piggies win a reprieve" reads the Daily Telegraph headline. Town councillors stepped in to reverse the decision.
The Open University in Britain has spawned an Arab Open University, based in Kuwait, with students primarily in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The contents of the two institutions' teachings are revealingly different, Ferdinand Mount notes in the Daily Telegraph, with the latter "to a greater or lesser extent, adapted, expurgated and bowdlerised in order to avoid offending the authorities in their target countries." This process, known as "versioning," means that all references to pork, alcohol, homosexuality, and unmarried mothers have to be deleted from texts. "Bizarrely, any mention of football stadia seems to be forbidden, too." Darwinian theory is taught but accompanied by a statement of the Islamic doctrine of creation. Paintings by J.M.W. Turner have been excluded. Analyses of selling bras and alcohol got dropped. Mount adds that
staff at the OU in Britain appear to feel absolutely no unease or discomfort at all this. They even post news of their latest versioning efforts on the web. When Anthony Williams, an OU postgraduate student, wrote to complain to the secretary and the vice-chancellor, and then to the chancellor, the blessed Betty Boothroyd, they all replied politely, but seemed bemused by his indignation. The university's senate, HEFCE, the QAA, even the DfES itself - the entire educational alphabet in fact - seems to have waved through this wholesale censorship without a second thought.
(October 3, 2005)
Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers has forbidden British prison officers from wearing a St. George's Cross tie-pin, although it is the national flag of England, due to its connection to the Crusades. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, approved of the step, noting that "A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history," Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with." (October 4, 2005)
Schools in Hillsborough, Florida, for years had vacation days on Good Friday, the Monday after Easter, and Yom Kippur, but when the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked that Eid al-Fitr be added, the school board decided (by a 5-1 vote) to go with a secular calendar for 2006-07 that takes away student vacation days for religious holidays, with the exception of Christmas. The three Christian and Jewish holidays will be replaced with Presidents Day and two days between spring break and the last day of school. The board members like the new calendar, saying it is more fair and preempts future requests from other religious groups: "I don't know where we're going to draw the line," board member Susan Valdes observed. Several Muslims said they feared Muslims will be blamed for taking away everyone's holidays. (October 13, 2005) Nov 9, 2005 update: The Hillsborough County School Board voted to restore Good Friday, Easter Monday and Yom Kippur to the 2006-07 school calendar.
Homer Simpson and donut |
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If the Open University bowdlerizing is high comedy, Homer Simpson's is the low version. Yasmine El-Rashidi reports in the Wall Street Journal on the transformation of this legendary cartoon figure for an Arabic-speaking audience:
"Omar Shamshoon," as he is called on the show, looks like the same Homer Simpson, but he has given up beer and bacon, which are both against Islam, and he no longer hangs out at "seedy bars with bums and lowlifes." In Arabia, Homer's beer is soda, and his hot dogs are barbequed Egyptian beef sausages. And the donut-shaped snacks he gobbles are the traditional Arab cookies called kahk.
(October 14, 2005)
Piggybanks: Wanting not to offend Muslims, two major British banks, Halifax and NatWest, have reportedly banned piggybanks, the symbol of frugality, and will no longer hand them out to children or picture them in advertising. Some Muslims support the decision; Salim Mulla, secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said "the banks are simply being courteous to their customers." But Khalid Mahmoud, Labour MP from Birmingham, criticized the move: "We live in a multicultural society and the traditions and symbols of one community should not be obliterated just to accommodate another. I doubt many Muslims would be seriously offended by piggy banks." (October 24, 2005)
Christopher Marlowe: Marlowe's 1580s play, Tamburlaine the Great, contains some pretty strong language spoken in Act V, Scene I by the title figure (usually known as Tamerlane, more properly Timur-i Lang, or Timur the Lame, c. 1336–1405, one of the worst butchers of history). He disparages "the Turkish Alcoran" and "all the heaps of superstitious books Found in the temples of that Mahomet," then burns the Koran and challenges the Prophet Muhammad to punish him: "Now, Mahomet, if thou have any power, Come down thyself and work a miracle." Tamerlane also declares that "Mahomet remains in hell."
The play was the surprise hit of the autumn 2005 season in London, winning rave reviews and selling out at the Barbican night after night. Now, it comes out that the producers censored the above passages. The Koran was not burnt, instead it was "a load of books" immolated. The "remains in hell" reference was dropped, and so on. Simon Reade, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, said that the director of the play, David Farr, felt that burning the Koran "would have been unnecessarily inflammatory." Curiously, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain disagreed: "In the context of a fictional play, I don't think it will have offended many people." (November 24, 2005)
Christmas ham: Port Hedland in Western Australia, a town of 15,000, ranks as one of the most remote and isolated habitations on earth. But dhimmitude has reached even there. The Port Hedland Regional Hospital leadership has decided that the traditional baked ham will be dropped from the Christmas menu, out of concern that Muslim patients could be offended. Nor is this a one-time thing; the entire menu has been overhauled and all meals made halal. And other Western Australian hospitals also plan to introduce halal menus. Dropping ham from the Christmas menu has particularly upset the kitchen staff, which has organized a petition to demand it be put back. One long-time hospital worker called the menu change "un-Australian" and commented: "The management of the hospital are unable to stand up to a minority and keep our Australian way of life intact. … Now all we need is for someone of the Hindu faith to jump up and down and we'll have no beef. Before we know it, if you're sick in Port Hedland, you will have to be happy with a diet of boiled rice and a cup of tea." To which, the hospital's nursing director, Judy Davis, gave assurances said though ham was not on the menu, "We'll still make Christmas special – we've got prawns and all sorts of other special treats." (December 18, 2005)
Soup kitchen serves pork: So far have things gone in the direction of dhimmitude that for a Catholic charity in Nice, France to serve pork to the homeless in a Christmas-time vegetable soup is deemed a provocation. Dominique Lescure, head of Soulidarieta ("Solidarity" in Provençal), shouted in a heated exchange with jeering protesters outside a church, "I don't see why I should not be able to put pork, which has always played a major role in my country's cuisine, into a traditional soup that I want to distribute." The free soup drew about as many protesters as poor people. Tensions ran so high that police had to divide the two groups and the deputy mayor of Nice, Noel Ayraud, showed up. He sagely noted that he could do nothing to stop the proceedings: "Serving soup with pork is not a crime." (Not yet, anyway.) Protesters denounced the group as racists, with a left-wing militant named Teresa Mafeis barely holding back tears of anger: "This pork-based soup kitchen is pure discrimination. It's an in-your-face way of telling people who don't eat pork, you can stay in your cardboard boxes and starve. After the holidays, we're going to set up our own soup kitchen, and there will be shorba [Arabic, "soup"] for everyone." A Muslim woman raised the ante by shouting, "Our fathers are Muslims, and they fought for France with honor and loyalty." (December 23, 2005) Jan. 25, 2006 update: One could not make this up. I quote the BBC:
Identity Soup, as it has been dubbed by its chefs, was banned in Strasbourg this month after officials ruled it could lead to public disorder. "Schemes with racial subtexts must be denounced," Strasbourg's mayor Fabienne Keller said. Although no ban exists in Paris, police have closed soup kitchens in the capital's Montparnasse and Gare de l'Est train stations on administrative grounds. Volunteers were ordered to re-seal soup containers on the basis they did not have the necessary permits to distribute food. A leading French anti-racism movement has urged Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to ban pork soup give-aways throughout the country. Bernadette Hatier, vice president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples, said the scheme was a ploy to drum up far-right votes ahead of 2007 presidential elections.
Feb. 28, 2006 update: The controversy continues. In Paris, more than 200 demonstrators defied a police ban to eat "pig soup" in public. Their leader, Odile Bonnivard, climbed a car and with a megaphone declared, "We are all pig eaters! We are all pig eaters!" Despite four vans filled with anti-riot police at the ready, the police did not intervene. "We're not yet living in a land of Islam," Bonnivard announced from atop the car. In an interview, Bonnivard explained that her organization, Identity Bloc, used smoked bacon, pigs' ears, pigs' feet and pigs' tails in preparing soup for the homeless because it was inexpensive. When they realized the political significance of this ingredient, it became a focus of their work. Other groups jumped on this bandwagon, serving the soup in towns such as Strasbourg and Nice (and also in Belgium), a trend that worried the authorities, especially after the November 2005 riots. In December, Bonnivard reported, several busloads of police officers stopped her group from giving out the soup near the Montparnasse train station in Paris, citing "the discriminatory nature of the soup." In response to Identity Bloc's appeal, a Paris police spokesman said the appeal would be decided "on the basis of the current regulations, in particular concerning risks to public order and incitement to racial hatred." Bonnivard sees this as part of an effort to defend European culture and identity. "Our freedom in France is being threatened. If we prefer European civilization and Christian culture, that's our choice."
Jan. 2, 2007 update: A judge at the administrative tribunal in Paris found no evidence that serving soupe au cochon meant discrimination against Jews and Muslims, so pork soup is back on the menu for the homeless of Paris. The police had shut down food distributions by Solidarité des Français on the grounds of xenophobia. The city's police prefecture was ordered to pay 1,000 in costs to SDF. SDF's president, Roger Bonnivard, commented: "After weeks of dirty manoeuvres, intimidation, harassment, all kinds of pressure, and despite a new ban, the Paris police authorities now have to adhere to the decision. There are no legal grounds allowing anyone to ban pig soup."
Australian flag: In the aftermath of Australia's summer beach riots, the Green- and Labour-dominated town council in Waverley (a beach town near Sydney) voted 6-5 on December 13 against a proposal to fly an Australian and an Aboriginal flag over the pavilion at Bondi Beach. It did so out of fear the flags would incite more violence, as George Copeland, a Green, explained: "The Australian flag was used by both sides as a symbol around which to perpetrate racial violence. The people from Lakemba [i.e., Muslims] burnt the flag and the Cronulla people [i.e., non-Muslims] swathed themselves in it while pounding people. We didn't want to wave a red rag in front of either side on New Year's Eve." But another councilor, Waverley deputy mayor George Newhouse, gave a totally different explanation: "We already fly the flag at Bondi, we proudly fly the flag at Bondi and this decision has absolutely nothing to do with racism or Cronulla. It has everything to do with practical common sense. The Pavilion is a heritage-listed building and it will cost thousands of dollars to perform a heritage study and then erect the poles, which don't exist."
Ironically, Keysar Trad of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia spurned the council's decision. "To suggest that Muslims would be offended at the sight of the Australian flag is naive. A great deal of Muslims call Australia home and they are just as happy to see the flag flying high." The premier of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, urged the Waverley council to rethink its decision. "Our flag is a symbol of national unity and the council decision is just ridiculous, they want to reconsider it and reconsider immediately. There's no excuse for anyone else to be saying ‘Well, because of the incidents, the riots of two weeks ago we're not going to fly the Australian flag'. That is just ridiculous." (January 2, 2006)
What the BMI abaya and hijab combination looks like. |
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Women walking alongside men: British Midland International, the only British airline flying to Saudi Arabia, has issued astonishing orders to its flight crews working on that route: no wearing of crucifixes or St Christopher medals, no Bibles, teddy bears, or cuddly toys. Stewardesses must cover themselves from head to foot in an abaya. To be precise, the staff handbook reads: "Prior to disembarking the aircraft all female crew will be required to put on their company issued abaya. It will be issued with the headscarf which must be worn." The BMI explains the rules are part of its "obligation" to "respect the customs" of Saudi Arabia. And then the kicker: the women must walk two paces behind their male colleagues. (January 8, 2006)
"Pinocchio and friends converted to Islam": London's Daily Telegraph reports startling news from the culture front:
Pinocchio, Tom Sawyer and other characters have been converted to Islam in new versions of 100 classic stories on the Turkish school curriculum. "Give me some bread, for Allah's sake," Pinocchio says to Geppetto, his maker, in a book stamped with the crest of the ministry of education. "Thanks be to Allah," the puppet says later. In The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan is told that he cannot visit Aramis. The reason would surprise the author, Alexandre Dumas. An old woman explains: "He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness."
Tom Sawyer may always have shirked his homework, but he is more conscientious in learning his Islamic prayers. He is given a "special treat" for learning the Arabic words. Pollyanna, seen by some as the embodiment of Christian forgiveness, says that she believes in the end of the world as predicted in the Koran. Heidi, the Swiss orphan girl in the tale by Johanna Spyri, is told that praying to Allah will help her to relax.
Several more books have been altered, including La Fontaine's fables and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
 Pinocchio |
 No more Nick in some of Vienna's schools. |
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"To Market, To Market to Buy a Fine Fox": Fjordman reports that "in Norwegian kindergartens, pigs in traditional fairy tales are now quietly being replaced with other animals. A person who visits kindergartens to read fairy tales experienced that in stories by Asbjørnsen and Moe, the Norwegian equivalent of the Brothers Grimm, the word pig had been replaced with fox. When she discovered the same thing happening in another kindergarten, she wondered whether this was a new policy." (December 7, 2006)
Related Topics: Dhimmitude, Muslims in the West, Radical Islam, Turkey and Turks receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
