a crescent-shape tattoo on their foreheads…
Posted by hakawi on December 6, 2006
In a disturbing and eye-opening experimental hoax, radio host Jerry Klein suggested on 26 November, that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band. While many called in to his show saying how crazy he was, many also called in supporting the branding and totally agreeing to it. At the end of the show Klein revealed that this was a hoax – an experiment that he deliberately set up, and that he could not believe that there were crazy people out there who would agree to something as off-the-handle as this [link]:
“For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.
Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous.”
Klein continues to be overwhelmed with the amount of emails and phone calls he is getting to this day [link to his website] with people STILL thinking he was serious and supporting him or others condemning him.
In any case, the audience’s response, according to Reuters, is not unique. A Gallup poll of 1000 Americans this summer showed that
39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.
Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
While all of this is very disturbing, I must emphasize that this is not only about how Arabs and Muslims are perceived by others. Yes, indeed there is ignorance that abounds among the Western mainstream, but Arabs and Muslims are not helping except at very individual levels. It is the duty of every Arab and every Muslim to work really hard to remove such distrust and debunk the myths.
This incidentally reminded me of the online satirical ‘newspaper’ The Onion, following the Madrid bombings last year, when hilarious commentator Albert Douglas asked: “What kind of Muslims are the Basques? They’re not Muslims? Then why would they blow stuff up?”
unitedcats said
The demonization of Muslims in the US is frankly scary, so many people simply accept it as a given now that Islam is a “violent” and “backwards” religion. Americans have always been prone to boogeyman thinking, but never on this scale before, where a billion plus people are simply considered as less than human because of their faith. Jesus wept.
Doug
hakawi said
Indeed.