[Note from The Student: Do not take the protests as an isolated incident; a reaction only to a no-name hate film. Start reading the history from 1948.]
A version of this article was published on the Index on Censorship website, you can read ithere or on my Huffington Post blog,here
Muslims eh, they just cant seem to take a joke can they? It would be very easy to cast, as many commentators have, the latest riots in response to the islamophobic film, as another example of intolerant Muslims lacking a funny bone. The Rushdie affair, the Danish cartoons, the murder of Van Gogh – surely the latest saga fits neatly into a pattern of evidence suggesting Muslims are over sensitive and violent. After all, critics will argue, Christians are regularly derided through the arts and media and they don’t go around burning embassies and killing people. Only the situation is hardly analogous. The power relations in which a dominant majority can be perceived as insulting and humiliating a disgruntled and feeble minority, cannot be ignored…
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