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Posts Tagged ‘Mumbai attacks’

Mark Tapson

‘The Simpsons’, Islamophobia and CAIR: The Price of Freedom

by Mark Tapson

This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone who morbidly follows this sort of thing (as I do) knows, enraging Muslim fanatics is hardly an accomplishment of Halley’s Comet-like rarity. It doesn’t take much: books, cartoons, teddy bears named Mohammad, posters of puppies, piggy banks, a Burger King ice cream swirl and the Nike logo (both of which apparently too closely resembled the Arabic script for “Allah”), are just a few of the recent Western offenses that have sparked their frothing outrage worldwide.

Simpsons

Yet despite the Daily Star’s perversely hopeful tone, there was no violent reaction in the UK from said fanatics, nor was there one in the United States after the episode originally aired here last Thanksgiving weekend (in a grimly ironic twist, the same weekend as the devastating mass murder and mayhem committed in Mumbai by a band of – wait for it – Muslim fanatics, or as the culturally sensitive media preferred to call them at the time, “gunmen”). So why no Muslim fury over The Simpsons? (more…)

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Posted Oct 26th 2009 at 5:00 am in Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics, Religion, Television | 122 Comments

Mark Tapson

Getting Real About Torture

by Mark Tapson

Since our country’s having a heated conversation about torture, and especially since that conversation seems certain to devolve into a parade of politicized, self-flagellating show trials that will broadcast our divided weakness to the world, it’s time to get some perspective on what torture is and isn’t, and who does it and who doesn’t. 

Let me state for the record that I firmly believe America should not torture. But I’m at ease about that, because America does not torture. Do we use harsh interrogation techniques?  Of course we do, and why not? This is war – why should we treat captive enemy combatants to a rejuvenating stay at the Four Seasons? Some of these maniacs plotted the devastation of 9/11, all cheered it, and if given the chance, all would gleefully saw your head off and then post a video of it on the Internet as inspiration for others of their fanatical ilk. Many of them might have information that could prevent further mayhem here and abroad – information they’re not going to volunteer simply because we’re congenial hosts. (more…)

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Posted May 2nd 2009 at 8:00 am in News, Politics | 158 Comments