Mickey Mouse, Modi and Muslims

The 'joke' and the joker's twitter page

If anyone should be objecting to the Islamised cartoon of Mickey and Minnie mouse, it should be the Disney group. It completely mauls their loved characters. The main job of the guy responsible for this is to make money through the mobile company he owns in a Muslim country. As a report states:

An Egyptian Christian telecom mogul has angered Islamic hard-liners by posting an online cartoon of Mickey Mouse with a beard and Minnie in a face veil. The ultraconservative Islamists, known as Salafis, called the cartoon posted by Naguib Sawiris on Twitter a mockery of Islam.

Naturally, everyone who is not part of the campaign or understands it has been going haha at his joke, although he has since apologised because the shares of his company fell after a call for boycott. Some people have asked, and rightly so, what happens if he had made Mickey and Minnie wear a priest and nun clothes or those of Jewish rabbis? Would it not be considered anti-Christian or anti-Semitic?

This guy lives in Egypt and runs a successful business. So, what makes him find humour in this sort of thing? I mean, it isn’t even worth a titter, unless you are seriously retarded and laugh at people who slip over banana peels. To be honest, when I read a small item, I smiled. I like Mickey and Minnie and thought there would be a cute beard and a nice sexy naqab. Muslims do not have proprietorial rights over beards – some famous names have them. And most of the Hollywood women cover their faces with outsize shades that work just as well as veils. Besides, Egyptians do not dress like that. Haven’t we seen enough of them at Tahrir Square?

But when I saw the cartoon, it does not look like a joke. Mr. Sawiris is no different from the rest of the hate-speechers I discussed following the Geert model. One is unclear about the motives except to push a faith into a corner without taking into account the varied kinds within it. Is Christianity to blame for what some priests do in their chambers? Are all Jews to blame for the Zionist expansionism? Do Hindus stand for the saffron parties? Then why must every Muslim be looked on as a potential cartoon or someone who needs to be poked to elicit anger and show the ‘ugly face of Islam’?

I feel sorry for such tickled imaginations.

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On another note, I got this in the mail. I should hope the ‘accidental reader’ is revisiting the site of accident, for I prefer responding here since there was no reference to the context in the note. I hope s/he understands. Thanks, anyway.


The note

I came across your blog by accident, and it made for delightful reading.

Would you feel safe in India if Narendra Modi were to become the PM by some tyrannical twist of fate?

My response

I assume you are asking this question because of the faith I was born in. Therefore, it means that the general perception is that Mr. Modi is against Muslims and could pose a threat to the community. As chief minister he has to be house-proud and showcase Gujarat as such, which is the reason many local Muslims of a certain class have become part of the economic development. As Prime Minister, he will have to delegate responsibility and not be the sole arbiter. That tendency, however tendentious, ended with Indira Gandhi.

If the BJP/NDA were to prop him up, I am not quite sure he would be ready for it. He is aware of his reputation and he is most certainly not a team person, unless having police officers at his beck and call can be termed a team. On a larger platform, he might have to soften his stand considerably, and since he has pushed the economic agenda he will have to live up to it. The RSS will be at hand to raise the communal bogey and he would not be able to shirk from being a loyal soldier of the cause of ancient heritage. The problem is there is no Babri Masjid to demolish now, so large-scale violence across the whole country would not be easy. Besides, he cannot take the mickey out of the mice who have already scraped the niche market.

The resurgence of the Hindu rashtra idea has pushed the Indian Muslim into backward mode to a large extent in terms of social attitude. This has been the worst legacy of the Hindutvawadis.

The survival of the Modis and Advanis, not to forget the whole saffron brigade, rests not on reclaiming culture but on opposing what they see as another culture. Take that away and they will be left twiddling their thumbs.

So, to answer the question: I would feel safe if Modi became the PM, but sorry – for him and his fractured ideas.

When Jews won't take a lift...

I have entered lifts with too many people breathing one another’s breaths. It is probably unhygienic and a security risk. I have pressed buttons, real ones, without knowing that some people in the world think that doing so after sunset on Friday until Saturday’s sunset is a “desecration of the Sabbath”.

That this has become an issue that Jews are concerned about in New York City and not some remote Taliban-like rugged turf should get our liberals to raise eyebrows. But, will they? I doubt it.

The report in the NYT has a deadpan tone. Almost as though it is perfectly acceptable:

But last week, newly added to the tenant issues facing building managers like Harold M Jacob, who runs a co-op where Orthodox Jews inhabit a substantial portion of the 2,500 apartments, was this almost ontological question: Does that elevator “know” how many people are on it?

Ontological? Is this anywhere close to the metaphysical study of the nature of being and existence?

Ever since elevators became the norm with the construction of high-rise buildings, concessions were made for the 39 activities prohibited during the Sabbath. Use of electrical devices is one of them. Pressing buttons constitutes such activity.This had got the Knesset involved and made it mandatory in Israel to designate one lift in a building as ‘Shabbos’, the good one that automatically stopped on every floor so that Orthodox Jews did not have to press any buttons and could spend their Sabbath within the accepted religious realm.

After a meeting with technicians, it was recently discovered that even Shabbos elevators have devices that automatically measure the weight of the lift car and adjust the power. It has resulted in seeking to ban them.

In a world that is sitting in judgement about other faiths and their strict adherence to them and making it out to be as though they are backward and not moving with the times, this sort of observance will not be questioned with much harshness.

Why? Because these people are educated? They have made money and can live in the heart of New York? They have a strong lobby within America? An apartment block that has 2500 residents and several other issues now being forced to think about pressing buttons in lifts is ridiculous.

How many of you have heard about Jews being made fun of because of their obsession with the kosher? They don’t eat pork. They are circumcised. The orthodox among them wear clothes as per the Talmudic laws wherever they are or go. Does it not strike anyone as unusual that rabbis are having meetings about this and how the community follows the belief?

Oh, so you will turn around and say, they don’t have suicide bombers. They don’t do this and they don’t do that. Kindly visit Gaza. If you can get there. An educated community that stops essential provisions from reaching people who belong to the land is hardly educated.

Incidentally, Palestinians are among the most educated people in the world. But a boy in Gaza has to ride a donkey painted with stripes to mimic a zebra because he has never seen a zebra in his life. His world, though, is black and white. And if he grows up, unless he gets killed, he will see the world as a monochrome reality.

The Jews in the world outside can continue to think of important issues about where the lift stops. The buck will never stop at their door.

Observatory

No one’s really going to talk about it. Or at least get judgemental. This isn’t the Taliban, you know.

Orthodox Jews can be orthodox Jews and even have their own search engine, Koogle, which is a play on the names of a Jewish noodle pudding and Google:

The site, at www.koogle.co.il, omits religiously objectionable material, such as most photographs of women which Orthodox rabbis view as immodest, Altman said. Its links to Israeli news and shopping sites also filter out items most ultra-Orthodox Israelis are forbidden by rabbis to have in their homes, such as TV sets.

Kosher, but so restrictive. The jihadis are way better off. They can get to watch Osama talking to them from his latest digs or some warlord or the other giving instructions on the mobile phone which the media manages to get hold of, but no one else seems to be able to trace.

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German TV host (L) looks on as a guest on the show (partly hidden) opens the bras of 25 models with chopsticks in the Spanish Island’s capital Palma de Mallorca

Does this serve any purpose at all? If my research is good (hah!), then I believe men have a problem doing the unbuttoning even with their fingers. So, I guess this was some feat and I am sure the man can now have his sticky rice without dropping a single grain.

Divisions

I read somewhere that people in Priya Dutt’s constituency were spreading the rumour that her husband was a Jew; he is a Catholic. The reason attributed to the rumour was to rile the Muslims who apparently start frothing at the mouth when Jews are mentioned.

This is such a silly conjecture. Muslims in India have hardly ever reacted to the Jew and Zionism as Muslims in many other parts of the world. True, there have been support rallies for Palestine, but that just does not translate into being anti-Jew. I don’t understand how people can sit on some perch and start chirping like little old gossips.

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We may be getting tired of Varun Gandhi but the fellow has managed to get a ticket from Pilibhit and is also campaigning for other candidates. At one rally, he rather audaciously declared:

“Now you people have to reply to my mothers’s tears.”

There are the tears of several mothers that need answers. Did he ash his goons to stop going on a rampage? Did he send out an appeal for peace? Now he talks about ahimsa (non-violence)and the disgusting thing is people might buy it because people buy such rubbish. We have very short memories. Instead of addressing core issues (naturally), he said:

“Main aapke bachchon ke samman ke liye jail gaya thha (I went to jail for the sake of your children’s honour).”

The honour of these children could be restored with literacy (which is among the bottom of the heap even in Uttar Pradesh) and alleviation of poverty (over 45 per cent under the poverty line). What honour can they boast of now? That he spoke about some limited idea of patriotism? That he got aggressive about a certain community?