Sunday, September 24, 2006
Fatwa Friday! With free rubber swords for the kiddies!
An Ohio car dealer is mocking Islamist extremists, and the multiculturalists are up in arms:
A car dealership's tongue-in-cheek radio advertisement declaring "a jihad on the automotive market," will not be changed, the company said, despite drawing sharp criticism that the ad's content is offensive to Muslims.
Several stations rejected the spot from Dennis Mitsubishi, which boasts that sales representatives wearing "burqas" — the head-to-toe traditional dress for some Islamic women — will sell vehicles that can "comfortably seat 12 jihadists in the back."
"We firmly believe the ad does not in any way disrespect any religion or culture, but we feel, I guess, that maybe poking a little fun at radical extremists is fair game," dealership president Keith Dennis said on Saturday. "It was our intention to craft something around some of the buzzwords of the day and give everyone a good chuckle and be a little bit of a tension reliever." ...
[Boilerplate objection from CAIR deleted. - ed.]
In the ad, Dennis talks about "launching a jihad on the automotive market."
"Our prices are lower than the evildoers' every day. Just ask the Pope!" the ad says. "Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies."
Never mind what CAIR says, some local radio stations are drawing the line on mocking the extremists:
Some radio stations are balking at the dealership's attempt to poke fun at extremists.
"With no disrespect to their creativity or their desire to build business, everything we're about is promoting the values of diversity. To air things of that sort would go against our mission statement," said Jeff Wilson, general manager of three Radio One stations in Columbus.
Mocking jihadis is contrary to "the values of diversity"? Do you know how hard it is to find somebody in this world willing to mock jihadis? There are way more jihadis than there are people willing to mock them. Somebody send Mr. Wilson a copy of Londonistan
, which is all about the ways in which multiculturalist cant works to the benefit of extreme Islamists. Yes, I appreciate that moderate Muslims are insulted at "jihadi" as a term of disparagement because of its relationship to purely spiritual struggle, but they have to sort out the nomenclature issues with their fellow Muslims. We're just using the terms that Islamist terrorists use to describe themselves. Lots of people weren't happy when the term "gay" was converted into a synonym for "homosexual," but if there was "fault" in that it lies with homosexuals, not with those of us who no longer refer to happy and lighthearted straight people as "gay" (see, e.g., the editing of the term out of the song "I Feel Pretty" in school productions of West Side Story). If the use of "jihadi" to mean "Islamist terrorist" is distressing to Muslims who are not in that category, they should take it out on al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and so forth. Until then, we poor confused Westerners will do our best to struggle with the rapidly changing terms for all of the various peoples we oppress.
In any case, it seems to me that jihadis should be mocked, just as Spike Jones and the City Slickers mocked Nazis -- who were, after all, Germanic extremists -- in "Der Fuhrer's Face". What has changed since then, other than the incorporation of "the values of diversity" into mission statements?
3 Comments:
By 
Clix, at
Mon Sep 25, 05:33:00 PM:
Quote: "Our prices are lower than the evildoers' every day. Just ask the Pope!" the ad says.
So where are all the complaints from the Catholic community? ;)
By Dan Trabue, at
Wed Sep 27, 07:17:00 AM:
How's this ad campaign grab ya?:
"Just in time for Easter: Our prices are to DIE for! Sure, Jesus died for your sins, but with prices this low, he won't have to! It'd be a sin NOT to buy our cars! Come on down to the river to pay...LOW PRICES!!"
By Dan Trabue, at
Wed Sep 27, 07:22:00 AM:
On a more serious note, I think what people are objecting to is the constant association of the extremist terrorists with regular Muslims - 95% or more of which are not supporting terrorism.
And the reason why it's a wise thing to object to that sort of characterization of a whole group of people is because it's demonization, which is often done - especially during wartime - for the purpose of dehumanizing the "target" making it easier to hate the whole group and kill them when the time comes.
Demonization is just wrong, and to use religion - any religion - in the process of selling your goods is offensive in the extreme to most folk from faith traditions. "Do unto others" and all that.
