I know you all have Foreign Policy magazine’s Passport blog in your feed readers, but I thought I would just draw attention to this post that picks up a Yahoo article about:
a picture of “Buddy Jesus” posted in the streets, accompanied by a badly photocopied pamphlet bearing a crude approximation of a US military crest and outlining a US “plan” to subjugate the neighborhood.
Apparently the Iraqi Shia of Sadr City mistook the image to be a caricature of a Shia holy figure, and were offended. A coalition spokesman said “If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny.” Carolyn O’Hara of FP’s Passport asks:
So is the picture an inappropriate prank by U.S. forces, or a misinformed (and, ultimately, ironic) tactic by elements in Sadr City to enflame opinion against U.S. troops by charging them with mocking a holy Islamic figure? You decide.
Younghusband asks, if you were Blue in this scenario, what would be the most ideal way to deal with this media attack? I say “attack” because regardless if the source was a soldier or an insurgent, it has been damaging. Ideas?
Get the RSS
Comments to this entry
Dan tdaxp
October 4, 2006
4:29 am
jon
October 4, 2006
3:04 pm
Chris
October 4, 2006
4:43 pm
Curzon
October 4, 2006
11:57 pm
It is a damaging incident, whether its an attack or not. What can you do? Show the movie?? Or explain that this is a domestic, self-deprecating humor? Would they buy that, or be appalled by it? It's hard to tell. But regardless, you'd think that this is a case where clearly the truth is on our side.
Kevin Smith on the incident: "It's a bummer that the Buddy Christ - meant as a symbol of a non-judgmental, forward-thinking, fictional version of the Catholic church - is being linked to something like this. God-willing, it doesn't go further than this"
Younghusband
October 5, 2006
2:23 am
arherring
October 5, 2006
12:10 pm
How do you convince people who read conspiracy and secret arrangements into almost everything that this is a crudely executed smear campaign?
Iraqis at one point believed that the sunglasses our soldiers were wearing allowed them X-ray vision and were able to see through the robes of women.
I even once knew a guy from Jordan (an engineer) who while living in the U.S. would repeatedly flash his high-beam headlights when he came to a red light at an intersection because he believed that the light would change due to some sort of sensor system that would allow emergency vehicles to pass quickly by changing the light to green. When it obviously didn't work and in spite of many explinations such a system didn't exist he merely maintained that we were all fools and he just wasn't blinking them at the proper frequency.
I don't know if it is cultural or something but in this case the only thing I think you can do is laugh at it and pass out copies of the movie (shouldn't be hard, I understand bootlegging over there is rampant.) Even catching the guys who did it and having them confess to it in public will be included into the conspiracy.
The last thing people with this mindset will do is admit they are wrong about anything but they will eventually drop something if they think it is getting them laughed at. They will still maintain they are right even knowing they are wrong, but they won't force the issue unless you do.
Gollios
October 5, 2006
8:04 pm
kevin
October 5, 2006
11:10 pm
Plunge
October 6, 2006
12:54 am
It really got to be frustrating how people would try and sneak religious items past us. I actually found a cross sewn into a teddy bear!
I am a very religious person, but I understand that it has its time and place and this was neither. Unfortunately, not everyone understood that.
Elizabeth
October 6, 2006
8:39 pm
Maybe they could show the movie on television.
Despite the fact that Jesus is a "major prophet" in Islam, it's not true that fanatical Muslims would react against His defamation. We know this because they don't seem to have any issues whatsoever about the DaVinci code, pissing-on-Christ "art", etc. If they cared, they'd have spoken out. Show the movie already.