A Refreshing View. Can We See It More Often?

In a cartoon strip, a boy wearing a large cross around his neck is shown telling a friend that a smiling Muslim girl in a veil looks like a terrorist.

He later confronts her and shouts: "Hey, whatever your name is, what are you hiding under your turban?"

She replies that the garment is called a hijab and that it is part of her religion "like the cross you wear".

Pity the boy in the cartoon didn’t try to justify his comment by reference to the current government campaign to instil fear and suspicion in the populace. That would have been interesting!

But of course, what we have here is ‘noble Muslim/yobbish white boy’:

The girl is then shown standing up for another boy, who is being bullied, and her behaviour is contrasted with that of the boy wearing the cross.

Because that’s really prevalent in society today, isn’t it…?

The cartoon story, entitled Standing Up For What You Believe In, appears in the latest issue of Klic!, a quarterly magazine aimed at children in care aged from eight to 12.

Published by the Who Cares? Trust, a charity set up in 1992, it is described on the cover as "the best ever mag for kids in care" and is widely distributed by town halls.

Oooh, is this a..

Yup:

The charity received £100,000 from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, in both 2007 and 2008, and £80,000 this year.

No, no, no! The DCSF doesn’t have any money to give. That should read ‘..from the long-suffering taxpayer’.

Nice of them to spend our money spreading the impression that we are all yobs who abuse Muslims, isn’t it?

Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering, said: "I think it is very unfortunate that the lad who is pointing the finger is wearing the cross. You can hardly imagine anyone producing a magazine in which the roles were reversed and it was the Muslim girl who was behaving badly"

Nope. I certainly can’t…

But Who Cares? Trust chief executive Natasha Finlayson described the cross as "bling" rather than a religious symbol. She said the charity had received one complaint.

Errr, hang on. In which case, why does the Muslim character refer to it as ‘a symbol of your religion’ then?

Doing some hasty backtracking, are we, Natasha?

However, this is a welcoming attitude to take:

"I am a Christian myself, so when a woman called us to complain, I went back and looked at the comic strip from her point of view," she said. "I am sorry she is upset but I don't share her view."

Excellent! That’s just the attitude to take when people complain, don’t you agree?

Can we ensure someone is rolled out to give that response the next time Muslims get upset about something? Which going on past experience, we won’t have to wait long.

Fair’s fair, after all….