Before I raised anchor from the Continent, spent some time in the U S of A becoming reacquainted with my home culture, and before planting my new homestead in Thailand’s capital, I wrote a post about a double standard in the Arabic world.
Now that I am ensconced on the other side of the world, I am going back to mine that “double standard” vein…mainly because it is so easy.
Today’s installment deals with the treatment of mosques.
In April of 2013, LEGO announced that they would be halting production of the Jabba’s Palace playset. Cries of racism came from the Turkish Cultural Community of Austria as they claimed that the palace of Jabba the Hut, the criminal lord of the Tatooine underworld, looked too much like the famous Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.
Putting aside the fact that the LEGO representation of Jabba’s Palace looks almost nothing like the iconic Turkish mosque (i.e., zero minarets on Jabba’s Palace as opposed to the four on Hagia Sophia, the tops of the domes are different), I’m here to talk about the double standard of the reaction.
The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria (TCCA) threw out the cry of racism and took to the electronic media to decry the technical desecration of a historic mosque because of its questionable similarity to a toy.
So what do you think the reaction of the TCCA would be to the actual desecration and destruction of a real historic mosque? If you guessed “apoplectic” or “hysterical”, then you don’t understand the meaning of the phrase “double standard.”
When – also in April of 2013 – a minaret of a historic and ancient Umayyad Mosque in the Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed during the civil war, the reaction of the TCCA was…
…absolutely ear-shattering nothing.
Go ahead. Look at their website here and you won’t find an iota or hint of any outrage at the destruction of the minaret in Aleppo.
The lesson here appears clear.
If a Western (in this case, Danish) toy company makes a product that looks something like a mosque (but only if you squint), then bring down the rafters with condemnation.
If an Arabic entity (in this case Syrian military or rebels) actually destroys part of a mosque, then shrug your shoulders.
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