Is This College Atheist Group’s Poster Blasphemous?
September 29, 2012 By Hemant Mehta 64 Comments
At Western Kentucky University, a student wrote a letter-to-the-editor complaining about a flyer put up by the school’s Secular Student Alliance affiliate:
The Secular Student Alliance (SSA) has a new flier displayed around campus showing a man in a turban decapitating a cartoonist. The SSA has the freedom to display this cartoon, but their disregard for Muslim and Arab students in displaying it is morally reprehensible.
Many Muslims and Arabs here are visitors from abroad and have chosen to study here on American turf. Americans should welcome them as guests, not ridicule them for their beliefs.
Some may say that the cartoon is only ridiculing militant Islam, not Islam as a whole. This may be true. However, the image is emotionally loaded and can only exacerbate tensions between Muslims and non-Muslim Americans, not heal them.