Cricket team told it can’t call itself ‘the Crusaders’…in case it offends Muslims and Jews. (WTF?)
on 02/02/2009 at 10:36 AM
"Forced to change its name"… By whom exactly? I smell voluntary appeasement, and a lot of it.
This is the kind of crap that would make me change the team uniform to the St. George’s Cross, and take up a mascot of a knight on a horse, with shield and sword to ride up and down the field when the team scored.
“We’re called the Crusaders. Yes, yes we DO mean to reference the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. It’s part of our history, and those of you that don’t like it can go have a weep over in the corner, and suck your pathetic thumbs like the crybabies you are.”
Now THATS a response worth giving.
FRAKKING A!!!!!!!!!!!! And we have a thing over here called a “Just In Case”. It’s a Mossberg 12 ga. in a PVC pipe, with room for food and water packets, that strikes me as applicable here.
I usually don’t presume to act as a spokesman for my people, but this time, I’ve got to. Reading the article, it was impossible to miss that both Moslems and Jews were listed as offended parties. This is more than a little odd.
As Jews, we are very aware of what has been done to us over the millennia, just because we are Jews. The Crusades just aren’t part of it. We don’t think that the Crusades were one of the major high points of Christian civilization, especially the Children’s Crusade, but as far as we’re personally concerned, it just doesn’t mean much. It wasn’t done to us specifically. The Crusades weren’t aimed against us. Any interaction between Jews and Crusaders was tangential to the rest of what was happening. Unless I’ve missed something very important, the Crusades were a Christian vs. Moslem business. We understand very well that a crusade can be something very different from the Christian crusades of the Middle Ages. Growing up, my Rabbi had his own crusades and had no problem calling them crusades.
In order for calling the team “The Crusaders” to be offensive to a Jew, there must be something involved beyond the name. A team called The Crusaders means little more to us than a team called The Braves or The Raiders (Just win baby!) By itself, it would indicate a team bound to commit heavy duty acts of aggression against their opponents, nothing more. If the team indulged in things specifically offensive to us, such as prayers excluding Jewish members of the team (eg. ...We pray in the Name of our Savior, Jesus Christ....), overt anti Semitic acts or overt anti Semitic statements, that would be another case. Even the part about the prayers is far from being a mortal offense. We’ve learned over time that few Christians understand just how offensive that is to us, when we are nominally part of the group being referred to. We also understand that to a Christian, the idea is personally integral to his faith. So we generally shrug our shoulders and get on with the rest of life.
How a “Jewish community” could be found that thought the mere name “Crusaders” was offensive by itself is beyond me. Whoever they are, they just wouldn’t be like any Jews I’ve known over the course of my life. I suppose it’s possible that some extremist loonies (yeah, we’ve got them too - everybody’s got a crazy aunt in the attic) raised a fuss, but their actions wouldn’t be embraced by the Jewish Community as a whole, they’d just be considered embarrassing.
Bottom line: I have no idea who lumped us with the towel headed goat f*ckers, but that is more offensive, than the name Crusaders, including reasons far beyond what I’ve given here.
Last item - If any doubt remains, yes, I’m Jewish. Born and raised. I’ve had my Bris, Bar Mitzvah and Confirmation. It’s my Faith and my People. I’ve been diddling off and on with an article/posting about the experience of growing up Jewish in America. It looks as if I need to get going and finish it. It’s my hope that it will explain much what it is to be a Jew in America and help bridge many of the misunderstandings that still exist.
Doc
Jeff: I honestly wonder if the team only had complaints from muslims who just wanted to cause trouble and further their own agenda.
The team may have added the reference to Jewish folk simply to try to better sell their piss-poor decision to appease the muslims.
To me this is like the Obamamedia’s constant reference to ‘historic’ and of course The One’s (tm) constant reference to race, race inequality, racial threats etc - I must be waaaay too much of an American mutt and been to waaay too many different churchs/religions because I don’t look at/judge people on their color/religion. Not until they shove it in my face. Then I become hostile.
I don’t care what you call your stupid team - because I am smarter than that, I am more secure in my origins, beliefs and values than that and because I do not take offense in every thing out there.
The reason that the muslims and the Left are so into pc is that they lie so much - so they don’t trust anyone else and that ignorance is the basis of all fears, hatred and wars - and guess who are the two most ignorant groups in the World!!!
Well said Doc.
I really did wonder about that. Made no sense at all.
Here’s a thought for you guys. And I’d bet this could be much of the case.Some wimpy, handwringing do gooder thought there might be offense and took it from there.
And that person would btw be a self hating white desperately trying to make amends for heaven only knows. And of course this would also prove his/her liberal credentials. And some jerk in management had to go along. Appease is the right word.
Whole thing bothers me. These ppl are making un-necessary problems for themselves.Tiger’s solution at the top of comments an excellent one. Sadly, nobody here with the balls to do that. And doesn’t that tell you how bad things have become, when it really would take nerve to do it instead of taking it as a matter course.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/742430.stm
Dr Jeff,
Do you think there is any truth to this article? I’m starting to think that the real issue here with the Arab Jewish relationship is lack of common respect for one another, and I don’t claim to understand why or how to solve it. It reminds me of a Yankees Redsox bench clearing brawl....except people are being killed here.
Hi Lateforwork2,
The article is certainly true. Actually, I’m a little surprised that anyone might think that we weren’t from the same stock and also that that was important enough to test. We both originated from the same area of the Mid East. Over the millennia you can only guess how much intermarriage there was between one clan and another, one village and another. Yeah, we’re common blood. Since we (Jews) got chased out of Israel and into Europe, there has been a lot of intermarriage. That’s where my fair complexion and blue eyes come from. The trite picture of a swarthy Jew with a big nose has some truth to it. Take a look at an Arab today.
It’s not a lack of respect. The are plenty of other problems, but the closest there is to a lack of respect is similar to the way you’d consider someone who had committed a particularly heinous form of heresy.
In many ways, we are brothers. For that matter, Christianity is also a close relative.Thousands of years ago, G-d spoke to Abraham and gave him a job to do. He and every generation after him, to the end of time, was to carry the word that there is only one G-d. Anything else we’ve ever said and much of what we do, comes from this core. Why did G-d lead us out of Egypt? I don’t think he wanted his messengers wiped out. That’s what we are. Messengers, nothing more. To be G-d’s messenger is considered to be blessed. That’s how we became known as G-d’s chosen people. All considered, sometimes we make jokes that we wish he’d choose someone else next time.
Please pardon my digression. Thousands of years after Abraham, came Mohamed. He was familiar with Judaism as Jews, animists, Christians and idolaters of every sort lived side by side all across the Middle East. You usually know a bit about your neighbors, there just aren’t that many secrets in a village.
The core of Judaism is nearly identical to Islam. Only the core though. What Mohamed did after he started Islam, got a little “weird”. Even the Islamic word for G-d, Allah, is virtually the same as our name for G-d. The main difference is that we are forbidden to speak it on the basis that any human utterance of G-d’s name would be taking the Lord’s name in vain. btw - In Christianity, it’s emerged as Jehovah. A little farther away, but still not that far from the original that we do not speak. If you want to know exactly how close, you’ll have to learn the Hebrew alphabet (actually only 1 consonant and 2 vowels) and then see where G-d’s name shows up in the Torah (Five Books of Moses - see the Old Testament starting with Genesis - it’s all there).
The most basic and important prayer in all of Judaism is called the Shma and it translates:
Hear o Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is one.
The Moslem prayers begin:
There is no G-d but G-d.
That’s not a big difference. I actually cringe a little when someone says that the Moslems don’t believe in G-d or worship a different G-d. With no offense meant for anyone, through Jesus, a practicing Jew, Christianity heard the message of one G-d from us. Centuries later, so did Mohamed. Both Abraham and Jesus are considered important prophets in the Koran. As the faiths diverged, differences arose. Mohamed came up with some particularly obscene ideas.
A split also occurred when Mohamed decided that conversion by the sword was a good idea. A community or city of Jews was not far from the city where Mohamed lived. A war ensued. In the course of the war, Mohamed invented the Hudna and used it to defeat us. Mohamed says we attacked first. Take that for what it’s worth, he’s the only one who wrote a history of it that I know of. Somewhere along the way, Mohamed came to hate Jews, leading to the lines in the Koran that refer to Jews as various kinds of animal and also the lines about trees and rocks giving up Jews for slaughter.
That’s my best understanding of the relationship between Jews and Moslems. Whether we like it or not, Jews and Moslems are relatives. We’re just the civilized one.
I sincerely hope that I have offended no one and that perhaps my writing has helped illuminate and strengthen someone’s faith as well. If I have offended, please accept my apology. Regardless of how we approach Him, we are all children of G-d. I look at myself as a small link in a long chain that begins with Abraham and will end somewhere in the future.
Sincerely,
DocThanks Doc, good explanation. There are plenty of conflicts going on in the world over religion and ethnic differences, I just don’t hear as much about them as I do the one in question, which is why I took some time to try to look at what it is that makes this conflict make the news so much.
02/02/2009 at 05:53 PM
02/02/2009 at 10:00 PM
