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February 22, 2006
Danish insensitivity
When hundreds of people around the world are yelling "Allahu Akbar" and blowing themselves up in strategic locations, it is hardly reasonable not to expect some nervous humor linking, well, Allah with terrorism. But in the free speech rights furor in defense of the Danish cartoons, I've heard little discussion of what seems to be growing racial intolerance in countries generally thought immune to it. I remembered this really racist little online computer game that a Danish family show me a couple of years ago. They thought it was great fun and said they saw the racist elements as satire. The "Mujaffa" game is hosted on the National Danish Radio and Televsion website, and can be found here.
Here's a description of it that appeared in the American Prospect in 2002:
The national radio station's Web site offers a video game featuring a dark-skinned immigrant named Mujaffa, who earns points by collecting gold chains and condoms on the street, yelling hello to all of his cousins and soliciting big-breasted, blond Danish women who pass him on the sidewalk. Mujaffa can spend these points on new speakers, stereo systems and hydraulics for his car. Though the Board for Ethnic Equality's executive director, Mandana Zarrehvarpar, complained that a state institution was perpetuating negative stereotypes, she and her colleagues were quickly dismissed as excessively politically correct and unable to "understand Danish humor." They succeeded only in having the game's name changed from one that included a derogatory term for Arabs (roughly equivalent to "nigger") to the more palatable "Mujaffa game." For the Danes who find Mujaffa harmless and hilarious, Muslim intolerance remains unacceptable, but their own is quite all right.
Posted by johnn at February 22, 2006 9:29 AM
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