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Cartoon Controversy Continues at UC Berkeley
BERKELEY, Calif., Sept 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The controversy surrounding a cartoon published in Tuesday's
The Daily Californian, which Muslims and others found offensive and racist, continues to rage as it enters its fourth day.
On Tuesday, Muslim students and their supporters had occupied the offices of the student newspaper at the University of California at Berkeley and demanded an immediate apology.
The protest continued well into the wee hours of Wednesday morning and 17 protestors were arrested when they refused to follow the police orders to vacate the premises at 3:30 am.
The editorial board of the newspaper has so far refused to tender an apology and say that it represents the views of the cartoonist and not of the Senior Editorial Board. The Board claims that the cartoon "falls in the realm of fair comment".
On Wednesday someone hacked into the newspaper's website and posted a fake apology in an article which looked like an normal article. Soon after, administrators discovered the hack, causing the site to go down for several hours. The site was again down for a couple of hours on Thursday.
The editorial cartoon by cartoonist Darin Bell, printed in the September 18th issue shows two men with flowing beards, turbans and robes standing in a long nailed hand surrounded by flames. One man is saying, "We made it to paradise! Now we will meet Allah, and be fed grapes, and be serviced by 70 virgin women, and..." The other man is shown dropping a book with the words "Flight Manual" on the cover.
Bell, a syndicated cartoonist and Berkeley alumnus, dismissed suggestions that the cartoon was racist. Referring to the two turbaned men in his cartoon Bell said: "Those two people are caricatures of [Osama] bin Laden," Bell said, adding he drew them based on bin Laden's beard, robes and head covering.
"It's easy to say, 'He drew a Muslim person. He must be talking about all Muslims.' That's just not the case. I'm talking about hijackers, and I'm talking about Osama bin Laden. I'm not talking about Muslim people," Bell said.
"Here's this group of people who have perverted the religion of Islam," he said. "The terrorists believe they're going to heaven, when according to Islam, they're going to hell. That's what I tried to show in the cartoon."
But protestors insist that that the cartoon is racist and divisive and held demonstrations at Berkeley's Sproul Plaza Thursday. They carried signs reading "Free speech demands responsibility," "Daily Cal Racist" and "Daily Cal commits hate crimes".
Bassam Elkarra, president of UC Berkeley's Muslim Student Association, said that the cartoon promotes the racist stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists. "The cartoon says Muslims - not crazy people - Muslims did it," Elkarra said. "[It makes people think that] anyone who has a beard is a terrorist."
Sikh students and others also joined in with the protest.
Janny Hu, editor in chief of the Daily Cal, said the board was willing to begin a reasoned discourse with representatives. But Muslim students claim that they have been given the run around.
Wajahat, a MSA board member, told IslamOnline: "The Daily Cal, after giving over 130 students [of all different nationalities, faiths, and opinions] the run around for over eight hours decided to not give an apology. The editors of the paper stayed in the backroom and only came out once to speak to the audience, in fact they only met with a few delegates when the did come out."
He said that peaceful protests would continue until their demands were met.
With additional reporting by Ayub Khan
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