I read this post at Hot Air about the British school which remade the story The Three Pigs into something else so as not to offend Muslims.
A junior school production of the children's story has been renamed the Three Little Puppies for fear of offending Muslims.
Organisers of a children's music festival have altered the popular characters and lyrics because of the multi-cultural nature of the youngsters involved and their parents in the audience.
As bizarre a concept as it seems that we would now be rewriting fairytales and children's stories to conform to our hypersensitivities, it's becoming more and more common. We read stories almost daily about teachers bending over backwards not to offend some group, either by changing lessons, avoiding topics, or overcompensating for past mistakes or wrongdoing.
In this case, however, some people finally said enough is enough.
But yesterday Islamic leaders condemned the politically correct move as misguided and said decisions like this were turning Muslims into 'misfits' in society...
But Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra from the Muslim Council of Britain branded the move 'bizarre'.
He said: "The vast majority of Muslims have no problem whatsoever with the Three Little Pigs. It's always been the traditional way of telling the story and I don't see why that should be changed.
"There's an issue about the eating of pork, which is forbidden, but there is no prohibition about reading stories about pigs. This is an unnecessary step."
The sensible attitude of the Muslim community to this tempest in a teapot made me reflect on other situations. For example, in this recent post, I stated that we should be teaching children not to use phrases such as "that's so gay," which could be offensive to homosexuals. But Aphrael pointed out in the comments that we shouldn't be offended by the phrase because the person's saying it weren't meaning "homosexual." In other words, I was being overly sensitive about this.
Another personal example concerns my ex-husband, who happens to be handicapped. Being married to a person with disabilities opens one's eyes to a whole different sort of reality, including the everyday problems and victories they face. More than accommodations, he taught me that disabled people simply want to be treated as everyone else. They don't want to be "special," and they don't want to be "other."
It seems to me that this is what the Muslim cleric was saying about changing "The Three Little Pigs" to "The Three Little Puppies." It's nice to try to be sensitive to other cultures, but destroying one's own in the attempt is insulting and alarming.
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