Link I claim bullshit. There is no way a mufti is inviting a piglet into a mosque. Can’t see a rabbi taking a shine to a piglet either. Clearly the bishop would help the piglet on its way to god if this story were even remotely true. Of course that help would come via a BBQ but that’s not the point. Oh and everybody knows hedgehogs practice Santería. Seriously though, out of the three religions mentioned which do actually think would be offended?
Sounds like an excellent book, not suer about a piglet and a hedgehog (i hate anthopomorphised animals), or portraying priests and rabbis as insane. But i love this concept And very much think it should be in books for children...
Well, I haven't seen the book yet, but some people claim that the depictions of the Rabbi and other Jews specifically copy old antisemitic steroetypes, funny noses etc., which gives this a bit of a different slant, and would make it a bad book in my book, but nothing that should be indexed. Indeed, why have such an index at all? In general, the fucking index of the BpjM -- Bundespruefstelle fuer jugendgefaehrdende Medien, Federal Authority for Investigating Media Endangering the Youth -- is a bloody disgrace. While the stuff on their little list is not exactly outlawed, still being available for adults, it cannot be advertised, and it cannot be sold visibly either in shops or on commonly accessible sites like amazon.de. That is essentially a death sentence for any commercial product, and doubly so for expensive productions like movies and computer games, which make up most of that list. That the BpjM spends half of its website explaining why their job is not exactly censorship should tell anyone anything we need to know. That the index itself must not be published, lest it be considered backhanded advertisement for its titles, is just the absurd icing on that cake. It's unconstitutional, it's against basic human freedoms, and it's incredibly stupid and insulting to adults as well as kids.
I, as a fully convinced, practicing Christian, agree with the conclusion made by a book that is supposed to convince kids not to believe in God! Perhaps religion and militant atheism are not as radically different from each other as people want to think. A lot of Jesus' message boils down to: "God definitely doesn't live in a synagogue, cathedral or mosque."
Totally off topic, but I have to say, the only thing that surprises me about that name is that it wasn't run into one portmanteau wordl Oh, and it seems to me that there's good money to be made in setting up Austrian websites to sell 'indexed' goods to German kids.
So of the "big three", I notice that Christianity counts all of it's variations (that rarely unify themselves) and that Jews are practically non existent. Likewise, the divisions within Islam aren't clarified. When we consider that half the Christians and Muslims are trying to kill off or exclude the other half of themselves when they aren't fighting eachother (or trying to get those last few Jews exterminated), we might count only half of their claim to take up 55% of the faithful.
The good news is that few children will read this as it would interfer with the Pokeman and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers hour.
"Hog" is not in the name in German. Must be some other reason. BTW, though I don't find the book offensive for saying that if there is a God, he does not live in a church or a mosque or a synagogue, I do find it offensive in how it tries to stereotype all of those with whom it disagrees as evil. From whom did they learn their propaganda techniques, the extremist Muslims, or the equally-extremist "kill all the towlies" people? That said, it is not the state's business to protect children from offensive books. That is the parents' role. And it is not the state's business to determine what parents may or may not find offensive, either. I have no doubt that parents who will want their kids reading a book like that will give the kids plenty of the same propaganda in other forms, too. The very existence of a list of "nearly banned" books shows how little freedom of expression there is in Germany. You can't deny the holocaust, you can't have a neo-nazi political party, and so on. Where liberty of expression is concerned, the only fundamental difference between the present "We will outlaw speech that is offensive" and their not-so-illustrious ancestors is that the current crop has a different (and, if I may say so) better grasp of what is "offensive." But the principle of imposing on the masses what the state determines to be right does not seem to have changed all that much. I don't think I want these people having much to say about the general approach to freedom in Europe.
Is "pig" in the German word for piglet? It has an author, Michael Schmidt-Salomon and an illustrator, Helge Nyncke. Here's one illustration: I can only speculate but I imagine it's a mix of utilizing a well established marketing technique (controversy), a tad of sincerity and a bit of humor. I completely agree. Again, I completely agree. Yep. Seems an attempt to prevent history from repeating itself. Acknowledging the holocaust happened and zero tolerance for Neo-Nazi political parties. Your statement shows how little you think Germany has changed since WWII. Officially denouncing Nazism and denouncing holocaust deniers is an extension of Nazism? These people? Careful, your prejudice is showing.
You're so behind the times. Nowadays it's Halo3 and Bratz. Germans and book banning...now that's something you don't see everyday.
Yes indeed. Actually, you can have an openly neo-nazi party, but your general point stands. Other quite fundamental differences include not murdering or in any other way punishing authors, publishing controversies like this which are very likely to end with the book being allowed and heavily advertised, and limiting this textual control to non-(explicitly)-political issues. Which people?
What a stupid exaggeration. I'm with you here, holocaust denial shouldn't be punished but ridiculed. You can, as long as you don't aim at abolishing basic principles (human rights, democratic process etc.) guaranteed in the constitution. And I fail to see how this is a bad thing... The idea is that the democratic proces must not be used to abolish democracy itself (like it's happened in the Weimar republic). It basically says that the rights of the individual are more important than the will of a hypothetical majority which might want to live in a dictatorship. Do you really disagree with that concept?
BUMP to update: The BPjM has refused to place the book on the index, the DA has refused to investigate the Catholics' motion against the book, and the discussion following this case might, just might help us to get rid of the BPjM and its stupid index once and for all.
