Call Me Mohammed??

  Foodie heard on the radio in passing this morning that Iran had asked its people to cease asking for a "Danish" when ordering Danish pastry. From now on one asks for a "Mohammed."
Strongly sensing this is apocryphal, Foodie nonetheless recalls that "Freedom Fries" in the United States did have a short run when sundry French Fry eaters were outraged by the French government's disinclination to join the Coalition of the Willing.

All this of course derives from the current tension in the Muslim world over publication of Danish cartoons of Mohammed.  Islam forbids any depiction, however flattering, of the Prophet. 

Comments

[GailT]

Poor food. It is always being knocked around by people who don't like it, who take offense at its source, or its name, or its use.

When I lived in Turkey in the early '90s, one of the Turkish newspapers called on the US Government to stop the Coca Cola company from using an image of Santa Claus holding a bottle of Coca Cola. The original St. Nicholas was from an area called Myra that is now in southern Turkey, and the editorial writer felt that this advertisement was demeaning to the original St. Nicholas.

These things are hard to understand. There is far more of a cultural gap that westerners realize. It may not make sense to us, but it may make very good sense to a person in another culture.

[TJ]

I feel sorry for the kids who won't get to play with Legos if Danish products are embargoed!

Speaking of Turkey, if you spend any time in the southern (Greek)part of Cyprus, you'll find "Cypriot Delight" but not "Turkish Delight", "Greek coffee" but not "Turkish coffee" and so on.

Finally, and more to the point, there was a story on NPR over the past week pointing out that while "Islam forbids any depiction, however flattering, of the Prophet. " you can easily find and buy depictions of the Prophet in markets in Iran! So yes, there are definitely cultural forces at play - more than we realize, but not necessarily what we're being told or in the way we're being led to believe.

[Cynthia]

Regarding Gail's comment about the gap between cultures, and Westerners not fully appreciating the gap, this is profoundly true. I have been to several lectures at the University of Chicago, where Arabic-speaking experts on Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs have stated over and over again that the West is pretty clueless, that we judge Islam by its leaders, most of whom were educated in the West and who speak in terms recognizable to us, but that the man on the street is another matter entirely. The Renaissance did not occur within the Islamic world, so there is no perspective in drawing, no "what if" in literature or science (hence, research is nearly impossible, other than pure observation -- because there is no possibility of hypothesis, as there is only what is, as defined by the imams), no linear time, just cycles (one doctor said it was frustrating trying to teach nurses how to fill out a progress chart on patients, because they had no sense of progress, there was just today), and vastly more -- things that we take for granted, but which have evolved over centuries in our culture. That's in addition to the insurmountable theological differences. And one of the experts explained that, even if we read the Koran, we wouldn't really know what was going on, because it is a sin in Islam to read it in anything but Arabic, so the translated versions are slightly altered.

That's not all these lecturers shared, but it at least gives some idea how great the gap is. Suffice it to say, we must take these people very seriously. Of course, as one lecturer pointed out, since a handful of leaders have virtually all the money in just about any Islamic country, it is in the best interest of those leaders to make someone else look like the bad guy, because otherwise, the people might rise up and try to get a share of the fabulous wealth in the hands of only a few.