Please excuse my ignorance. I’ve just searched for this PBUH as a meme but haven’t managed to discover how/where it started or much about it at all. I understand that it is mocking “Peace Be Upon Him”.
Unfortunately, my own interpretation of it is influenced by my experiences being brought up in Britain in the 70’s and 80’s. Throwing or waving bananas at black people was a form of racial abuse, along with monkey noises and gestures. In the 90’s and the 00’s I found bananas were still being used as a racist joke/insult in Britain (and also in Spain in the time I worked there). I had a stand up row with a work colleague at a meeting who saw fit to bring a bunch of bananas for the “coloureds” and a packet of biscuits for everyone else. It was, apparently, a bit of harmless fun. This was in 2006. I could go on with more recent examples.
I’m not trying to be censorious, I’m just trying to explain a perspective whereby some people like me feel uncomfortable and may react negatively when a banana is used as an insult because of this long association with racism.
stewartsays
Your sensitivity to racial overtones is understandable, given what you write, but the issue is clear-cut. Islam is a religion and not a race. While you may have encountered a situation in which Islam was synonymous with a darker skin colour, that is by no means always the case. The banana is in there as nonsensical mockery, because something had to start with “b” (and I decided against an earlier idea of someone mooning through the black hole). Since this is about religion and not race, the connotation of bananas is more in the direction of Ray Comfort (Islam is creationist), but that would’ve been too far to stretch. I trust you will agree that a tendency to equate opposition to Islam with racism is something that ought to be fought, on the simple grounds that it is both false and misleading (the two are not quite identical and I mean them both separately).
haitiedsays
That’s just sad Jaggington. :c
stewartsays
This is generally appropriate to this case, as well as to many others, and it’s a rare instance of something that sounds like an unconsidered insult being no more than the unvarnished truth.
Sheesh, you don’t read blogs for a week or 2 and a new meme pops up. Who would have guessed? Anyway, could someone explain the rash of PBUH mockery? Speaking as someone who is ignorant of how this started, it just seems like a snotty thing to do. Sort of: “Ha Ha! Look at us make fun of an acronym that Muslims use”. I’m really not getting the joke.
LOL!
Please excuse my ignorance. I’ve just searched for this PBUH as a meme but haven’t managed to discover how/where it started or much about it at all. I understand that it is mocking “Peace Be Upon Him”.
Unfortunately, my own interpretation of it is influenced by my experiences being brought up in Britain in the 70’s and 80’s. Throwing or waving bananas at black people was a form of racial abuse, along with monkey noises and gestures. In the 90’s and the 00’s I found bananas were still being used as a racist joke/insult in Britain (and also in Spain in the time I worked there). I had a stand up row with a work colleague at a meeting who saw fit to bring a bunch of bananas for the “coloureds” and a packet of biscuits for everyone else. It was, apparently, a bit of harmless fun. This was in 2006. I could go on with more recent examples.
I’m not trying to be censorious, I’m just trying to explain a perspective whereby some people like me feel uncomfortable and may react negatively when a banana is used as an insult because of this long association with racism.
Your sensitivity to racial overtones is understandable, given what you write, but the issue is clear-cut. Islam is a religion and not a race. While you may have encountered a situation in which Islam was synonymous with a darker skin colour, that is by no means always the case. The banana is in there as nonsensical mockery, because something had to start with “b” (and I decided against an earlier idea of someone mooning through the black hole). Since this is about religion and not race, the connotation of bananas is more in the direction of Ray Comfort (Islam is creationist), but that would’ve been too far to stretch. I trust you will agree that a tendency to equate opposition to Islam with racism is something that ought to be fought, on the simple grounds that it is both false and misleading (the two are not quite identical and I mean them both separately).
That’s just sad Jaggington. :c
This is generally appropriate to this case, as well as to many others, and it’s a rare instance of something that sounds like an unconsidered insult being no more than the unvarnished truth.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=724184270933370&l=e40ff5725d
Sheesh, you don’t read blogs for a week or 2 and a new meme pops up. Who would have guessed? Anyway, could someone explain the rash of PBUH mockery? Speaking as someone who is ignorant of how this started, it just seems like a snotty thing to do. Sort of: “Ha Ha! Look at us make fun of an acronym that Muslims use”. I’m really not getting the joke.