Seeing anti-Muslim Chick tracts in my neighborhood lately

[lawlifelgbt]

To preface this, I live in a gentrifying neighborhood, on the edge of a Somali-majority area of the city. In my apartment building, it's maybe about half students (with a good number of international ones, and some recent grads), with the other half or at least a sizable minority being Somali or other immigrants from Muslim countries. Go just two blocks over, and a lot of the signs are in both languages, and hours of shops and restaurants changed some for Ramadan this summer.

Anyway, so I was coming in the main entrance, and saw someone had put a tiny book on top of the call box. I had never seen a tract before, so I picked it up not knowing what it was.

It started out with a caricature of a Muslim dude refusing to accept Jesus. Then, he's dying, and gets his life reviewed, with frequent references to Allah and Islam. It also shows him saying bad things, lusting, etc. to show he was "evil" and God sees everything. Dude worries about this. The guy trying to convert him says that actually, all of that Islam stuff is wrong, and he needs to turn to Jesus. Dude does.

I don't have pictures, because of the ones I've seen (I also saw a few at a local coffee place and Target), I've thrown away. But they're all based around that same theme. I'm linking to the ones I saw below (not sure how to break them, sorry).

chick.com/reading/tracts/1031/1031_01.asp

chick.com/reading/tracts/1058/1058_01.asp

chick.com/reading/tracts/1086/1086_01.asp

I think throwing them out was probably the best thing to do with them, since I think if you go against someone's already-established religion like that, you'll only offend and hurt them. I have never even tried to convert anyone, but even if I were to, I wouldn't try it by convincing someone their established and large religion is entirely wrong! My best friend from when we were teenagers is a Pakistani-American Muslim, and I remember once asking my church's youth minister what to do about her. She told me not to "steal sheep," i.e. convert someone from another belief "flock," but that my friend was always welcome to join me for fun church stuff if her parents said it was okay (paintball, lunches, coffee, etc.) I don't even think I would convert or persuade anyone unless they were either atheist, agnostic, or nonpracticing, and they told me some version of "I'd like to be Christian." Just not my style.

Anyway, should I just keep tossing them, or try to find out who's distributing this crap, or what? If I see another one, I will try to remember to keep it for snark purposes.

[Arete]

Keep tossing. Even if you find the distributor, you won't be able to change their narrow minds. Caricatures of other religions are par for the course in Chick Tracks. They have hook nosed Jew caricatures, blinged out diamond cross cackling Eastern Orthodox prelate caricatures, lavicious pimped out Catholic priest caricatures.....I have seen some of the most hateful and derogatory representations of other cultures in the so called

"Christian" Chick Tracks. I don't even think Jack Chick believes they are an actual ministry. That is just the public gloss given to people who enjoy dehumanizing other groups but don't have the guts to own what they are really doing.

[browncoatslytherin]

i can't stand chick tracts. the attitude of "everything bad is because of a demon" and that every bad event is like some sort of devil conspiracy is just so out there and ridiculous...and yet apparently christians eat that shit up, because years and years later, they are still in business.

imho, to believe in something just because you are afraid of the consequences of believing in it is no reason to believe in it. and it seems like this is exactly what the chick tracts try to do, use scare tactics on gullible people.

on a side note, i was actually reading through some of their tracts a couple of weeks ago, just for shits and giggles cuz i was bored. and goddamn, if it's possible, they've gotten worse with the claims they make about certain religions and all the bullshit they push.

[blisterine]

They should put them in the bathroom. People will read anything while they are using the bathroom.

[lawlifelgbt]

So you can put shit in to replace the shit going out?

[DGayle]

Chick tracks are hilariously bad. My favorite might be the one that had the moral of Dungeons & Dragons makes people kill themselves because it's somehow the occult.

Just toss, or draw red devil horns on the Jesus character.

[Fenchurch]

This is not about the Chick tracts (which I could not even read because it made me so angry), but about a 'friend' I have on Facebook who posted something along the lines of :

"There are only 10.5% anti-Jewish passages in Mein Kampf and 15.7% in the Q'uran. :shock: "

(Not his exact words or percentages, but on the lines of that)

The guys is a 'pastor' and I am not sure if he is being pro-Nazi or anti-Muslim, but honestly think that that statement is just stupid?

I wanted to reply, so I looked up the statistics of Jewish deaths during WWII and deaths by Muslim terrorists, and could not find anything concrete regarding specifically Muslim terrorists, but even so, almost 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust and about 3000-4000 by "terrorist attacks" (not necessarily Muslim) since 1920.

I didn't reply because I wasn't actually sure what he was trying to get at....... But if was implying that Muslims are worse than the Nazi's then I have no hope left for him. I will keep a lookout for any more anti-Muslim rubbish.

Typical ignorant fundie, it's the words that matter, not the actions!

[Trynn]

Well, I did get through 2 chapters of Mein Kampf... I don remember anti Semitic stuff, but that was only the first 2 chapters.

[IronicallyMaeve]

I have a copy of Mein Kampf. When I bought it, I also got a copy of "Yiddish for Dick and Jane." The cashier glared at me the whole time.