Jack Chick trolls with the best of them, it’s true.
I wonder how much of what he says about syncretism between Islam and the older religion of the Arabian peninsula is true.
Does it matter? How many Christians or Jews care about the obvious borrowings of the Bible from older religions?
How common ARE Chick tracts though? I’ve only heard about them on the internet, and only when someone’s making fun of them.
For some reason SDMB has some Jack Chick fetish, but most people outside the SDMB don’t know the first thing about Jack Chick. And why then specifically Jack Chick? There are tons of stuff floating around the Internet that Muslims can become upset about if they wanted if they ever feel like they needed a reason. Wikipedia for instance. It contains some very un-Islamic things. Or Google. The German first lady just settled Google with a lawsuit for associating her name through the Google autocomplete feature with some Berlin whore. I just tried to enter “Muslims are” into Google, and it’s suggestions are “idiots,” “animals,” “racist,” and “disgusting.” “Mohammed is” gets you some nice suggestions too. Plenty of fodder for fatwas and riots that are more obvious than some two-bit dude nobody ever heard of.
Maybe it’s a regional thing, or maybe it’s because I went to college 30 years ago, but back then the college Christian groups liked to hand them out, or leave them lying around in libraries and classrooms. And often they were genuinely disappointed if you didn’t immediately convert after reading one, like the open-minded Muslim in the tract cited.
I asked about Chick tracts precisely because they are probably the most widely distributed anti-Muslim screeds in the world:
Oh, I don’t think most Muslims would listen. I was simply curious. It would give Islam’s founding the same kind of complexity that Christianity’s founding has.
Sooner or later, Jack Chick will have to face the facts: even Muslim extremists don’t take him seriously.
Biased source, don’t you think? As far as them being at the Smithsonian Institute, a google search yields the only source of that is Chick himself. :dubious:
And yeah, I’m guessing it’s a regional thing, TonySinclair, since I’ve NEVER seen one around here. But then, Pittsburgh isn’t a big fundie area. Not saying we don’t have our nutjobs, but they’re not that much of a presence. I think I’ve seen only a few religious tracts in my time left lying around, and none of them were Chick ones.
(One I found in a restroom stall back when I was working at Kmart. Probably the most appropriate place for it.)
This, I think. These sporadic outbursts of “Muslim anger” are anything but spontaneous; various Muslim religious leaders find it useful to whip up the mob now and then by grabbing some image or video from the West, altering it if necessary to make it more offensive, then waving it in front of his followers with the appropriate rhetoric to provoke them.
Guinastasia, Chick tracts may effectively be regional; they are certainly a sectarian thing. You have to have someone who’s actually bothering to distribute them. I saw a lot when I was a kid, but haven’t run across them much in years (except online, when someone links to them as something wacky or offensive).
And of course Chick really hates Catholics. And Freemasons. Those and Islam, to him it’s all one grand conspiracy out of the Antichrist in Rome.
I imagine in the northeast US, that kind of thing a) doesn’t have the fundie base, and b) is seen as counterproductive by many evangelicals. I think it’s seen as counterproductive by many evangelicals in the south; we just have enough evangelicals that a few people buy into it. And presumably some people sell his stuff (unread?) because it’s “Christian” and it’s cartoons, so nifty, right? If the major Christian sect in your area is Catholic, it doesn’t work.
I guess this means the real audience is fundie kids. And there’s a difference between those who swallow this whole and those who laugh at it–and those who eventually figure out it’s crap. :o
I always used to find Chick tracts on or around payphones, but since those are gone I haven’t been able to consistently find them in the wild. Every now and again I’ll get one under my windshield. Whoever hits our street once a month or so has these tracts that are similar content-wise (perhaps slightly less crazy) but feature bland airbrush-style art. Boring! I demand the genuine article!
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a Chick tract in a public restroom sometime in the last 10 years.
I’m pretty sure, though, that it was just the once.
I used to find them all the time at pay phones and in public restrooms when I was younger. I guess he’s losing popularity with Southern Baptists, his main fan base.
Here in California I’ve never seen a Chick tract in my life. They’re just something I’ve heard about on the internet.
I see them regularly in Texas with an upswing around election years. Public restrooms in Sears and JCPenny’s are the most common locations and sometimes of the waitstaff I know complain about receiving them inside of proper tips. I have also heard they show up in the restrooms of some gay clubs. I have always wondered if the person dropping those off wasn’t using distributing Chick Tracts as a cover for something else.
Man! That Virgin Mary (I think it’s Mary) in the row about 3/4 of the way down is a RED-HOT BABE!! Plus, she looks just like Kate Middleton.
Ironically enough, in Oregon in the 70’s, I saw them everywhere. When I moved back to Oklahoma, they were nowhere to be found.
They were much more popular in the 1960s-early 70s Fundamentalist & Evangelical circles and carried by big chain Christian bookstores. Then Chick got into Conspiracy theories- even then, the John Todd-Illuminati based tracts were few & far between. Then Chick met fake “ex-Jesuit” Alberto Rivera, with his tales of the Catholic Conspiracy behind EVERYTHING! And gradually the anti-Catholicism permeated too many of his tracts to ignore. Big chain Christian bookstores refused to carry them. More moderate Evangelicals stopped distributing them. Thus, they became much rarer in public. His fan base now are ultra-Fundamentalists, collectors like myself, and
those who have fun hating on him.
Definitely, especially Penney’s.
I’ve seen them handed out instead of Halloween candy within the past few years.