Comparisons to hate speech are immaterial. Jihad is not hate speech, not is it an incitement to or endorsement of violence. Jihad means “struggle,” and it almost always refers to an inner, spiritual struggle, not physocal violence. If there is a problem it’s that so many Americans are ignorant of the meaning and intent of the word, largely due to the grotesquely distorted picture of Islam perpetuated by the media.
What if someone had “Onward Christian Soldiers” tatooed on his arm? Would that be an issue with anybody? Are tattoos of knives and guns (sometimes in conjunction with Christian sentiments) not commonplace? What if someone had a Knights of Columbus tatoo? Hey, knights are soldiers, are they not? The KC’s must be inciting violence.
Not a “community Religious Studies program”, a ‘conference with community leaders designed to address the concers of local residents’. Those seem standard for any large police department. Allegations that cops are using racial profiling? Conference. Officers shoot a suspect who turns out to be unarmed? Conference. Officers shoot unmedicated schizophrenic? Conference.
I’m sure the NYPD already has a list of people they contact when they want to adress Jewish concerns, another list for Christian concerns, and another list for Muslim concerns. These people are invited to a meeting which is not open to the general public. Once their worries are taken care of, these community leaders tell their congregations and neighborhoods not to worry.
If they reject a recruit on the basis of an Islamic tatoo, they’ll have even more problems.
By thta logic, we’d allow swastikas and the words “Aryan pride.” After all, the original meaning of they symbol and the word “Aryan” had nothing to do with Nazis. If there is a problem it’s that so many Americans are ignorant of their meaning and intent, no?
This statement is a complete non-sequitur from anything I said. I wasn’t talking about some obscure origin from antiquity, I was talking about what a term has always meant and still means now in Islam. The word jihad has no connotations which are either hateful or violent. A better analogy for you would be those hate groups who take the Christian cross as a symbol for white supremacy. Those fringe groups who use jihad as call to violence are hijacking the word every bit as much as the “Christian Identity” movement hijacks the cross. Should tattoos of crosses be allowed?
Fine with me. That’s just bad taste, not hate speech.
I think we are missing a middle ground here. On the one hand, some are arguing that the guy has an Islamic tattoo, so he should be banned. On the other, people are arguing that he has a right to whatever tattoo he wants, freedom of speech, yadda, yadda, yadda.
But certainly we can allow tattoos, but subject people with questionable tattoos or other such associations to extra scrutiny. What wrong with doing an extra-thorough background check on this particular guy before we let him join the police force? I’d think that if he were really a hate-crazed Islamic fundamentalist on a deep-cover assignment he probably wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo that identifies him as a hate-crazed Islamic fundamentalist. But if he is an Islamic nutcase a little background investigation should be able to turn that up. If he’s not, then let him join the police force.
No blanket ban on tattoos, no pretending that the tattoo doesn’t raise concerns either. Just a little common sense. Investigate him, if he turns out to be a nut don’t let him be a cop, if he turns out to be OK then let him be a cop.
The issue is not merely the possibility of him being a nut, but the problem of the way it will be percieved by the people he is charged with serving and protecting. If you are a little old Jewish lady, an Arab policeman with a prominent “Jihad” tattoo will not instill confidence. For that matter, I think lots of people, especially in NYC, would be disquieted by it.
I (and plenty of scholars of the Middle East) would take serious issue with DtC’s description of the historic meaning of the word “jihad,” but that’s to one side; the far more relevant fact is that the claim that in the present it “has no connotations which are either hateful or violent” is laughably absurd. Most people are busy with their own affairs and have not undertaken a thorough study of Muslim history. Nonetheless they do manage to switch on the news occasionally, whereupon they are introduced to the word “Jihad” by numerous groups who use it in the sense of the “violent death to infidels.” That is the only context in which they have heard it used, and it is only natural that they should understand it in that sense.
Even if we should grant that such a usage is ahistorical, the fact remains that for the vast majority of the non-muslim world, that’s what the term has come to mean. The word, if you will forgive me, has been hijacked by the extremists, and we must deal with it as such.
The analogy to the swastika is quite apt: far from having an “obscure origin from antiquity,” the swastika is still very currently in use in large parts of Asia: buy any map in that part of the world and you’ll see the location of temples marked with little swastikas. If a devout Hindu or Muslim were looking for a religious tattoo, a swastika would be a natural choice. Nonetheless, it’s fairly obvious that the vast majority of the populace, upon seeing the swastika, thinks of something else. Regrettable and a sign of ignorance on the part of Joe Six-pack, if you like; but public policy must sadly deal with the populace we have, not the one we would like.
I strongly suspect the police department would forbid a Buddhist officer from sporting a swastika tattoo; not because he is a Nazi, but because it is ragingly obvious that people will think he is. Similarly, a Jihad tattoo is out of line, not because the officer is likely a fundamentalist, but because it is ragingly obvious that people will think or at least suspect that he is.
And to forestall the obvious, sophmoric, reductio, I repeat my earlier formula: “recruits may be disqualified for presenting a physical appearence that may reasonably be expected to alarm, frighten or disturb a significant portion of the populace.”
For the vast majority of Muslims, the word jihad has no more sinister implication than the image of the cross has for Christians. Both things have been misused by fringe groups and terrorists. Furt is merely proving my point about American ignorance of Islam.
The vast majority of Americans are not Muslim; and were we discussing appropriate body art for Coptic police officers in Cairo, I’d probably be against crosses with the word “Crusader” underneath them.
I believe this is an extremely naive interpretation of the tattoo in question. According to this wikipedia article, there are five kinds of jihad, one being “jihad by the sword”, i.e. holy war. The tattoo is said to depict a sword.
The local NPR host at the Pasadena station during the afternoon drive is Shirley Jihad. I’ve never heard her editorialize, so I don’t know what her political leanings are, but man, what a name to be stuck with in this day and age. It sounds like a character from a parody of the Nation of Islam. Still, I listen regularly.
Trivia: A prominent scholar in my (former) area of academic study is Ali Jihad Racy, from Lebanon. He is, to the best of my knowledge, Christian, as is his family.
