Tolerance Venture Accused of Promoting Intolerance

A UK charity has sparked a religious war with a comic strip aimed at promoting tolerance. The latest issue of Who Cares? Trust magazine Klic! features Standing Up For What You Believe In, in which a cross-wearing Christian bullies a Muslim girl for wearing a hijab. The key scene (image above):

In a cartoon strip, a boy wearing a large cross around his neck is shown telling a friend that a smiling Muslim girl in a veil looks like a terrorist.

He later confronts her and shouts: "Hey, whatever your name is, what are you hiding under your turban?"

She replies that the garment is called a hijab and that it is part of her religion "like the cross you wear".

The girl is then shown standing up for another boy, who is being bullied, and her behaviour is contrasted with that of the boy wearing the cross.

Some Christians are in an uproar over being stereotyped as bigots, and the fact that the charity receives a substantial amount of funding from the government is only stoking the fire.

The charity's intriguing response: the cross is not a reference to Christians.

Who Cares? Trust chief executive Natasha Finlayson described the cross as "bling" rather than a religious symbol.

Via Robot 6