How Many Times Can We Say the Code Word: ‘ASIAN’
…in one article, in an attempt NOT to say ‘Muslim’?
Asian students’ shock at ejection from jet by passenger mutiny
Two Asian students have revealed their shock and despair after being thrown off a plane because other passengers feared they were suicide bombers.
• Mutiny as passengers refuse to fly until Asians are removed
‘Muslim’ is used twice ~ by the students themselves, who also persist in calling themselves…Asians first.
“We might be Asian, but we’re two ordinary lads who wanted a bit of fun,” Mr Ashraf told the Daily Mirror.
“Just because we’re Muslim does not mean we are suicide bombers.”
Kim Jong Il is ASIAN. Chairman Mao was ASIAN. Hideo Nomo is ASIAN. William Hung is ASIAN. You say ‘ASIAN’, most of the world thinks ‘Far East/Occidental’. By the Daily Mail’s reckoning, Mel Gibson is ASIAN. (I could call myself Gisele all night long, but that doesn’t make me ‘Bündchen‘.) (At least it hasn’t so far.)
Are we are going to be sensitive ~ turning ‘Muslim’ into the N-word of our times, even though, like ‘Jew’, it’s an ethnic and cultural fact vice a perjorative? Then how ’bout just plain old ‘Middle-Eastern’? Whatever happened to that?
Media | tree hugging sister | 
August 23, 2006 3:29 pm
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I think raghead works the best if not goat f****r. Gisele?! We need to talk…
I wonder just what, exactly, these “ordinary lads” mean by “a bit of fun.” Did they decide to arouse suspicion as a practical joke and then cry in the papers later on when it was taken seriously?
Neither report is very helpful – in fact, they seem to go out of their way to be unhelpful, except to note that they were dressed for winter despite the summer swelter.
“Asian” in British English generally means South Asian, i.e., Indian/Pakistani. And I wouldn’t be the first to accuse the Daily Mail of bowing to PC: it’s the right wing tabloid that most of the British “elite” of whatever political stripe regard as horrifying. The Daily Mail is the UK’s closest analog to the New York Post.
Dave J is right – to a Brit, Asian or Oriental means Indian or Pakistani. Another example of two countries divided by a common language.
You know, I’d have probably not even noticed all the ‘Asians’ if I hadn’t just heard a Brit on TV talking about how pissed the Hindus and Sikhs were about getting lumped in with Muslims by virtue of that very term.