It seems they’ve dubbed The Simpsons for TV in the Middle East. Among things cut from the show are Homer drinking and eating bacon and any mention of Krusty being Jewish.

I’m not sure about this. Taking out everything that isn’t consisent with an Islamic Homer (or Omar as they’re calling him) is perfectly natural, but taking out the references to religion is different. As far as I can tell, it means one or more of the following a) it’s not OK to depict non-Muslims on TV b) it’s not OK that Omar is friends with non-Muslims c) it’s not even OK that there are non-Muslims in existence. In other words: bad stuff. So I was wondering, why does The Simpsons need a dose of racism and insularity to get a place on TV in the Middle East? Are people really that nuts that they can’t watch a Jew being Jewish? And are those who support the censorship ever going to be happy with the show? I mean, in the end, when all these compromises are made, it’s still going to be the Simpsons. It’s a symbol of everything western, and the people who watch it probably won’t mind seeing non-Islamic values.

I don’t just want to question religious conservatism here, but to ask whether this is how people in the Middle East really want television to be. Does the censoring of The Simpsons give us an accurate idea of the values of the audience? Or - conversely - does it create a false image in the hope that everyone, the audience and the outsiders, will see the Middle East in a certain way?

One of the prevailing misconceptions of our day is that everyone who isn’t white is a clone. We know people are wrong when they say we’re all decadents and infidels but we still think that all Muslims are fundamentalists. Does The Simpsons make them all angry? Or should we attribute to them more ambivalent hearts, beneath the convenient images held up by dogmatists eastern and western?