Sunny Hundal has been busy blitzing the media with an interesting debate about minority (mis) representation. His ‘manifesto’ is published in today’s Guardian. More debate can be found at his comment is free site, and at Pickled Politics. Click here…

Not true. Dr Julian Bashir from DS9 was of Middle-Eastern ethnicity. Not sure if he was a Muslim, though.

=>”Weren’t the Romulans a bit Asian?
Funny enough they also had a controversial cloaking device”

So did the Klingons, who were partly based on (somewhat exaggerated versions of) Sikhs, amongst various other “warlike” groups.

From Prince to Star Trek. That’s quite an off-topic tangent to this thread.

There’s gonna be a funny wee guy pop up any minute and reprimand you for not differentiating between Muslims who wear the veil and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, who don’t in your amusing star trek related comment.

“The Iranian ambassador to the UN had just finished giving a speech and walked out into the lobby where he met the United States ambassador John Bolton.

They exchanged pleasantries and as they walked the Iranian said, “You know I have just one question about what I have seen in America.Ambassador Bolton said, “Well anything I can do to help you, I will.”

The Iranian whispered, “My son watches this show ‘Star Trek’ and in it there is Chekhov who is Russian, Scotty who is Scottish, and Sulu who is Chinese, but no Iranians. My son is very upset and doesn’t understand why there aren’t any Arabs or Muslims on Star Trek.”

Bolton laughed, leaned toward the Iranian ambassador and whispered back, “It’s because Star Trek takes place in the future.”

By all means point out that a ‘climate of fear’ has led to scapegoating and grandstanding, that much is observably true. But don’t imply that this fear and distrust is a purely irrational feeling that arrived out of nowhere; it has been assiduously cultivated over a long period of time mainly by radical islamists and more latterly by bandwagonning bigots.

If you find that kind of thing plausible, I’m not sure there’s much to be said.

At least in that article, she is making her claim explicit, rather than sliding over it as something not to be mentioned. Now, maybe it doesn’t need to be mentioned a dozen times, or in every context, but when someone writes 5000 words on the topic of ‘why do they hate america?’ without once mentioning the word ‘CIA’, then it’s reasonable to point out they were kind of wasting their time if they were trying to persuade anyone south of the Rio Grande of their point of view.

That line actually made me laugh out loud in the office, now I have to explain why to the curious folk nearby…:D