Muslim Exchange Student Attempts Humour in America...

It's strange that for many people, cultural sensitivity only ever works one way.

Take the following incident which occurred in Niceville, Florida:

When international exchange student Jawdat “J.D.” Kasab wrote “Death to America” on a board inside a Niceville High School classroom, he had no inkling of the havoc the phrase would cause.

It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t a promise. It was just a joke, he said.

Jawdat, a Muslim, was sent back to his home in Israel on Friday evening after officials in the exchange program he was enrolled in told him he had been dismissed over the incident, which occurred about a month earlier.

“I’m sorry that I did that,” Jawdat said during a phone call Monday from Israel. “I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of terrorist because the people who know me, they know I’m not. I’d like for them to give me another chance to come back and show them that I’m not.”

Jawdat arrived in Niceville four months ago as part of the Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES) through AYUSA Global Youth Exchange. The incident that got him sent home occurred in early November inside an art classroom at the high school.

“We were in class, we had nothing to do; we were joking around and we wanted to do something funny,” Jawdat said. “I didn’t think something would happen.”

He said he told the group he was going to write the phrase, which they often jokingly said to each other, up on the board in Arabic.

“I am the one who translated it, not anyone else,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything.”

Jawdat’s friends laughed and he erased the phrase moments after it was written, he said.

Later the story of him writing the phrase was recounted by another student and brought to the attention of school officials. School officials asked Jawdat what happened; he told them and was suspended for two days, he said.

He thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. On Nov. 30, AYUSA sent Jawdat the letter informing him he had to leave the country.

Hmm.

Whilst the individual in question may have genuinely been joking, what made him think such humour was appropriate in an American classroom?

After all, thousands of Americans and other Westerners have been slaughtered in the name of such sentiments, part of an on-going Jihad against them and all infidels.

Oddly, this story hasn't been picked up in Britain, probably because it doesn't teach us anything useful, I expect.

Imagine the outcry in papers such as the Guardian if a British exchange student in India made an insensitive joke about the British Raj? Or, God forbid, a British person in an Islamic country made a joke about Islam?

Then it would be time for self-flagellation, handwringing, and many long rants about how evil and racist we are.

Even the American article is written as if this incident is trivial, when I expect anyone telling a joke about Islam might find themselves facing prosecution in several Western countries.

Some jokes just aren't funny, and context is important - but a strong reaction, or rather lack of it, seems to show just what is important to our masters.