A Singapore couple has been charged with distributing a Chick Tract. The tract in question, The Little Bride, features a Muslim boy trying to convert two young Christian girls (presumably to marry both of them, I suppose). One of the girls’ grandfathers explains to them why Islam is wrong, Mohammed is a person who married a 9 year old girl, and various other things that are pretty offensive to Muslims.
One of the couple has been charged under the Sedition Act, and the other under the Offensive Publications Act. They distributed them to two apparently Muslim people.
There are lots of interesting points in this. First, yesterday I looked at the Chick website and found the tract in question quite easily. It was slimy, as they all are, but also pretty risible, as they also are. Today I looked again, to refresh my memory, and I get an error message. In fact, in each language in which the Chick tract is published I get an error message. It seems to have been taken down. I wonder if there is a connection between this story and the removal of the tract. I do understand that the website was unavailable in Singapore through a bar by their government web proxy.
Second, Singapore is full of evangelical Protestants as well as a shedload of Roman Catholics. I suspect they won’t be too happy that two of their evangelists have been arrested for spreading the Word of God. They may actually do the unthinkable and lobby the government a bit.
Third, the tract in question (in my humble opinion) is likely to cause unrest in Muslim communities and particularly in Singapore, where there was a history of religious violence that only ended 40 years ago or so and still bubbles under the surface. The tract makes a disparaging reference to Muslim countries having the crescent moon on their flags (and there is such a crescent moon on Singapore’s flag, connected with its history as a Malay settlement up until a century or so ago). This will be highly offensive to Singaporeans of whatever religion.
Evangelisation is often best carried out by the example that Christians make of their own lives. Chick Tracts are a Southern Babtist’s idea of how to spread the Gospel. I don’t think they translate very well to Singaporean culture and society.
nowadays, singapore has got more Assemblies of God and Pentecostal christians than the other denominations.
I must allow a small amount of schadenfreude here. I’ve always found Chick tracts offensive, and nothing to do with my religion, though they call it by the same name. I think it’s very interesting that you were able to find it online, and then evidence that they’ve removed it.
would that there was a method as easy to get them all away
Goodness…things have changed from the mid 1990’s, then. My ex was Presbyterian and told me that most were either Presbyterian or Methodist. Thanks for telling me. I shall edit the entry accordingly.
Roman Catholics, as a rule, aren’t terribly thrilled with Jack Chick either, considering that a few of his tracts refer to the RCC as the Whore of Babylon, and the Pope as the Anti-Christ.
(Back in my Catholic days, I was amused to leave the church building, go to my car, and find a full-length comic book blasting Catholics. Did you know that priests in the Vatican regularly torture, rape, and kill nuns and bury the bodies underneath the building?)
well i think the catholics will think differently when they dig out the chick tracts that talks about catholicism.
this is why there is so much misinformation – the road to hell is paved with good intentions.