-Saying ‘God Bless You’ Is Microaggression Against Muslims?
by Dr. D ~ March 22nd, 2018
According to a college guide, saying ‘God bless you’ is considered a ‘microaggression’ against Muslims and should be avoided along with many other greetings like ‘Merry Christmas.’ From the Christian Post:
A college in Boston has prepared an "Anti-Oppression Library Guide" so that no one is offended on campus. It lists "saying ‘God bless you’ after someone sneezes" as a "microaggression" against Muslim people, and "Merry Christmas" as an offensive phrase.
The guide, prepared by college librarians at Simmons College, "is intended to provide some general information about anti-oppression, diversity, and inclusion as well as information and resources for the social justice issues key to the Simmons College community."
It states that "Islamomisic Microaggressions are commonplace verbal or behavioral indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults in relation to the beliefs and religious practices of Muslims."
Response: So now traditional cultural responses like ‘God bless you” and ‘Merry Christmas’ must be eliminated in order to accommodate Muslims? At least by the students going to Simmons College.
The imperative here goes beyond combating Islamophobia. So now even vestiges and examples of the Christian faith in this culture, that might be offensive to Muslims, are designated by this college guide to be ‘Islamomisic Microaggression’ or in plain language- ‘hate speech.’
This demand does not merely combat offensive language. It places Islam, Muslims, and Muslim culture in a dominant position over everyone else to dictate what is offensive, blasphemy, and hate speech. So the Muslims are now to be the arbiters of what is acceptable and what is wrong in America?
Meanwhile, Christians saying a very traditional American greeting like ‘Merry Christmas’ are cast as haters and promoters of ‘Islamomisic Microaggression.’ I am offended by this guide because conservative Christians and traditional Christian speech are obviously not part of the ‘diversity and inclusion’ that it intends to accomplish but the target it is trying to eliminate and demonize. *Top
March 23rd, 2018 at 11:25 am
Here is a link to the actual guide:
https://simmons.libguides.com/anti-oppression
Chapters include:
anti-oppression
anti-racism
anti-transmisia (which, I gather, is “oppression of transgendered”
anti-ableism
anti-islamomisia
anti-sanism (which apparently is discrimination against those who are neurologically non-standard)
anti-queermisia (which I thought they covered above with anti-transmisia?)
and finally “social justice zines”
Oddly, there is no entry for Anti-Christianomisia which I would certainly have EXPECTED to find here….