{"id":2788,"date":"2008-09-24T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T09:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/saudi-leader-mickey-mouse-is-one-of-satans-soldiers.html"},"modified":"2008-09-24T09:15:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T09:15:00","slug":"saudi-leader-mickey-mouse-is-one-of-satans-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/saudi-leader-mickey-mouse-is-one-of-satans-soldiers.html","title":{"rendered":"Saudi leader: “Mickey Mouse is one of Satan’s soldiers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular readers may remember that The Deacon’s Wife and Your Humble Blogger spent several days back in June at Disney World. (My account of the trip can be read right here<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

So imagine my horror when I read this news<\/a>: <\/p>\n

<\/a> “Is Mickey Mouse an agent of Satan?”. This is the question being asked today in an editorial in the Middle East Times, commenting on the fatwa issued by a Saudi religious leader, Sheikh Mohammed al-Munajid, according to whom “sharia, or Islamic law, calls for the extermination of all mice. That includes the common house mouse as well as the famous cartoon mouse”. <\/p>\n

“The mouse”, the sheikh explained in a television interview reported by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, “is one of Satan’s soldiers and is steered by him”.<\/p>\n

The newspaper uses these comments as an occasion to ask King Abdullah, who is making efforts to bring greater moderation to Islam and foster interreligious dialogue, to find a way to rein in these “experts”, who are often interviewed on television, and give religion a bad name with this “saga of outrageous fatwas”.<\/p>\n

The editorial recalls that Al-Munajid was a member of the department of Islamic affairs for the Saudi embassy in Washington, before being “cashiered and sent back to Saudi Arabia”. <\/p>\n

The editorial says: “The problem is that he – and others like him – continues to make harebrained statements such as this one, or yet his earlier rant of Aug. 10 when he took on the Beijing Summer Olympics. The sheikh decried the world’s major sporting event as the ‘Bikini Olympics’ and lashed out at the ‘immodest dress’ worn by female athletes. He is reported to have issued a fatwa banning women competing in the Olympics; an event he also labeled ‘satanic'”. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regular readers may remember that The Deacon’s Wife and Your Humble Blogger spent several days back in June at Disney World. (My account of the trip can be read right here.) So imagine my horror when I read this news: “Is Mickey Mouse an agent of Satan?”. This is the question being asked today in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nSaudi leader: "Mickey Mouse is one of Satan's soldiers" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/saudi-leader-mickey-mouse-is-one-of-satans-soldiers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saudi leader: "Mickey Mouse is one of Satan's soldiers" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Regular readers may remember that The Deacon’s Wife and Your Humble Blogger spent several days back in June at Disney World. 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This is the question being asked today in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/saudi-leader-mickey-mouse-is-one-of-satans-soldiers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-24T09:15:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SNo-imkZbqI\/AAAAAAAADB0\/TFbySVvK8U4\/s320\/344px-Mickey_Mouse.svg.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Saudi leader: \"Mickey Mouse is one of Satan's soldiers\" - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/09\/saudi-leader-mickey-mouse-is-one-of-satans-soldiers.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Saudi leader: \"Mickey Mouse is one of Satan's soldiers\" - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Regular readers may remember that The Deacon’s Wife and Your Humble Blogger spent several days back in June at Disney World. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}