 The
German Family Ministry is pushing to have a book it says slurs
Judaism, Christianity and Islam labelled dangerous for children.
The book's publisher says kids have a right to enlightenment.
The German Family Ministry is pushing for the children's book
How Do I Get to God, Asked the Small Piglet, by written by
Michael Schmidt-Salomon and illustrated by Helge Nyncke, to be
included on a list of literature considered dangerous for young
people.
The three large religions of the world, Christianity, Islam
and Judaism, are slurred in the book, the ministry wrote in
a December memo. The distinctive characteristics of each
religion are made ridiculous.
The book tells the story of a piglet and a hedgehog, who
discover a poster attached to their house that says: If you
do not know God, you are missing something!
This frightens them because they had never suspected at all that
anything was missing in their lives. Thus they set out to look
for "God." Along the way they encounter a rabbi, a bishop and a
mufti who are portrayed as insane, violent and continually at
each other's throats.
The rabbi is drawn in the same way as the caricatures from the
propaganda of 1930's Germany; corkscrew curls, fanatical lights
in his eyes, a set of predator's flashing teeth and hands like
claws. He reacts to the animals by flying into a rage, yelling
at them that God had set out to destroy all life on Earth at the
time of Noah and chases them away.
The mufti fares little better. While he greets both animals at
first as a quiet man and invites them into his mosque, he soon
changes into a ranting fanatic. He assembles a baying Islamic
mob and holds the animals up in a clenched fist while condemning
them to everlasting damnation through bared teeth and an
unruly-looking beard.
The bishop, a pale fat man with a clearly insinuated
predilection for child abuse, makes up the unholy trinity which
eventually convinces piglet and hedgehog, after they have
survived the long search in the maze of religions, that nothing
of any importance has been missing from their lives.
I think that God doesn't even exist, the hedgehog says at
the end of the book. And if He does, than he definitely
doesn't live in [a synagogue, cathedral or mosque].
Published in October 2007, the 20-page book's publisher, Alibri,
said it was aware it was risking a political battle when it
published the book.
Calling the ministry's accusations an attack on freedom of
expression, the publisher said the book answers the question
of whether a nonreligious child is missing part of life from
the perspective of secular humanism. Schedel added that the
book is intended for nonreligious parents looking to provide
their children with a critical view of religion.
The German department responsible for reviewing children's
literature is scheduled to discuss whether the book presents a
danger to children's upbringing in a March meeting.
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