NEWS: Rage Boy Is Actually A Nice Boy

POLITICS: Rage Boy Is Actually A Nice Boy

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Rage Boy, but you should have. He is very popular and has become the poster boy for radical Islam after having been photographed at many demonstrations. Over the years, Rage Boy has been photographed at protests against Salman Rushdie, the Kashmir government, Pope Benedict XVI, Danish anti-Muslim cartoons, Kashmir state elections and to stop the execution of a Muslim man. He always has the same crazy, bursting with anger look on his face and it makes for one hell of a photo.

Conservatives have jumped on Rage Boy as an example of what we are up against. It’s the face of crazy, belligerent rage! Eternal idiot Christopher Hitchens explained.

The amazingly retarded Michelle Malkin jumped on board the Rage Boy train and used his picture for her policital message. They love him over at Jihad Watch. (What idiot goes to a sight called "Jihad Watch?" Rage Boy became the visual for everything they hate and fear about Muslims.

And now you can buy Rage Boy T-shirts, mugs, clocks, shorts and bumper stickers. He’s the perfect symbol of everything those Islamofascists are and what we should fear. The comments on the right wing message boards show the lemmings eat it up.

I’m sure it does. Too bad Rage Boy’s real story doesn’t match the right wing created monster.

A reporter for the Daily Mail went to the city of Srinagar in Kashmir and found Rage Boy, whose name is Shakeel Ahmad Bhat. Bhat has not had the best life in the world. He was raised in a religious family who followed a tolerant form of Islam called Sufi. His father taught him to spread Islam by peaceful means.

He dropped out of school at 10. When he was 13, Indian soldiers broke into his home looking for militants and threw his 18-year-old sister out a window. She died four years later from her injuries, which included a broken spine. Bhat decided to join the rebels fighting India.

He went to a training camp and fought, but never killed anyone. He even tried to talk his fellow militants out of killing people, which is bad if your profession is killing people.

At 16, he was arrested and tortured. Ever since, he has been unable to lift anything with his right arm, which means he relies on his family to survive. Today he is 29, not married, unemployed and does not know how to read or write, but he does love a good protest.

Dude loves to get a bunch of people together and shout, who the fuck doesn't? He didn’t think Rushdie should be knighted because he is a “Muslim basher,” big deal. Sounds like something Christians here in America would say -- after their “War on Christmas” ends. He hates to hear about terrorist attacks.

After his face became the poster boy for the right wing, he began apprearing appearing on T-shirts and mugs, the local cops asked him to stop going to demonstrations. That is pretty harsh. What the fuck else is Rage Boy supposed to do? Did I mention he doesn’t have a job, a wife, or know how to read or write? And now you want him to stop screaming in the street? Fuck off.

Although, one officer did offer Bhat a government job with a wife tossed in and he turned it down. (Now I’m worried about him.)

Bhat is aware of his fame because friends have shown him the pictures, many of which have been photoshopped in some not so flattering ways. And it kind of bums him out.

See, now I want to hug Rage Boy. This dude is just uneducated, poverty stricken and handicapped. I guess the right wing will have to find another poster boy for Islamic rage. Or, maybe they won't.

Right, you totally got the gist of it, you right wing asshole. A reporter went to a dangerous place and actually did his job and you call him a liar. At the same time you totally miss the point of the article: He’s just a fucking human being who has had a shit life and is a threat to nobody. He is a political activist who actually goes out and starts protests against shit that pisses him off, like police brutality and people talking shit about his religion. And because he takes a great action photo, he has become the symbol of something he is not. I kinda like Rage Boy, myself, and I'd like to extend an invitation to Thanksgiving.

I dare you to formalize that invitation.

Take that story and apply it to an American and you have a hero.

im picturing a tshirt

with a graphic of rage boy, above his head, but behind his fist, the words, in a kind of college font:
"I wanna ROCK!" maybe photoshopping his hand into the devil horns thing?

He ought to sue for use of his likeness, then turn around and use the funds to further his protests.

I know I'm not helping matters here, but common this is kinda funny.

oh king mob, i can NOT let that go!

I was thinking something more like this:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Back on topic, though, I'd never heard of this guy before today, of course. But then, I really do try not to follow GWOT-booster propaganda.

I thank you for wading through that swill to bring me an actual story, FTR, and one which shows the humanity (flawed, of course, as whose is not?) of the guy I just mocked mercilessly.

islam is a helluva drug!

I haven't seen any references to Sparta yet...

I loved it!

said the thirty year old suicide... girl?
ever wish you could rebrand missy?

If anyone on here puts up one with him screaming SPARTA! I swear to God, I don't even know what I would do, but it would be terrible and final.

Ahem...Anyway. My mom is Sufi (sort of, she studied at a Sufi school). I always wonder when people talk about how much Muslims love violence or whatever, if they've ever even heard of Sufi.

Considering that Dubya didn't even really know there was a difference between Sunnis and Shiites before he started using our military to intervene in that sectarian dispute, I'd say generally not. Sufism is relatively obscure in the West.

...and delusional, but that's not the point.

People should understand how many protesters have boredom as their primary motivation. People who haven't protested probably won't understand the thrill of protesting; westerners have a hard time grasping the level of social pressure in a tribal culture and the boredom level of a young man with no job and no videogames or interporn.

probably because it doesn't even exist! peaceful islam? pffft.

Addendum: anyone who has protested will recognize the camera tricks the press uses to mislead the public regarding the size of demonstrations. Hitchens has that much correct, and I also generally dislike hypersensitive people be they Christian, Muslim, or Feminist.

and you just became mine.

What a shock.

I think that makes him the perfect poster boy for Islamic rage. Not in the weird, wanky, cheesy, miss-the-point sort of way that the 'merican right are indulging in, but terrorist organisations do rely on poverty, frustrastion, failed states and brown zones to spread their ideology. If you look at a person like this as an example of 'Islamic rage', it might give some good ideas on how to reduce the 'rage' (assuaging poverty and alienation).

Strangely, Sufi muslims aren't always entirely peaceful. One of my Sufi friends went to a terrorist training camp - although his dad did kick his arse when he found out.

On the one hand, I have a strong distaste for the kind of smug attitude that leads people to assume that this guy is some kind of violent proto-terrorist and that his ilk fill the streets and tenements of every backwards non-Christian nation. He and every guy like him that shows up on Fox news to scare the shit out of middle America are just people with unique and fucked up lives and without knowing about those lives its really easy to hate them.

On the other hand, those poor idiots in Kansas or Montana or wherever who assume this guy is Bin Laden's nephew and out to kill their children are also the result of unique and fucked up lives and without knowing about those lives it's pretty easy to hate them as well. None of which stops FTR or any of a million other blog pundits from mocking them mercilessly whenever they vote republican or freak out on an airplane or something. Shit, if they were illiterate, unwed and unemployed would just be more grounds for mockery most of the time.

Vote Rage Boy '08!

Also, it hasn't really been mentioned (I don't think), but Sufism is pretty much the mystical arm of Islam. They're the one's that do the whirling dervish dance to get in contact with the universe. They be cool if you ask me.