Ed: Following is a letter that we’ve sent to Patrick French, a writer at The Daily Mail, concerning his article Sunday entitled “The Surprising Truth About Rage Boy, America’s Hated Poster Boy Of Islamic Radicalism.”

Dear Mr. French:

We read with great interest your article on Sunday about Islamic Rage Boy (“The surprising truth about Rage Boy, America’s Hated Poster Boy Of Islamic Radicalism”). Had you contacted us, or any of the other websites that poke fun at Islamic fundamentalism, you might have discovered the true story behind Islamic Rage Boy, and not simply published a one-sided puff-piece about Shakeel Bhat.

We are the editors of The Nose On Your Face, the website that coined the term “Islamic Rage Boy” (not to be confused with the politically-correct “Rage Boy”), and one of the American websites that you take great pains not to mention in your article, yet from which you draw the majority of the quotes and examples supporting your argument that Americans are engaged in a campaign of hatred against Mr. Bhat.

Stunningly, besides neglecting to mention–or even attempting to speak with–us, you also fail to point out that we are a humor-satire-parody website: not an insignificant frame of reference with regard to the material you cited. We can only conclude that you did not contact us because our input would have interfered with your portrayal of Mr. Bhat as a pathetic, tragic hero under hateful attack from the odious conservative blogosphere in the United States.

So allow us to raise a few points.

• Islamic Rage Boy and Shakeel Bhat are not one in the same. Islamic Rage Boy is a fictional, satirical character, created and copyrighted by The Nose On Your Face (the image we use for Islamic Rage Boy is an illustration). Yes, Mr. Bhat provided the visual inspiration for IRB, but after that, any similarities are coincidental, at least on our website.
• Islamic Rage Boy is not a symbol of, as you say, “all that we fear and despise about Islamic fundamentalism.” To the contrary. Islamic Rage Boy is a comic concept, the humorous embodiment of all that is wrong with Islamic fundamentalism. It is a deliberate effort to fight primitive savagery with laughter. That your piece misses this critical point is staggeringly careless and journalistically suspicious.
• You call the decal we designed (”Honk If You Like the Tender Embrace Of A Mountain Goat On A Chilly Star-Filled Evening”) “a popular American bumper sticker.” This is simply preposterous; we’ve sold seven of them.
• Our Islamic Rage Boy material includes: song parodies, op-ed pieces, advice columns, and the aforementioned bumper stickers (along with t-shirts, mugs, etc.). Whether anyone finds these funny is certainly debatable, however, the fact that it is intended as satire/parody is not open for debate. Again, a point you failed to make in your article.

You seem to have set out to prove that Shakeel Bhat does not live up to the concept of Islamic Rage Boy. We agree, and had you contacted us, we could have saved you a trip to India (but then you wouldn’t have been able to enjoy Shakeel Bhat’s brother covering you with a blanket against the Kashmiri cold).

Putting aside your predisposition to all things Islam, though, we must take issue with your inexplicable conclusion that Mr. Bhat’s failure to live up to the notion of Islamic Rage Boy somehow proves that Islamic fundamentalism is either inept or rare.

If, as you say, “Osama Bin Laden has hijacked Islam from the vast majority of the world’s Muslims,” then why is the vast majority allowing a handful of extremists to be the dominant voice of Islam? Where is their outrage? This, Mr. French, is the pivotal issue, because until that vast majority of Muslims let themselves be heard, their silence speaks volumes. And by evidently writing this article with your mind already made up, and failing to even broach the other side of the story, you’ve fallen into step as yet another “useful idiot” in the Islamic propaganda effort.

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