WS Chronicle

On Feb. 28, Hollywood released a new movie, “Son of God.”

Obviously, it is a story about the great Christ Jesus, whom some say is God and others say is the son of God. Most Christians believe that Jesus is both God and the Son of God.

Jesus Christ has been portrayed for hundreds of years as Caucasian, a white man. Until recently, he has mostly been shown with blond hair and blue eyes. Today, you may see him pictured with brown hair and brown eyes, but almost always, still as a Caucasian man.

If Jesus is God and Jesus is white, then God is white. If Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is white, his father’s white; therefore, God must be white. This is the undeniable message that is communicated when God is portrayed this way.

In the early to mid 1970s, an African American Muslim leader named Imam Warith Deen Mohammed asked several serious questions, including, “What do you think would happen to the world’s white people if they sat in churches from the time they were children until the day they died, generation after generation, for 400 years, with the image of a black man in front of them as the God who died to save them? What do you think this would do to their minds?”

He also posed this – “What do you think it does to the minds and hearts of white people who are taught from time they are children, generation after generation, for thousands of years, that Jesus is God, and they see that God looks like them and not like the darker people of the world? What does this do to their minds?”

Mohammed’s answer was that it would consciously and subconsciously promote feelings and thoughts of superiority in white people and inferiority in non-white people.
If we cannot remove racism from religion, how can we remove it from society and the world?

The obvious solution is to stop portraying God in this way in pictures, statues and movies. The image that is used for Jesus is not even the real image of the historical Jesus.

Dear people – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Caucasians, Latinos, Asians and Africans – it is not right to put God into a color, to say that He is in the image of one people to the exclusion of others. This cannot be moral. This is not godly. Let’s make no image of God.

It is our appeal to the Higher Voice within you to stand against this kind of thing. (I am) not asking anyone to stay away from the movie, but to be conscious of this wrong.

Some people think the images are harmless, but corporations spend millions of dollars for 30 seconds of advertising to get images of their products before your eyes. There is indeed an impact.

Let’s stand against racism in religion. Remove images portraying God as white or any other color.

Irshad Hasan, Guest Columnist