Pearl Harbor vs. Islamic New Year

Apparently, the Islamic New Year is going to fall on December 7th this year. It does that occasionally, or so I'm told.

The problem with this is that a lot of Americans think of December 7th as Pearl Harbor Day, first and foremost. And so, today a story in the Tampa Bay paper begins with, "Bowing to complaints from angry customers, Publix has agreed to remove a free 2010 calendar from its stores that mentions the beginning of the Islamic new years on Dec. 7 but not the anniversary of Pearl Harbor."

I found the basic idea quite frustrating. It's a free calendar, so obviously it's not enough for offended customers to boycott it - they have to call Publix (a local grocery store) and complain until Publix removes the calendar from their stores. Publix has no plans to replace the calendar, for which I really can't blame them - so this year there will simply be no Publix Calendar or the coupons that come with it.

If some sort of twisted logic was on the side of the offended, it might be easier to take. But, as Publix has explained, the Islamic New Year is a holiday, while the anniversary of Pearl Harbor... just isn't. The calendar has not previously listed the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, although it does list Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, and it has never recieved complaints about this before.

"Kaufman said she objected because she didn't want World War II veterants "to be disappointed" and because she views Muslims as "an enemy who declared war on us," Kaufman told the St. Petersburg Times.

Furthermore, she said, she thought it was inappropriate to have holidays for people from the Caribbean and Central and South America on the calendar....

"Why pander to Islamics and people from Peru, Belize, Cuba, and Haiti?" she said on the phone. "It's irrelevant in America.""