The Religious Policeman

I'll include an "Arab News" cartoon from time to time. They do archive the news articles, but they don't archive the cartoons, and an immensely rich seam of Saudi humor is being lost for ever. I hope that this blog can become an invaluable reference source for untold generations.



Cartoon art critics and historians would regard this one as a particularly fine example of the "retro Nazi chic" school of cartoonry. Although some may find it rather derivative, the juxtaposition of the classic "Uncle Sam" figure with the pseudo-1930's "Ugly Jew" motif makes for an ironic dialectic; furthermore the cartoonist pokes gentle fun at the reader's perceptiveness and his own literacy, by explaining the joke even further at the top in bad English. They don't get any funnier than this.