I thought banning the preschoolers’ Spongebob picture books was crazy, but this is even more insane.

The hardcopy of the International Herald Tribune, as delivered to Malaysia, blacked out the titles in Arabic on the books pictured in a Paris bookshop run by the Islamic Organizations Union.

As we may assume that the IHT is really not interested in clumsily censoring their own newspaper, the obvious conclusion is that our Malaysian censors have surpassed themselves in crass stupidity. If there is another explanation, please tell me. I really, really, want to know.

See the photos here and marvel. In fact, if anyone can think of ANY rationale for this, I’d be delighted to hear it. If you click on the photos, they will enlarge.