After the last several years, I can no longer muster the naiveté to be shocked when political commentators sweepingly mischaracterize Muslims as violent enemies of freedom.

I just never expected to see such vitriol spurred on by “Batman” comic books, as was the case several weeks ago.

In the current storyline spanning the "Batman" comics, Bruce Wayne is travelling the world, setting up Batman Incorporated, a network of Batmen protecting major cities worldwide.

The trouble started in “Detective Comics Annual” #12 and “Batman Annual” #28, both released in December. In those books, Batman travels to Paris, and is aided by a young French hero named Nightrunner in the Clichy-sous-Bois region of the city, eventually naming Nightrunner the Batman of Paris.

Several conservatives bloggers, most visibly Warner Todd Huston and Avi Green, threw their arms up in quite literal religious terror when Nightrunner took off his mask. The hero is the alter-ego of Bilal Asselah, a 22-year-old French Muslim of Algerian descent.

“How about that, Bruce Wayne goes to France where he hires not a genuine French boy or girl with a real sense of justice, but rather, an ‘oppressed’ minority who adheres to the Religion of Peace,” wrote Green on his blog, who must have missed the part where Asselah is written as a French citizen who has lived in Paris his entire life while he was doubtlessly painstakingly scouring through the issues.

While it is hilarious to watch these bloggers criticize a “Batman” story as they would a new appointment to the Obama Administration, the ideas behind these views are very real and very dangerous.

Beyond the very wrong ideas that all Muslims are terrorists, or that religion is the main reason for class riots in Parisian neighborhoods like Clichy-sous-Bois, the idea that a Muslim cannot represent France as a hero is terrifying.

Both Huston and Green suggest the French Batman should be a “native,” or “real,” Frenchman, and their comments suggests that people living in adversity cannot decide what is right for themselves or where their loyalties lie.

Don’t forget that American leaders and heroes like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were born as British subjects.

“Through it all (“Batman” publisher) DC makes a Muslim in France a hero when French Muslims are at the center of some of the worst violence in the country’s recent memory,” Huston said.

Huston’s argument is basically that comic-book creators should not introduce an Arab and/or Muslim superhero while members of that group of people are in a controversial spotlight.

Following that argument, in the wake of Tucson, Ariz. gunman Jared Loughner’s actions, no comic-book creators should create any white superheroes for the time being.

If it is that important for a nation’s fictional crimefighters to be representative of their “native” people, I assume that Huston and Green would prefer Bruce Wayne step down and hand his cape to an Iroquois or a Navajo.

Yes, the fact that people threw a fuss over this is silly, and it is probably silly that I am giving these folks such a response. However, be it regarding current events or the Caped Crusader, people should not tolerate prejudices based on false logic, ignorance or hate.

Batman wouldn’t.