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Extremists Warn South Park Creators Over Muhammad In a Bear Suit
An anonymous reader writes "A radical Islamic website is warning the creators of South Park that they could face violent retribution for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode broadcast on Comedy Central last week. RevolutionMuslim.com posted the warning following the 200th episode of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's South Park."
They already had depicted him before in season 10 "Cartoon Wars Part II":
http://images.southparkstudios.com/media/images/504/superbestfriends.gif
I was kind of surprised when I watched the show since they did this right after the danish
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
What surprised me even more is that I don't recall anybody saying anything back then. Nevertheless, apparently Comedy Central is now refusing to show depiction of Muhammad so it seems the authors decided to masquerade him as a bear.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
They could have put him in a pedobear costume.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think they actually knew what they could be getting themselves into when they did this. Even though South Park seems "childish", it does do social commentary, and it shows that the authors seem to be paying attention to the world around them. I may not agree with everything they have done, but in my opinion, it's better that they do too much than too little. It's important that someone has the balls to stand up and speak out. And now they dared to touch Muhammad.
That said, have they ever refused to parody or ridicule someone or something? Is there anything that is "sacred" to them?
Muhammad might be sacred to Muslims, and they may be offended by this. But this is exactly why Muhammad needs to be ridiculed even more. Nothing should be above criticism and ridicule, and if some think that they or their symbols are, they should be the target of even more ridicule, until they understand that they will not be able to do anything they please without criticism for their wrongdoings.
Let's hope Matt and Trey won't end up as "martyrs" of free speech, though. We need them around to keep doing what they do.
Clever signature text goes here.
...is to increase the number of targets by several orders of magnitude. No, really, I'm quite serious. If everyone posts or publishes a cartoon simultaneously mocking Mohammed, Jesus, and Moses, there will be no practical way for religious extremists to respond. (Yes, I know there are other religions, but it's the big three monotheist camps that are making most of the trouble.)
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Part of the plot of the episode was the characters worrying that Muhammad was going to appear in their town. They kept asking "is that okay" in the episode... representations of Muhammad as a stick figure to Muhammad inside a U-Haul prompt worried questions from the characters... eventually the characters opt to place Muhammad in a full-body bear suit so he was not visible.
"is that okay?"
I guess not.
[signature]
I mean, so far, South Park has lampooned Christ, Budda, etc....and yet none of these groups have threatened them with anything more dangerous than possibly a boycott.
Seriously, what the fuck is with these people? Isn't it time to move into the 21st century with the rest of us?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's even more ironic that the prohibition against depicting Mohammed was originally (IIRC) to prevent him from being idolized and treated like a deity.
This is exactly the reaction that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were looking for.
If you watch the episode, the members of South Park conclude that the only way to _NOT OFFEND_ Muslims is to put him in a bear suit.
Unfortunately, it looks like in the real world, the Muslims are even more crazy than South Park has depicted them to be. It shows exactly how wacko the muslim community is.
It's similar to the Scientology episode...except, they didn't actually get sued by Scientologists. I daresay, that Scientologists are more sane in this regard than Muslims.
I mixed up things, they actually depicted him 2001 as TFA says in "super best friends" , but as I stated, I don't recall anybody said anything back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Best_Friends
"Cartoon Wars Part II" is a different show aired after the danish
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_II
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
OK, OK, *Somebody* had to make the joke.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"Extremists Warn South Park Creators Over Muhammad in a Bear Suit"
What a total wimp-out of a headline. A 'warning' is when the weatherman says 'it looks icy out today, drive slow.' When someone calls upon the nut-jobs of the world to murder you because you pissed off their bronze-age sky fairy, that's inciting violence, an explicit threat. I'm willing to go pretty far in support of free speech, but this is definitely "fire in a crowded theater" material.
The reverse is also true though, this is getting Al Amrikee much more attention than he deserves.
Really? I think he deserves a little more attention. I eagerly await the South Park episode where a whiny little pissant runs around saying, "This is not a threat but a warning that you are on murder lists ..." to everyone in South Park. It'd be hard but I have confidence that Matt and Trey would adequately portray the stupidity of Al Amrikee. "Raising awareness?" More like a power trip or inciting a murder.
My work here is dung.
Christianity used to honor a similar tradition to prevent idolatry.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Sort of, but I think it mostly derives from certain Muslim traditions that either discourage or outright ban visual depictions of any living creature, particularly humans. This is part of the reason the Taliban in Afghanistan blew up those giant statues of Buddha, and also the reason we had all those stories early in the "war on terror" about how hard it was to find specific bad guys we were looking for (because few or no pictures of them existed, because having their picture taken was forbidden). Extremist Islamic groups have taken these traditions and radicalized them to the point where basically any depiction of Mohammad (or presumably anyone else, although they seem to get particularly offended if it's Mohammad) punishable by death by suicide bomber.
More mainstream Muslims don't care quite that much about it, and it's worth noting that there are plenty of paintings and other art works in Muslim areas featuring visual depictions of Muhammad dating back hundreds of years. This is just another symptom of what happens when people with extremist views have access to lots of explosives: their views get a whole lot more attention than they normally would.
Too be fair, the terrorists are no more about Islam then Pat Robertson is about Christianity.
Not to mention that the KKK are all radical Christians, but we wouldn't want them speaking on behalf of the entire faith, now would we?
The one constant truth of all zealots is that obedience to the rules they fight for is far more important to them than the reason for the rules' existence.
If they're such extremists what are they doing watching South Park?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I'd say you've never even heard of a little country called Ireland...
From watching the episode, the entire point of it seemed to be to show the absurdity of a prohibition on any depiction of someone. By making a depiction of Muhammed (PBUH) that involved no image that was recognizably of him, they showed that the prohibition was ridiculous, because it is then a blanket prohibition on any image. I could say that the category icon for this story was a depiction of the Prophet disguised as a white man in glasses with a black rectangle over his mouth - suddenly that would be a prohibited image.
CAVEAT: This line of argument also means that prohibitions on depictions of things that _we_ think shouldn't be allowed are also absurd.
Finally, this is not to say that I think that any image is acceptable, but it must have to do with the objective content (or at least consensus agreement of what the objective content is), rather than what the artist intended it to depict, or what it may have been interpreted as depicting.
When someone calls upon the nut-jobs of the world to murder you because you pissed off their bronze-age sky fairy,
I'm an Atheist myself, but to exactly what "bronze-age sky fairy" are you referring?
The Bronze Age ended more than a millenium before the birth of Muhammad.
If you're going to disparage a religion, at least try to educate yourself minimally about it. Be a responsible Atheist.
Perhaps "medieval sky fairy" would be more appropriate
Is that Islam has not undergone a process analogous to the Enlightenment.
Pre-Enlightenment, much of Europe was basically a mass of warring theocracies, split between the Catholic ones and the Protestant ones. Separation of church and state were basically nonexistent, blasphemy laws were on the books(and had real teeth, with limited exceptions[thanks a whole fucking lot Ireland] the ones that remain are just relics at this point). You easily could be, and people were, killed for having the wrong doctrinal positions. Censorship was rampant. Things pretty much sucked.
Thanks to the dedicated(and at times heroic, not a few faced jail, or worse) efforts of various Enlightenment figures, along with a number of political occurrences(the French Revolution had its minuses; but it did have the salubrious effect of annihilating a schlerotic and corrupt divine-right absolutism and replacing it with a secular nation-state. The Glorious Revolution in England was less dramatic; but went rather better. Then, of course, you had the American Revolution, which was absolutely dripping with Enlightenment sentiment[much to the displeasure of today's crop of "America is a Christian Nation founded on the Bible!!! Dominionist nutjobs]).
The Enlightenment was not an easy process. Much blood, sweat, and ink were spilled; but the results helped make the modern west the more-or-less pleasant place it is today. It was basically the death-knell of absolutist theocracy in the west, and the impetus behind the broad introduction of fun concepts like "human rights" and "freedom of religion"(also coffeehouses and atheism, what's not to love?).
The relatively benign forms of Christianity that we think of today are basically creations of the Enlightenment(even among the zealous, things like persecution and warfare between Catholics, protestants, and various sects thereof are basically off the table). It wasn't always that way. Even today, there are reactionary hardliners who would really prefer to roll things back(Rushdooney and the "Reconstructionists", for instance, "Dominionists" more generally, are the main thrust of that in the US, where the hardcore are predominantly fundamentalist protestants. On the European stage, we still have the Catholic church pretending that its "canon law", rather than being simply a set of rules for a private club, somehow takes precedence over Civil Law. Without substantial moderating influences, Abrahamic monotheisms are mean, ugly, primitive, and brutal.
Unfortunately, Islam has not, historically, experienced an analogous process. This doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of more-or-less modern people who are nominally "muslim" in the same way that much of the west is still nominally "christian"; but it does mean that none of the major strains of Islam have been subjected to the radical reduction in power that all the various flavors of Christianity have. For instance, a Christian advocate of theocratic government qualifies as a right-wing nutjob(they exist in surprisingly large numbers, unfortunately; but they still qualify as a fringe position). In large areas of the world, Islamic theocracy(either as a matter of law, or in the form of a state so heavily subservient to religious enthusiasts and Sharia courts that it might as well be) is simply the local form of government.
This is not to say that there is anything intrinsically superior about Christianity. It fought progress tooth-and-nail, every step of the way, during the Enlightenment. To this day, it harbors downright nasty reactionary elements. And, despite protestations to the contrary, most of the noblest aspects of our society exist in spite of rather than because of it. (Fun stuff like "Civil law" and "freedom of conscience" are either classical, or modern derivations from the classical philosophical tradition). However, because Islam has not been subjected to the moderating(some would say "neutering") influence of an Enlightenment, it retains many of the ugly elements that Christianity no longer has the political power or cultural clout to employ.
To be fair a good percentage of those being brought up as Muslims are being taught that it'd be an honor to kill a few infidels like Matt and Trey.
Remember Islam is about 6 centuries younger than Christianity. Read some of the history of Christianity from the 1400's and you will find similar violent reactions of Jesus depicted in any non-sacred way. Jesus was not even portrayed in cinema until 1961's "King of King's".
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
<sarcasm>Yes, because we all know that Christians have NEVER tried to hurt anyone for believing differently than them.</sarcasm>
The problem is humans tend to want to kill/remove/banish anyone who doesn't agree with the local groupthink. Be it religion, science (global warming, for instance) or just cultural. The problem is that "beliefs" are held up high while "ideas" are not. Most religions amplify this tendency. Try being a non-Christian in the US today, it is a pain in the ass because of the sheer stupidity of others. Every time someone hears that I am not a Christian, the first thing they say is "oh, are you an atheist?" as if that is the only other option. When I tell them that 80% of the entire planet is not Christian, their response is "Well, everyone is in America", which is obviously not true and obviously saying that no one outside of America matters anyway.
I was raised in the Catholic church, so don't preach to me how Christianity is about "love". It is yet another flavor of control whereby you follow the rules, or "burn in hell", and anyone who believes different than you is automatically suspicious. Christians are not better than Muslims. Both have extremists even if the vast majority of believers are rational persons. Both believe their view of God is right and everyone else is wrong. Even their God is the same, the God of Abraham. And here in the southeastern USA, not being a Christian can still prevent you from having employment and make life difficult, which isn't very Christian of those folks, is it?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Source.
Maybe the Muslim community supports them more than you think.
What I've found talking with moderate Muslims from Muslim-majority countries is that they are all for tolerance in principle, but in specific instances they'll say "Yeah but why do they want to say THAT about Muhammed? What does that contribute to free speech?" and so on.
We don't exactly help the situation when we have Western countries that outlaw hate speech (e.g. Canada, which recently threatened Anne Coulter when she was going to speak at a university).
I don't know if you've ever read Terry Pratchett novels, but a recurring joke is when the police investigate a death and classify it as suicide instead of murder - because the person did something provocative that would obviously lead to murder. The assumption is that the people who murdered him HAD to murder him.
Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan have a segmented society and the moderate, liberalized, urban Muslims who you typically see as journalists, authors, etc, are very much like Terry Pratchett's characters. They see a huge segment of their population as beyond help. The bad Muslims have a "tribal" (not "Muslim") culture. They are uneducated and ignorant. They don't know the true Islam. Maybe they are funded/co-opted by the CIA/Israel/India/Blackwater. Whatever the excuse, the purpose is to say "See, we have all these people who JUST HAVE TO get violent when you do something un-Islamic like insult Muhammed, promote women's education, say something positive about the US."
So for the sake of the stability of their society, they say, they can't support the kind of "destructive" free speech that we want them to support.
The debatable part (for us) is whether those "tribal" people really don't understand Islam, or if it's the moderate and liberal minority who doesn't understand Islam. (As if there's one "Islam" anyway.) And to what degree the moderates are actually moderate compared to using the "tribal" excuse to appear moderate while pragmatically leaning towards fundamentalism.
That's just my experience though.
do you expect them to get violent and angry about people getting violent and angry in their name? If that's not actually how they are, then the "reaction" will be substantially more passive.
For my part, I saw an ad right after 9/11 for an outreach from the Muslims to demonstrate their faith and that they didn't want to kill white people. So I showed up, talked to a few guys for a long while. During the discussion I learned that if someone asks about their faith, then one of the core principles is that the person has to stop right then and there and explain it to them. Then I learned that the guy that was doing most of the talking had his wife sitting in the car for the 2 hours he had been in there with me - he seemed sensitive to the fact that this was the case, but...fact is, there was no where on the grounds that the wife was allowed to be other than in the car in the parking lot. Not that I was going to be converted anyway, but the fact that the wife wasn't even allowed in the building...or any other buildings on the ground...they can talk all they want about being the "religion of peace" but sorry, I have a bit too much respect for women for that.
That's not a disease specific to Islam, though. There are plenty of people -- possibly a majority -- in the US, other Western countries, and on Slashdot who support freedom "X" in principle but are opposed to any specific use of freedom "X". When pressed they either react just like those Muslims, or babble about how liberty is not license, or talk about how rights have to be balanced with responsibilities, or whatever. There are few who actually support freedom in practice.
Catholicism != Christianity. Catholicism is based on Christianity, but is far more "Roman Empire" than Christian.
The crusades ended over 700 years ago. Since then the Catholic church has changed dramatically. The pope is no longer the ruler of any kind of an empire. In fact, in the US, he is pretty much just a dirty joke. Since the end of the crusades western civilization has gone through the Renaissance, the Reformation, a long series of civil wars, that has all but eliminated the direct influence of organized religion on government. We've gone through the whole experience of the new world and contact with the civilizations of the Americas, Japan, China, India, Africa, Southeast Asia.... the list is too long to write and I appologize to those I missed.
In other words we have changed. We are not the people who carried out the crusades.
In the US we have as a basic concept of law that the government may not interfere with the practice of your religion so long as that practice does not infringe on the rights of other people to live their lives as they see fit. We aren't perfect on holding to that principle. But, it explains why I can be a Buddhist living in Texas who drives past a Mosque on my way to the grocery store. My friends, neighbors, coworkers, and relatives include everything from born again fundamentalist Christians to Wiccans, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Mormons, and Atheists.
Here in Texas you can celebrate Cinco De Mayo in front of the Alamo. We can watch Anime on December 7th. And on St. Patrick's Day, my Irish relatives can sit down with my Scots Irish (Orangemen all by their ancestory) relatives and all drink a beer and toast Ireland. Not one of them cares about which side their ancestor were on. We're all just Irish on St. Patty's day.
And yet, when I listen to Muslim Clerics and such talking about why they hate us they always talk about something that some people from Europe did some folks from where they live 700 years ago. We aren't the people who did it them. And you are not the people it happened to. What kind of sickness is at the core of a society that keeps a grudge for 700 years?
Of course, that is the problem. The extremist Muslims seem to still be nursing a grudge from 700 years ago. Every heard a European express a grudge against the Mongols 700 years ago? No? Me neither. But, we are dealing with people who use something that happened 700 years ago as justification for killing us.
One last comment: You don't want to piss off every South Park fan in the world. You really don't. Kill South Park and millions of people who don't currently even bother to vote will become your implacable enemies. Blowing up lower Manhattan is one thing. Messing with a favorite TV show, now that is something you do not want to do.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I'm a great great grandson of John D. Lee. (look up "The Mountain Meadow Massacre. And yes, according to my family he did it.) So I understand what religious fanaticism can do to people at a deep personal level. I truly hope that this problem passes into history with no more violence. But, I deeply fear that it will lead to the deaths of millions, if not billions, of people.
The Middle East has had more time to modernize than Western Civilization has. They have have no excuse for not being world leaders; the Middle East was at one time the greatest center of learning and science in the world. To say they have not had an opportunity to modernize is bull. They have continued to live in the iron age due to the choices they have made; not a lack of opportunity. And this garbage has persisted even into the current century.
Agreed, and the Iranian experience up until the collapse of the Shah proves it. Up through 1979, Iran was rather "civilized" by Western standards, at least culturally/economically. In many ways similar to China today. It is difficult to imagine now, but there was an alliance between Iran and Israel .
At one point, Syria and Lebanon were both developing briskly. For the most part, the Islamic extremist/militant/political resurgence sprung up with the Iranian Revolution. Since then, each nation in the region has done its damnedest to Islamicize as fast as possible, most likely as a counterweight to their economic failures.
I can speak from family experience, and friend experience, that Iran pre-1979 was culturally very liberal; with public social behavior that would make Westerners' blush. Pre-1979 Iran was the number one customer of AT&T's USA Long Distance minutes, worldwide. The 1973-74 oil embargo had resulted in vast amounts of wealth heading into the Middle East, and many had assumed that in the long run Tehran would be the new banking/financial capital of the world.
Development is not an inevitable force. One merely has to look at the promising states of the third world, such as Vietnam, North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba; many of these places were considered economic miracles at one point.
Then crappy dictators took over, corruption ran rampant, and the rising stars collapsed. Venezuela is on this path now.
Some of these states survive, and turned things around, slowly; like Vietnam, and to some extent Lebanon.
They have have no excuse for not being world leaders; the Middle East was at one time the greatest center of learning and science in the world.
I cannot agree with this statement more. In addition to having advanced societies, the incredible oil wealth of the Middle East was probably the greatest concentration of natural wealth in a given region, ever. That the regimes of these nations have managed to squander these vast, immense, incredible resources is nothing short of criminal. Criminal isn't even the right word for it.
It is *simply* *unimaginable* that gas is about $0.29 in Iran; and that most of it is imported since they no longer have the refinery capacity to manufacturer it. It is *simply* *unimaginable* that it is a common sight to see gallons of fuel splashed into the streets of Tehran, because it is so "value-less" to the consumer. It is *shocking* and *disturbing* that Iran and Syria trade away vast quantities of high-quality, industrial resources to China or Russia for a pile of worthless, outdated weaponry which will inevitably used to oppress their citizens.
These things are a humanitarian tragedy of epic proportions. These nations have truly squandered their wealth. 20-50 years from now, they will have no natural resources left, and will have nothing to show for that massive destruction of wealth; and most of them will endure starvation and poor standards of living between now and then!
There *is* *no* *excuse* for this mismanagement!!!
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell