South Park and Islam

(I went off on quite a rant for some reason, so you may want to skip this one)

Here's an interesting interview of Matt and Trey, personal heros of mine.

"What we've stood behind for 10 years is: It's got to all be OK or none of it is," Parker told ABC's "Nightline." "Because as soon as you start picking, 'Well, OK, we won't do this,' then all of a sudden the ones you did about that shouldn't be OK either. So we were starting to say, 'I don't know that this is a world that 'South Park' can live in.'"

...

"People told us at the time, 'You can't really draw an image of Mohammed,'" Parker says. "And we were like, well, we can. We're not Muslim, so it's OK."

That's something that's never made sense to me either. The various rules of any religion only apply to members of that religion.

Islam forbids eating pork and depicting Mohammed. I'm not a Muslim. Therefore I can eat all the pork and draw all the pictures of Mohammed I want, and then pay for it in eternal hellfire if that's what happens when we die.

Of course it's not about souls, it's about intimidation.

In 2006, however, when Stone and Parker wanted to depict Mohammed in an episode, Comedy Central wouldn't let them. After all, Muslims worldwide had rioted over insulting depictions of Mohammed in a newspaper in Denmark.

It seemed odd to the creators of "South Park," who had been and were still allowed to depict Jesus in any number of profane ways. In fact, the episode in question, "Cartoon Wars," shows a cartoon (supposedly created by al Qaeda) in which Jesus defecates on President Bush. [editor's note: they actually crap on each other while standing on an American flag]

"That's where we kind of agree with some of the people who've criticized our show," Stone says. "Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We've had him say bad words. We've had him shoot a gun. We've had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn't just show a simple image."

...

Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed — even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots — claiming they were refraining because they're religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.

"No you're not," Stone retorts. "You're afraid of getting blown up. That's what you're afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: 'We're afraid of getting blown up.'"

I'm not trying to pick on Muslims, but they single themselves out by acting like babies. A small minority is responsible for the images and the media plays it up, but a deadly riot is still a deadly riot. Honestly, I don't understand why they get so angry at the smallest dig against their religion. I would think the pious would have an unwavering faith that could withstand all criticism.

I think part of the problem is that we look at humor in different ways. I think in Arab/Muslim cultures, calling out someone's faults is highly offensive. But to us, pointing out faults and hypocrisy through humor is almost doing someone a favor. Because how can you improve if you don't get ripped on from time to time? Part of the painful lesson you learn after overdrinking is the humiliation you suffer when your friends bring out the pictures of you hugging the toilet. You'll never do it again after that. It's a form of tough love.

This whole killing nuns and burning embassies over cartoons and things the Pope says has got to stop. You can't take that guy seriously anyway (most Catholics ignore him too). His choice of quotes seems deliberately provocative, but his point was that spreading religion by force is wrong. Acknowledging that he's right, that's pretty rich coming from a Catholic. See, don't waste your time listening to that old coot. No one else does.

The media laps all this death and rioting up and it's making you look bad, especially because there are all too few counter protests against extremism, though here is one such demonstration (including protest babes). Our mainstream media does report on anti-terror protests, but they don't seem to get top billing like loppin' heads or going after the Pope does. And no, I don't think it's racism, I think it's just them trying to sell advertising and nothing draws eyeballs like violence and strife. Unfortunately, this is what most protests in the Middle East are like.

I'm not stupid enough to say that Americans are loved the world over. I am well aware that our glorious leaders have squandered the sympathy we had after 9/11, with the exception of our true friends. But you have to know that you have a serious image problem too.

Everyone says the correct PC thing in public, but behind closed doors nobody trusts you. No, it's not fair, but that's just the way it is. Until we meet you specifically, and learn that you're a normal good person, we're going to be suspicious, especially at the airport.

I'm not trying to make fun, I'm just saying how it is so you know where you're starting from. No other American is going to tell you these things. I'm sure our reputation among Arabs/Muslims is bad too.

But if a bomb goes off in a crowded place somewhere, we just assume it was done by a young Muslim male. And we're almost always right. Every bomb is another example, another feather in the caps of our own extremists who want total war with you (ie - the kind of war wherein dropping nukes on population centers is justified). Sometimes I'm genuinely worried that you're skating on the thinnest of ice.

Fortunately for all, those people have very little sway right now. However, I am particularly worried about what the Europeans are going to do to their large unassimilated Muslim minorities once the jihad picks up there (you know how they get). Provoked Europeans are not the mamby-pamby wishy-washy pushovers they appear to be right now.

Before 9/11 we didn't give a crap about you as long as you were blowing yourselves up in your own countries. But ever since, we've been paying close attention to you and most of us do not like what we see. The religious leaders who claim to speak for you want to violently take over the world and convert us all to Islam. Because I make it a point to learn about the Arab/Muslim world, I know this isn't mainstream or anything, but that's how it's coming off over here. That really doesn't sit well with anyone, but it goes down especially poorly in America.

You could argue that America is the one taking over the world by force, and you would have a point. Our goal isn't to take over the whole world, but sadly I must concede that we are an empire, and an inept one at times. I can understand being mad at our government. I despise it half the time myself.

But ordinary Americans don't want to be an empire. Most Americans will deny that we're an empire if you ask them, so distasteful is the notion to us. And there are very few, if any at all, Christian leaders baying for blood with the forcefulness of your clerics (if we have any, they're extremely marginalized to obscurity). We may distrust you, but we don't want to kill you. And as I read our elites' motives, the purpose of our empire is for money and influence, not pride or religion, which is what I imagine the motive is for Arabs/Muslims.

You guys seem to want an empire, and too large of a minority takes pleasure in killing civilians/infidels (like, ahem, me). The ones who make the papers anyway, talk about restoring the caliphate and taking over the world by force (this is similar to pan-arabism). This seems to be a popular plan among Arabs/Muslims. I could be wrong, but that's how it looks from here.

And this is where I break from most westerners. If you're an extremist, if you want to convert us or kill us, and take over the world by force, I don't want to be liked by you. You can go and do disrespectful things with your mother for all I care. The way I see it, if a religious extremist of any stripe is insanely pissed off at me, I'm doing things right. So if you think I should be killed because I'm an infidel, you can just go ahead and kiss my heathen ass. I'll see you in hell, thankyouverymuch.

If you want to know, I think in the end Islam will probably win against the other religions, a thousand years hence. Because you're more ruthless than your competition. Christianity gave up the sword as a means of conversion a long time ago. Islam quite obviously has not. It's like the Seinfeld episode where it was debated who would win in a fight, Jerry or George. The answer was George, because he would fight dirty, bring a baseball bat or something. Terrorism is the baseball bat. You aren't constrained by principles when you have no honor.

I doubt any Muslims are reading this, since only about 5 people read this blog anyway, but if so, I hope you consider this friendly advice. It's not meant to inflame. Every Muslim I've ever met was intelligent and friendly, with one exception. I don't mean this to be a criticism of the majority of good normal Muslims who are happy to coexist with us non-Muslims. I'll even tolerate a little attempted verbal conversion; it happens all the time from Christians anyway.

But I have a different message for the radicalized ones: back to my vomiting analogy, you're not just hugging the toilet, you're drinking out of it. Don't you realize how stupid this sounds, "Say we're peaceful or we're gonna start slittin' throats!" Seriously. Grow up. Have you no sense of irony? There's only so much of your shit we're going to take before we hoist the proverbial black flag ourselves. You don't want tolerance, you want obediance. No. You're not getting it. Fuck you.

I know the majority of Muslims are great people who wouldn't hurt a flea. But until the good normal ones have finally had enough and stand up and root out the nutters in your own societies, you're going to be erroneously lumped in with them by a lazy western public consciousness. That's not good for anybody, but that really won't be good for your civilians if the bombs start flying, god forbid.

The media likes to sensationalize the "Arab street" or whatever, but let me tell you, the American street is far more deadly. All it takes is one leader who wants a war and a pliable public, scared by some disaster, to get the tanks rolling (hmmm, sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?). Frankly, right or wrong, I'm disturbed at how easy it was to whip this country up for a war in Iraq. She may not look it, but the suburban soccer mom wields more power in her voting thumb than a division of antiquated soviet tanks.

This is why I don't get it when people say that we hate Islam or Arabs. Dude, if we hated you, you wouldn't be alive to complain about it. We would have hit the big red button a long time ago. We certainly wouldn't be spending blood and treasure in an attempt to democratize and capitalize some of your countries (and yes, siphon off your oil while we're at it -- look, we don't have that much control over our leaders).

But when your nutters start blowing our shit up, we're going to stop waiting for you to fix your own societies and we'll try to fix your problems for you. We're hardly perfect, but at least we imprison our crazies who deliberately kill civilians instead of lionizing them like some of you do. And the emphasis is on the "try". It's a messy ugly process, as is evidenced by Iraq (yes, we didn't have to go in there, and yes we created that problem, but now that we're there we have to root out the terrorists killing Iraqis).

I think it's safe to say that you won't like our help, since it comes in the form of the Marine Corps. That's more than understandable. I think we can agree that we'd all be better off if you just did it yourself.

We'd be happy to help if you like, but I think this really needs to come from within your own societies. You need to stop preaching the militant strain of Islam to your kids. It needs to be brought back to Islam's famous "peaceful" ways. Easier said than done, of course. But it sure would be nice to avert a huge war. Ya know, just sayin'.

Oh, and happy Ramadan.



[/unexpected rant] Where did that come from? Sorry for going all political. Sometimes I think it's pointless to say these things, because either I assume the message is already out there, or no one is reading this. But it bears repeating.


There's lots more in that article, if you care about South Park. The article isn't all about religion, but alot of it is.

"All the religions are superfunny to me," Parker adds. "The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act."

But Parker says atheism is more ludicrous to him than anything else.

"Out of all the ridiculous religion stories — which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous — the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah, there's this big, giant universe and it's expanding and it's all going to collapse on itself and we're all just here, just 'cuz. Just 'cuz. That to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever," he says. "So I think we have a big atheism show coming."

...

"Part of living in the world today is you're going to have to be offended," Stone says. "The right to be offended and the right to offend is why we have a First Amendment. If no speech was offensive to anybody, then you wouldn't need to guarantee it."

That ought to be inscribed somewhere.