South Park, Fatwas And Freedom Of Speech III
South Park, Fatwas And Freedom Of Speech III
By
Ken Eliasberg
This brings us back to our point of beginning — the South Park fatwa, which read as follows:
“An episode of ‘South Park’ that continued a story line involving the
Prophet Mohammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central
with audio bleeps and image blocks reading ‘CENSORED’ after a
Muslim group warned the show’s creators that they could face
violence for depicting the holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim,
a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the ‘South
Park’ creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker ‘will probably wind up
like Theo Van Gogh.”
Nothing subtle here; this is a direct threat on the lives of the creators of this episode of South Park. I don’t know about you, but I find this not just unacceptable, but despicable. In simpler times, we might have sought out the authors of this threat and saw to it that what goes around comes around. Today, we are much too civilized to even contemplate, let alone do, anything quite so violent. Indeed, we are much too soft to do anything but roll over and hope — nay, pray — that Obama’s pearls sooth these savage beasts into a calmer state.
Once again, a good number of media panjandrums have chosen to cut and run, hiding behind obeisance to Muslim sensitivities as an excuse for their cowardly behavior. However, among a good number of our other journalists, this threat seems to have constituted a bridge too far — they see the danger to free speech if we keep yielding to these religious fanatics (a small number of Muslims, say 150 to 200 million or so, according to Daniel Pipes, whose website I wholeheartedly recommend). And I’m not trying to be either cute, facetious, or disrespectful here; we are not dealing with 20 or 30 thousand nut jobs— according to Pipes, who is an authority on matters of this nature, we are dealing with 10 to 15% of the Muslim world. Since the Muslim world contains about 1.4 billion people, you do the math. And, please spare me any nonsense that I am attacking the religion of peace — even if the bad guys number 200 million, that still leaves 1.2 billion good guys to reign them in and take back their religion. Unfortunately, the good guys, notwithstanding numerous declarations as to their displeasure with their violent cohorts, seem to be either unable or unwilling to do much about reigning the bad guys in. Which means that we shall have to or perish in failing to do so. Those our the stakes; they want to establish a world-wide Caliphate of which we are to be apart. No thanks! But that is exactly what will happen in time if we do not step on them, and step on them hard now.
We cannot afford to be passive, let alone cowardly, on a matter of this nature; the 2 most important freedoms conferred on us by our founding fathers are those of speech and religion. To sit back while violence is being done to these freedoms is to surrender everything worthwhile that our forefathers have given us with their blood, sweat and tears. I recommend a brilliant piece on this matter by one Daniel Greenfield in the Canada Free press website on April 28th entitled They Don’t Have to Silence Us, If We Silence Ourselves First. In it, Greenfield makes these observations:
“Recently we rediscovered the simple fact that even on Cable television, on a network where anything goes, one thing does not go.
Depicting Mohammad. Even in a bear suit. That same iron law has
been unofficially passed in country after country, where operas,
newspapers, books, television programs have been censored in order to avoid offending the people who might kill them if they were not
censored. Speech and image have been blocked, cut out, snipped and silenced. Not because anyone has actually been killed, but because
attempts have been made to kill some people. Which is enough to make free speech go the way of the Dodo.
And that is exactly the point. They don’t have to silence us, if we silence ourselves first. They don’t have to oppress us, if we oppress
ourselves first. They don’t have to demand our surrender and submission,if we surrender and submit first. Islam, we love it. Sharia law, we’ll gladly adopt it. Free speech, it has to have its limits. Women’s rights, we’ll have to walk a fine line. Freedom. Ha, what freedom. We’ve already traded that away for nice set of multicultural
Bongos, a few curry shops, a glass of arack and a leatherbound copy of the Koran.”
Extreme? Not at all! This is the path we are walking down if we give in to these murderous religious fanatics.
More recently, Muslim activists have demanded that the evangelist FranklinGraham be censored and disinvited from another forum, the National Day of Prayer, an event scheduled with members of Congress (you may recall they were successful in having him disinvited from a prayer service at the Pentagon for his unfavorable observations re Islam. For further discussion, see Muslims want Franklin Graham censored again — ‘Our nation’s founders wouldn’t have tolerated it, and neither should we’ by Bob Unruh at worldnetdaily on April 27th.
By the way killing you is typically one of their more extreme efforts to silence you. First, Islamists try to embarrass by accusing you of being an Islamaphobe — a bigot. And, if that doesn’t work, suing you into submission. Typically, they don’t hope to win, just bankrupt you in a lawsuit since they have the funds to do it. These types and organizations are well funded, with resources being made generously available by Mideast countries, usually Saudi Arabia through many of its numerous potentates., see e.g. Funding Evil — How Terrorism Is Financed — and How to Stop It by Rachel Ehrenfeld, Bonus Books (2003)We must stand up to these bullies, terrorists, killers, and nut cases.
And please spare me any crap about Islamophobia. This country does not have an “Islamophobia” problem; we have an Islamic intimidation problem. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. It seems clear to me that not to be afraid of something or someone or a group of someones who want to kill you (and, as noted, have succeeded in certain cases, e.g. Theo Van Gogh) is quite rational. Indeed, not to take such threats seriously would be irrational. Moreover, while we are constantly being advised of a Muslim backlash (recall the general who, after the Fort Hood disaster, was more concerned with apossible effect on diversity than the safety of his soldiers), but there hasn’t been any, despite various honor killings, threats and other nonsense. Frankly, I am a lot more concerned with an actual Muslim
“frontlash” (such as what happened at Fort Hood, or what could have happened with that screwball on the plane to Detroit who set his underpants on fire (thus presenting him with some problems with those 72 virgins unless Allah restores his genitals in the course of his passage)) than I am with any potential or possible “backlash.” If we don’t respond to these depredations then we don’t deserve our liberties.
What to do? Stop worrying about a Muslim backlash — really peaceful Muslims should (and, hopefully, will) applaud efforts to drum the bad guys out of the corps and restore the good name (and peaceful image) of Islam. In the South Park case, arrest the owners of the website that made the death threat, find out everything about them and their funding sources, try them for inciting murder, jail them, and then deport them.