Radical Islam 1, South Park and Free Speech 0

At first glance, this whole incident seems insignificant and overblown. A zany cartoon that has a reputation for deliberately offending and is no stranger to controversy suddenly faces a serious show of disapproval; what’s the big deal? Something similar occurred in 2006, when cast member Isaac Hayes ditched the show allegedly because he found the show’s jokes on his religion Scientology too much to handle. However, the new controversy between “South Park” and Islam is just one skirmish in the current war radical Islam is raging against the West. One of the most impressive and unique aspects of our society is the extent to which we enjoy political and social freedoms that let us say and do what is on our minds, and these liberties are exactly what radical Muslims hate and intend to destroy. By proclaiming its disgust for any depiction of Muhammad whatsoever, no matter how inane or silly, and implying certain death for the perpetrators, Revolution Muslim and its ilk are sneakily helping to advance the fundamentalist Muslim agenda. Comedy Central’s response has sadly proven that this time, the radicals have won again.

This is hardly the first time a scandal like this has occurred, but this ought to be a wakeup call for Americans as to the powerful and dangerous effects radical Islam has against freedom. Today, there is still a disturbing double standard when it comes to satirizing any religion, belief or ethnicity, when compared to Islam.

For as long as anyone can remember everywhere…
Entertainment nowadays has endless examples of jokes on Christianity, Judaism and the like, such as Larry David urinating on a portrait of Jesus, or endless stereotypes of southerners, gays, Jews, and Jesus on “Family Guy”. The list of hilarious and racy jibes at manifold types of people in our modern culture goes on, but when one tries to come up with examples for Islam, the list is considerably shorter. Take the recent book The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, which chronicles the controversy over the Danish political cartoons of Muhammad – without featuring any images of the actual cartoons. Editors at Yale University Press, not even wanting to risk publishing the cartoons again, gave in to Muslim pressure and removed all cartoons, essentially castrating the subject of the book and leaving it like a hot rod without wheels.

In 2009…
Roland Emmerich made sure to wreck every world landmark in his movie 2012, but graciously spared the Kaaba of Mecca, the holiest of holies for Muslims, because, as he pathetically stated, “you can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have … a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is”. Can you say double standard? The movie alone was already a galling experience, but Emmerich’s spinelessness takes the cake.

Last week…
Emmerich is someone who has already given up the right to express whatever is on his mind and exercise artistic freedom, but Parker and Stone have not, and that is why they deserve our support and gratitude so much. The duo serves up an ingenious mix of humor and satire combined with deep meaning in their show, and their willingness to go places where no one else has dared gone before makes them an example for everyone in the free world. I’m not saying these things just because I’m a passionate “South Park” fan; Parker and Stone recently held firm to their decision to spoof Muhammad and resolved not to back down and be “hypocritical…messed up”. This kind of courage is rare these days, and truly uplifting to hear.

For centuries of Western history…
One of the greatest achievements of Western society is its formation of liberty unparalleled in any other part of the world, which allow for democratic government, virtually unlimited opportunity to write, say, and express any sort of ideas, and equality for people of all walks of life. Radical Muslims realize this and are hard at work undermining these freedoms. What happened to “South Park” is one such instance; if this trend of submitting to Muslim demands out of fear of retaliation continues, the West will lose another major front in the war against terror and fundamental Islam.

Spokesmen for Revolution Muslim claim that the message they send to Parker and Stone was hardly a threat but only a harmless warning intended to persuade them to realize their error and hubris, which is similar to “white nationalists” insisting that they are not spawn of the Nazis and KKK, but simply feel that different races can never coexist peacefully. Everything about the group’s threat to Parker and Stone indicates an incitement to violence; a photo of murdered Dutch director Theo van Gogh accompanies the home addresses of Parker and Stone, and a harsh criticism of their actions.

In 2004…
For those who don’t know, van Gogh made a 10 minute film entitled Submission that took an unflinching look at the lack of women’s rights under Islam, and for expressing his views was stabbed and shot by Mohammad Bouyeri, a radical Dutch Muslim.

Last Wednesday…
Recently, Revolution Muslim posted a lengthy response to the controversy it raised with its “warning” to Parker and Stone, trying to soothe critics by laying the blame on “imperialist” activities of the American Empire and its hideous genocidal lackey Israel, citing Parker and Stone for “spreading Islamophobia”, and calling for dialogue and increased understanding between cultures so that America’s attempts to colonize the Middle East will not succeed. The very name of the group is evidence that Revolution Muslim is interested in anything but peace and justice; the front page of their blog features protesters imploring Allah to “make a mushroom cloud over Israel” and encouraging Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to “eliminate…Israel from the map”. The article is a childish and perverted combination of Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto that has more holes and fallacies in its arguments than Swiss cheese, and the group itself has only a dozen members, yet Revolution Muslim still succeeded in intimidating Comedy Central and getting what they wanted with a simple Internet message.

In their blog post, Revolution Muslim argues that freedom of speech is a “vital tool in the staving of oppression, but this function has its limits”, and that freedom of speech nowadays is an excuse for people to show “pornography, homosexuality, slander, and libel against even that which is considered sacred”. Actually, freedom of speech has no real limits attached to it. George Orwell accurately noted that “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”, and in a free society, while many things in today’s media are no desirable to everyone, everyone has the right to just avoid those things and express whatever suits them more. Throughout the article, the writer continues to openly spew hatred of America and anything deemed un-Islamic, claiming that America is a genocidal empire devoted to “destruction of the Islamic identity”, insisting that Muslims would never “insult the deities that other religions hold in high esteem”, citing traditional sharia law as reason for threatening Parker and Stone, and blaming the crux of the controversy on Parker and Stone and other “pawns” of racism and imperialism who support “passive acceptance of a sick status quo…dependent on a hedonistic, consumerist mindset that effectively numbs the general world populace and keeps them ignorant and oblivious to the imperialist reality”.

Where do I start in taking apart this garbage? This article is the worst of fascism and communism combined. Mountains of evidence reveal that on every point, Revolution Muslim is wrong and twisted.

For years…
Comedians have enjoyed the opportunity to make fun of very religion under sun, but suddenly, Islam is the excpetion and enjoys heightened status. The solution to this whole mess, Revolution Muslim states, would be to hold “detailed discussion…open dialogue” and for people to convert to Islam.

In 1939…
The Munich Agreement is a perfect example of the good that comes from negotiations with dictators and terrorists; management consultant Peter Drucker was right on the money when he noted that “if there is a word why the human race has never and will never progress, that word would be meetings’”. The sooner people wake up to this reality, the better.

For now…
Muslims have gained another victory in their quest to wipe away Western freedom. There is still, however, hope. The struggle against militant Islam is far from over, and there is still much that people can do to prevent radical Islam from intruding further. People everywhere, especially entertainers and comedians, can take an example people like from Jon Stewart and defy Revolution Muslim and their kind by disregarding what the radical Muslims threaten and continuing to express themselves freely, and not steer clear of any mention of Islam. People must continue the war against terror, because it is absolutely imperative to squash terrorism and put an end to militant Islam’s grip on the world. And lastly, an apology from Comedy Central to viewers it insulted with its cowardice wouldn’t hurt either.