I'm sure I've seen South Park episodes in which the Prophet Mohammed has made an entrance before. The idea that South Park have only recently done something offensive enough to upset radical islamists is pretty hard to believe. Still, if they bothered attacking even half of the targets they said they'll attack then most of the world would be in flames by now

They refer to it themselves, SP has shown Mohammed before. That was before the Danish cartoon upheaval and nobody bothered much.

I hope they show Muhammad tonight. They already had an episode with a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from her rectum. I find that unspeakably offensive, but you know what? I just don't watch that episode.

These people need to come out of the Dark Ages. Something that claims it can't be the subject of satire needs to be satirized mercilessly.

Invictus +101 (an extra +100 for recognizing that even the Virgin Mary was satire and you can always choose not to watch it).

I'm with Invictus. Is there really nothing better for these people to focus on than South Park?

Radical islamism needs to be put into perspective, and to do that ou need to understand it's history. It all started with a man named (sp?) said kutb.

theres a really good documentary about it, called 'the power of nightmares'
it's probably free online somewhere.

These Muslims need to read the Qu'ran:

(4:140): He hath already revealed unto you in the Scripture that, when ye hear the revelations of Allah rejected and derided, (ye) sit not with them (who disbelieve and mock) until they engage in some other conversation. Lo! in that case (if ye stayed) ye would be like unto them. (Pickthall translation)

It says "walk away from people who mock your faith". It doesn't say to kill them or threaten to kill them. Muhammed and the early Muslim community did just that - instead of choosing to fight the Powers That Be in Mecca, they chose to 'walk away' to Medina in the Hijra.

And if you *really* want to put 'Radical Islamism' (a term I'm not fond of, but I don't have a better one handy) into perspective, you must start not with Qutb but with ibn Taymiyyah (both of whom, interestingly, were executed essentially for undermining the legitimacy of the Muslim governments under which they lived)

There's no need for perspective. Physically threatening the makers of a TV show because they're satirizing your religion is barbaric. These crazy people need to be mocked and free speech defended.

Tolstoy, then they came back and sacked Mecca.

@Invictus, actually, the "sack" of Mecca (more accurately a "conquest", since Muhammed and the Muslims remained after they got there) was an almost entirely bloodless affair, particularly by Ancient/Medieval standards of warfare. It was the culmination of about a decade of on-and-off warfare between the Quraish of Mecca and their allies against the Muslim community and their allies, which for the latter was literally a matter of survival (particularly during the early years after the Hijra). Nearly all (I think there were one or two exceptions) of the Quraish leaders were spared execution, and many of them (particularly the relatives of Uthman) wielded great power and influence in the Caliphate in the decades after Muhammed's death.

Damn Tolstoy... You know a lot of Muslim history. Any recommended reading for an open minded person like myself?

what's wrong with not showing the image of Muhammed??

@alamothe, huh? There's nothing wrong with not showing the image of Muhammed. (who said otherwise?) And there's nothing wrong with showing it either. I guess I don't get what you're getting at.

"There's no need for perspective. Physically threatening the makers of a TV show because they're satirizing your religion is barbaric. These crazy people need to be mocked and free speech defended."

I agree with your sentiment, partially. Threatening a satirist's life is certainly being close-minded. actually it's being vehemently intolerent, and by no means should be accomadated (sp).
but do you see the ridiculousness of your statement? no need for perspective? theres always need for perspective, to refuse to learn about the views of others is willfull ignorance of the worst kind. I'm not pulling the 'your as bad as they are' bullshit, thats not even remotely true, after all your not threatening to kill comedians. but you cant combat intolerance with ignorance.

They refuse to learn about our culture enough to understand that they're not being attacked because it's just jest, you refuse to learn enough about their culture to understand why they're so pissed. I'm not trying to equate them, but there is a certain similarity.

2what's wrong with not showing the image of Muhammed?? " - South Park were, apparently, taking the piss out of the fact that they couldn't show Muhammad.

Which tends to be what they do anyway, take the piss. However i do think Muslims general take offence to depicating Muhammad in a negative light, (like any human depiction of God does not do justice to God and is thus insulting) In fact i think several Christian factions had a few wars over the very same thing (iconoclasms?)

Lol Tolstoy the idea of the Hijra as just "walking away" doesn't quite add up... since he went to Medina, raised an army, came back, and presumably did away with the mockers.

@Draugnar,

Well, when I was in college, the basic textbook was HAR Gibb's ironically titled "Mohammedanism" (a good Muslim would take offense to the title, since the religion isn't supposed to be about Muhammed, but about God). The book is dated (originally published in 1949), but fortunately the core tenets and beliefs of religions don't really change much in 60 years. It's available from Amazon, although the price is surprisingly steep:

http://www.amazon.com/Mohammedanism-Historical-H-R-Gibb/dp/1104843080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271911728&sr=8-1

If you're willing to make a serious study, the best place to start would of course be with a heavily-footnoted English language translation of the Qu'ran. This though takes a lot of time and patience - much of it (including the second chapter, which is also the longest) is text which lays out the basics of Islamic Law and is about as exciting as the California Vehicle Code. *DO NOT* get any of the plain vanilla straight translations (ie, Penguin) that makes no attempt to explain the context and 'hidden messages' of the underlying text - that is absolutely pointless. Much of the Qu'ran requires an understanding of the particular situation when particular verses were revealed to make real sense and get a genuine understanding of Islam. Also, the footnotes will include some Qu'ranic exegesis which will be helpful in understanding Islam as a religion beyond just Qu'ran. I'd make a recommendation, but my two heavily footnoted Qu'rans are 1) printed by an obscure and non-mainstream offshoot sect of Islam (this was my introduction to Islam), and 2) an extremely well-produced (and probably very expensive) version which CAIR was for a short time shipping for free to anyone who requested them (a program which they have apparently and unfortunately terminated). This one is the best-recommended on Amazon, but I can't vouch for it personally:

http://www.amazon.com/Quran-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199535957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271912422&sr=1-1

Here are a few websites I have bookmarked over the years which may be of interest:

http://www.islamonline.net/English/index.shtml (largely a collection of religious rulings (fatwas) by religious scholars, some written by a professor whose class I took at University and happened to be one of the most prominent members of the Muslim community in America)
http://wwww.examiner.com/x-17122-SF-Muslim-Examiner (an American convert to Islam and also a hardcore Libertarian who publishes a blog covering subjects of interest to both identities)
http://english.bayynat.org.lb/ (personal website and fatwas of the religious leader of Hezbollah, who is actually pretty liberal (or at least moderate) on several issues)
http://minaret.org/ (Minaret of Freedom Institute - a Libertarian/Muslim think tank)
http://www.introductiontoislam.org/index2.shtml (I picked this up from a google search just now, and after a ten minute review I find it worthy of recommendation)

I don't know if there are any mosques or Islamic bookstores near you in the Rustbelt, but they might be a good place to start.as well Be forewarned that the people you meet on this path may not necessarily be representative of the entire Muslim community (the mosque closest to my house, for instance, is an Ahmaddiya mosque. They're kinda like Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons in Islam - far outside the mainstreams of doctrinal though, but still titularly part of the Community of Believers)

The quickest and easiest route to knowledge of Islam would be wikipedia, but I would not recommend it. If you go down that road, your quest will be filled with perilous disinformation, bias, distortions, and outright lies from more quarters and with more agendas than you can even imagine right now. Should you choose this path, be sure to read the discussion page for each article concurrently with the actual text, so you can get a feel of each article's 'angle'. (I will say that wikipedia's articles on Islam and related subjects are generally much better than they were 2-3 years ago, but there are still some real clunkers).

I also recommend "Muhammad" by Martin Lings, a fairly basic, easy-to-read, and uncontroversial (from what I remember - I read it about ten years ago) English language biography: http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Life-Based-Earliest-Sources/dp/1594771537/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271914320&sr=8-1

Keep in mind that I'm not actually a Muslim (although I did seriously consider converting back in college during the late 90's), so my advice may not necessarily be correct; God knows best (as they say).

@Thucy: That's certainly the Cliff Notes version, but in reality a lot of things happened during those ten years. Like the Quraish sending three or four armies to Medina to kill Muhammed and exterminate the early Muslim community. Even after the Hijra, Islam was proving quite disruptive to the social fabric of Mecca (like slaves running off to Medina, where the Muslims gave them protection and freedom - sort of a 6th century Underground Railroad).

And as I've already noted, the 'mockers' by and large weren't "done away with". Many of them (or their children) became a great political thorn in the side of Muhammed's son-in law Ali in later years, which of course was a cause of the great Sunni/Shi'a split.

That's all very interesting, but I don't see how it changes the fact that these people who threaten violence against anyone mocking Islam are nuts.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Did you read my first post in this thread? Beyond that, what do you expect me to do?

Your post just quoted another Koran verse, while there are obviously many others which advocate killing those who mock Islam. I have to read a piece of literal terrorist propaganda for my joke of a minority film class and there are verses which advocate killing a secular leader who tries to set up democracy.

My point is that quoting Koran verses to show that they shouldn't be threatening the South Park guys is irrelevant. They shouldn't do it because we live in the post-Enlightenment world and even if Islam explicitly DID say that Muslims would be justified to kill these guys, it would still be wrong. Islam needs to make peace with modernity the way Christianity did over the past 400 years.

"there are obviously many others which advocate killing those who mock Islam... and there are verses which advocate killing a secular leader who tries to set up democracy."

Can you cite them please?

No, Sister Mary Robert took my Koran away. I don't have the reading in from of me, but it's from an essay by Zawahiri on sharia (yeah, that's what my tuition is paying for). It's all over the place.

I find it very, very troubling that you challenge me on that particular bit of minutia and ignore the point about how quoting chapter and verse from the Koran has no bearing on whether the sort of violent behavior fundamentalist Islam is justified. Whether or not the Koran condemns anything doesn't matter. It doesn't change the right to freedom of speech and that the actions of fundamentalist Islam against that freedom should be held in abhorrence.

Okay. I believe that threatening to kill the Southpark people over their depiction of Muhammed is unjustified, Qu'ran or no. Good enough?

If you want to persuade people, you have to speak their language. Talking to the folks at revolutionmuslim.com about the importance and inherent goodness of Free Speech would be a colossal waste of time. Speaking Qu'ran and Sunnah will get their attention.

Talking to anybody on a website called revolutionmuslim.com would be a waste of time.

"Islam needs to make peace with modernity the way Christianity did over the past 400 years."

What planet are you from?

@ Pastoralan- care to expand on that?

Southpark creators asked for it :-)

They shouldn't do it because we live in the post-Enlightenment world, well what is this and how is this defined?

The meccans at the time thought they lived in this world, the Jews at the time of Jesus thought they lived in this post enlightened world. the Pharaoh thought he was post enlightened and then came Moses and destroyed his way of life or was he freeing the Jews?

the point is you say Islam is a medieval religion but on what basis. i see Muslims using mobile phones and watching HD TV all the time. what is modernism and why cant religion be a part of it? Christianity on the other hand didn't embrace modernism but had to contend with science and its view of the world.

DId anyone watch the episode last night? I thought that SP came out a little soft in the end. They did not ever show Muhammed and they actually bleeped out the word Muhammed every time a character said it. Which I guess was satire about Muhammed now being an explict word/image/being. I thought it would have been great for them to show him.


And actually, back in the 2001 episode with Muhammed, they censored his image. SP has never shown an actual image of Muhammed. Just black censor bars.

Panthers, no they had an episode even before that, called Super Best Friends as I recall, where at one point all major religious figures get together and Muhammed is plainly there. It's just that it was not at all a mainpoint of the episode and it was before the Danish cartoon scandal so nobody cared.

I imagine that they didn't show him again this time because Comedy Central once again vetoed it. They probably had a full on episode of Mohammed depicted in various ways that they scrapped because Comedy Central wouldn't budge for a second time.

Of course, this is just speculation. I don't actually know, and I plan on watching the episode in question tonight.

Interesting, I remember the Best Friends Episode as having Muhammed riding a horse, but he is blacked out by a censor bar. But I could be wrong.

My mistake! I just looked it up and you are right Chrispminis. I just saw a picture of Muhammed in that South Park episode. I was thinking of Family Guy.....my mistake.

Here is a link for anyone interested:

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/04/09/muhammed-was-on-south-park-before/

It shows a picture and video of Muhammed in South Park.