This week I had the privilege of watching the 200th episode of South Park. I have to say it was one of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time. In terms of jokes it wasn’t as funny as some episodes but what it did wonderfully was highlight the absurdity of Islamic censorship.
For those who didn’t see it the basic plot saw all the people South Park has previously made fun of bring a class action lawsuit against the town. The only way to stop the lawsuit was to bring the prophet Mohammed to Tom Cruise. Rather than actually depict Mohammed the creators dressed him in a bear suit.
Not surprisingly then, given the willingness for violence of some Muslims when someone dares to depict Mohammed, the writers of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have now received death threats. The internet has also been awash with angry Muslims ranting about how incredibly offensive the show was. Funny how those who say they’re “people of God” are the ones making the death threats, a shining example of morality!
I applaud South Park for having the guts to stick their neck on the line. It’s about time the world stopped pussy footing around and pandering to such lunacy. Some may say this episode was trying to purposefully offend Muslims but lets face it, that’s what South Park does isn’t it? It’s important to point out that in the US they have a concept called free speech (It’s a concept they’ve not heard of in the Middle East), one which is far more important than not drawing images of some bloke called Mohammed. This South Park episode screamed from the rooftops “this is America and we allow people to say what they like”.
It’s because of this I was sad to hear they’d censored the follow up episode. I understand that the creators value their lives and I can understand Comedy Central wanting to avoid being the centre of a religious row, but what on earth did they think would happen? The first episode made a point of how Muslims would respond so they were aware of the response it was going to have.
This episode raises an important issue which is deeply affecting the planet at the minute; the issue of why the religious think that the rest of the world has to humour their beliefs. If, as a Muslim, you wish to refrain from drawing pictures of Mohammed then by all means go ahead but that should not give you the right to dictate what the rest of the world does. It seems to be that we have created a new human right: the right to not be offended if your illogical beliefs are questioned.
We need to sort this out. Let’s face it, if we seriously think we can continue this farce of never offending the religious then we’re very mistaken. All religions are built upon ancient superstitions which are slowly being proven fallacious. We are trying to create a ‘free speech’ world yet, at the same time, we’re granting the religious not only the freedom from persecution but freedom from having anything negative said about them. As we push forward into a new age of enlightenment this is only going to cause conflict. The result of sending this signal to the religious, that the world will bend over backwards to accommodate their beliefs, will create a generation of fools who think they can say whatever they want but can’t have anything said back to them. It is nothing more than ludicrous for the religious to demand that non-believers live their personal lives in accordance with a religion they have no interest in.
Situations like this are going nowhere and will happen again. This is why the world needs to get some balls and stand up to religious threats.
The Mind Of An Atheist 