Trey and Matt Parker are threatend by Muslims

[A Black Falcon]

This so much.

And now the 200th and 201st episodes of South Park are banned both on television and on SouthParkStudios.com (which legally streams every episode; the old 2001, pre-9/11 episode The Super Best Friends, which depicted Muhammad back when it was still okay, has also been removed from the site). This is just ridiculous. Luckily, I have Season 5 on DVD and so I can see The Super Best Friends anytime I want, but I wonder if 200 and 201 will be included on the Season 14 DVD set next year. I was hoping Muhammad would appear uncensored on the Season 10 box in the episode Cartoon Wars Part II (originally aired in 2006, right after the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy), but it was released exactly as it had aired on television, with the scene of Muhammad edited out.

Fuck sensitivity to the Islamic community. If they can portray Jesus defecating on the American flag, then why can't they show Muhammad giving a South Park caricature of Family Guy's Peter Griffin a salmon helmet? They can portray Jesus being stabbed in the neck and shooting arterial spray everywhere (in fact, that was the second time he had been brutally murdered on the show, third time if you count the crucifixion scenes from The Passion of the Christ), but now they can't even say Muhammad's name? If Christians began threatening the show with violence, would Comedy Central cave in like this? If Jews started threatening to blow us up unless we stopped eating pork, would grocery stores start pulling all their pork, bacon, ham, etc. off the shelves? Fuck this shit. Here's a naked Lego Muhammad fucking a six-year-old:

Because Islam never had a Reformation or an Enlightenment, and is still stuck in the Middle Ages. Belief in concepts such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, that people have inalienable rights, separation of church and state, and much more is rare in Islam, particularly in extremist Islam, and the extremist branch is very, very strong. They do not believe in many of our most fundamental values, and as a result there is a massive culture clash, as should be expected.

Some bits of democracy are starting to spread more in the Middle East, and some Islamic countries are more progressive than others (the Arab ones are the worst, in general), but overall Islam is a very conservative religion which has resisted change.

Antagonizing such people isn't great, but giving in isn't right either -- we should not surrender our rights just because other people don't believe that such rights should exist. They are wrong, and we should say so and stick with what we believe...

Problem is, of course, they are also sometimes violent... So what should we do? It can be tough. But yes, I do not support just giving in. That does not help anything, really.