Free speech: South Park vs. Islam

This might be “the lowest point in the history of American TV,” said Margaret Wente in the Toronto Globe and Mail. After veiled threats were published on a U.S. Islamist website, the cable network Comedy Central last week altered an episode of South Park to remove references to the Prophet Mohammed, and is now refusing to rebroadcast the episode—ever. The threats against creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone actually came in response to the previous week’s episode, which had poked fun at the Islamic prohibition against depicting the Prophet. Mohammed was shown hiding inside a giant bear costume, with a character explaining, “We cannot risk violence from the people!” With no evident sense of irony, said David Harsanyi in The Denver Post, the humorless Islamists at RevolutionMuslim.com warned that Parker and Stone had “outright insulted’’ the Prophet and might pay for it with their lives. Instead of standing up for free speech, the appeasers at “Cowardly Central” caved in.

We’ve seen this kind of cowardice before, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. The West’s cultural institutions have been “cowering before the threat of Islamist violence” ever since the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. But the South Park case is “particularly illuminating.” In the show’s 14 years on the air, “there’s no icon South Park hasn’t trampled” with its signature blend of toilet humor and blasphemous nastiness: from the Virgin Mary profusely menstruating to the Buddha snorting cocaine and Jesus Christ downloading Internet porn. Yet only references to Mohammed get censored. Through threats of violent retaliation, it seems, Islam has carved out the unique right not to be insulted.

Nothing unique about it, said Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com. This very month in Texas, a college production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, which depicts Jesus as a gay man, had to be canceled after threats of violence. A Manhattan theater club had to cancel the same play a decade ago, after threats to “burn down the theater, kill the staff, and ‘exterminate’ McNally.” Clearly, Christians also threaten to kill people for blasphemy. The truth, said Ahmed Rehab in ChicagoTribune.com, is that the threats against South Park’s creators came from a fringe group “of literally 5–10 people” who are “widely reviled” by mainstream Muslims. Most Muslims have responded to South Park’s puerile “satire” with the “silence and indifference” it deserves.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up