A blog called slog has been encouraging folks to do this:
The reason. The take-on-all-comers Southpark cartoon has just lampooned Islam by skirting around an ancient Islamic taboo. Borrowed from the Jewish prohibition against worship sacred objects the Koran forbids any ANY artistic representation of anything lest it become an object of worship…….So you could manufacture a lexus but not draw it. It goes without saying that if there was anything short of God that it would be sacrilege to draw it would be the prophet Muhammed.
South Park had a cartoon devoted to this and kept Muhammad out of camera range but placing him out of sight by such sleight of hand as putting him in a bear suit. Extremists have called for the death of the cartoons creators just as they have the Danish cartoonist who some claim to have drawn Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.
Southpark is very funny for those who are young and impossible to offend. I laugh heartily when I watch it but while I my sort of cartoon humor took shape in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Era.
I am however very offended by the threat of assassination for the cause of punishing humorists and thinkers.
A quarter century ago when the newly empowered Ayatollah’s of Iran called for the assassination of Salman Rushdie for writing a book that took liberties with early Islamic stories I was outraged myself. I penned an outraged letter calling for support for Rushdie and sent it to the student senates of about 100 of America’s largest colleges. In the day before the Internet this was a considerable little project and the postage and printing was close to a hundred bucks.
It was the age of Reagan and sleepy politics on college campuses. Everyone wanted to be a Michael Keaton from Family Ties and his soft headed liberal father was a joke. No one responded and I ended up feeling naive. Too bad I didn’t have Southpark’s panache.
As long as Islam is a minority religion in America Ill be reluctant to joke at Mohammed’s expense mostly because I don’t like picking on the powerless.
Go Cartman!
