South Park duo criticise Comedy Central

Started by Sportsdude, Apr 17 06 10:42

Previous topic - Next topic

Jolly Green Giant

Sportsdude wrote:The duo behind South Park have used the cartoon\'s latest episode to attack their network for banning them from using an image of the Prophet Muhammad. Comedy Central prevented Matt Stone and Trey Parker from using the image after the furore caused by a Danish newspaper publishing caricatures of Muhammad.Instead, Wednesday\'s episode showed an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President George Bush and the US flag. So, they get scared because of the worldwide riot caused by the Mohammed cartoons ; so, in order not to lose face and still look heroes, they just make fun of Christ ?Nothing to fear from Christians, is there ? No throat cut, no court case, right ?

tenkani

They had a very intelligent, funny dude on the Daily Show the other night, Reza Aslan (f*cking great name). He's just written a book about Islam called No God But God. Check out this summary.

  From [A href="vny!://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062136/"vny!://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CQNJZ0/qid=1144107304/sr=2-1/ref=mag_ny_100""][FONT color=#003399]The New Yorker[/FONT][/A]

[FONT face="Times New Roman"]Aslan, a young Iranian emigrant, lucidly charts the growth of Islam from Muhammad's model community in Medina—depicted as a center of egalitarian social reform—through the chaotic contest to define the faith after the Prophet's death. Within generations, seven hundred thousand hadith—accounts of Muhammad's words and deeds—were in circulation, many "fabricated by individuals who sought to legitimize their own particular beliefs." Out of this muddle was born the primacy of the ulema, Islam's clerical establishment. The ulema, in Aslan's view, foreclosed Koranic interpretation, detoured from the Medinan ideal, and obscured Islam under a thicket of legalistic decrees. Fifteen centuries after Muhammad, Islam has reached the age at which Christianity underwent its reformation; Islam's renewal, Aslan attests, "is already here." However, both modernizers and their "fundamentalist" opposites call themselves reformers, and the victory of the former is not assured. [/FONT]

[FONT face="Times New Roman"][/FONT]

[FONT face="Times New Roman"]From [/FONT][A href="vny!://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/booklist.html/$(0)"][FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#003399]Booklist[/FONT][/A]
[FONT face="Times New Roman"]Aslan's introduction to the history of Islam, which also devotes several chapters to the place of Islam in the contemporary world, tackles its subject with serious and well-informed scholarship. But, miracle of miracles, it's actually pretty fun to read. Beginning with an exploration of the religious climate in the years before the Prophet's Revelation, Aslan traces the story of Islam from the Prophet's life and the so-called golden age of the first four caliphs all the way through European colonization and subsequent independence. Aslan sees religion as a story, and he tells it that way, bringing each successive century to life with the kind of vivid details and like-you-were-there, present-tense narration that makes popular history popular. Even so, the depth and breadth here will probably be a bit heavy for some, who might better enjoy Karen Armstrong's shorter, if less authoritative, Islam (2000). That said, this is an excellent overview that doubles as an impassioned call to reform. John Green[/FONT]


  It's a fascinating subject, and I'm almost entirely ignorant about it. Still, one of the things Aslan brought up was that there is no central religious authority in Islam. Various religious leaders come up with their own interpretations of the Koran, some WILDLY divergent from others, and issue a religious decree that their followers are bound to obey. This is why it's not very useful to make broad generalizations about Islam.

  You might have a religious leader (perhaps in the West) decree that all violence in the name of Islam is evil, and his followers will generally tow the line. Somewhere else, a religious leader may decree that all non-believers in the middle east must be converted, expelled or executed and, having faith in their leader, the followers of this sect will likewise tow the line.
For thou art with me; thy cream and thy sugar they comfort me
Thou preparest a carafe before me in the presence of Juan Valdez
Thou anointest my day with pep; my mug runneth over
Surely richness and taste shall follow me all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the house of coffee forever.

Chicklet

Very interesting.  Thanks tenkani.  People seem awfully quick to generalize a religion or all religions as being the same but they couldn't be more different.
'In every group of human beings you will find a few specimens of below average intelligence, above average ego and spectacularly bad judgement.' - tenkani

kitten

We rarely hear of the Muslims that go about their daily lives in peace and tolerance.  I knew a small group of Muslims that were attending McGill University many years ago, and they were far from the wild fanatics that we hear about daily in the news.  Although I reject religion of any sort for myself, I read the Koran in order to compare it with the Bible.  Considering the age in which they lived, they were extremely forward-thinking compared to Europe.  They insisted on personal cleanliness, for example, as well as courtesy toward women.  Actually, they were much more civilized under the caliphs of that time than the Christians.
Thousands of years ago cats were worshipped.  They have not forgotten.

Jolly Green Giant

 kitten wrote:We rarely hear of the Muslims that go about their daily lives in peace and tolerance.  I knew a small group of Muslims that were attending McGill University many years ago, and they were far from the wild fanatics that we hear about daily in the news.  Although I reject religion of any sort for myself, I read the Koran in order to compare it with the Bible.  Considering the age in which they lived, they were extremely forward-thinking compared to Europe.  They insisted on personal cleanliness, for example, as well as courtesy toward women.  Actually, they were much more civilized under the caliphs of that time than the Christians.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The western world suffered a setback which lasted for hundreds of years. What we usually consider to have been \"Christianity\" was actually the decline and the end of Roman civilization which took that much time, and during which Christianity slowly developed to fill the void.
Note: although I have set this to normal Text Area, it refuses to show the correct format. Go figure. So I inserted a line of dashes to indicate the end of the quoted part.

|