Bleeps Be Upon Him

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Bleeps Be Upon Him
The genius of South Park's censored "Mohammed" episodes.
By Jonah Weiner
Posted Thursday, April 29, 2010, at 9:46 AM ET

Earlier this month, South Park aired its 200th and 201st episodes. Together, they formed something like a greatest-hits special, as Trey Parker and Matt Stone crammed in references to a score of bygone plots, parodies, and gags: In the first of the two episodes, every celebrity ever mocked on the show returned to file a class-action lawsuit against the town (and, of course, to enjoy a fresh helping of mockery); the seasons-old question of Cartman's father's identity was reopened; and one long-absent character after another trotted out for a cameo, from Mr. Hat to Mr. Hankey, Mecha-Streisand to the Prophet Mohammed.

This last throwback—Mohammed first appeared on South Park in 2001 as part of a team of superhero religious figures that included Jesus, Buddha, and, in the form of a giant glowing dreidel, Moses—was the most controversial. Since the 2005 Danish cartoon fiasco, when caricatures of Mohammed sparked a chain of worldwide protests, death threats, and media self-censorship, the idea of representing Mohammed visually has been the single most radioactive issue South Park has dared to touch. In the two-part 2006 episode "Cartoon Wars," the show tried, and failed, to bring Mohammed back to the screen—at the moment of his appearance, the screen went black, and a title card explained that Comedy Central had refused to air the image. Here the show was, four years later, giving it another go.

The first episode, "200," was a tease: Mohammed "appeared" obscured from sight, first behind a black box marked "CENSORED," then in a U-Haul van and later on in a bear suit. In "201," he stepped into full view—or, rather, into what would have been full view, were the "CENSORED" box still not superimposed over him. (In an elegantly telescoping gag, it also turned out that the guy in the bear suit was actually Santa Claus, pretending to be Mohammed wearing a bear suit). What's more, every mention of Mohammed's name had been replaced with a shrill bleep—which wasn't the case in "200." Comedy Central, apparently acting in response to a threatening post published (after "200" aired) on a New York-based Web site called RevolutionMuslim.com, had plastered the episode with fig leaves.

In newspaper editorials, official statements, and comment sections across the Web, the controversy over the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in "200" and "201"—and Comedy Central's duck-and-cover response—has been cast as a simple case of individual bravery versus institutional cowardice, free speech versus censorship. But is it really that simple? The dustup revolves around a set of seeming absolutes that, upon closer scrutiny, dissolve into a dizzying array of questions.

For starters, were Matt Stone and Trey Parker trying to "make fun" of Mohammed, were they trying to merely "depict" him, or, once we find ourselves within the mirthful city limits of South Park, Colo. (not to mention the give-no-quarter limits of fundamentalist Islam), is there no meaningful distinction between parody and depiction?

Meanwhile, did the post on RevolutionMuslim.com, which suggested that Stone and Parker might meet with a grisly fate for their "outright insult," constitute a "threat" (as the New York Police Department and FBI called it) or simply a "warning" (as Revolution Muslim insisted)? If it was a threat, how credible was it, and if it wasn't credible (as the NYPD diagnosed it, characterizing the two men behind the site as all-talk nobodies), then on what basis did Comedy Central decide to censor "201" so heavily? Comedy Central has yet to acknowledge that there was any link between the Revolution Muslim post and the network's decision.

Then there's the question of which Muslims, exactly, believe that there should be no visual representations of the prophet. The injunction itself turns out to be just one interpretation—more prevalent among Sunni Muslims than Shiites—of sayings attributed to Mohammed that appear not in the Quran but in supplementary oral transcriptions known as hadith. Finally, faced with a centuries-old history of art and artifacts in which Mohammed has been portrayed, variously, as a turbaned and/or bearded sage, as a flame, and with his face veiled altogether, how does one decide which representations, if any, are permissible? And what even counts as a representation of Mohammed in the first place?

Which is all to say, the "200" scandal rests atop a mountain of contingencies. If there is one absolute here, it is the precedent of violence both real and intimated—the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, to which Revolution Muslim alluded in its original post; the deaths of more than a hundred people protesting the Danish cartoons throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa; and the threats that sent several of these cartoonists into hiding.

What's funny, of course, is that when South Park first featured a cartoon depiction of Mohammed back in its fifth season, not a whisper of scandal ensued. Perhaps this is because South Park's depiction of Mohammed wasn't negative: The theme of the episode—different religions have different things to recommend them, unless the religion is Scientology—was hardly provocative. Or perhaps it's simply because the episode aired way back in July of 2001, in a very different world. In the wake of the "200" controversy, Comedy Central has tried to scrub the old episode, "Super Best Friends," from the Internet, but you can find a streaming version easily enough.

South Park owes its longevity to its deft mixture of shock and sophistication. For sure, Parker and Stone can be irritating, and not always in the gadflyish ways they intend. They have a weakness for breaking the world into two camps—hypocrites on one side, Trey Parker and Matt Stone on the other—in the manner of two kids in the cafeteria who think they're smarter than everyone else. They are overly convinced of the hilarity of Asian people speaking English poorly. And their libertarian streak can grow pigheaded, as in their Season 4 swipe at hate-crime legislation, in which they argued speciously, via Stan, that "all hate-crime laws do is support the idea that blacks are different from whites." But when they avoid these pitfalls, they are among the sharpest, most inventive satirists working.

In "200," they are at the top of their game. The last time South Park took on the depiction-of-Mohammed issue, in 2006, it did so with a far heavier hand: In one subplot, Americans afraid of violent al-Qaida reprisals for a cartoon of the prophet literally buried their heads in sand, and the script featured several speeches about the slippery slope of censorship. This time around, Parker and Stone take an inspired, show-don't-tell approach: The episodes vibrantly illustrate the idea—fascinating both in its political and philosophical implications—that a U-Haul van, a bear suit, and a "CENSORED" bar can themselves come to represent precisely the thing they were meant to obscure.

And Parker and Stone do this in a way that thumbs a nose at censorship itself, demonstrating that Comedy Central's skittishness actually made South Park's representation of Mohammed more "offensive": In 2001's "Super Best Friends," Mohammed was a hero. In "200" he is stuffed into a piece of moving equipment. Which representation is more sensitive?

Unlike the "Cartoon Wars" episodes, "200" and "201" feature no speechifying interlude—the moment, traditionally, when Parker and Stone risk underestimating our intelligence and lay out the "moral" of the episode. The co-creators have Comedy Central to thank for this absence, as more than a half-minute of monologues from Kyle, Jesus, and Santa Claus toward the end of "201" is completely bleeped. From Parker and Stone's official statement, we know that the theme of the monologues was "intimidation and fear," and that the bleeps weren't a "meta-joke"—they were added by the network. But the sequence winds up speaking as eloquently, startlingly, and hilariously to the issue at hand as a monologue ever could. That 38-second bleep is one of the best pieces of writing South Park has ever aired.

Jonah Weiner is a pop critic for Slate.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2252252/

The unfairness of the trial of Muslim activist Syed Fahad Hashmi

The Legal Black Hole in Lower Manhattan
The unfairness of the trial of Muslim activist Syed Fahad Hashmi.
By Jeanne Theoharis
Posted Tuesday, April 27, 2010, at 11:05 AM ET

On Wednesday, an American citizen goes to trial, without the right to review all the evidence in his case and after three years of isolation. This is happening not in Guantanamo or even a military brig but in the Southern District of New York. Syed Fahad Hashmi, held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, is charged with two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. If convicted, he faces 70 years in prison. His case represents the vast, baffling scope of this sort of criminal charge and the abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism right here at home.

With all the attention that has gone to Guantanamo, much of the outcry over inhumane treatment and torture, the use of secret evidence, and denial of habeas rights has cast these as problems occurring largely outside U.S. shores and courts. Yet the conditions of Hashmi's pre-trial confinement are not more humane than those inflicted on many Guantanamo detainees. Nor has his right to a fair trial in New York been significantly more protected than those of foreign nationals facing U.S. military tribunals. And the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration has ameliorated none of this.

Hashmi is a 30-year-old U.S. citizen who was born in Pakistan; grew up in Flushing, Queens, where his family still lives; and received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his master's from London Metropolitan University. At Brooklyn College, in 2002, Hashmi was a student of mine in a seminar on civil rights. A critic of U.S. foreign policy and its treatment of Muslims, he held the rather optimistic view that you could change people's minds by talking and arguing with them. He could often be found in the hall before and after class debating other students. For my seminar, he wrote a research paper on the abridgement of the civil liberties of Muslim-American groups in the United States after 9/11. Now it is his rights that have been violated.

Since arresting him in 2006, the government has sought to prosecute Hashmi for providing material support to al-Qaida without accusing him of being a member of al-Qaida, of trying to help al-Qaida commit any act of terrorism or other crime, or of even having any direct contact with the group. Instead, the government's charges against Hashmi are based on the testimony of a cooperating witness named Junaid Babar, an acquaintance from Queens who stayed in his student apartment in London in 2004 for two weeks. The government claims that while Babar was in Hashmi's apartment, he had luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks (what the government terms "military gear") and that later Babar delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of al-Qaida in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In addition, Babar borrowed Hashmi's cell phone and then allegedly used it to call other conspirators in terrorist plots. Babar was himself subsequently arrested on material support charges and has agreed to testify in a number of cases in exchange for a much-reduced sentence.

Material-support laws are the black box of domestic terrorism prosecutions, into which all sorts of constitutionally protected activities can be thrown and classified as suspect. The law defines material support as the knowing provision of "any service, training, [or] expert advice or assistance" to a group designated by the federal government as a foreign terrorist organization. The prosecution need not show an actual criminal act, just the knowing "support" to a group designated a terrorist organization. It's a prosecutor's dream: You don't need to show evidence of a plot or even a desire to help terrorists to win a conviction—a low bar the standards of traditional criminal prosecution would not allow.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have relied on the statute's vague nature—what the Bush Department of Justice described as "strategic overinclusiveness"—to criminalize a wide range of activities. Operating by the logic of preventive prosecution, material-support charges often target small acts and religious and political associations, which take on sinister meaning as ostensible manifestations of forthcoming terrorism.

These laws have created a climate in which certain political and religious beliefs are deemed questionable and dangerous. In its prosecution of Hashmi, the government will likely focus on political statements Hashmi made about American foreign policy and the treatment of Muslims here and abroad. Hashmi drew the attention of Time and CNN in May 2002 as a student activist and potential homegrown threat; he was quoted at a 2002 Brooklyn College meeting as calling America "the biggest terrorist in the world." He was also a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun. The government has not designated Al Muhajiroun a terrorist organization nor deemed membership in the organization illegal, yet Hashmi's First Amendment protected speech and association with the group is being used against him.

Hashmi's pre-trial detention—nearly three years of solitary confinement—has been served in severe isolation under Special Administrative Measures imposed by the Bush administration and then renewed by the Obama administration. The federal government created SAMS in 1996, at first to target gang leaders and mafia bosses in cases where "there is a substantial risk that an inmate's communication or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons." After 9/11, the DoJ relaxed the standard for imposing a SAM and expanded their use. In Hashmi's case, the government cited his "proclivity for violence" as the reason for these harsh measures—even though he has no criminal record and is not being charged with committing an act of violence.

The result is that Hashmi is allowed contact only with his lawyers and his immediate family—one visit by one family member every other week for one and a half hours. His cell is electronically monitored 24 hours a day, so he showers and relieves himself in view of the camera. He cannot receive or send mail except with his immediate family. He cannot talk to other prisoners through the walls or take part in group prayer. He is allowed one hour of exercise a day, in a solitary cage without fresh air. These conditions have degraded his health—in pre-trial hearings, he appears increasingly withdrawn and less focused—and have interfered with his ability to participate in his own defense.

Much of the evidence against Hashmi is classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act (originally enacted in 1981 to prevent U.S. intelligence officers under prosecution from threatening to reveal state secrets to manipulate the legal proceedings). His lawyers, who had to receive CIA-level security clearances, are able to review the evidence but may not discuss it with Hashmi or any un-cleared experts. This, too, blocks Hashmi from assisting with his defense.

Hashmi's case has attracted growing attention. More than 550 academics and writers signed a Statement of Concern about "the conditions of his detention, constraints on his right to a fair trial, and the potential threat his case poses to the First Amendment rights of others." Broadway actors, civil libertarians, Muslims, clergy, law students, anti-war activists, and Hashmi's own family have held weekly vigils outside MCC, where Hashmi is being held.

Many of these concerned New Yorkers planned to attend the trial. In response, the government filed a motion citing the public interest in the case as potentially dangerous. They asked for an "anonymous jury" with extra security. On Monday, Judge Loretta Preska granted this request. The U.S. attorney disparagingly wrote that "jurors will see in the gallery of the courtroom a significant number of the defendant's supporters, naturally leading to juror speculation that at least some of these spectators might share the defendant's violent radical Islamic leanings."

Promoting guilt by implication, this move by the prosecution signals to the jury that Hashmi is dangerous even before he steps into the courtroom and encourages jurors to view observers in court as suspicious as well. Compromised due process requires further secrecy. The politics of fear requires more fear. And so tomorow, Syed Fahad Hashmi goes to trial in a legal black hole right here in New York City.

Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College and endowed chair in women's studies. She is the co-founder of Educators for Civil Liberties.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2252117/

Not Even in South Park?

The New York Times
April 26, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
Not Even in South Park?
By ROSS DOUTHAT

Two months before 9/11, Comedy Central aired an episode of “South Park” entitled “Super Best Friends,” in which the cartoon show’s foul-mouthed urchins sought assistance from an unusual team of superheroes. These particular superfriends were all religious figures: Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mormonism’s Joseph Smith, Taoism’s Lao-tse — and the Prophet Muhammad, depicted with a turban and a 5 o’clock shadow, and introduced as “the Muslim prophet with the powers of flame.”

That was a more permissive time. You can’t portray Muhammad on American television anymore, as South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, discovered in 2006, when they tried to parody the Danish cartoon controversy — in which unflattering caricatures of the prophet prompted worldwide riots — by scripting another animated appearance for Muhammad. The episode aired, but the cameo itself was blacked out, replaced by an announcement that Comedy Central had refused to show an image of the prophet.

For Parker and Stone, the obvious next step was to make fun of the fact that you can’t broadcast an image of Muhammad. Two weeks ago, “South Park” brought back the “super best friends,” but this time Muhammad never showed his face. He “appeared” from inside a U-Haul trailer, and then from inside a mascot’s costume.

These gimmicks then prompted a writer for the New York-based Web site revolutionmuslim.com to predict that Parker and Stone would end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for his scathing critiques of Islam. The writer, an American convert to Islam named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, didn’t technically threaten to kill them himself. His post, and the accompanying photo of van Gogh’s corpse, was just “a warning ... of what will likely happen to them.”

This passive-aggressive death threat provoked a swift response from Comedy Central. In last week’s follow-up episode, the prophet’s non-appearance appearances were censored, and every single reference to Muhammad was bleeped out. The historical record was quickly scrubbed as well: The original “Super Best Friends” episode is no longer available on the Internet.

In a way, the muzzling of “South Park” is no more disquieting than any other example of Western institutions’ cowering before the threat of Islamist violence. It’s no worse than the German opera house that temporarily suspended performances of Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo” because it included a scene featuring Muhammad’s severed head. Or Random House’s decision to cancel the publication of a novel about the prophet’s third wife. Or Yale University Press’s refusal to publish the controversial Danish cartoons ... in a book about the Danish cartoon crisis. Or the fact that various Western journalists, intellectuals and politicians — the list includes Oriana Fallaci in Italy, Michel Houellebecq in France, Mark Steyn in Canada and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands — have been hauled before courts and “human rights” tribunals, in supposedly liberal societies, for daring to give offense to Islam.

But there’s still a sense in which the “South Park” case is particularly illuminating. Not because it tells us anything new about the lines that writers and entertainers suddenly aren’t allowed to cross. But because it’s a reminder that Islam is just about the only place where we draw any lines at all.

Across 14 on-air years, there’s no icon “South Park” hasn’t trampled, no vein of shock-comedy (sexual, scatalogical, blasphemous) it hasn’t mined. In a less jaded era, its creators would have been the rightful heirs of Oscar Wilde or Lenny Bruce — taking frequent risks to fillet the culture’s sacred cows.

In ours, though, even Parker’s and Stone’s wildest outrages often just blur into the scenery. In a country where the latest hit movie, “Kick-Ass,” features an 11-year-old girl spitting obscenities and gutting bad guys while dressed in pedophile-bait outfits, there isn’t much room for real transgression. Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place.

Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing.

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

Happily, today’s would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn’t Weimar Germany, and Islam’s radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy.

For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/opinion/26douthat.html

Convert To Christianity Or Leave

By
Jason Linkins
jason@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
The Huffington Post

American Family Association To Muslim-Americans: Convert To Christianity Or Leave

First Posted: 04-13-10 01:10 PM | Updated: 04-13-10 01:51 PM

It seems like only a week ago that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer (who is the AFA's Director of Issues Analysis, perhaps because he has so many personal issues that need to be analyzed by professional psychopharmacologists), was saying that the Christian thing to do would be to round up all Muslim American citizens and deport them to Muslim countries, because surely that would solve a lot of problems? You know, by sending happy American citizens to other countries?

The most compassionate thing we can do for Muslims who have already immigrated here is to help repatriate them back to Muslim countries, where they can live in a culture which shares their values, a place where they can once again be at home, surrounded by people who cherish their deeply held ideals. Why force them to chafe against the freedom, liberty and civil rights we cherish in the West?

Well, naturally, such remarks call for a clarification, and, in keeping with the traditions of "clarifying," Fischer basically swaps out one ridiculously abhorrent statement for another statement of equal ridiculous abhorrence, without really retracting the first.

Via Media Matters:

Muslims who have become naturalized citizens, of course, would need to commit an act of treason to forfeit their citizenship and become eligible for repatriation. Based on the Constitution's definition of treason in Article III Section 3 ["adhering to (the) Enemies (of the United States), (or) giving them Aid and Comfort"] treasonous acts are likely committed on virtually a weekly basis here in the U.S. in many mosques and Islamic organizations.

[...]

Muslims continue to have as their objective the Islamization of the entire world, including the U.S., and are taught by their god to use force where necessary to accomplish the goal. The current objective of Muslim activists is to create a brand new Islamic state - meaning a state like New Jersey or Montana - out of existing jurisdictions and establish a virtual Islamic homeland in our midst.

[...]

Many Muslims are on our shores on student visas and such and have not yet become citizens. We must politely decline their request for naturalization (becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a right) and use the money we would otherwise spend on their welfare, their education, their medical care and their incarceration to graciously assist them in returning to their countries of origin.

Those who are willing to convert to Christianity and renounce Islam, Allah, Mohammed and the Koran may be welcomed, for they can become not just good Christians but true Americans.

Meanwhile, I am reliably informed by the Constitution of the United States that one of the freedoms we cherish in America is the right to worship whatever faith we bloody well please, so maybe it's Fischer who needs to sail away on a little sloop in search of a land more to his liking?

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/13/american-family-associati_n_535810.html?view=print