Daanish's Days

After watching the recent South Park episode I realized that even in this day an age we are held back by fear and intimidation. Every human being has a very important right in a fair and just society. That right is the freedom of speech.

When South Park featured a new two part episode in which they featured Mohammed along with a team of other religious leaders as a parody of a rag-tag group of super heroes, a character set which has been on the show many times before, they received threats from radical islamic groups based in New York. These extremists warned the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, that if they depicted Mohammed they meet the same fate as Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who made a short-documentary about violence against women in Islam and Islamic society. Theo Van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic extremist.

It seems based on this threat, Comedy Central continued to heavily censor the second part of the two part episode. The censoring involved bleeping out Mohamed’s name, his cartoon self, and what seems to be any message what so ever that seemed like it may have agitated any Muslim extremist.

This begs the question how far can freedom of speech go? The answer is, all the way, well at least in the United States. Freedom of speech is a right that allows people to voice their opinions without fear of persecution from the populace or the government. Freedom of speech is also sometimes known as freedom of expression, which allows people to voice their creative opinion in any medium or form. The argument that what if someone’s opinion, or “expression” offends someone, should they be allowed to make it. Under the law the subject under this argument has the full right to voice these opinions no matter who it offends.

In South Park’s case, if Muslims find the depiction of Mohamed offensive then they should not view such programs. When you turn on your TV and you see the “viewer discretion is advised” title, that is for you to understand that there is no such thing as “TV show producer your creativity is under discretion” well at least after 10pm. So in conclusion if people have a problem with certain media or opinion, do not view the shows, or participate in any activity that offends you, because it is not made for you. Instead of trying to change the content and going against the people that enjoy this content just do the simple thing of averting your eyes.