Here’s the image that’s causing the fuss

“May Allah kill Matt Stone and Trey Parker and burn them in Hell for all eternity. They insult our prophets Mohammed, Jesus, and Moses.” – Zachary “Abu Talhah al-Amrike” on Revolution Muslim website, now taken down.

Well as I said before, whenever jihadists start threatening cartoonists for images that offend them, and craven media types cave in, we bloggers should make it a point to post the images.

That’s the image. In case you’ve been on vacation in Antarctica, it’s supposed to be Mohammed in a bear suit. The bear suit is South Park’s clever way of satirizing Comedy Central which previously censored images of the Prophet on the show.

Now to be fair, preliminary reports indicate Revolution Muslim is a fringoid group of perhaps a dozen members. Our boy Zachary was evidently born Zachary Adam Chesser and appears to be a convert.

He insists he didn’t threaten them when he posted on the site that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, “will probably end up” like Theo van Gogh.

And to make his point clear, he reportedly posted pictures of van Gogh’s butchered body.

Chesser/Abu Talhah al-Amrike told FoxNews.com, “It’s not a threat, but it really is a likely outcome. They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.”

Oh that’s all right then. He wasn’t threatening, he was predicting. And from what has been found out about him by FOX, he doesn’t seem like the kind with the huevos to carry out a threat.

FOX news reported:

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, characterized Revolution Muslim as a loosely-organized group with such outrageous beliefs he believes it may be a “setup” to smear Islam.

“They say wild and irresponsible things periodically,” Hooper told FoxNews.com. “There’s a strong suspicion that they’re merely a setup to make Muslims and Islam look bad. They say such wild and crazy things that you have to wonder.”

Me, I think that’s BS. CAIR appears to be the aboveground legal face of jihadist terrorism in the U.S. A common strategy for terrorists operating in more-or-less democratic countries is to have such an aboveground arm as their spokesman, vis-a-vis the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ulster.

But I concede they might think of the Revolution Muslim group as a loose cannon bad for their image. The group reportedly published a poem about killing Jews on their website in October, for example. That’s not good for the we-aren’t-anti-Semites-just-anti-Zionists line.

However, they have now moved their online operation to the Revolution Muslim blog.
I urge you to have a look. The article on the South Park controversy is articulate, well-written, and not at all raving. I’d say it’s the work of a native English speaker, or someone who speaks English with near-native fluency.

It discusses with calm rationality, citing precedent as an academic writer would cite his/her sources, the scholarly justification for murder

“Many are proclaiming that the South Park episode’s insult was minimal and some might inquire about a situation where the insult is not that great. The renowned scholar Imam Malik said, “If someone says that the button of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is dirty, then he should be executed!”…

“In the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) two key events stand out that provide evidence for the permissibility and indeed preference for retaliation against those that insult him. In the first, a blind Muslim man who had a Jewish wife (and some say servant) assassinated his wife when she continuously cursed and mocked Muhammad (peace be upon him). In the other, a Jewish poet by the name of Ka’b bin al-Ashraf was killed for his poetry insulting the Prophet even though he was living under peaceful covenant with the Muslims and was within his own territory. If anyone is in need of details and sources for these occurrences feel free to contact us and we will forward them to serious inquirers. At this point, it must be known that this is the position in Islam, that there is consensus in it and that for those that argue the harm coming as a consequence exceeds the benefit, then they should know that this is at best an argument that entails a difference of opinion although the evidence suggests that adopting the platform that we ourselves have taken is best.

“The law, known as shariah, in Islam is sacred and it is for no man to change, alter, or disregard when reacting to events like the recent degrading of the Prophet Muhammad (saws) on South Park. Indeed there is an Islamic ruling on nearly every affair and Muslims must seek their response in the religion and not in the personal desire and false manipulation of subjective introspection via philosophy or, as in most cases, emotional attachment to socialized norms.”

And note this:

“Thus the postings that have caused so much controversy on revolutionmuslim.com with regard to this matter were actually not the publication of the opinion of some Muslims but a referral and deferment to Islamic Law, thus fulfilling our divine obligation to command the good and forbid the evil by teaching and preaching the religion of Islam no matter how strange that way of life may seem to some. This is a divine order, obligatory for at least some Muslims in any community to fulfill. Allah says,

Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. (3:104)”

But do read the entire piece. Among other reasons, I’d like to know if anybody else sees something familiar in this. This reads like a lot of post-60s Marxist rhetoric to me. They were good at scholarly suport for murder too.

And while I suppose I could spend time debating a lot of specific points in the post, I’m not going to.

My reply: We are enemies. I concede you have legitimate grievances mixed with the sophistry, but I’m not interested. In the long-but-growing-shorter run, I’m only interested in the judgment of battle.

Gentle readers, read the post. Know what you’re up against.

I will address one point. Early in the post, the author said, “Free speech is a vital tool in the staving of oppression, but this function has its limits.”

Nope.