Summary: Comedy Centralrsquo;s South Park sparked a bit of a controversy recently with a couple of episodes that teased viewers with a possible visualization of the Prophet Muhammad. That visualization never materialized, but it did cause a fringe group in New York to threaten the showrsquo;s creators with violence. ldquo;I think itrsquo;s interesting the ways this so-called lsquo;grouprsquo; was able to get all the attention that it did,rsquo;rdquo; says Peter Gottschalk, associate professor of religion at Wesleyan University. ldquo;Looking at the news reporting of this event, itrsquo;s particularly striking that none of the news organizations that Irsquo;ve looked at have made any effort to see what exactly this group is and how big it is and how important it is.rdquo; Gottschalk says the media, instead, chose to focus its efforts on the ldquo;threatrdquo; posed by the group; the reporting perpetuating ideas of Muslims, and Islam itself, being inherently violent ndash; all based on a single posting on a website by a random group the police determined not to be a threat at all. ldquo;So that, for me, is one of the most astonishing phenomenon,rdquo; he says. ldquo;That for all we know one person with a website is able to get this much attention and reaffirm all of the negative stereotypes about intolerant and violent Muslims.rdquo; Stereotypes Perpetuated By The Media Negative stereotypes of Muslims have a long history in American media Gottschalk points out. In fact, he co-authored, with Gabriel Greenberg, a book that examined some of them. In Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, Gottschalk and Greenberg focused on the history of the representation of Muslims and Islam in political cartoons. ldquo;The book is basically an effort to help Americans realize the ways in which therersquo;s an unjustified fear and antagonism toward Islam and Muslims thatrsquo;s just become normal for American culture,rdquo; he says. ldquo;Those fears are deeply rooted. They didnrsquo;t start with 9/11. They didnrsquo;t start with the Iranian Revolution. They actually reach back about 200 years.rdquo; The Function Of Political Cartoons Gottschalk says he and Greenberg embarked on the project after observing the fear and distrust of Muslims that seemed so rampant in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. He says political cartoons gave them insight into how Americans have been seeing and understanding Muslims collectively. ldquo;So we saw that Muslim men tended to always be typified as being very angry, as wielding swords, as being misogynists. And generally looking the same with an Arab facial stereotype,rdquo; Gottschalk says. ldquo;Muslim women tended to be seen as being very passive, as being victims, as being oppressed by those Muslim men.rdquo; He says itrsquo;s all too easy for people to buy into those staid stereotypes whenever something happens that seems to reinforce them. Thatrsquo;s what happened with South Park, Gottschalk says. The network censored the showrsquo;s final speech after the ldquo;threatrdquo; of violence was made. But itrsquo;s not just makers of mass media who may be overly concerned. Gottschalk points out itrsquo;s also affected academia. Yale University Press recently pulled reprints of the images that sparked the Danish cartoon controversy from a book about the controversy because the press was concerned about what would happen if the cartoons were published. This after the book had been vetted by other academics and by Muslims groups. ldquo;It seems to be real overkill,rdquo; Gottschalk says.
