By Rachael Dickson, Four Years After Final Four Editor
A former George Mason University Student posted a warning online to the creators of South Park that has been perceived as a threat by many, including Comedy Central.
The message, posted on RevolutionMuslim.com April 15 after a recent South Park episode in which the prophet Muhammad was shown in a bear costume, said, “We have to warn [Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park] that what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”
Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed in 2004 after he produced a film criticizing the treatment of women in Islamic societies.
Because of the message, the latest episode of South Park aired with the Muhammad character censored.
The author of the note, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, was born Zachary Adam Chesser, he confirmed in an e-mail correspondence. He attended Mason as a freshman for one semester in 2008.
“I did not think [my comments] would garner quite this large of a reaction, but they were intended to turn this into a story so that the Muslims would not just let this event go unnoticed,” Al-Amrikee said via e-mail. He said Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York City, would attempt to turn the issue into a broader story and that the group might not post anything new online “until the dialogue broadens.”
A FoxNews.com article that Al-Amrikee characterized as “more or less correct, but far from a full story,” described him as a former football player and crew team member from Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Va. He said one thing the article did get wrong was timing — he was in fact a heavy metal fan in middle school, and not high school, as it claimed.
The article went on to say that Al-Amrikee dropped out of Mason in the spring semester of his freshman year in 2008.
He eloped and married a Muslim woman he met in college who recently gave birth to a son. He lives with his mother, brother, wife and son in Centreville, Va.
“I do what I can with the time that I have, but I do not necessarily tell people I am affiliated with Revolution Muslim unless it serves some purpose,” Al-Amrikee said. “We do not encourage Muslims to remain in the West and we do not plan on doing it either. If immigration laws were not such a pain, then I would not be here right now.”
Al-Amrikee maintains an active YouTube account at AlQuranWaAlAhadeeth and, until Thursday, an active Twitter account, http://twitter.com/mujahidblog@mujahidblog. On April 15, he posted on Twitter, “May Allah kill Matt Stone and Trey Parker and burn them in Hell for all eternity. They insult our prophets Muhammad, Jesus and Moses…”
Al-Amrikee also said reports online that claimed he was planning to set up a Revolution Muslim branch in Northern Virginia were false and that he is planning on immigrating out of the United States as soon as he can.
A follow-up statement clarifying the South Park response was posted on RevolutionMuslim.
blogspot.com and RevolutionMuslimDaily.blogspot.com.
Al-Amrikee took responsibility for the statement along with Younes Abdullah Muhammad. The statement, which is eight pages long in PDF form, includes sections on Islamic belief, the events of 9/11, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and free speech.
“This stance [advocating death for those who insult Muhammad in keeping with several Islamic rulings throughout history] is virtually obligatory,” the statement says in part.
“But it does not mean that our taking this stance is in some way an absolute call toward the requirement that the creators of South Park must be killed, nor a deliberate attempt at incitement; it is only to declare the truth regardless of consequence and to offer an awareness in the mind of Westerners when they consider doing the same thing.”
The statement also says, “All one has to do to see the impact Matt Stone and Trey Parker have had in spreading Islamophobia already is to go on any right-wing [sic] extremist website like the Jawa Report and count the number of times the words ‘Derka Derka Muhammad Jihad’ are written.”
This statement references the 2004 film Team America: World Police, a profanity-laden political satire produced by Stone and Parker.
In response to statements by the Council on American-Islamic Relations implying that Revolution Islam was too outrageous to be real and could be a setup to smear Islam, Al-Amrikee said, “CAIR is an organization which frequently abandons Islamic principles in favor of pleasing American politicians. This is how many if not most Muslims view them. We e-mailed them our press release so that they could respond, but they have yet to do this. They do not return to the religious proofs for what they say, but they issue statements from emotions.”
“CAIR should worry more about the millions of Muslims whose blood has been shed by America over the past 20 years than appeasing a society that only cares about its own citizens,” Al-Amrikee said.
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