South Park is usually the animated show where anything goes, but even Comedy Central apparently thinks show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker took things too far with their recent parody of the Prophet Muhammad. Comedy Central censored out any references to the Prophet Muhammad in Wednesday night’s South Park episode after Stone and Parker were targetted with violent threats over references to the religious figure in the show’s 200th episode.
The network bleeped out conversation relating to the Prophet Muhammad in the follow-up episode this week and covered images of the character with ‘censored’ boxes. The South Park website noted that it did “not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.”
South Park creators were forbidden by Comedy Central to depict the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 after censoring another episode featuring the character. In the South Park 200th episode, Parker and Stone hid the character in a bear suit. This, apparently, did not appease outraged Muslims.
“By placing the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a bear suit, the creators of South Park sought to insult the sacred, and show their blatant and general disregard for religion,” RebolutionMuslim.com said in a blog post. “By insulting our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) without the outright depicting of his image, the creators of South Park thought that they had found some loophole in the Muslim faith for them to mock.”
RevolutionMuslim.com also posted a warning to Trey Parker and Matt Stone that further use of the name and image of Prophet Muhammad could lead to violence. The threat was accompanied by a terrible photo of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 after filming a documentary on the abuse of Muslim women.
“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” the website post read. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”
We’re all for a good bit of parody in the name of fun, but death threats and photos of murdered filmmakers is no kind of funny.
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