Comedy Central censored its long-running series South Park, bleeping out every mention of the word Muhammad after a U.S.-based Muslim group made a statement that implied series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would be targeted for death.
The episode, titled 201, was the second half of a two-part episode in which all the celebrities that had been made fun of on the show teamed up to get their revenge. In the episode, the celebrities ‘ led by Tom Cruise ‘ sought to replicate Muslim prophet Muhammad’s immunity from being made fun of.
Muhammad’s immunity from satire is a comment on incidents from 2004 and 2005, when filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was threatened with death by Muslims for making a film critical of Islam. Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim man in 2004. In 2005, several Dutch editorial cartoonists also sparked controversy for depicting Muhammad, which is forbidden in the Muslim faith, leading to further protests and threats of violence from Muslims. Though the incidents and the controversy were extensively covered by Western media, few showed the images amid extensive debate over whether it was proper or safe to do so.
South Park previously depicted Muhammad in an episode that aired in July 2001, and the first half of the episode did not bleep out the word Muhammed.
After the first half aired, a web site called RevolutionMuslim.com criticized the episode for portraying Muhammad and wrote:
‘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. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.’
The site has gone down since the statement was made.
The second part, episode 201, aired with all mentions of Muhammad bleeped out and all images of Muhammad covered up with a black bar that says ‘censored’ or replaced. Several long stretches of dialog delivered at the end of the episode by main characters also were completely bleeped over.
The changes to episode 201 were not all done with the permission of Parker and Stone. On the South Park website, the episode is missing from the library of streaming shows and the following statement was posted:
‘In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.’
The New York Times reported that Comedy Central confirmed it added more bleeps to the episode and that it was not allowing the episode to stream on its website.
