Death Threats Lead to 'South Park' Censorship

Comedy Central bleeped mentions of the Prophet Muhammad in this week’s episode of South Park, after the edgy 200th episode last week led to death threats against creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The censorship extended to Kyle’s final speech, in which he talked about the dangers of “intimidation and fear,” without referencing any religious topics.

Last week’s South Park episode featured a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. RevolutionMuslim.com, a U.S. Website that has since been shut down, then warned Stone and Parker that they could share the fate of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by extremists in reaction to a film that was critical of the treatment of women in Islam. The site included a photo of Van Gogh’s corpse, and published the addresses of the show’s production office and a link to a story about a house owned by Parker and Stone.

Stone and Parker continued the gag in this week’s show, but Comedy Central apparently decided to pull the plug on any references to Islam, and even to the threat. Stone and Parker issued a statement, in which they said, “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.”