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UPDATE: Here is a statement from Matt and Trey:
“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.”
PREVIOUS: South Park creators defied death threats from a radical Muslim group by continuing their Prophet Muhammad-themed storyline. But the network, wisely, took precaution by censoring Muhammad’s image and name. It’s not clear if that would appease the New York-based group Revolution Muslim, which posted a message on its website after last week’s 200th episode claiming that producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone had insulted their prophet by briefly showing him in a bear costume (any physical representation of the prophet is considered blasphemous by Islam) and threatening that they will “probably wind up like [Dutch filmmaker] Theo Van Gogh” who was murdered by Muslim extremists. Last night, the Muhammad character’s face was covered by a black box and the mention of his name was bleeped.
Comedy Central did confirm that they asked Parker and Stone not to show Prophet Muhammad and that they added additional bleeps in the episode after it was delivered. The network wouldn’t comment whether security for Parker and Stone had been beefed up in light of the threats, or whether last night’s episode will ever be repeated. As of now, it’s still not available online.
Parker and Stone have built a brand of crossing all kinds of lines and being equal offenders to celebrities, politicians and religious leaders. But the Muhammad incident does raise the question about the limits of artistic freedom and free speech when it comes to religious content and simple self-preservation. Did they go too far?
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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In other words, the terrorists have won.
The terrorists won 9 years ago.
Nellie’s rhetoric and choice of words are right out of the Vichy handbook. Very disappointing.
So in between blowing up innocent people and dehumanizing woman Muslim’s watch South Park? And I thought I didn’t have anything in common with them.
So all Muslims believe it is “blasphemous” to depict Muhammad because they do not want him, to be made into an idol, right? (Iconoclasts) So if the mere depiction of or drawing of the prophet is justification for murder, guess what, YOU’VE MADE THE PROPHET INTO AN IDOL (albeit an invisible one).
And why is a verbal depiction of the prophet (with words) somehow less idolatrous than one with lines and colors? It’s a very inconsistent line of reasoning.
there is no line, there is no reason
Ding ding ding. The above post is the 1,000 point answer, the rest of y’all can take five.
Muslims who would kill over Muhammad’s depiction are idolaters, albeit in negative form, and it’s an excellent example of how religions, doing service to their social functions, tend to pervert their spiritual functions. Put more briefly, in religion, the social institutions tend gradually to assume the role of God, and what follows is invariably religious people behaving in ludicrous ways that shame notions of divine benevolence or morality.
Seems like Jesus said something about that at some point.
Muhammad in a bear suit is funny.
Jesus as a dolphin if funnier.
These lunatics kill and riot over this issue. Look at what happened to Theo Van Gogh and the riots that took place all over the world after the Muhammad cartoons were published. Much as it’s an intolerable infringement of free speech, Comedy Central probably did the smart thing. It may be cowardly, but rather than taking Comedy Central to task for playing it safe, we should be asking why the people behind Revolution Muslim aren’t facing legal action for making what is tantamount to a death threat?
I think that when it comes to religion there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed an to me the line is truthfulness – if you attack someone’s religion do it with the truth of their beliefs. As a Mormon I thought the South Park episode on us was honest. I may have winced at some of their satire, but they weren’t dishonest. I haven’t seen the episode at issue here, but nothing I’ve read has made me think that they’ve strayed away from playing off of the truth.
Theo van Gogh was Dutch, not Danish
Well that solves everything. Dutch not Danish, let’s wrap it up people.
Thread closed. Lolz.
This is the United States of America.
Freedom of Religion, the PRESS, AND SPEECH, ARE WHO WE ARE. Screw the fanatical Muslims. Go Trey and Matt.
What cowards the mainstream media is. When the Cartoons incident flared up, the sleezy New York Times not only did not have the balls to print the cartoons, they ran the Madonna made of dung photo instead since they knew no Catholics would try and kill Sulzberger and company like the muslims would.
Shame on the media for not having a spine to stand up to such terrorism.
Parker and Stone actually censored the image themselves (the black bar is clearly essential to some jokes). The network bleeped his name.
After thinking about I thought it was pretty funny they bleeped Muhammad’s name. I would have thought it would have more upsetting to extremists that they did bleep it. It puts it in the category of curse words.
Why should I care if it’s blasphemous in Islam? I’m not a Muslim so your religious laws do not apply to me.
Reason #4,556,884 why religion is the downfall of our species.
Trey Parker and his large gun collection isn’t afraid of idiots threatening him over the Internet.
He’s been used to that for over 14 years, and continuing…
I mean those guys are the ones who punctured that fear in Hollywood of the industry afraid of insulting the Scientologists in anyway. And they got away with it, waving the traffic finger in mighty triumph all the way.
Also all the left/right-wing wankers in this threads reminds me of that episode about that book of poop and pee stories becoming the next CATCHER IN THE RYE.
Its sad and pathetic that they couldn’t even say his name on air without fear of being murdered. Jesus was watching porn, Buddha was doing coke, John Smith could fly and has ice breath, Cartman has anti-semitic rants against kyle by calling him a jew the entire episode.
Mohammed was in a bear suit! My lord. What a joke that they got death threats from that. Islam is the most racist, sexist, machogonist religion around. More power to the south park guys.
fuck allah and your 72 hoes.
If in the Islamic faith it is blasphemous to show images of Mohammed then so be it, that is their choice. However, do not even presume to take away my right and the right of both Trey Parker and Matt Stone to portray whoever they want, whenever they want. Muslim extremists such as the group that issued death threats to Trey and Matt must understand that WE ARE NOT MUSLIM. We do not have to follow the rules that Islam sets forth if we do not follow the faith. If that is too much for them to bear, then they are clearly in the wrong country.
As a side note, is anything being done to track down and find these extremists who are clearly making death threats in a public forum? This seems very peculiar to me.
Radical religious fundamentalists believe that EVERYONE must follow their rules. That’s why they’re fundamentalists.
I kind of hate to say this, but people like this are a bunch of babies. In their world, they get to say whatever they want about us, we’re evil (of course Bush said that about “them” too, if you equate Iraq/Iran with “Muslim”), we’re corrupt, we’re horrible people in league with Satan, etc. etc. etc., and then the second any of “us” say something about them, well now they’re just forced to try and kill us for it, and it’s not their fault, it’s ours. They’ve been babied by their religious leaders desperate to hold onto their power for so long that they’re like six year olds throwing tantrums the instant someone looks at them funny. Then they wonder why people treat them as such. And I’m a freaking liberal.
Yup, it’s official.
I think his is big news, in a way. This is so obviously not a case of “Oh, we don’t want to offend our advertisers and our viewers” but rather, “We don’t want to get killed.”
People can say all they want about Christianity, Judiasm, Mormonism, Scientology – those folks just threaten boycott and legal action.
Horrible religion. Just a horrible, horrible religion. Muslims threaten death, it’s just that simple. While there are only a few who commit murder, there are a helluva lot more who silently nod in approval. How many ‘peaceful muslims’ did not condemn the murder of the documentarian? Lots of “Well, that’s terrible, BUT he had it coming” sentiments.
And I think there’s a big stretch between a crackpot like Timothy McVeigh and an entire network of sleeper cells around the world, training in several countries, given safe haven by wealthy families and regimems, all with one common goal – to rid the world of the millions of Jews, Christians and others they deem ‘infidels’.
Stitch, that’s a very myopic way of looking at it. People have killed in the name of religion for years. Spanish Inquisition? The Crusades? While I’m not religious and dislike many aspects of religion, I’m also not naive to think that it’s the religion that’s horrible – it’s the people and how some choose to use it that can be called “horrible.”
This doesn’t make sense. The episode hasn’t air yet, right? So how did this supposed extremist Muslim group know that he was going to be in a bear suit before even someone like Nikki? Obviously, this is just a marketing ploy.
This was the 2nd part of a 2 part episode.
Learn before you speak up with your “obvious” knowledge.
Part 1 aired last week. Part 2 aired last night. You should get cable Kristi, it’s great.
“Spanish Inquisition? The Crusades?”
Was that in 2010?
“…wisely, took precaution by censoring Muhammad’s image and name”
Wow, this is someone Nikki decided to hire for Deadline? A cowardly apologist for terrorists and censorship? Nellie should stick to reporting the facts instead of sticking her foot in her mouth. She’s basically saying that if a group is angry and offended and threatens violence, then you should censor free speech to appease them. In other words… let the terrorists win.
And I used to think this site had some guts. Guess I was wrong.
Chuck, as a true hero you claim to be and defender of free speech you should have by now created your own web site and publish all cartons to show the terrorist that you are not coward as other you claim are
How can we be sure this so-called ‘radical muslim group’ isn’t in fact a nefarious war profiteer like Blackwater or some rightwing Christian group with a vested interest in engendering hatred of Islam?
How can we be sure you’re a complete idiot? Well, for one, you just told us you are.
Do you work for Blackwater, KBR, Drudge or the 700 Club? Mybe you’re one of those Teabaggers who were inexplicably MIA during the 8 year crimewave that was the Bush administration but suddenly came out of the woodwork when the black guy got elected.
I suppose you also think that 9/11 was an inside job?
Stop watching MSNBC, stop drinking the Kool-Aid… and get a life!
Olbermann, what happened to you, brother? You were a good sportscaster here at channel 5. You were good on ESPN. Did you get in the head or something? Was it a little too much X? You changed. That’s all. You changed.
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve read in awhile.
You fail.
I think it is amazing that it takes an animated show with talking poop to truly open up our eyes to what is going on in the world. We don’t show Muhammad because we are SCARED of the islamic extremists?!?! I am sorry but that means the terrorists are winning and we are allowing them to win this war. We always talk about how this country will not bow to terrorists. Well we just did, in the form of an animated show (the best one out there by the way) being unnecessarily censored. The problem is it is not only us who are scared but it is also the majority of muslims out there who are NOT extremists who are too scared to speak out against the crazy fucks.
The true battlefield in this day and age is not a battlefield but the media. This fight along with most others will be won or lost with a microphone, not a machine gun. If the mainstream Islamic community would rise up and speak out and not live in fear, that is when we will end this. Until then we must continue to fight.
And yes, there are terrorists from all groups, its just some we are more frightened of than others. For whatever reason, political correctness, loss-of-life, we have decided that we will bow to the extremists in the Islamic community but not the extremists from other groups.
Trey and Matt, CONTINUE TO FIGHT! NEVER GIVE UP!
If your religious views are so delicate that a friggin’ cartoon that once featured a story arc about a stoned towel can offend you, get a new religion – that one clearly isn’t working for you.
As a H’wood lib I want to be all tolerant and stuff, but I’ll defend artists over religious nutbars every day of the week.