Burns After Reading: ‘South Park’ drama over CENSORED is ridiculous

Last Wednesday night started out like any other Wednesday night. After getting home late, I was excited to watch the heavily anticipated new episode of “South Park.”

But something tragic happened. The episode didn’t record on my DVR. I tried to catch the 11 p.m. re-air later that night, but at the last minute it was replaced by an old re-run.

The next day I tried to watch it online, but the episode had been banned entirely. It wasn’t until later I learned why.

After the previous week’s episode, which poked fun at the mysterious aura surrounding the Muslim prophet Muhammad, a group of radical cyber-Muslims evidently demanded that Comedy Central not air the show’s upcoming episode portraying the sacrosanct Islamic prophet. The ensuing backlash and personal threats eventually forced Comedy Central to heavily censor the show’s 201st episode before the Wednesday night premiere.

“We have to warn Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] that what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show,” wrote one poster on RevolutionMuslim.com.

For the record, Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker and religious critic, was shot and stabbed in the head multiple times by an Islamic militant in Amsterdam in 2004 after filming a documentary exposing the abuse Muslim women face in some Islamic societies.

RevolutionMuslim.com later displayed graphic pictures of van Gogh’s mutilated body as a warning to “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. It also posted links to the location of a home the two own together in Colorado as well as the addresses of their L.A. studios and the Comedy Central headquarters.

As “South Park” fans know, this is not the first time “South Park” has encountered vicious blowback from radical Muslim groups.

The show encountered a similar backlash in 2006, when network executives censored an image of the Muslim prophet during season 10’s “Cartoon Wars” episodes. The episode was a response to the Jyllands-Posten controversy, when a Danish newspaper was threatened by Islamic radicals for publishing cartoons satirizing Muhammad in 2006.

The Jyllands-Posten publication incited thousands of riots and demonstrations across the Muslim world, leading to the deaths of more than 100 protestors in the Muslim world, according to the BBC.

Following the Danish incident, Islamic leaders faced mounting pressure to extend Sharia Law sanctions against depicting the Muslim prophet beyond the Muslim world.

The impact of this reinstatement is evident in the wake of the show’s latest controversy. Today’s threats are being issued not from remote locations in the Middle East but from Revolution Muslim — an organization that operates only a few miles from Comedy Central’s New York City headquarters.

Many of Revolution Muslim’s members insist they don’t support outright violence or “terrorism.” But given the words of one of the site’s leaders, it’s hard to be certain.

“We are commanded to ‘terrorize’ the disbelievers,” Revolution Muslim leader Younes Abdullah Mohammed said in a 2009 CNN interview. “It’s a command from Allah.”

“South Park” has always had a unique way of taking serious social issues, wrapping them in a thick band of satire and providing viewers with uniquely profound lessons.

The show’s most recent controversy is no exception.

The beauty of our modern society is that everyone has a right to hold his or her own beliefs. But as this saga illustrates, there’s a big difference between holding a particular belief and violently imposing those beliefs upon others.

In this instance, Revolution Muslim has clearly crossed the line. These religious extremists aren’t merely threatening the creators of “South Park” now. They’re threatening free speech, in general.

Enraged Muslim groups are certainly free to express their outrage. But their right to free speech doesn’t allow them to restrict the free speech of others.

Religious radicals may not like everything Stone and Parker have to say. But if they think a “South Park” episode warrants death threats and violence, they can go CENSORED themselves.