Comedy Central Censors South Park After Muslim Group's Warning

Comedy Central censored South Park's parody of the Prophet Muhammad following a warning from a radical Muslim group.
Wednesday's episode — the conclusion of a two-parter — aired with numerous bleeps and a "Censored" bar over the depiction of Muhammad, whose physical representation is considered sacrilegious by Muslims.
"After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode," read a statement on SouthParkStudios.com, creators Trey Stone and Matt Parker's website. "We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show. We will bring you a version of [episode] 201 as soon as we can."

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A rep for Comedy Central confirmed that additional bleeps were added when the final cut was delivered.The censorship comes days after Revolution Muslim, a New York-based radical Islamic group, posted a message on its website chastising Stone and Parker for their depiction of Muhammad in a bear costume in last week's episode."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 post, written by Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said. "This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

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Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in 2004 over his documentary about Muslim women."[Stone and Parker] should feel threatened by what they did," Al-Amrikee told The Associated Press Wednesday.South Park has parodied Muhammad before, first in a 2001 episode that aired without incident, and in 2006, following a controversy caused by a Danish newspaper that published caricatures of Muhammad. The latter episode, however, never aired.