South Park creators threatened with death

By Ethel C. Fenig

While President Barack Obama (D) reaches out to the Muslim world, extending his hand in friendship, bowing to Saudi rulers and even banning mention of "Islamic radicalism," the Muslim world reciprocates not quite in kind.

Extremist Muslims have threatened to kill the creators of the Comedy Central show South Park because of portrayals of Muslim's originator/founder/inventor, Muhammad, dressed in a bear suit. This is a big no, no in Islam which frowns on any pictures of Muhammad or any jokes about him. A cartoonist in Denmark who had earlier drawn Muhammad with a bomb in his turban is now living with security because of death threats.

Cowed, Comedy Central has bleeped and changed the South Park episode of Muhammad as a bear reports David Itzkoff of the New York Times.

An episode of "South Park" that continued a story line involving the Prophet Muhammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central with audio bleeps and image blocks reading "CENSORED" after a Muslim group warned the show's creators that they could face violence for depicting that holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker "will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh"

(Van Gogh's throat was slit on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim angered by his film on the Muhammad.)

Meanwhile many cartoonists in the Muslim world--and some even in Europe and the US--continue to portray Jews and occasionally some Christians in the vilest way in complete safety. Indeed, they are honored for spreading hatred and bigotry.

As Rush Limbaugh recently asked:

What are we doing having relationships with the Muslim world anyway? Do we have a relationship with the Catholic world? Do we have a relationship with the Buddhist world? Do we have a relationship with the Jewish world? Well, if we did, Obama's taken care of that. But we don't have relations with religious worlds."

Indeed.