South Park Episode Featuring the Prophet Muhammad Blocked by Network

The 201st edition of the satirical animation was aired on Comedy Central last night but only after the channel had introduced a slew of audio and visual obfuscations in addition to the self-censorship applied by the program’s makers.

A spokesman confirmed that the network had not granted permission to play the episode online and that producers had edited the program before it was broadcast.

Trey Stone and Matt Parker, the cartoon’s creators, were warned this week that they would be killed if they were seen to continue mocking the Prophet after an episode broadcast last Wednesday. It included a character representing Muhammad, who spoke from inside a giant bear suit to prevent the illustrators having to depict him a blasphemous act according to some Muslims.

The latest episode also featured Muhammad, but not before it was sent to Comedy Central by Stone and Parker with a black silhouette marked "CENSORED" in place of the bear. Every mention of the Prophet was also bleeped out.

Despite the program-makers’ alterations, Comedy Central added more bleeps and have now stopped the original episode being played on the South Park website.

A message on the site reads: "We apologize that South Park Studios cannot stream episode 201 at this time. After we delivered the show and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream the original version of the show."

The dispute comes after a little-known American group calling itself "Revolution Muslim" posted a message on its website warning Stone and Parker "that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show".

The warning was accompanied by a disturbing image of Van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker who was murdered by an Islamic militant in 2004 after making a film that was seen to criticize Islam.

The website also linked to details of a home owned by Parker and Stone and the addresses of their production office in California and the New York office of Comedy Central.

Younus Abdullah Muhammad, the head of Revolution Muslim, said that there was no direct threat of violence contained in the inflammatory web posting.

"How is that a threat?" he asked. "Showing a case study right there of what happened to another individual who conducted himself in a very similar manner? It’s just evidence."

South Park has been censored by Comedy Central over this issue before. In 2006, the network removed an image of Muhammad from an episode designed to comment on the Danish cartoon controversy.

In an interview with the website Boing-Boing last week, Stone pointed out that they had been allowed to depict Muhammad in the program in 2001 before the Danish furor.

"It was before the Danish cartoon controversy, so it somehow is fine," he said. "Then, after that, now that’s the new normal. We lost. Something that was okay is now not okay."