Was South Park censored?

Last week, MWW reported on an episode of South Park in which the end asked wether Comedy Central would dare to show an episode featuring an image of Mohammed.

The play within a play format makes things very hard to figure out, but according to details of the show over at The Volokh Conspiracy, there could well have been some censorship. In the show, Fox are about to show an episode of Family Guy featuring Mohammed. At a point in the show where Mo is to be seen handing a football helmet to the Family Guy, the following words appear on the screen:

In this shot, Mohammed hands a football helmet to Family Guy.

Followed by:

Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.

In the South Park episode Jesus is shown defacating on people, and being defacated on, but if the “censorship” is genuine, this isn’t considered as bad as showing Mohammed standing around being normal.

Of course this could all be Matt Stone and Trey Parker having a joke around, but in the current climate we can’t tell. More on this as and when we find it!

Thanks to Andy Gilmour for the link.

**UPDATE**

According to this article, the creators of South Park were told weeks ago that they could not run an image of Mohammed. An un-named individual who is close to the show said that the decision was made over concerns for public safety. Comedy Central issued a statement today saying:

In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.

What does it say when a TV station is scared of showing an image of Mohammed standing around being normal, but is fine with showing Jesus literally being crapped on? It shows that the bosses of Comedy Central are self-censoring cowards who have no respect for artistic integrity. It also shows them as hypocrites for allowing the show to insult one religions prophet, but not even show anothers. Matt Stone and Trey Parker have shown that hypocrisy in excellent fashion, and they are the only ones who come out of this with any credit.

It also makes you wonder where this self-censorship when it comes to Islam is going to take us. Comedy Central have previously been known as a network not afraid of pushing the boundaries, as shown by airing South Park in the first place, but now they seem scared shitless of offending Muslims. When they’re scared of showing Mohammed doing nothing, but not of showing Jesus being shat on, it just shows that these Mo-toon protesters are having way too much influence.


12 Responses to “Was South Park censored?”

  1. boohiss says:

    I’ll wait until I know for sure that Comedy Central censored South Park. After that, I will no longer watch Comedy Central for any reason.

  2. […] According to this article (via) Comedy Central have banned South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker from depicting Muhammad on their programme. Stone and Parker have responded by attacking the network for its rank hypocrisy. The comedy – in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians – instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag. […]

  3. Paul French says:

    There is in fact an image of Mohammed in this and every episode from Season 6 til now. In the opening song right as it ends there is a large group of every character that has appeared in South Park. Among them is the profit Mohammed as he was in the Season 5 episode “Super Best Friends.” He is hard to see but he is on the right side of the screen right in front of Satan.

  4. David says:

    After Southpark imaged Mary bleeding out of her ass, Jesus defecating on President Bush, revealing Ron Howard’s hoax along with so many other insults on religious feelings isnt it sort of ridiculous to start censoring southpark now (especially if mohammed has been imaged in season 5 before!!!). This all tells me that the comedycentral-board are a bunch of spineless hypocrites!

  5. David says:

    …not that i ever wanted southpark to be censored 😉

  6. Marc Draco says:

    Proves to me (if I needed any more) how dangerous religion is: and Islam is one of the most dangerous of them all. Muslims make the David Koreshes of this world look like positive good citizens.

  7. martyn says:

    Pooing on the stars and stripes? I bet that didn’t go down to well over the pond, they love their bit of cloth over there don’t they?
    While we’re on the subject of religious nutters, I had this forwarded to me in regard to us soldiers funerals. http://www.godhatesfags.com
    Worth a quick look to make you think wtf are these people on about. god hates fags?, I didn’t think the smoking ban was THAT all encompassing

  8. likuit says:

    every religious one is a little mentally weak. why should he need religion if he was sane? so religions danger does not rely on their specific rules – the danger comes from its adherents and their social status. their would not be that much islamic terrorism if their home countries were wealthier. stopping the us and eu are now stopping their financial aid for the palestinians and let the iran pay for them now – is that how you fight islamic radicalism?

  9. kevser says:

    You guys! You’re surely not that naive.
    So all is level on the playing field? Christains, muslins all living in peace and equality?
    No massive financial and military support for Israel from the US? No apache helicopers raiding civilian population centres? No cutting the funding and not recognising democratically elected popular movements? No support for tyrannts and dictators??
    No guantanamo bay? No Waterboarding in Romania/Cuba/Poland/Baghram/Abu Ghraib? (All publicly funded and offically sanctioned) No Shock and Awe on the civilain Population of a half starved and malnourished country?
    Catch yourselves on!

  10. sam says:

    well let me start by saying that muslims arent gonna come to ur doors and kill u coz u showed an image of their great respeted honnored prophet instead they will boy cut all american products and more than half profets that amera makes is from arab and muslim countries so they r not afraid of terrorist attacks they r just afraid of loosing economy and shit they were showing people protesting and breaking stuff on the news when suiden showed that cartoon about the prophet mohamed those were footages of the war that happened 5 years ago with israel and thats a fact people in arab coutries dont even watch south park nor even know it exixts but if they find out they will not hesitate to boycut america

  11. sam says:

    and one more thing its all about respect in every islamic movie ever made they have never had an actor acting as mohamed nor jesus nor moses because we do beleive that those were holly man and no one can pose as being them i guess other people dont feel the same way about theirholymen since its okay to show jesus shitting on people but that is dfar from being tolerated in the muslim religion coz we know what respect means and how to respect our heros so if u dont understand that we im sure u wont than thats ur own problem and for those who think muslims only know violence thats funny coming from a nation that killed millions and millions of inocent indians to take their land and now its okay to go bomb and kill thousands and thousands of children and women and men who their only sin was they lived in a land where happens to have oil in which the president wanted so he can get richer and ur saying muslims only know violence thats funny u know sometime u gotta think outside of what cnn and the media tells u coz after all all they want is more money in their pockets and they will do anything for that money and u know what im talking about so stop being idiots and start thinking for urselves

  12. Brad says:

    South Park rips into every religion imaginable. Anyone who gets offended by South Park simply has no sense of humour. It looked
    to me that the censorship was part of the story, so who knows. But if seeing Mohammed standing there doing nothing offends
    anyone, they seriously need shooting through the temple.