New York, NY: What many people believe to be the rudest, brashest, most insulting but funniest and intelligent show on television finally found its boundaries these past two weeks, as South Park’s portrayal of the Islamic prophet Muhammad spurned an outcry from Muslims around the globe.
That depiction, of course, was the black box.
Since the inception of the beliefs of Islam, one of the interpreted beliefs of the religion is that one cannot depict a visual representation of Muhammad. This belief began way back in history, when two unknown clerics had an argument over whether or not Muhammad had a beauty mark underneath the right side of his chin. After many years of war over this conflict of image, the other clerics decided that Muhammad should never be visially depicted again for fear of such repercussions.
Those repercussions were re-ignited recently over South Park’s 200th episode. In this episode, the prophet Muhammad was portrayed as a flying, black, censored rectangle. This, in turn, incited anger from some Muslims, annoyed others, and found some laughing at the humor or just apathetic.
“It is disgusting to see the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, portrayed as a large black rectangle!” exclaimed local Muslim Rahim Abdulleh Azzad. “Who are Matt and Trey to say Muhammad looks like a black rectangle? For all we know, he looks like a red rectangle, or better yet, a triangle! Who are they to decide?”
Other Muslims shared the same view, and found that the way the South Park creators tried to appease Muslim sentiment was, at the very least, lazy. “I don’t care that they covered the Prophet in a giant bear costume,” stated Raja Sheh Alazaar. “The fact is, they portrayed Muhammad as a black rectangle, and dressing him up in a bear costume or a naughty nurse costume does not cloud that initial depiction of him as a flying black rectangle.”
The black box depiction has gone as far as to lead to veiled threats against Trey Parker and Matt Stone from anonymous internet users, which were entirely unknown to the public until Comedy Central over-censored the second part of the 2-part story in Episode 201. The word “Muhammad” was allegedly bleeped out every time it was said in that episode, and scenes with the black box Muhammad were allegedly replaced by pictures of Bruce Vilanch. However, executives at Comedy Central said that this was untrue.
“We didn’t bleep out the word ‘Muhammad’ at all. In fact, no characters in the show used the word ‘Muhammad’. The name that was bleeped out was actually Bea Arthur,” explained Comedy Central representative Julian Matterhorn. “We could not sit idly by and let that woman’s name be blasphemed.”
