Muhammad: Mental Images Also Forbidden?

Not Showing Muhammad?

(Non-Image from CNN)

Todd Leopold of CNN has an article, "Has 'South Park' gone too far this time?" (April 21, 2010), in which he first notes:

This is a show . . . that once painted God as a gap-toothed rhinoceros-monkey.

A rhinoceros-monkey? Maybe a rheseus monkey? Anyway, Mr. Leopold then follows this by asking:

But have they gone too far this time with a depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in a bear suit?

Let's think about this sequence. The creators of South Park first ridicule God. They then go on to ridicule a human being. And Mr. Leopold asks, "[H]ave they gone too far?"

Good question. How could a satirical show that's previously only commited the minor blasphemy of ridiculing God go so far as to commit the major blasphemy of ridiculing a human being?

Now possibly, Mr. Leopold is speaking in irony here, for in the video accompanying the article, CNN's John Roberts asks not if South Park has gone too far, but if the radical Islamist group calling itself "Revolution Muslim" has gone too far in an apparent death threat against South Park's creators:

Does that go too far, or is that a threat that's protected by free speech?

Now that sounds like a better question, depending upon what those 'revolutionaries' said to the creators of South Park:

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid," the posting on Revolutionmuslim.com says, "and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

Hmm . . . that sounds sort of like a threat to me, given how Theo Van Gogh ended up for his part in making a movie on the oppression of women in Islamic culture. He was shot, stabbed, and nearly decapitated on an Amsterdam street by a radical Islamist. So, yeah, that sounds rather threatening, especially coming from a group that considers 9/11 justified, as you can hear around a minute and twenty seconds into the video.

All this for not showing Muhammad? In South Park, 'Muhammad' appeares completely disguised in a bear suit. How can we even be sure the figure inside the suit is Muhammad? There might even be nothing at all inside that suit.

I can thus only imagine that these Islamists are now forbidding a mental image of the man.