The last time South Park took on the depiction-of-Mohammed issue, in 2006, it did so with a far heavier hand: In one subplot, Americans afraid of violent al-Qaida reprisals for a cartoon of the prophet literally buried their heads in sand, and the script featured several speeches about the slippery slope of censorship.
In “200,” they are at the top of their game. In the wake of the “200” controversy, Comedy Central has tried to scrub the old episode, “ Super Best Friends,” from the Internet, but you can find a streaming version easily enough. Or perhaps it’s simply because the episode aired way back in July of 2001, in a very different world. Perhaps this is because South Park’s depiction of Mohammed wasn’t negative: The theme of the episode-different religions have different things to recommend them, unless the religion is Scientology-was hardly provocative. What’s funny, of course, is that when South Park first featured a cartoon depiction of Mohammed back in its fifth season, not a whisper of scandal ensued. If there is one absolute here, it is the precedent of violence both real and intimated-the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, to which Revolution Muslim alluded in its original post the deaths of more than a hundred people protesting the Danish cartoons throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa and the threats that sent several of these cartoonists into hiding. Which is all to say, the “200” scandal rests atop a mountain of contingencies.
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