Comedy Central is not taking a risk of them getting killed by a radical Muslim group so they censored the “South Park” bit which was deemed an insult to the religion’s Prophet Muhammad. Two recent episodes of the satirical animation featured the holy figure in bear costume which Revolution Muslim took as an insult. The group quickly responded with a message on their official website.

The post, written by Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said, “We have to warn [creators] Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] that what they are doing is stupid, 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.” van Gogh is a Dutch film maker who was killed by an Islamic extremist in 2004.

Matt and Trey’s defense was, “It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part.” The duo who is known for working last minutes to gather an episode, wanted to celebrate the show’s 200th episode with every significant characters including Tom Cruise, Barbra Streisand, Jesus, Buddha and Moses. But they had difficulty in bringing the character of Islamic leader so they put him in a bear costume.

Although a member of Revolution Muslim said their posting was a prediction rather than a threat, Comedy Central preferred to play it safe. About 35 seconds of dialog between the cartoon characters of Kyle, Jesus Christ and Santa Claus was bleeped out in the Wednesday, April 21 episode.

Matt and Trey have commented on the censorship, writing on their official site, “Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.”