Com­ment: In a sadly char­ac­ter­is­tic sur­ren­der of free­dom of speech rights, the West­ern crit­i­cal estab­lish­ment remains duti­fully silent over attempts to impose Islamic stan­dards of cen­sor­ship on West­ern society.

The com­pul­sively irrev­er­ent South Park com­edy pro­gram had to bow to Islamist desires in air­ing an alto­gether tepid por­trayal of the Prophet Mohammed.

“‘South Park’ Episode Is Altered After Mus­lim Group’s Warn­ing by David Itzkoff; New York Times; 4/22/2010.

An episode of “South Park” that con­tin­ued a story line involv­ing the Prophet Muham­mad was shown Wednes­day night on Com­edy Cen­tral with audio bleeps and image blocks read­ing “CENSORED” after a Mus­lim group warned the show’s cre­ators that they could face vio­lence for depict­ing that holy Islamic prophet. Rev­o­lu­tion Mus­lim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the “South Park” cre­ators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will prob­a­bly wind up like Theo Van Gogh” for an episode shown last week in which a char­ac­ter said to be the Prophet Muham­mad was seen wear­ing a bear cos­tume. Mr. Van Gogh was slain in Ams­ter­dam in 2004 after mak­ing a film that dis­cussed the abuse of Mus­lim women in some Islamic societies.

The new episode of “South Park” on Wednes­day night tried to revisit this char­ac­ter, but with the name and depic­tion of the char­ac­ter blocked out. It was unclear how much of the bleep­ing was Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker’s decision. . . .