Media Executives: “Allah is Now Off-Limits,” Current Scripts Being Changed to Weed out References to Islam

From Weasel Zippers:

(Fox News)- Don’t mess with Allah. That’s the new, unwritten code in Hollywood following the one-two punch of Islamic extremists’ threats against the creators of “South Park” and the failed bombing attempt outside the cartoon’s parent company, Viacom, in New York’s Times Square.

In the current, supercharged climate, it just isn’t worth endangering the safety of an entire production staff or network by pursuing a storyline that Muslim extremists might find offensive, media executives and writers tell Fox411.com.

Aasif Mandvi, a self-described “liberal Muslim” and the “senior Islamic correspondent” for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, said on air after the “South Park” threats that it would upset him to see the Prophet Muhammad depicted in a cartoon. But, he added: “Here’s what’s more upsetting. Someone, in the name of a faith that I believe in, threatening another person for doing it.”

But after the failed Times Square terror attack, “The Daily Show” asked Mandvi not to comment further on the matter, according to his spokesman. In fact, reps for the networks and television shows reached for comment on this article, including Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, FOX, NBC, and CBS, either failed to respond or asked to speak on background for fear of retribution.

And it isn’t just comedians on fake newscasts who are being muzzled. One writer for a scripted drama fold Fox411.com that in one of his show’s final episodes, there had been a minor plot point involving a Muslim extremist. Last week it was removed and the script was rewritten, he said.

Random House canceled the 2008 publication of Sherry Jones’ “The Jewel of Medina” out of fear it would incite acts of violence, and last year Yale University decided remove all images of Muhammad from Jytte Klausen’s book, “The Cartoons that Shook the World,” a book commenting on the Danish cartoon controversy that sparked violence in the Muslim world.

The subject has gotten so sensitive, media pros are even chilling the conversation in forums where no one is watching.

“The writer’s room has always been a safe place for jokes of any sort, the dirtiest jokes you can think of that you could never tell in public because your own mother would hate you,” a network comedy writer told Fox411.com. “But for the first time we feel like there is a taboo."