Both episodes were fairly entertaining and I enjoyed them. But, it would seem to me that there are two separate issues here and they are being freely conflated with one another.
The first is the issue of the depiction of Muhammad. I do not think that this is the core one. The backlash against the Danish cartoonist a few years ago is commonly referenced, but there is a wide disparity between these two events. Westergaard was essentially picking on a fairly weak minority just to prove he could. In other words, while it is rather impolite to depict Muhammad I think the real issue was the rather unprovoked attack on an almost defenseless minority group that is commonly mistreated. In the case of South Park, things are a bit different. The South Park guys were rather reverential when it comes to Muhmmad, in fact they made a point of it. It was fairly clear that they were attacking Viacom and other television companies, not Muslims. So the response was fairly weak from Muslims, but strong from Viacom.
So, I think the more important issue is how Comedy Central handled it and then how the media presented the issue. In my view, Comedy Central’s reaction was almost a back handed attack on, not only the South Park guys, but the greater Muslim community. It stokes fears that Muslims are gaining political influence through terror, rather than the traditional routes, which are of course mostly blocked to them. Furthermore as the media searched for a radical group that was upset, they found one and turned a tiny web based group (that did not even make a real threat) and turned them into a representation of the extremist Muslim community (which in and of itself was a caricature) and in some cases the greater Muslim community. This isn’t a good sign.