David Letterman Gets Death Threat On Terrorist Website

There are some people out there who don't find David Letterman, 64, very funny, and they're not afraid to make it known. The veteran host of CBS' Late Night received a targeted assassination threat on the jihadist web forum, Shumukh al-Islam, which garners most of its support from Al-Quaeda followers.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist websites, discovered that a contributor to the forum who posted under the name Umar al-Basrawi referred to a previous assassination when calling on followers to target Letterman. "Is there not amongst you a Sayyid Nosair al-Masri (may Allah release him) to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever. Just as Sayyid (may Allah release him) did with the Jew Kahane," the post reads. The writer refers to the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in the late '80s.

The threat comes in response to a joke that Letterman, who is, incidentally, not Jewish, told on his show about the late Ilyas Kashmiri, who had been a rumored replacement for Osama bin Laden before his death during a U.S. raid in Pakistan. The poster describes that Letterman mocked Kashmiri's "way of slaughter …. He showed his evil nature and deep hatred for Islam and Muslims."

The incident calls to mind the 2010 warning from extremists issued against South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker after they depicted an image of the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit on their show. SITE anaylist Adam Raisman reveals that this time may be more serious. "This was a more explicit threat," he said, reports Entertainment Weekly. "It was direct and to the point."

This is also not the first time that Letterman has been the target of criminal activity. In 2005 a plot to kidnap the funnyman's son, Harry, was thwarted by authorities, and in 2009 he found himself the victim of extortion by a CBS News staffer who threatened to reveal an extramarital affair he had had. Letterman himself took the wind out of the blackmailer's sails by confessing the affair on his show to a bewildered audience who was trying to figure out if the whole thing was a joke.

The Late Show is currently on a scheduled hiatus, and Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, would not comment on the death threat.