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A_Wanderer

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A leading German opera house has canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears stirred by a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting a storm of protest here about the renunciation of artistic freedom.

The Deutsche Oper in Berlin said it had pulled “Idomeneo” from its fall schedule after the police warned that the staging of the opera could pose an “incalculable risk” to the performers and the audience.

Political and cultural figures throughout Germany condemned the cancellation, which is without precedent here. Some said it recalled the decision of European newspapers not to print satirical cartoons about Muhammad, after their publication in Denmark generated a furor among Muslims ...

Michael Naumann, a former German culture minister, said, “It’s a slap in the face of artistic freedom, by the artists themselves."
link

Somehow I doubt that the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus or Posiedon have anything to do with this. Offend religion, offend any religion - if there ever comes a point where you are not able to do so from fear it is a dark day indeed.
 
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It can be seen as art, it can be seen as blasphemous.

Why not just call it blasphemous art?
 
Would be interesting to hear the views of the muslim 'community' about this cancellation, whilst they avoid outright condemnation of Muslim freedom fighters who commit beheadings on a seemingly daily basis.
 
How much longer is the world gonna act like a pussycat in the lion's den of those Islamic fundamentalist bastards?
 
Zootlesque said:
How much longer is the world gonna act like a pussycat in the lion's den of those Islamic fundamentalist bastards?
I wouldn't expect Islamic fundamentalist "bastards" to be the only Muslims to take offense to this.

How I hate taking sides on issues like this.
 
Macfistowannabe said:
I wouldn't expect Islamic fundamentalist "bastards" to be the only Muslims to take offense to this.

That's why I made sure to use the word 'fundamentalist'.
 
Macfistowannabe said:
I wouldn't expect Islamic fundamentalist "bastards" to be the only Muslims to take offense to this.

How I hate taking sides on issues like this.
What are you talking about it is very clear cut, the right to free expression must trump sensitivity considerations - be it blasphemous cartoons or offensive song lyrics, the fact this was done in fear of violence from sections within a religious group makes it all the more worrying.
 
A_Wanderer said:
What are you talking about it is very clear cut, the right to free expression must trump sensitivity considerations - be it blasphemous cartoons or offensive song lyrics, the fact this was done in fear of violence from sections within a religious group makes it all the more worrying.
Then rings the question - is it tax-funded?

Blasphemous art like "Piss Christ" should not be supported by my tax dollars.

If not, then to each his own.
 
A_Wanderer said:
What are you talking about it is very clear cut, the right to free expression must trump sensitivity considerations - be it blasphemous cartoons or offensive song lyrics, the fact this was done in fear of violence from sections within a religious group makes it all the more worrying.



agreed.

which is why we should celebrate the following works of art:


piss.jpg


ofili.jpg


the film Priest
 
"celebrate" a crucifix dropped in urine? Go right ahead. You probably also celebrate the "booger ball" exibit as well (the art exhibit where artists collected their boogers into a ball over the course of two years).

People are of course free to "celebrate" this stuff of course. Freedom has its drawbacks.

But also agree that none of this should be publicly funded. I believe in a firm Seperation of "Art" and State.

"They don't know what you're doing
Babe, it must be art" - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me - U2
 
According to Deutsche Welle the German Interior Minister (Schaeuble), together with a conference of 30 representatives of various German Muslim umbrella groups, issued a call supporting the staging, and agreeing to jointly attend a performance should it be reinstated. I haven't seen any stories which provided much information about who these representatives were (in fact, I haven't seen many stories which even mentioned that this conference occurred, period) but a few who have been named were Kenan Kolat, a spokesman for an association of Turkish Muslim groups; Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims; and Ali Ertran Toprak, an Alawite Shiite community representative.
 
AEON said:
"celebrate" a crucifix dropped in urine? Go right ahead. You probably also celebrate the "booger ball" exibit as well (the art exhibit where artists collected their boogers into a ball over the course of two years).

People are of course free to "celebrate" this stuff of course. Freedom has its drawbacks.



we can all celebrate the right of the artist to create whatever art he wants -- and when does "taste" become a prerequisite of the NEA?

i find the Iraq War rather tasteless, and i don't celebrate it, but my tax dollars still go to support it.
 
yolland said:
According to Deutsche Welle the German Interior Minister (Schaeuble), together with a conference of 30 representatives of various German Muslim umbrella groups, issued a call supporting the staging, and agreeing to jointly attend a performance should it be reinstated.

Wow, that shocked be. Pleasantly.

Danish cartoons are no longer required as a forum for freedom of expression.
 
Irvine511 said:
we can all celebrate the right of the artist to create whatever art he wants -- and when does "taste" become a prerequisite of the NEA?

i find the Iraq War rather tasteless, and i don't celebrate it, but my tax dollars still go to support it.
The Iraq War is not a work of art, and has nothing to do with free speech.
 
Macfistowannabe said:
The Iraq War is not a work of art, and has nothing to do with free speech.


well, you might be right about the second part, but the point remains: there is no litmus test for what we do and do not get to spend our tax dollars are. if i have to fund the greatest American military debacle since Vietnam especially when i have protested against it, then you have to for over that measly $.25 or however much the NEA costs the tax payer per year.

i don't get to pick and choose what my tax dollars support, neither do you get to pick and choose what art and artists an infinitestimal amount of taxpayer money goes towards.

i'm sorry you're offended, but i'm glad that the government is willing to pay people to make art that's going to shock and offend some people.

it makes for a healthier society.
 
Irvine511 said:
i'm sorry you're offended, but i'm glad that the government is willing to pay people to make art that's going to shock and offend some people.

it makes for a healthier society.
I'm not extremely offended, I accept the fact that a no-talent Bolshevik is going to get recognition for what he did. Even Rudy Guiliani had an honest moment when he tried to stop the funding for it.

It belongs somewhere, sure, but not on tax-funded property.
 
Macfistowannabe said:
I'm not extremely offended, I accept the fact that a no-talent Bolshevik is going to get recognition for what he did. Even Rudy Guiliani had an honest moment when he tried to stop the funding for it.

It belongs somewhere, sure, but not on tax-funded property.



sorry, it's like free speech -- you take the good with the bad, so as long as the "Piss-Christ" artists can get funding to do his work, maybe you can get funding to do your work.

a "no-talent Bolshevik"? do you have any other insults from the 1930s?
 
Irvine511 said:




agreed.

which is why we should celebrate the following works of art:


piss.jpg


ofili.jpg


the film Priest
Apart from government funding brilliant, but the thing about mocking Islam is that it will make you a genuine target for violence; not like those all bluff Christians who barely ever get motivated enough to go out and gun down blasphemers (or abortion clinic doctors).
 
A_Wanderer said:
Apart from government funding brilliant, but the thing about mocking Islam is that it will make you a genuine target for violence; not like those all bluff Christians who barely ever get motivated enough to go out and gun down blasphemers (or abortion clinic doctors).



agreed.

and we have secular Western democracy and the clear separation of church and state to thank for that and the comparative "success" of Western Christianity in comparison to Islam outside the West.
 
BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Wednesday not to bow to fears of Islamic violence after a Berlin opera house canceled a Mozart work over concerns some scenes could enrage Muslims and pose a security risk.

"I think the cancellation was a mistake. I think self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practise violence in the name of Islam," she told reporters. "It makes no sense to retreat."

Merkel's comments, which echoed those of other senior German politicians, fueled a row over the cancellation of Mozart's "Idomeneo" that overshadowed a government-sponsored conference to promote dialogue with the country's 3.2 million Muslims.

Berlin's Deutsche Oper said on Monday it had pulled performances of the opera, which features a scene depicting the severed heads of the Prophet Mohammad, Buddha and Jesus, after police warned it could pose an "incalculable" security risk.

The row comes two weeks after Pope Benedict enraged Muslims by quoting from a medieval text linking the spread of Islam to violence. Last year's publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper triggered violent Muslim protests.

The opera, first performed in 1781, tells the story of Cretan king Idomeneo. The controversial scene was added by the director, Hans Neuenfels, and is a departure from the score.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters after the conference the participants were united in their call for the opera to restart performances of "Idomeneo".

"To send a signal, we could all go to the performance together," Schaeuble, who has no authority over the opera house, told reporters after the conference.

He said it was just as important to defend freedom of expression as to ban torture. "We must not blink. We must be self-confident enough to guard our freedoms," he said.

HARMONIOUS DEBATE

The meeting, which had 15 central and local government officials and an equal number of Muslim representatives, discussed issues such as equal rights, the building of mosques, Islam lessons and imam (prayer leader) training.

Schaeuble said there had been an open but harmonious debate. Working groups set up to look at specific questions would come up with concrete suggestions in two to three years.

"This is a historic moment for us, it is a milestone and we will work hard in the next two years to achieve results," said Bekir Alboga of the Turkish Islamic Union, DITIP.

The organisers were not immediately available to comment on media reports that all participants had been invited to a snack after the meeting even though it is Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.

Integration has become a priority for the government as concern grows about Islamic radicalisation across Europe and the emergence of an underclass of disillusioned young Muslims, mainly Turks, in Germany.

A recent outbreak of violence at a Berlin school where the bulk of pupils are immigrant children and last year's "honor killing" of a Turkish woman have highlighted the challenges faced by the government and Muslim communities.

Germany brought over unskilled labourers from Turkey after World War Two to help drive its economic boom. There are now about 1.8 million Turks in the country.
 
You can't get away from this these days, can you? Some sort of mixture of Mohammed, pictures, and an artist or two. The guy is a VIP in every sense of the word.
 
verte76 said:
You can't get away from this these days, can you? Some sort of mixture of Mohammed, pictures, and an artist or two. The guy is a VIP in every sense of the word.
He seems to be a murderous thug with delusions of grandeur that managed to conquer Arabia and codify the cultural norms of the era, he is not deserving of emulation and deserves critical analysis and depiction.
 
The voluntary closing of the Deutsche Oper Berlin because of the anticipated sensitivities of Muslims hearing about their Prophet’s severed head assumes great symbolic significance in the age of globalization in which we live. Images, events and words—as we saw in the case of Pope Benedict a few days ago—have the capacity to inflame societies across the world in a matter of hours.

Although I totally support free speech and freedom of expression, and have been saying so publicly, all of us need to be sensitive to the culture and traditions of other faiths. I am not talking of a purely academic or idealistic discussion but the possibility of people losing their lives as a result of some perceived attack on faith made across the world. I believe that the lives lost and the properties destroyed—including mosques and churches—after the Danish cartoons controversy erupted could have been avoided had there been people of greater wisdom and compassion at the start of the crisis.

The first crisis that acted as a catalyst in the context of our discussion was that of Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses.” It appears that we did not learn any lessons from that controversy. The West continued to insist on freedom of expression and the Muslims continued to insist on their right to protest when the central figure of their religion, that is, the Prophet of Islam, was under attack. Lives were lost and property damaged across the world. From the Salman Rushdie controversy to that generated by the pope’s remarks, we have seen relations between the West and the Muslim world steadily deteriorating.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, in one sense could be viewed as a symptom of this growing crisis between the two civilizations. Five years ago, the world was poised at the crossroads: one road led to a clash of civilizations and another toward dialogue and understanding. Developments after September 11 have confirmed in the minds of millions across the world that there is a global conflict in progress. Nearly 3,000 American lives were lost on that day and another 3,000 have been lost in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Muslims have lost their lives in these wars. As a result, an entire generation of young Muslims is coming of age that sees the world through the lens of an ongoing attack on the foundations of its faith.

It is in this context that anything that can provide these Muslims with an alternative paradigm should be encouraged. It was the reason why Pope John Paul II reached out to the Muslim community by changing the direction of relations between Christianity and Islam after a thousand years of confrontation. He visited mosques and apologized for the Crusades, which won him admiration among Muslims. Another example is that of my friend Judea Pearl who overcame the impossible burden of his son’s brutal beheading in Karachi to reach out and begin a process of dialogue with the very people whose society had killed his son.

It is time for Muslims to reciprocate these gestures. As a Muslim committed to interfaith dialogue, I would appeal to the president of Iran not to make provocative remarks about the Holocaust nor to threaten the Jewish population with extermination. It is time for all of us to think about the boldness of the theater owners in Germany. They did, after all, stop a production of Mozart, the quintessential iconic Germanic figure, in order to express their belief in the dialogue of and understanding between civilizations.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15047857/site/newsweek/

Understanding is recognition of the right to criticise and being able take criticism peacefully and resist with words and ideas,

The notion that choosing silence in the face of violence is an expression of understanding is pure doublespeak; it is submission and coercion robbing free individuals of their basic rights - that sort of "understanding" is a term of surrender; surrender of speech and thought at the hands of a lot of people with a common delusion of an invisible friend.

I want to see Islam under siege from the outside and within; I want to see the marketplace of ideas blow a big damn whole in the faith and lead to liberalisation, agnosticism and atheism.
 
More "understanding" from a minority of extremists
A philosophy teacher today described how he was forced into hiding after a newspaper article in which he attacked Islam provoked death threats against himself and his family.

Robert Redeker, 52, from Toulouse in south-west France, is receiving round-the-clock police protection and changing addresses every two days, after publishing an article describing the Koran as a "book of extraordinary violence" and Islam as "a religion which ... exalts violence and hate".

He told French media today that he had no regrets about writing the article and that it was part of his job as a philosophy teacher to ask difficult questions.

In an interview with i-TV he said that he had received several e-mail threats targeting himself and his wife and three children and that his photograph and address were available on several Islamist internet sites.

"There is a very clear map of how to get to my home, with the words: ’This pig must have his head cut off’," he said.

Another e-mail says: "You will never again be safe on this earth. One billion, 300 million Muslims are ready to kill you."

And interviewed over the telephone from a safe house by Europe 1 radio, he complained that the education ministry had left him alone and abandoned. He said the ministry "has not even contacted me, has not deigned to get in touch to see if I need any help."

He accepted that his detractors had "already won a victory of sorts."

"I cannot do my job. I have no freedom of movement. I am in hiding. Already they have succeeded in punishing me ... as if I was guilty of holding the wrong opinions."

Dominique de Villepin, the French Prime Minister, said that the threats were "unacceptable".

He said: "We are in a democracy, everyone has the right to express his views freely -- of course while respecting others. That is the only restriction that is acceptable on this freedom.

"This shows to what extent we live in a dangerous world... and how vigilant we must be to ensure people fully respect one another in our society."

The Paris state prosecutor’s office today launched a preliminary inquiry for "criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise", asking the intelligence agency to look into the death threats.

Gilles de Robien, the Education Minister, yesterday expressed "solidarity" with M Redeker, but also warned that "a state employee must show prudence and moderation in all circumstances".
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2381435,00.html
 
Even the non "fundamentalist bastard" muslims don't think their hierarchy will repudiate the violence and intolerance

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Mansur_Salim/2006/09/30/1923945.html

"Within the Arab Sunni world the Egyptian-born Sheikh Qaradawi, 80, of Qatar, is the face of institutionalized Islam. He is the closest to what might pass for a titular head of Muslims akin to the Pope. Qaradawi's words, now broadcast by television network al-Jazeerah, are taken as authoritative pronouncements of Islam. He is the "spiritual" leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement formed to repudiate freedom and democracy, and a defender of Islam's war against the West by any means, including suicide bombings.

For such representatives of institutionalized Islam, all things are political. They are the authoritative guardians of the ideology that in Islam religion and politics are inseparable, and jihad -- holy war -- is its defining aspect. "
 
Irvine511 said:
a "no-talent Bolshevik"? do you have any other insults from the 1930s?
I'm not going to call him Michelangelou. HE was a real artist. He did a lot more for society than piss on a cross.
 
Macfistowannabe said:
I'm not going to call him Michelangelo. HE was a real artist. He did a lot more for society than piss on a cross.

Funny, because back in his day, Michaelangelo was seen as "obscene" as the "Piss Christ" artist--so much so, that the Vatican started painting loincloths onto the naked people in the Sistine Chapel in the centuries after his death.

A 1990s restoration removed all but the Council of Trent loincloths, which are viewed as a part of history.

Melon
 
A_Wanderer said:
Apart from government funding brilliant, but the thing about mocking Islam is that it will make you a genuine target for violence; not like those all bluff Christians who barely ever get motivated enough to go out and gun down blasphemers (or abortion clinic doctors).
Those who went out and bombed abortion clinics are hypocrites for calling themselves "pro-life", where as those who rioted over a Danish cartoon are also hypocrites for calling themselves followers of a "religion of peace." You'll always find extremes, but nobody beheaded anyone as a result of Piss Christ. A few acts of violence in the name of Judeo-Christianity that are throughly condemed throughout the Judeo-Christian community is not the same as many acts of Islamic violence partially condemned throughout the Islamic community.
 
melon said:


Funny, because back in his day, Michaelangelo was seen as "obscene" as the "Piss Christ" artist--so much so, that the Vatican started painting loincloths onto the naked people in the Sistine Chapel in the centuries after his death.

A 1990s restoration removed all but the Council of Trent loincloths, which are viewed as a part of history.

Melon
It should also be mentioned that Renaisance Art fit the glove on 16th/17th century Italian culture - nudity was not sexualized. That's why it was so prevalent and accepted throughout that timeframe.
 
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