Posted on 01/06/2008 8:47:14 AM PST by DogByte6RER
Woman artist gets death threats over gay Muslim photos
Matthew Campbell
THE Dutch were debating the limits of freedom of expression last week after an artist who photographed gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding and her work removed from a museum exhibit.
Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, an Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym of Sooreh Hera, said she had been threatened with “execution”. She accused the director of the municipal museum in The Hague of cowardice for caving in to Muslim extremists.
Her story is a reminder of the tensions that have put the Netherlands and other European countries on the front line, sending dozens of people threatened by extremists into hiding since 2004, when a Dutch film-maker was murdered on the street and his collaborator driven into exile.
This leaves Hera, 34, in no doubt that she is in real danger. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth’,” she said, referring to menacing e-mails.
“They say, ‘Now you are locked in your home and you cannot go out any more’.”
She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct.
“They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men,” said Hera. “Works of art can be provocative. It is not an artist’s job just to paint flowers. Art should shine a light on social issues.”
The photographs were part of an extensive collection of images by Hera of mostly Dutch gay men. Another part of her exhibit was a video featuring hard rock music and images of Iranian clerics interspersed with pictures of naked men.
Wim van Krimpen, director of the museum, initially praised Hera’s collection of photographs as “exceptional”. Last month, however, he announced that the masked men could not be included in the forthcoming exhibition because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”.
This was no understatement. When a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad in 2005 it unleashed what the prime minister referred to as the country’s biggest international crisis since the second world war as Muslims staged violent protests.
“The museum director was very afraid,” said Hera. “He gave in to pressure from the Islamists. It is censorship.” In protest, she withdrew the rest of her photographs from the exhibition and Ranti Tjan, director of a museum in Gouda, agreed to put them on show. He received threats from extremists and was under police protection last week. Hera declined to discuss her own security arrangements.
She said she would like to attend the opening of the show in Gouda if it went ahead, but that it might be too dangerous. “There are times when I am very afraid,” she admitted, “times when I feel like a prisoner.”
The affair has highlighted deep divisions among Europeans over how to deal with the Islamic extrem-ism since the murder of Theo van Gogh over a film that criticised Islam’s treatment of women.
A note attached to his body with a knife threatened other people, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born former Dutch politician and his collaborator. She fled to America, accusing the Dutch of “appeasement” of extremists. She has since returned to the Netherlands and is said to be working on a film about the repression of gays in Islamic societies.
She may not get much support from the politicians, who seem determined to avoid confrontation even if some might accuse them of turning a blind eye to the erosion of artistic freedom. When Hera wrote to Ronald Plasterk, the culture minister, asking for his support he agreed to meet her but would not help to reinstate her photographs in the exhibition.
Wouter Bos, the deputy prime minister, seemed to take a stand for freedom of speech, saying: “In a democracy, we do not recognise the right not to be insulted.” The left wing de Volkskrant newspaper, by contrast, praised the museum for its “great professionalism” in excising the images.
For her part, Hera, who fled Iran seven years ago, says she has “no regrets”, particularly when she thinks about the young men and women being hanged there for offending the country’s code of sexuality. “I do it for them,” she said, “for the boys and girls with no freedom in Iran.”
lol
Islam IS GAY.
haha
Just like the brother of the slain sisters in Texas said, it was not a killing to do with Islam. Cause Islam is a religion of peace... right? Maybe he was offended by all that Christmas, I’m sure it was the Christians fault.
Only if you’re using art as a flashlight to shine the BS light. I like to think of art in the modern era akin to the kings clothes. People don’t get any of it they just say they do. Now its sinking to the level of potty humor.
Since typical ways of exhibiting or publishing can be threatened, perhaps they need to go “underground”, by doing such things as printing fliers and publishing ‘zines.
And since the government is ambivalent, they can use that to their advantage, slandering the extremist leaders. For example, what would their followers think if there were grainy b&w pictures of their extremist mullah Photoshopped onto gay porn? Hundreds of such pictures, spread all over the Muslim streets, would drive them crazy.
Such extremists rely on the ignorance of their followers, and try to keep them ignorant. By flaunting them, it is shown that they are powerless.
A few pages of print could claim that Muslims are leaving their religion in great numbers, even giving them directions on how to escape; that their leaders are closet Satanists, or agents of Israel, etc. There is no limit to the credulity of the ignorant.
Their inability to stop it or kill those that make it, would undermine their authority terribly.
Maybe the next time something that is so offensive to Christians is passed off as Art we need to be more vocal in our protests.
San Francisco should invite all C.A.I.R members to its annual Folsom Street Fair!
It won’t matter because they know Christians won’t kill artists over the disrespect shown them.
What may change this is if there is a strong perception that Christian are a solid force within th electorate with the power to elect and defeat candidates across the political spectrum. At that point the politicians will sit up and take notice when we speak out because as politicians they really only care about getting elected and re elected
Wow, that’s going to create up a storm.
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Mohammad 1: This town sucks, there's no nine-year-old girls to marry.
Mohammad 2: Yeah, lousy town....Hey, let's be homosexual.
They can’t be gay. Their interior decorating sucks.
One time in America you would go for years and never see the word (Muslim) since 9/11 you can not go one day without a crazy muslim being in the headline, either in America some other very unlucky country
...so am I supposed to be upset that there is an attack on “artistic freedom”? Or that these people are ignoring their “responsibilities of free speech”?
I’m getting confused...
These no-talent ‘artists’ try to substitute controversy for greatness. This one hit the controversy mother lode by attacking the big Mo.
Christians are obligated by love to tell the pagan their work offends God, because God is the avenger, not the Christian.
He did? I never would have figured that in a million years.
He sure did. Saw it in a Rolling Stone article on the whole controversy. Go figure!
Awesome! Apparently, he was absolutely REVILED by the gay community back then (and I guess there’s still some lingering resentment, even though he’s one of their icons). Hehehehe, mavericks always intrigue me.
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