Desecration flap roils Delta art show

Record Columnist ^ | 12/03/05 | MICHAEL FITZGERALD

[Pikamax]

Time again for "Self-Appointed Censor," today starring Muslim students at San Joaquin Delta College and their student imam.

Many Muslim students are upset over an artwork in the current show, "My Country, Right or Left: Artists Respond to the State of the Union," at Delta's L.H. Horton art gallery.

Called "Kalashnikov Jihad," the work by local artist John Lechner is a life-sized ceramic Kalashnikov assault rifle wrapped in pages of flowing Arabic script from the Quran.

The biting point of which, Lechner said, is "that religion is being used as weapon. That the loudest voices that we hear from the Islamic community are the terrorists and the radicals."

That's been said before, but not using pages of the Quran, at least not at Delta. And a procession of mostly male, obviously perturbed, Muslim students marching through the gallery doesn't like it, said gallery director William Wilson.

Many demand the artwork be taken down, some loudly, Wilson said. One interrupted Wilson's art talk. Another intruded upon a private business mixer held at the gallery.

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"He said the Muslim community had to resist this or they'll be relegated to the treatment the American Indian or African-American community has received in this county," Wilson recounted.

Mohammed Al-Otoum, who identified himself to Wilson as a full-time student and an imam, or mosque leader, also complained.

Saying "defacing the Quran" was "unacceptable," Al-Otoum asked that the work be removed from the exhibition; that the Quran pages be separated from the artwork and given to him, "to burn and bury them according to Islamic tradition"; and that officials arrange a private meeting between the artist and a student Muslim leader, according to Wilson, who documented the complaint.

Other students also asked for Lechner's phone number, e-mail address and home address, Wilson said.

Al-Otoum declined to comment, except to say it was Wilson's choice to write up his objection and launch an official complaint process.

The twist here is that the main objection for many is not the artwork's message but the destruction -- some say "desecration" -- of Islam's holy book. It's a sore point at Delta, where last year a Quran was found in a toilet.

But the message rankles, too. "I think it's pretty much saying that Islam teaches terrorism," objected Malik Bayanzay, president of the Islamic Student Association. That's a distortion of Quranic teaching, he said.

Bayanzay raised a couple of points: Many Americans support a flag-burning amendment, don't they? And where are the artworks desecrating the Bible or the Talmud?

Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Council on Islamic-American Relations' Sacramento chapter, added that, given the ongoing Lodi terror investigation, "rising Islamophobia" is a concern in the Stockton area.

Delta's president, Raul Rodriguez, listened to student concerns but took a firm stand against removing "Kalashnikov Jihad."

"You don't bow down to pressure like this," Rodriguez said. "You have to respect the right of the artist to express his idea. We're not going to censor anything here."

It's important for students to understand the purpose of academic freedom: to present a range of ideas so students learn the critical-thinking skills to sort them all out, Rodriguez said.

The opposite of critical thinking is allowing only one point of view. "And that's how fanatics are created," Rodriguez said. "And that's dangerous."

When one student rep intimated some Muslim students might take things into their own hands, Rodriguez responded resolutely.

"I told him I hope they don't do that, because there would be some very serious consequences. The students would be arrested. They would be expelled. And they would be branded terrorists."

The right way to object is with Islam awareness days and speakers who clear up misconceptions about Islam, Rodriguez said.

Or with equally pointed art. Have at it. Ironically, any shouting and saber-rattling tends to vindicate Lechner, whose artwork suggests a segment of contemporary Islam cannot reconcile religiosity with modern secular institutions and principles.

The reconciliation begins by conceding that art has the right to offend. Even desecrate.

[USF]

The one eye which represents the Dajjal (the deceiver), the lone superpower, its "imposition of hegemony" and its "new world order" as promoted by islamic "we are at the end of times" nuts:

[Fred Nerks]

A murderous cult established by a pathological liar and psychopath...what else can the clerics do but attempt to silence or kill all the witnesses?

And 'all the witnesses' includes you and I!