GeoffP
10-09-06, 09:05 AM
I don't mean to be a broken record, but essentially everyone's time is limited and I have to take the issue I feel I can provide the best discourse on. I'm sure there are moderate Muslims, and I'm sure that the Quran can be interpreted in a touchy-feely-no-hacky-neck kind of way: it's just that there is no evidence at all that such feelings are in the majority in the ummah, and that violent, intolerant attitudes are being transferred to the islamic community living in the West. Is there anyone who imagines, even for a second, that if one or more Western nations became islamic that they would not instantly apply the same range of sharia-inspired lack of human rights currently available in every other islamic country in existence?
Possibly the worst, though, is pre-censorship, that gift we give ourselves in order to prematurely casket our own culture for fear of generating hostility. If our culture is bound to offend, then by all means we should be promoting it as offensively as possible, in order to adjust those who have chosen to live among us to the reality of their new society as quickly as possible.
The alternative, of course, is simpler by far: just naturally imagine the most extreme reaction you can think of in response to any given artistic endeavour, and then appropriately hide your head in the sand, or simply bow and scuttle away.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-06T165708Z_01_L06909511_RTRUKOC_0_UK-ARTS-MUSLIMS.xml
PARIS (Reuters) - A London gallery has decided not to show some works of art because it fears they would upset Muslims, a curator said on Friday, a week after a German opera house canned a Mozart production for the same reason.
The director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery decided to remove works by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from an exhibition the day before it was due to open, one of the museum's curators, Agnes de la Beaumelle, told Reuters.
"The motive was simply to not shock the population of the Whitechapel neighbourhood, which is partly Muslim," she said.
Well, fine then. Cancel the operas - music is a sin, sayeth Mohammed. And no paintings - nudes or anything else - for representation art is, similarly, a sin. Save on poetry, too: by eliminating it altogether.
Possibly the worst, though, is pre-censorship, that gift we give ourselves in order to prematurely casket our own culture for fear of generating hostility. If our culture is bound to offend, then by all means we should be promoting it as offensively as possible, in order to adjust those who have chosen to live among us to the reality of their new society as quickly as possible.
The alternative, of course, is simpler by far: just naturally imagine the most extreme reaction you can think of in response to any given artistic endeavour, and then appropriately hide your head in the sand, or simply bow and scuttle away.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-06T165708Z_01_L06909511_RTRUKOC_0_UK-ARTS-MUSLIMS.xml
PARIS (Reuters) - A London gallery has decided not to show some works of art because it fears they would upset Muslims, a curator said on Friday, a week after a German opera house canned a Mozart production for the same reason.
The director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery decided to remove works by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from an exhibition the day before it was due to open, one of the museum's curators, Agnes de la Beaumelle, told Reuters.
"The motive was simply to not shock the population of the Whitechapel neighbourhood, which is partly Muslim," she said.
Well, fine then. Cancel the operas - music is a sin, sayeth Mohammed. And no paintings - nudes or anything else - for representation art is, similarly, a sin. Save on poetry, too: by eliminating it altogether.