Sunday, September 27, 2009

Muslims Provoked by Art

Lahlou-Georges 1

Oh, no! It’s happening again: the Islamic world is grievously insulted by a work of art produced by an infidel! More specifically, a French artist has showed disrespect for Muslim prayer mats.

This reminds me of an old joke:

A man is sent to prison for the first time. At night, the lights in the cell block are turned off, and his cellmate goes over to the bars and yells, “Number twelve!” The whole cell block breaks out laughing. A few minutes later, somebody else in the cell block yells, “Number four!” Again, the whole cell block breaks out laughing.

The new guy asks his cellmate what’s going on. “Well,” says the older prisoner, “we’ve all been in this here prison for so long, we all know the same jokes. So we just yell out the number instead of saying the whole joke.”

So the new guy walks up to the bars and yells, “Number six!” There was dead silence in the cell block. He asks the older prisoner, “What’s wrong? Why didn’t I get any laughs?”

“Well,” said the older man, “sometimes it’s not the joke, but how you tell it.”

I suppose I could save our readers a lot of time and say, “Number forty-one!” But just for the heck of it, here’s the whole story, as reported by our Flemish correspondent VH.

First, from Brussel Nieuws:

Artist’s gallery closes down after angry reactions from Muslims

Lahlou-Georges 2Brussels — A young French artist has prematurely closed his gallery in the Charles Rogier Passage, near the train station Brussels North. He had exhibited a work of art that was considered a provocation by some Muslims.

The cause of the fuss was a pair of bright red high heels under a spotlight, surrounded by men’s shoes, all on Muslim prayer mats.

The artwork is exhibited in a gallery whose windows have been sealed since Wednesday to avoid hostile reactions from passers-by. The artist has been threatened before, and the gallery damaged. “They attempted to shatter the window with stones before; that caused a crack in it,” the artist Mehdi Lahlou-Georges says. “And it is a very thick piece of glass; they must have thrown the stone with a lot of force.”

Lahlou-Georges 4The angry reactions came from certain Muslims who view the high heeled shoes as a provocation to their faith.

TV-Brussels approached a random passerby and asked for his response. He did not had no hostile reaction, but the woman’s shoes should not be there, the man said: “Those red high heels bring misfortune. Men and women are always separated during prayers.”

With the woman’s shoes, the artist wanted to point at himself, as a transvestite. The artwork was to remain in the gallery until October 5.

For additional information, see the report by Mark d’Aviano at Het Vrije Volk:
- - - - - - - - -
Lahlou-Georges 3It seems that the stone-throwers have not been arrested and punished, instead they are rewarded because the artwork now has to go. Fortunately we still have some photos. And a few videos.

Eating a banana while balancing a Qur’an on his head: (Mehdi-Georges Lahlou — Stupidité contrôlée II [Stupidity under control]).

Praying with high heels: (Mehdi-Georges Lahlou — The Prayer — Al Fatiha).

There are more videos here.

VH reminds us of a few previous Muslims-versus-Art incidents (these are reference numbers 18, 23, 30, 43, 57, 67, 81, and 86, in case you want to skip them):

In 2002, Five men (of whom four were Moroccans) were arrested in Bologna in northern Italy after their behavior inside the San Petronio Basilica aroused police officers’ suspicions that they were plotting a terrorist attack. The Basilica has a 15th-century fresco with a depiction of the prophet Muhammad among demons in hell that has drawn complaints from Muslims before.

In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 drawings depicting Muhammad, of which the most famous was the Turban Bomb by Kurt Westergaard. Afterwards the Muslim world was higly offended and never really recovered from it. In 2009, Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected to the appointment of the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as secretary general of NATO, because in 2006 he refused to apologize for the publication of the cartoons. Only after major concessions to Turkey — a member of the Islamic country club OIC (which has a Turkish secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu) — did he drop his blockade. Rasmussen recently took part in an Iftar meal in Turkey to show respect for “Islam as one of the world’s great religions”.

In 2007, Turkish hackers attacked more than 5,000 Swedish Web sites in response to a Swedish newspaper’s publication of a disparaging caricature of Islam’s prophet.

The same year, a museum in The Hague suddenly rejected exhibited art works by Sooreh Hera depicting two men with masks of Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali (photos here and here. The work would be “offensive to certain groups” according to the museum director Wim van Krimpen, who at first had said he loved the work.

When in 2008 a Museum in Gouda announced it would exhibit the photos, about 75 “liberal Muslims” protested against it. Museum manager Ranti Tjan: “Insult is a consequence of our freedom of religion. It’s difficult to limit it.”. The Museum in Gouda resisted the pressure and finally exhibited the photos late 2008, as did the “Verzetsmuseum [Museum on the WWII resistance] Zuid Holland”.

In 2008, Belgian police had to protect a 17th-century pulpit in a Flemish town. The sculpture, which dates from 1685, two years after the battle of Vienna, depicts “a man” subdued by angels, representing the triumph of Christianity over Islam. The Brussels Journal was threatened by Turks for showing photos of the sculpture, after the newspaper Yeniçag called in an article to “Stop this hideous insult”.

Also in 2008, Muslim vandals attacked a London art gallery, after it showed inflammatory images of veiled Muslims. The solo exhibition of paintings by Sarah Maple included a veiled woman holding a pig, which was interpreted as a flagrant disregard of the Islamic ban on eating pork [another painting was of a Muslim with banana, called Bananarama]. The exhibition also included two self-portraits: one of Sarah Maple wearing a headscarf and an image of Kate Moss’s naked breast attached to it. In another art work, a veiled Muslim woman wears a badge that says “I love orgasms”. The windows and doors at the SaLon Gallery in West-London were smashed after a series of abusive, anonymous phone calls and angry protests by Muslims.

As a contrast: In 2008, creative Muslims in Sarajevo wanted to express themselves by painting the pavements in the city in “the color of Islam”: green. “This is a message of intolerance and a perfidious scene of ethnic cleansing that was preconceived as a way to drive away people of other ethnicities and religions living in Sarajevo,” said NGO President Leo Plockinic. “It is clear that Sarajevo wants to be a greater Tehran than the capital city of the Islamic Republic of Iran itself.” According to the Mayor Semiha Borovac though, painting the pavements and streets green would be good for the city, because the city lacked greenery. He did not view it as offensive to citizens of other religions.

Finally, returning to Bologna: In 2009, the Italian police decided to search visitors to the magnificent Church of St. Petronio from then on, after offended Muslims protested against a depiction of Mohammed in a 14th-century fresco [that depicts Mohammed being tortured in Hell], and there had been unsuccessful attempts to blow up the painting.

14 comments:

laine said...

I thought the kicky high heel pumps on a prayer mat constituted a brilliant comment on how afraid Islam is of its women (wouldn't want to limit it to transvestites).

Perhaps the West should give some thought to building bomb proof art gallery display windows in every major city behind which to display Western art that Muslims find offensive.

The expenditure would be more than justified if some Muslims in high dudgeon departed for Muslim countries of which there is no shortage.

There IS a shortage of countries not hemmed in by various sharia strictures on NON_ MUSLIMS!!!

WAKE UP said...

Man, it must be tough being Muslim - all that running around being offended ALL THE TIME. So, why are these people migrating to, and refusing to leave, Western countries where you can GUARANTEE they'll be "offended"?

What offends ME is the disgusting hypocrisy implicit in all this.

I repeat: Why DON'T MUSLIMS CHOOSE TO LIVE IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES? if it's difficult for them in the modern world.

Anonymous said...

What is so disconcerting as well annoying about Muslims, is that they think nothing of insulting other faiths, like publicly maintaining in the West, that Jesus is not the son of God. Muslims expect that others accept their right to say so. Yet if Christians said anything about Mohammed, even if true and garnered from Islamic sources, they start to riot, issue death fatwas and what not.

Sometime soon, I hope this tendency of theirs to irrational behaviour, will be subject to correction.

Anonymous said...

Here we go again...

Now we have two additional layers of scandal spread on top of the usual "challenging" and "rebellious" nonsense of "contemporary art" : the Muslim-titillation element, plus the fact that the artist is a Muslim himself, at least in an ethnical way, since he is of Moroccan origin.

Considering that this does, at least, introduce a certain dose of courage and actual rebellion in a discipline which is usually a string of awfully conventional platitudes masquerading as revolt, let's say that it might be worthy of some interest.

But still. I've seen vastly stronger Muslim-related "artistic" statements on the Web. Have a look at this -- and be sure to browse the archives (in French, some strong language to be expected) :

http://pdmp2k9.blogspot.com/

This guy is really a genius. But then, he has something definite to say about the world. He is not just "questioning about sexuality". He's got answers, too.

Zenster said...

WAKE UP: I repeat: Why DON'T MUSLIMS CHOOSE TO LIVE IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES? if it's difficult for them in the modern world.

How many times do I need to repeat this?

MUSLIMS ARE SKINLESS PEOPLE LIVING IN A SANDPAPER WORLD

They are Olympic-class whiners and being perpetually offended is not just a way of life for them, it is a way by which they justify continuous jihad against us.

Face it, even in Muslim majority countries, they are still at each other's throats so regularly that you can set your watch by it. If Muslims cannot find peace among their own kind then there is no possible way that they will ever find peace living in the Western world.

The only reason Muslims are here is to make our lives miserable. It is all part of expanding the Islamic empire and has absolutely nothing to do with peaceful assimilation. By their thundering silence, even the most "moderate" Muslims assist in this assault upon Western civilization. There simply are no Muslims of any worth to non-Islamic cultures as they all manage to serve the purpose of jihad in some manner be it by tacit or active acceptance.

This is why mass deportation is the only peaceful answer but, unfortunately, the logistics of such a measure are so prohibitive that a Muslim holocaust is the far more likely outcome.

None of this is any fault of the West. So long as Muslims are allowed any freedom of movement, they will always drag along with them their blood-soaked jihadist baggage. There is no middle ground in this issue and there never has been.

Islam is purposefully structured to be an "all or nothing" proposition and it is up to the West to make sure that Muslims end up with the "nothing" portion of that equation. Muslims have done absolutely nothing of worth for our world in almost an entire millennia and we are under no obligation to show the least respect for such modern-day parasites.

The monumental ingratitude shown by a vast majority of Muslims makes them totally worthless as any sort of productive members in society. At some point, they will routinely fall into line with Islamic dictates and no matter who has shown them whatever degree of kindness, they will be led to the chopping block just as cheerfully as Islam's worst enemy.

Islam is a no-win proposition. A world without Islam is they only viable outcome for the future of the human race. Anything less will only promise a world full of constant terrorist attacks and bloodshed without end.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

41!!! Hahahaha!! That was a good one, Baron!

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

Where are all the soap box artists and musicians in defending this Artist's freedom of expression?

Henrik R Clausen said...

Prayer mats? That's funny. I thought only Allah was worthy of worship (according to them, not me).

But then, any opportunity to practice intimidation of infidels is usually taken up by these 'holy' zealots - who seem to have little better to do than proving their holier-than-thou position to each other.

Conservative Swede said...

Same prison:

Now the new guy yells "Number eighty-seven!" And the other prisoners are laughing like crazy, some of them are literally rolling on the floor.

When he finally gets a word out of his cellmate he asks him: "Why did you laugh so much at this one?" His cellmate, regaining his breath, answers "Because we'd never heard that one before."

Anonymous said...

Baron and Americans - what do you make of this

Purported non Muslim President Obama makes high level Muslim appointment to DHS


Muslim Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Arif Alikhan for a top job at the federal Department of Homeland Security

WAKE UP said...

Obama has been pushing Islam onto America from the moment he was elected. It's what Muslims do. QED.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

When do you think he's gonna come out of the closet? The end of this term or during next?

lib said...

"... depicts “a man” subdued by angels..."

the two links in there are broken.

Baron Bodissey said...

library --

I don't vouch for links being good even a week after they're posted, much less an entire year.