Sculpture banned from the Venice Biennale

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A spokesman for the Venetian arts authority said there was a danger that Muslims would feel provoked by the work, heightening the risk of the city being vulnerable to terrorist attacks
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The reinforces my belief that Europeans are *afraid* of Muslims, and are into appeasement.

I am suprised that PM Berlesconi is not quoted in the article, in that he certainly has some spine in this matter.

Pity poor Mr. Schneider, the artist. All he wanted to do was symbolize the connections between Arab and European cultures. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I do think that the decision to not show his art is probably for the best. After all, Muslims are so easily offended and enflamed and blowing up St. Mark's Cathedral would be a perfect way to show their displeasure. And, along the way, they might have taken the opportunity to destroy some nearby sidewalk cafes with their offensive policies of serving wine to their customers. The Italians aren't always dhimmis, but they are learning.

What a joke.

The Ka'aba existed before Islam, and was part of the polytheistic religions that existed in the Arabian Peninsula during the middle ages. Mohammed stole it, partly to appease the locals in Mecca. It was a great coup on his part, and he made it a center point of his newly invented people controlling religion. All moslems are supposed to go to the Hajj (pilgrimage) at least once in their lifetime, and walk around this big black stone, like it is spiritually significant.

Like I said what a joke!

Maryrose, you are right! I predict that one day some moslem will hang a cardinal in St Peter's square. Then the Italians will finally get it!

Sad isn't it? Can't have nothin' nice when these wonkys are around, they'll just break it.

Muslims might feel "provoked." It seems that a small minority continues to create policy in the West that is voluntarily giving in to dhimmi status.

This is rich.

He wanted to symbolise a connection between European and Arab cultures. But he didn't realise that Islam is a psychopathic religion, and as such muslims are "sensitive" to anything that an outsider says about their religion.

The reaction for killing the sculpture is much like the abused wife that lives in fear of "Setting-Off" their husband into a fit of rage and violence that they caused from "provoking"
the Abuser.

Theo Van Gogh died a free man that will go down in the history books as not submitting to Islam
because of the oppressive rules and threat of death for question Muhammed or the Quran,we will all die some day and I'll choose to die free,not
chained to a death cult religion where I could be killed befor my time .

"All he wanted to do was symbolize the connections between Arab and European cultures."

If that's all he wanted to do it would have been easier to depict a huge Muslim thumb pressing down upon a cowering and de-balled Europe.

In this case, those who are easily provoked (Muslims) are obviously insecure with their status as conspicuous minorities.

The manifestation of this "insult" to their perceived "superior" status amongst their host nations is best summarized by Ibn Khaldun (Maliki jurist) with his age-old assessment:
"Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations."

The real crime here is not the agitation by the Muslims to get what they want. That will always be a given.

The crime committed is by those who allow themselves to forsake their own culture for the benefit of those interloping bloodsuckers.

Political correctness breeds apathetic wilfulness to the point where the host refuses to remove the tick from its own body.

This is GREAT News! Why honor anything muslim and show a "connection" where there is NONE?

I'm offended that yet another symbol of death (as if all those black-clad women weren't offensive enough) is being placed in the heart of Rome.

Islam is a pathetic rip-off of Judaism and Christianity by a still insecure people who had NO CIVILIZATION comparable to the empires surrounding them.

Praying to a stone five times a day....how very Pagan.

The artist accomplished EXACTLY what he set out to do.

Although not in the way we wanted.

Perfect poetic justice!

Even trying to bow to the Muslim masters gets your artistic head cut off.

Sublime!

(Excuse me while I laugh my ass off.)

The Revenge of the Black Cube!

Freedom of expression in Europe is dead. Is the Rijksmuseum burning? St. Peter's Square 2006

I don't know who is more pathethic in this story, if the artist who "wanted to symbolise the connection between Europe and Arab culture" by a replicating an islamic religious symbol in the middle of a square (and not, say, at least something more discreet or at least related to architecture or decoration, few of the real contributions of Arabs to Europe other than war, or, better yet, try to do something with real aesthethic value instead of a mere "political point"), or the authorities who were afraid that "muslims could feel provoked and cause a terrorist attack".

Well, ok, obviously the so-called authorities are way more pathethic. Notice that they didn't even wait for a single muslim to "feel provoked", they just assumed that they would feel, and therefore gave no chances for any protest... Like Pavlov's dogs...

Couldn't they refuse it simply because of the sheer bad taste of the idea? Or is contemporary art (like islam) hopelessly lost?

I'm afraid for Europe. If it goes on like that, soon people will be afraid to breath because their "infidel breath" might offend a muslim.

Don't people realize that these islamists act just like spoiled little children with weak parents? The more you give, the more they'll ask. And everything is an excuse (cf. replicating Koran abuse stories).

The cringing dhimmis of Europe will never understand. It is impossible for Muslims to believe any benefit of their new homeland is to be reciprocated by gratitude. All benefits are jizya, and expected. That is why they are always telling you 'better send money' or 'you had better reverse this insult' or I'll get upset and physically attack the infidels that offend, or attack your infrastructure (i.e., bombs, etc.).

And the dhimmis say yes, yes, tell me what to do to stop any offense to you.

Europe is pathetic, and the US is in line right behind the dhimmis of Europe bearing jizya to Islamic states and nonstates and in our own country, muslem organizations like CAIR, MSNA and so on demand attention and oversight of how America 'respects' Muslims. It's all done another name, be is multiculturalism or humanitarian aid. It's submission, it's jizya, and once you begin the danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.

If you stop for a moment and look at this situation, it looks really bewildering. How is it possible that a first-world nation is afraid of a minority of third-world immigrants in its midst? The first worlders outweigh the third worlders in EVERY respect - power, riches, status, homeland, education, achievement, civilization, even firepower.

And yet they cringe and pander, like an elephant kowtowing to a little spot of arrogant ants. If the ants get out of line, all the elephant has to do is STOMP! STOMP! Peace again in elephant land.

But here, the elephants behave like pussified dhimmis. Why the heck do they do that?

Skidd wrote...Why the heck do they do that?

That's a question I would like to ask Dhimmi Rice and Dhimmi Bush. I believe it is all ignorance. Surrounded by Islamists dressed in 'moderate Muslim' drag and dhimmi 'experts' like Esposito and Lewis, they are clueless and will remain clueless. I thought Dhimmi Rice was 'intellectual' but she has obviously had her readings directed by the aforementioned who have carefully orchestrated the feeding of their dhimmi. Good dhimmis, good clueless dhimmi.

How is it possible that a first-world nation is afraid of a minority of third-world immigrants in its midst? The first worlders outweigh the third worlders in EVERY respect - power, riches, status, homeland, education, achievement, civilization, even firepower.
But here, the elephants behave like pussified dhimmis. Why the heck do they do that?

Posted by: skidd at June 20, 2005 09:55 PM

Americans have unconsciously fallen into the leftist, progressive, social engineering trap and we are now engaged in a double standard against ourselves. The diversicrats, multiculturalists, moral relativists, socialists, Marxists, and hard-core communists have relentlessly echoed their mantras in our schools, universities, churches, workplaces,and on television and radio. We have been literally forcefed the multiculti, moral/cultural/religious equivalence doctrine until it has become hardwired in our brains. So now, whenever one dares to criticize a minority, especially Islam, the protectors of the downtrodden leap to their defense with piteous cries of Islamophobia, racism, bigotry. Our Islamic enemies, who are overtly waging a war against our civilization, are defended and appeased, and our fellow Westerner is condemned and ostracized.

The Western ideology of liberalism is tolerant and all-inclusive. The non-Western ideology of Islam is predatory, totalitarian, xenophobic, imperialistic, and wholly intolerant. We are the prey; they are the predators. Liberal Americans, and that includes most of us regardless of our political affiliations, are pathetically naive about Islam's agenda. We want to believe that with the exception of "a small minority", muslims are just like us. It is inconceivable to most Americans that muslims would want to deconstruct America.

A liberal American is non-judgmental of other cultures and to sustain our liberal American identities, we must assume that people of other cultures are basically just like us. Discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity is strictly forbidden. We all know those words by heart and until recently, thought little about them. Now we find ourselves threatened by an evil religion and bellicose muslims living in our country. We can't "discriminate", so how do we handle the problem? We pretend to ignore the negative qualities of muslims and Islam because we are generous and unselfish but in reality, we want the tentacles of American liberalism to reach out and touch the world and then we won't be forced to "discriminate" against our avowed enemies, because to do so would shatter our carefully constructed image of ourselves. I would call this false pride and pusillanimity. We are inviting our own destruction at the hands of ruthless, merciless jihadist fanatics to coin a muslim aphorism, "to save face."

.

Has anyone wondered why the actual ka'aba is covered with all that black cloth?

Apparently because it's so unattractive and ramshackle.

"A spokesman for the Venetian arts authority said there was a danger that Muslims would feel provoked by the work, heightening the risk of the city being vulnerable to terrorist attacks"
- from the article

Am I hearing right?

"Offending", or "provoking" MUSLIMS will make us vulnerable to TERRORIST attacks?

Aren't we told, over and over and over again, that Muslims and Islam have nothing to do with terrorism?

So how come provoking Muslims might lead to terrorist attacks?
Doesn't make sense, does it? (Unless one admits that Muslims DO have something to do with terrorism, of course..)

Does anyone remember the one fatality in the whole Rushdie affair. It was the Japanese translator of "Satanic Verses," Hitoshi Igarashi, who was murdered on the campus where he taught Islamic studies in Tokyo. He bled to death having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and arms. As one net rememberence points out, "The irony was that the Islamic tolerance Igarashi wished to demonstrate was in fact intolerable for those to whom he wanted to display tolerance." Igarahshi translated Rushdie with the idea that he would continue to show the richness of the Islamic tradition. I think even sadder is that Igarashi is a forgotten and unkown casualty which in retrospect, like the destruction of the buddhist statues in Afganistan, should have been a warning to the world that there is an element in the world of Islam bent on literal destruction of any force it sees as in its way or even mildly contradictory to its absolute worldview.

Does anyone remember the one fatality in the whole Rushdie affair. It was the Japanese translator of "Satanic Verses," Hitoshi Igarashi, who was murdered on the campus where he taught Islamic studies in Tokyo. He bled to death having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and arms. As one net rememberence points out, "The irony was that the Islamic tolerance Igarashi wished to demonstrate was in fact intolerable for those to whom he wanted to display tolerance." Igarahshi translated Rushdie with the idea that he would continue to show the richness of the Islamic tradition. I think even sadder is that Igarashi is a forgotten and unkown casualty which in retrospect, like the destruction of the buddhist statues in Afganistan, should have been a warning to the world that there is an element in the world of Islam bent on literal destruction of any force it sees as in its way or even mildly contradictory to its absolute worldview.

Does anyone remember the one fatality in the whole Rushdie affair. It was the Japanese translator of "Satanic Verses," Hitoshi Igarashi, who was murdered on the campus where he taught Islamic studies in Tokyo. He bled to death having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and arms. As one net rememberence points out, "The irony was that the Islamic tolerance Igarashi wished to demonstrate was in fact intolerable for those to whom he wanted to display tolerance." Igarahshi translated Rushdie with the idea that he would continue to show the richness of the Islamic tradition. I think even sadder is that Igarashi is a forgotten and unkown casualty which in retrospect, like the destruction of the buddhist statues in Afganistan, should have been a warning to the world that there is an element in the world of Islam bent on literal destruction of any force it sees as in its way or even mildly contradictory to its absolute worldview.

Does anyone remember the one fatality in the whole Rushdie affair. It was the Japanese translator of "Satanic Verses," Hitoshi Igarashi, who was murdered on the campus where he taught Islamic studies in Tokyo. He bled to death having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and arms. As one net rememberence points out, "The irony was that the Islamic tolerance Igarashi wished to demonstrate was in fact intolerable for those to whom he wanted to display tolerance." Igarahshi translated Rushdie with the idea that he would continue to show the richness of the Islamic tradition. I think even sadder is that Igarashi is a forgotten and unkown casualty which in retrospect, like the destruction of the buddhist statues in Afganistan, should have been a warning to the world that there is an element in the world of Islam bent on literal destruction of any force it sees as in its way or even mildly contradictory to its absolute worldview.

Does anyone remember the one fatality in the whole Rushdie affair. It was the Japanese translator of "Satanic Verses," Hitoshi Igarashi, who was murdered on the campus where he taught Islamic studies in Tokyo. He bled to death having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and arms. As one net rememberence points out, "The irony was that the Islamic tolerance Igarashi wished to demonstrate was in fact intolerable for those to whom he wanted to display tolerance." Igarahshi translated Rushdie with the idea that he would continue to show the richness of the Islamic tradition. I think even sadder is that Igarashi is a forgotten and unkown casualty which in retrospect, like the destruction of the buddhist statues in Afganistan, should have been a warning to the world that there is an element in the world of Islam bent on literal destruction of any force it sees as in its way or even mildly contradictory to its absolute worldview.

Oops sorry for repeat posts. Not shouting. I hope someone deletes the extra three.

Statues, like paintings of any living creature, are forbidden in Islam. If the Bamiyan Buddhas managed for centuries to survive in Islam, it was only because the technical wherewithal was lacking. Once the Taliban acquired enough Western-produced explosives, they could finish the job.

A little booklet, possibly the most pathetic guide to an art museum ever published, is the "Guide to the Kabul Museum." I have a copy, published in 1964, long before the Taliban arrived on the scene to see Islamic justice done. There are a few dozen pages, a handful of photographs. It is clear that the ancient Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan, and of all other non-Islamic civlizations, were reduced mostly to rubble -- the flying rubble that we see whenever we see pictures of Aghanistan.

For in Islam, the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic artifacts are of no interest, no valuable. They can be destroyed, they should be destroyed. The tens of thousands of Hindu temples destroyed by the Muslim invaders, and a partial list of which was compiled by Sita Ram Goel, are perhaps the best-known example. But what of everything that might have gone into that Kabul Museum, but never made it?

The greatest destruction of art works in human history is that wrought by Muslim conquerors on the non-Muslim lands and peoples they invaded, conquered, and subjugated.

What will happen in Europe if it is islamized? If there are already people removing statues, however banal those statues may be, from art expositions now, what will happen in 10 years? In 20 years? Already statues have been vandalized or destroyed by Muslims -- in the Piazza del Popolo, and in a church in northern France (a statue of Mary and Jesus). Muslims have been recorded discussing their plans to destroy a celebrated fresco in Bologna that depicted Muhammad in Hell. What else is happening, and is being suppressed from us by worried European governments, whose elites, having been responsible for permitting millions of what are clearly enemy aliens, a classic fifth column, behind our own lines, cannot bring themselves to recognize the problem, and instead are intent on hiding the full truth from their own populations -- populations that are getting fed up?

In France, one out of every three babies born is now a Muslim. In 20 years, one out of every 20-year-olds will, therefore, be a Muslim. What is to be done? Anything? Nothing?

In 1946, the most advanced and tolerant government in Central or Eastern Europe, a model of right-thinking, the government of Czechoslovakia, issued the Benes Decree. By that decree, because of their actions in the recent war (taking the enemy's side) 3 million ethnic Germans (many, but not all, had been supporters of Hitler and Deutschtum) were expelled from lands that had been populated by ethnic Germans for 600 years. No one in the Western world dropped a tear or uttered a protest. Everyone understood. Everyone still understands today, save for a handful of German revanshisty (as they used to be called in Krokodil cartoons).

When will the Western world begin to realize it faces a mortal threat, small now but growing, and growing precisely to the extent that its Muslim population grows, learns the local languages, learns to present itself with all the cunning suavity of Tariq Ramadan, to ensure the constant confusion and fear that is easy to spread, apparently, among Infidels -- all too willing to deny the evidence of their senses.

One more thing.

The Venice Biennale has long been one of those places that prides itself on its daring, its refusal to kowtow to the narrow-mindedness of entirely imaginary bourgeois prejudices. It has long been the butt of jokes for the kind of stuff it has sometimes put on display.

The most famous mocking of the Biennale occurs not in some ArtForum magazine, or one of those that Catherine M. (of "La vie sexuelle de..." fame) ran or runs in Paris, but rather on the silver screen. In "Le vacanze intelligenti" Alberto Sordi, playing a Roman pizza-maker, and his plump wife are sent off, by their presumptuous three children (who pay for the trip) on a kind of cultural tour, when all they really want is to lie around and stuff themselves (as, in the end, they do). Among the most memorable scenes is one at the Biennale, where the fat wife slumps, exhausted, in a chair. As she sleeps, a guide comes by with his docile herd of visitors to the exhibition, and they stand solemnly in front of the dead-to-the-world wife, as he discusses her as one more of the art objects to be found.

So here we are, sans Sordi, sans wife, sans anything humorous at all. And the Biennale, with all those people -- the same kind who take the contents of the Saatchi collection, or that of Eli Broad, seriously -- who are delighted to mock, oh -- the Americans, or the benighted Vatican, or some such obvious target. But the mere hint that "Muslims" might be offended -- ah, those "tolerant" and "peaceful" Muslims we hear so much about -- and that therefore this piece must be quickly taken away.

Let no one, ever again, in the so-called Art World start prating about "transgressive" art. They are complete cowards when it comes to any real transgression, the real misbehavior -- in this case, the greatest transgression or misbehavior in the Western world is to do anything, anything, that might offend Muslims.

Well, let's transgress. Let's misbehave.

Hugh, Great piece.

But we should not 'misbehave'. That is to surrender our mindset for theirs.

We should behave. BE OURSELVES.
Italians in Italy. Britons in Britian. And stop these bastards, or kick them out, who are in Italy and refuse to be Italians, and in Britain and refuse to be British. And insist on being muslims first.

We should show them whose country they are in.

Period.

Hugh, you are right about the "no-living-thing-in-art" for moslems. But I want to add something.

Allah forbade this form of art through his prophet for one reason, to stop any of the followers worshipping anything but him. The idea was stolen from the jewish religion by Allah as he competes with the one true God for the affections of mankind.

I don't care what Bush or anyone else says, Allah is not the same as God. The characteristics of God listed in the Bible or Torah are different than those listed in the Koran.

Hi

>>Allah forbade this form of art through his prophet for one reason, to stop any of the followers worshipping anything but him. The idea was stolen from the jewish religion by Allah as he competes with the one true God for the affections of mankind.>I don't care what Bush or anyone else says, Allah is not the same as God. The characteristics of God listed in the Bible or Torah are different than those listed in the Koran.

What the art world needs now is a movement of "guerilla art", where brave artists put up pieces that mock and ridicule Islam -- and even blaspheme it (à la Andres Serrano's Piss Christ exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in the late 90s, in which a crucifix was presented immersed in urine} or Chris Ofili's collage of the Virgin Mary using elephant excrement, or an arts festival in Australia where the Virgin Mary was shown holding an accordion in her arms instead of the infant Jesus, or a scene which substituted a naked woman for Jesus and 12 modern artists for his disciples, etc.).

Any depiction of Muhammad would do the trick. But a statue of Muhammad arm-in-arm with little Aisha, possibly carrying a rough-hewn doll under her arms as she walks trustingly beside him, would be even better. Will the brave Chris Ofili, the daring Andres Serrano, their dissected cows and pissing Christs the proof of their bravery, create such art-works?

Go ahead, Andres and Christo. C'mon, you who braved the Vatican and all those holy-rollers you like to mock. C'mon. I dare you.

And if you act as if man and God may be mocked, but Allah never, then you should simply fold up your tents, go back to that drawing school you never attended, and try, try, to figure out what art is all about.

"Excuse me while I laugh my ass off.)

The Revenge of the Black Cube!"

LOL, exactly BigSleep!

"All he wanted to do was symbolize the connections between Arab and European cultures."
A cowardly hedonist hiding from the barbarians he let into his home to do his dirty work. That would be a multi-media installation. Honestly, next to rational scientific logic, Islam scores pretty low on the art scale too.

Charles Saatchi and the Tate Modern rule one side of the market; video installations, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and a thousand knock-offs of both and of others de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, now rule the roost in Art World. And even in Art History, the cultivated refugees from Hitler have died (Ernst Kitzinger, at 91, was the last of them), and their cultivated students too, are now, if not shy, at least retiring.

The worst kind of collectors, with their grotesque sums, skew the market, encourage the fashionable, those video installations and daubs and smears of paint or chocolate (it hardly matters which) on canvas or on skin (it hardly matters which), and all the rest of the winners of the Tate's annual prize for fraud, each winner more obviously fake than the last.

The rich cannot be taught to part with much of their money, so instead they have to be carefully educated. If they are not, in the way, for example, that Lincoln Kirstein was educated, then they can do a lot of damage with their money. Money without taste or self-assurance (needed to fend off the cunning dealers selling the higher schlock) does damage all way round. To museums, to the market, to those who are trying their best not to succumb to fashion, and maddened by the sums lavished on their inferiors.

Few Eugene Thaws around to guide them. On their own, they are easy prey for quickly taken in tow by mountebanks eager to separate them from their allowances.

And that is how the glittering prizes can be given to the girl who offered up her unmade bed, underwear, Tampax, and all, as a work of art, with similar contributions by male prizewinners in other years. If that is Western art, then the Muslims have nothing to worry about. We will wait for the barbarians to destroy that which now, certainly, deserves to be destroyed.

"The beating down of the Wise/And great Art beaten down." Yeats can get on anyone's nerves, but a good line. Ian Robinson uses it as an epigraph to one of the chapters in that bracingly grim book "The Survival of English." What about "the Survival of Art"? Between the Tate prizes and the Muslims swarming about outside the Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery, can Art survive?

Hugh-

I've been arguing this exact point with gelded artist friends for over a decade. These avante garde(d reactions) 'artistes' pose and think themselves so daring. But every one cringed at the suggestion (and even the thought) of perhaps mocking Mohammad's quirks. Or with tempting the anger of the Muslim Juggernaut (long before Theo Van Gogh's slaughter). And not just the response Muslims themselves, but that of the grant-bestowing, legitimacy-endowing p.c. left-wing defenders of "Peaceful Islam" within academe.

Somehow kicking the docile dog of Christianity was titillating, piquant, outrageous and bold, etc.
(ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz......)

But standing up against the art-hating faith of Mecca was uncomfortable . Not neccesary. Uneasy-making. Aesthetically irrelevant. A cheap shot. Mere propaganda. Didactic. Banal.

Excuses never applied to any other target of Art.

But, of course, this is one target that shoots back.

Art is a complete eunuch, at the moment.

People in Occupied Europe at least published underground press mockeries of Hitler, Mussolini and their Nazi/fascist maniacs. Through comics. Broadsides. Lampoons. Savage satires. Scatological verse and lacerating Songs.

("Terminator", in present company, graciously excepted.)

Maybe it is time to mock the Artists for their failure to mock the destroyer of Art?

FOR EXHIBITION:

A pair of golden balls, nestled in a pinkish translucent plastic bag, nailed to the frame of an empty picture, entitled:

"Art Calls off the Battle for Freedom of Expression When the Name Theo Van Gogh is Screamed"?

Sic semper castratos!

"But standing up against the art-hating faith of Mecca was uncomfortable . Not neccesary. Uneasy-making. Aesthetically irrelevant. A cheap shot. Mere propaganda. Didactic. Banal."

You forgot the biggest reason why Leftist Artists (who currently comprise the vast majority of artists) would refuse to lampoon Islam through their art: "Racism". Yes, any criticism or denigration of Islam is now voluntarily banned, under the stigma of racism. In the minds of these Leftist artists, to poke artistic fun at Islam would be no different than to poke fun at blacks (as a 1920s movie using blackface buffoons, for example).

No amount of rational argument will dissuade these Leftist artists from their programming, I fear.

Brilliant postings Hugh. Remember the pious outcry caused last year by Zvi Mazel (Israel’s ambassador to Sweden), when he fused the lights on the Stockholm museum installation celebrating suicide bomber Hannah Jadarat who murdered twenty one people in Haifa? Roberta Smith even wrote a piece for the New York Times that compared Mazel’s mild subversion with the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamian - “in many ways the violation is the same”! ‘Transgression’ in the arts community is a back slapping affair that gets you invited to dinner parties – not a matter of taking real risks (gasp!). Kosher ‘transgression’ is very good for funding, exhibition and critical acclaim. All impossible to obtain if your target is Islam. If the flaccid multiculturism of Gregor Schneider is too much for these brave art professionals to cope with, what hope Mohammed with his child bride? No – they are much happier with public celebrations of dead Israelis. Then you get a chorus of media groupies like Roberta Smith explaining that angry reactions display “a distorted sense of entitlement” (try saying that about a Muslim) and a refusal “to entertain paradox, to see art as a coalescence of grey areas, ambiguities and multiple interpretations.” Funny how this ‘nuance’ somehow doesn’t prevail when it comes to art that might expose Islam.

Jinnee-

Well said!

You've nailed the cowards with their own agenda.

Kick the dog you know won't bite, then celebrate your "transgressive" courage.

Haven't feminist artists (where's Judy Chicago?) heard of the treatment of ALL women under Islam?

Isn't this worth a "dinner party" installation
?
Maybe a sculptural set piece showing ALL of Mohammad's wives, beheaded, and posed at a table setting, with their heads on their own individual plates, and their hands holding knives and forks, ready to dig in to their own violation, degradation, humiliation and prostration before the Ultimnate Patriarchy?

There's more chickensh*t in the current Art World than at Heinrich Himmlers' former farm.