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France: Street artist brutally attacked for “Coexist” artwork

Feb 7, 2015 8:35 pm By Robert Spencer

Combo-coexistCombo won’t describe the “young people” who attacked him, as “it would only add fuel to the fire.” In saying that, he makes clear who they were. Even though Combo dresses in the garb of a devout Muslim, his art offends Muslim hardliners who don’t like seeing the Islamic crescent next to the Star of David and the cross. “Coexist,” indeed.

“Street Artist Combo Brutally Attacked for Pacifist Tag Post Charlie Hebdo,” by Coline Milliard, artnet news, February 5, 2015 (thanks to BD):

It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,” written on a wall using a Muslim crescent as the letter “C,” a Star of David as the letter “X,” and a Christian cross as a “T.”

But in Paris, this particular iteration of the popular inscription—here, created by the street artist Combo, who also pasted a life-size photo of himself next to it—didn’t go down well with everybody. Le Monde reports that four young people asked the artist to remove it last weekend, and beat him up severely when he refused to do so.

Combo ended up with a dislocated shoulder and many bruises.

The attack is characteristic of the inter-religious tensions that plague France and have been exacerbated by the Charlie Hebdo tragedy (see 12 Killed at Magazine Previously Attacked for Satirical Cartoons). Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. “It would only add fuel to the fire,” he told the French newspaper.

A former adman, the artist has taken his politically-charged street art to Los Angeles and Hong Kong, where he pasted printouts of web pages forbidden by the Chinese government. “My pieces function in a disruptive manner, they surprise, and appear up where they shouldn’t be,” he said.

During a residency in Bayreuth, he grew his beard and started wearing the traditional Muslim dress—not because he was increasingly attracted to a more fundamentalist version of Islam, but, again, to disrupt established codes. To his friends asking him whether he was “going to jihad” in Lebanon, he answered, “I’m going to ji-art.”

“First I thought I was French, but I quickly understood that I was Arab, then beur (French slang for second and third generation North African), now I’m told I’m Muslim,” Combo continued, talking of the French des-integration….

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Filed Under: Featured, France Tagged With: Coexist, Combo


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Comments

  1. cs says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 8:41 pm

    Who attacked him? Does anyone have a clue who could be the assailants? Perhaps radical Buddhists?
    Tibetan monks perhaps? Certainly not the people from the RELIGION OF PEACE.

    • Kepha says

      Feb 7, 2015 at 8:50 pm

      Shucks, CS, I suspect it isn’t even members of some extremely conservative splinter from Les Eglises Reformees Evvangelique, either. Or Jews. Or….

      Still, I groan about that “coexist” bumper sticker/graffiti shtick. Even if I live the final judgment to God, not all the creeds represented by the symbols can be true. Maybe it’s better simply to agree to disagree without being disagreeable?

      • Katnis says

        Feb 8, 2015 at 11:33 pm

        Coexist? Hahahahaha! Never going to happen. You can put Jews, Hindus, atheists, Christians, pagans, agnostics, and every type of philosophy at belief together and they will get along. Adding a musslim to the group is like shitting in your soup. It just doesn’t work. No faith can coexist with Islam.

    • pumbar says

      Feb 7, 2015 at 10:28 pm

      That area of Paris does have a lot of wound up Wiccans (there aren’t many trees to hug).

      • cs says

        Feb 8, 2015 at 6:43 am

        Mad followers of Aleister Crowley.

  2. Ayatrollah says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 8:57 pm

    There is part of Islamic law called “sitr”. You are not to say bad things about muslims. Under this doctrine you don’t tell on Muslims for things like sex crimes because it makes the ummah look bad. This guy is following the law.

  3. MKG says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 9:00 pm

    Imagine, a bunch of people suddenly scraping off their COEXIST and Obama bumper stickers. Wouldn’t that be a sight. But, I won’t hold my breath, mental illness knows no bounds.

    • pumbar says

      Feb 7, 2015 at 10:30 pm

      And when they were chanting, “four more years” they were referring to how long they have before the car loan is paid off.

  4. Georg says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 9:07 pm

    “The attack is characteristic of the inter-religious tensions that plague France…”

    I take exception with this characterization. I’d say it’s characteristic of Islamic aggression; it’s due time to speak its name.

  5. Angemon says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 9:19 pm

    The attack is characteristic of the inter-religious tensions that plague France and have been exacerbated by the Charlie Hebdo tragedy

    Huh, “the attack is characteristic of the inter-religious tensions”? What “religions” are characterized by this kind of actions?

    • PJG says

      Feb 8, 2015 at 4:44 am

      The word “tragedy” is lame, too. What about “attack” or “murders”? No, journalists like to call islamic attacks ‘tragedies”. it started with 9/11 and it hasn’t stopped.

      • PJG says

        Feb 8, 2015 at 4:46 am

        Please excuse bad punctuation etc. It’s the grey-on-grey thing, hard to deal with but it looks like it’s here to stay.

      • gravenimage says

        Feb 9, 2015 at 3:42 pm

        This is *very* true, PJG—describing these deliberate attacks in the name of Islam as “tragedies”, as though they were earthquakes or floods or icy roads. Grotesque.

  6. Don McKellar says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 9:27 pm

    It would be the most poetic of justice is Islamic supremacists would start targeting every car they find with one of these “coexist” bullshit stickers on it. They should burn them all to the ground, just like they have so many cars in Paris. This should be an international Islamic fatwa. Get with it, you moslem retards!

    • Georg says

      Feb 8, 2015 at 12:03 am

      “There are no coexist bumper stickers in Islam.”

      -Ayatollah “Do the Dougie” Khomenei

  7. saturnine says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 9:36 pm

    He should have painted this http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/images/Coexistx800.jpg

    • gp says

      Feb 7, 2015 at 10:21 pm

      That is how radical ISLAM “Coexists” with the rest of the civilized world.

    • TheBuffster says

      Feb 8, 2015 at 2:24 am

      I want that.

  8. Bezelel says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 9:41 pm

    Major identity crisis, There’s room at the Cross.

  9. gp says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 10:12 pm

    Because “Radical” ISLAM and the civilized world cannot “Coexist”

  10. gp says

    Feb 7, 2015 at 10:41 pm

    Because “Radical” ISLAM and the civilized world cannot “Coexist”. That rendition at the link you posted portrays this accurately. ISLAM is absolute, rigid, and wholly intolerant. According to Obama only If you look at it the wrong way- like the 1990’s magic eye pictures. Then ISLAM turns from “The Religion of Peace” into a head severing, burning alive, Evil, Murderous, Genocidal, Rape Gang, “Death Cult”. Death, rape, torture, slaughter, destruction and hatred is all they know. All that from The Religion of Peace…from ISLAM it turns into ISIS.

    All based on misinterpretations of their Holy Book the Koran.

    • 10thGenerationAmerican says

      Feb 10, 2015 at 11:41 am

      “All based on misinterpretations of their Holy Book the Koran.”

      How on Earth is it easy to misinterpret this actual quote from the Koran?

      Quran (5:33) – “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”

  11. Georg says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 12:10 am

    Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. “The Ummah are blameless,” he told the French newspaper.

  12. thomas pellow says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 7:50 am

    Also in France-

    “Teacher quits Muslim school he claimed was riddled with Islamism and anti-Semitism”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/teacher-quits-muslim-school-he-claimed-was-riddled-with-islamism-and-antisemitism-10031055.html

  13. Bonnie Loranger says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 8:09 am

    Muslims barbarian attacked him.
    Arab is not a slang word in French but it is considered derogatory.

  14. Veritas says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 8:13 am

    “Coexplode The terrorist want to kill us all” This is my bumper sticker on my car. The C is the Islamic crescent and their is a little bomb on it. I bought it off Zazzle when I was fed up with the anti religious attitudes and implications of the coexist crowd. Shortly after I prosecuted one Coexist bumper sticker guy for breaking into cars I just had to respond.

  15. Veritas says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 8:16 am

    Get a “Coexplode The terrorist want to kill us all” bumper sticker.

  16. Peter says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 10:00 am

    Islam poses an existential threat to all other systems of belief (Qur’an 9:33). The real formula should be different: If you replace the crescent (“C”) with an “X” and the “O” or peace sign with an equal sign (=) you get “X=EXIST.” Put that on your bumper sticker.

  17. joeblough says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 12:08 pm

    Another skull-full-of-mush kumbayah guy.

    Somehow they never seem to get it that if you’re nice to others they won’t necessarily be nice to you.

    In fact, the Mo’s will kill you for it.

  18. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 12:22 pm

    During the Vietnam War they came up with the peace sign. Its implicit statement was that sure, the USSR and the PRC had poured weapons and propaganda into Indochina, but the way out was to just give up. But anybody with a brain knew the real meaning of the peace sign was that of a chicken claw print, as in chickenshit unwilling to fight for freedom.

    There’s more fraud in the coexist sign. It pretends that the problem is that there should be equity between the various religions, but that has been violated by Western prejudice and bigotry. Yeah, there’s inequity between them, alright, but the question is where the inequity comes from. The implication is that it comes from them all, and that’s a fake answer. The dumbasses who put the Coexist bumper sticker on their cars should read the Holy Ko-Ran to find out the real answer.

    • Kepha says

      Feb 8, 2015 at 6:43 pm

      Ages ago, when I was at the Foreign Service institute learning Thai, I was walking in one morning and bumped into the senior Chinese teacher. I noticed he had a the Boddhisatva Guan Yin on his dashboard. I later mentioned to the senior Thai teacher, whom I knew to be a serious Buddhist, that his Chinese language teacher seemed to be a Buddhist, too. The Thai teacher scowled and informed me that Chinese Mahayanists are not Buddhists at all.

      So, there’s prejudice and heresy-finding everywhere.

      • gravenimage says

        Feb 9, 2015 at 4:10 pm

        I don’t doubt your story, Kepha. But I notice that your Chinese and Thai language teachers, while they may have had religious differences, were not attacking each other in the parking lot or calling for each other’s murder.

        While it may have been a bit uncomfortable at times, they *were* peacefully coexisting.

        Would that it were the same with Islam…

  19. Jack Holan says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 12:36 pm

    Most Muslims have a low threshold for tolerance as demonstrated by President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast and for Intolerance most Muslims have high capacity to find insult, slights, humiliations that demand a death sentence for the offender. They are always looking back at some egregious historical period to justify the present but never look forward to another way of life since for them there is no other way of life. How complacent the audience at that breakfast was defied the imagination. I am not a Christian however if I had attended I would have stood up and denounced his message as race baiting. Let there be not mistake, he picked Christians because its the largest religion in the US and fit his crazy 5 dimensions of a stretch to make an analogy that wasn’t. He would have included all us at one time if he could have and I have no doubt how he feels about my faith or Israel. I read an interesting article about our fragile economic fiber due to debt and the dollar (I do have a degree of knowledge in this area) it describes where we were at the end of Bush and where we are now. The article then goes on to explain how thin everything has is and that it could all be brought down like a house of cards. The question is whether Obama actually pushed everything know that it was driving us to this situation and more importantly (conspiracies I never used to believe in) does it have to do with his disdain for non-Muslims and the US.

  20. Mirren10 says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 12:58 pm

    “First I thought I was French, but I quickly understood that I was Arab, then beur (French slang for second and third generation North African), now I’m told I’m Muslim,” Combo continued, talking of the French des-integration….”

    Oh, you’re a muslim, all right.

    What a load of meretricious crap this ‘Combo’ is purveying.

    • Kepha says

      Feb 8, 2015 at 6:47 pm

      How Muslim? I’ve known quite a few people with Muslim names who are basically secular every which way to Sunday and are Muslim “only because my parents were from Somewhereistan.”

      I’m all for rounding up the firebrand mullahs and their disciples and deporting them. But third- and fourth-generation who know no homeland other than the one in which they were born, and who may even be flirting with Christianity? No. Even some of the first generation folks exited Islam. I understand that the people who re-planted Christianity in parts of Turkey and Kabylia were former guest workers who headed home with the Gospel.

  21. Boston Tea Party says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    “It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,”

    ***

    And this is the problem the west has with Islam, summarized in one sentence. The west has been so brainwashed by leftist cultural relativism and multiculturalism that it’s virtually incomprehensible to many people that another culture might not want to integrate or coexist–they might actually want to dominate. For many in the West, they have no means of processing that possibility, and their only response is to deny it and attack anyone who might suggest it.

  22. Pushy Galore says

    Feb 8, 2015 at 7:38 pm

    As Jim Quinn used to say, if there is just one muslim who wants to kill you in a room full of peaceful muslims, they instantly become irrelevant and all you will think about is getting away from or neutralizing the one who wants to kill you. Coexistence is futile as long as a few want to kill us.

  23. gravenimage says

    Feb 9, 2015 at 4:32 pm

    France: Street artist brutally attacked for “Coexist” artwork
    …………………………….

    How many times have we seen *this*—something used to whitewash Islam in the West then being attacked by pious Muslims where they have control?

    The only shocking thing is that this did not happen in Dar-al-Islam. but *right in Paris*.

    Muslims feel increasingly emboldened with every atrocity they pull off—we’re seeing the latest in the wake of the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre in France.

    More:

    During a residency in Bayreuth, he grew his beard and started wearing the traditional Muslim dress—not because he was increasingly attracted to a more fundamentalist version of Islam, but, again, to disrupt established codes.
    …………………………….

    What a jerk. Notice that he isn’t “disrupting” Jihadists—instead, his intent is sneering at Infidels who are alarmed or frightened by his Jihadist garb.

    And this is so often the case with “art” over the past century, and increasingly in recent decades—that it’s only purpose is to make decent people uncomfortable and to mock their values. Not only is this pretty questionable as an aim in and of itself, but it is a coward’s type of “transgressiveness”—insult the very people who are unlikely to protest in any but the most polite manner.

    This is why I am sometimes ashamed to call myself an artist.

    We’ll see how long Combo actually continues—like the brave, and very rare, artists at Charlie Hebdo—to annoy actual Muslim supremacists.

  24. locomotivebreath1901 says

    Feb 10, 2015 at 1:15 pm

    Does ‘coexist’ occur before or after barbarians cut off our heads?

  25. gravenimage says

    Feb 10, 2015 at 10:51 pm

    By the way, my stupid ultra-liberal neighborhood—Oakland near the Berkeley border—is full of these “Coexist” bumper stickers. I just saw another one today.

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