An art exhibition in Turkey has been cancelled by organisers after municipal officials were accused of censorship. Three photographs were removed from the exhibit titled “Aykırı” (Contrary) by officials from the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality after newspaper reports suggested some photographs contradicted religious and social values. Another report said that the exhibition insulted “religious values has alarmed the country.” Following the removal of the images by authorities, organisers İzmir Photography Art Association (IFOD) pulled the exhibition. Among the photos that caused controversy were two headscarfed women kissing each other, two men kissing each other, and a headscarfed woman wearing a bikini.
An outspoken professor of constitutional law has resigned his post in the university after being investigated by police and received death threat for his comments about the Malaysian constitutional monarchy.
“I have decided to resign due to the pressure, which makes it impossible to fulfill the ideals of being an academic,” Professor Abdul-Aziz Bari said in an email interview. “The pressure on my [academic] friends is also part of the reason as I do not want to get them into trouble.”
He said his last day as the law lecturer of the International Islamic University Malaysia (Universiti Islam Antarabangsa- UIA) will be on 31 December.
In early October, he commented that it was “unusual and inconsistent” for the Selangor state’s Sultan, Sharafuddin Idris Shah to come out in defence of the state’s religious department (Selangor Islamic Affairs Department- JAIS), which has come under fire for raiding a church allegedly converting Muslims. Under Malaysia’s law, proselytising Muslims is prohibited. The Sultan had admitted that although the department had evidence of proselytising occurring at the raided church, it did not warrant legal prosecution.
The professor’s comment was deemed to insult the monarchy by Malay ethno-religious pressure groups and he was attacked by a daily newspaper, Utusan Malaysia, owned by the ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). A senator from UMNO lodged a police report against him. Following the controversy, the university suspended Bari, but the move provoked public outcry. Activists, opposition law makers and academics criticised the suspension as a violation of academic freedom. On 24 October, the university lifted the suspension after hundreds of university students reportedly staged a demonstration against the decision.
Discussion of the role of the monarchy remains a sensitive topic in Malaysia, nine of its thirteen states are ruled by Sultans, while the remaining four have a Yang Dipertua (Head of State). The Federal Constitution and the Sedition Act 1948 outlaw questioning the position of the monarchy, and both have been exploited by politicians and right-wing groups to condemn any discussion of the role of royalty. Bari, who has written extensively on monarchy and politics, argued in an 12 October article published on news website Malaysiakini that criticism of the monarchy is permitted under Malay law — the line is crossed when someone calls for its abolision. After the article was published, both Malaysiakini and Bari were questioned by the Communications and Multimedia Commission, the regulator of electronic and online sector
On 29 October, he received a bullet along with a warning in the post. In early November, the Higher Education Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the Professor should resign. By late November Bari found himself in deeper controversy, after the Sultan expressed his disapproval of comments Bari made on another issue. Bari said that an earlier amendment to the state enactment exempted the accounts of the state religious council (Selangor Islamic Affairs Council-Mais) and the Selangor Zakat Board from audit by the national Audit-General. But he said that given the limited access to the documents of the amendment, he could have been mistaken in his comments and was willing meet the Sultan to clear the air.
Although the police have completed investigation of his case, Bari remains concerned about what will happen to him.
“I’m worried because I’m not informed of what the police will do, they could charge me” he said.
The smoke had barely cleared from the firebombed office of Charlie Hebdo magazine – attacked for publishing cartoons of Mohammed – when TIME magazine’s Bruce Crumley chose to criticise the satirists before the terrorist. James Kirchick denounces a too-familiar tendancy (more…)
The news that a mobile phone company ad featuring a winking Jesus has been banned from future use should cause alarm among free speech fans. While using religious imagery to sell phones may seem a little crass, there is no real taboo around Christian imagery, despite the best efforts of the iconoclasts over the ages.
The placing of the ad during Holy Week may have seemed topical, but it apparently led 98 Christians to complain that it was disrespectful.
Phones4U claimed the ad aimed to present a “light-hearted, positive and contemporary image of Christianity relevant to the Easter weekend”. Why this is the job of Phones4U is not fully explained (though there are clearly echoes of “the values of the Carphone Warehouse” going on here: if you don’t know what I mean by that, watch the below clip now.
It is possible, however, that someone really has been wronged in all this: US director Kevin Smith, who introduced the Buddy Christ figure in his film Dogma. Smith, a Catholic, used the image as a satire on the church’s sporadic attempts to present itself as a youthful, hip organisation (the campaign in the film is given the painful title Catholicism Wow!)
Is it possible Smith’s copyright has been infringed?
Meanwhile, I can’t help but be reminded of another riff on the Buddy Christ idea, country singer Hayes Carll’s quite brilliant “She Left Me For Jesus”
