Here Are the Muslim Feminist Voices, Mr. Rushdie!

Prem #133 and Hobbyty #146 I think the question of hermeneutics is indeed a central one that muslim societies need to come to grips with. There are two issues here: (a) How does one go about determining the intent behind the Quranic verses and placing them in historical context; and (b) Who has the responsibility to do so. I think the answers to both are in fact quite straightforward: On (a), I think the guiding principle has to be common sense and logic. Thus, common sense would dictate that we cannot go wrong if we err on the side of mercy and kindness; if we are honest; if we approach life in a rational manner; and so forth. The answer to (b) is also rather obvious: it is the individual concerned who is responsible. And by that token, that individual has no right to impose his interpretation on another individual. I leave it to you to judge what this means for the legitimacy of the religious parties in Pakistan that would impose their interpretation of religion on the rest of society.

re saminashah 164

``8. As for this ``PC`` thing; do you guys know where youi`d be if we hadn`t fought for your butts on our college campuses? But thats another post...``

Yes. We will be in less regulation prone and less suspicious society. You`re not the only one who waged intellectual battle on college campuses. We in the College Republican movement fought the leftist domination of American academia for years. We have not succeeded yet but the tide is turning slowly. When my kids go to college someday, chances are that patriotism, decency, and freedom will not be dirty words any more, thanks to the good fight we fought against the leftist, feminist, socialist, politically correct, anti-American mindset that monopolized college America for two generations.

God Bless America and ALL she stands for. Amen!

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Tahmed: EXACTLY!!!!! Common sense, that is all. If we just apply all we read to common sense, we dont need to worry about how authentic something is, or who said what hadis. The Quran and the writings of confucious can be read with the same guide, human reason. (Do we not have ``souls`` enabling us to be connected to the divine?). Ie the Quran says we can beat women. Regardless of all the apologetic acrobatics of the moderates, a person (((brave))) enough to think will never accept such a verse as being divine (or at least will not adhere to it in this day and age).

Hamid: ``beat me with a stick and call me brenda !``

I didn`t know people still said that...

PS: This is killer `` or maybe they heard it at a convention of witches and hobgoblins in benaras or al-azhar or bob jones university .........``

LOL!!

re deepika 174

Thanks for bringing the earth shattering story to our attention. Ten out of her thirty years Bangladesh has been ruled by women. Women who, according to an article in DAWN`s Encounter Section (11/24/01, `The Return of the Iron Lady), `eat nails for breakfast`. In the forseeble future that trend will continue. But the attention grabbers always highlight the acid throwing, the harassment, the life-expectancy etc. Some people simply cannot accept the fact that Bangladesh is the sixth biggest democracy in the world. They have to malign her, humiliate her, somehow bring her down. AMongst them are two sistinct elements: one, the defeated forces of 1971(Paki and Bengali) who bemoan the repect garnered by Bangladesh as Pakistan has slipped to a near-terrorist-state designation; two, some idle Indians and their Bangladeshi agents who simply cannot accept Bangladesh coming of its own.

Eat your hearts out. Bangladesh has come to stay. And stay she will as a pluralist republican democracy, imperfect but improving with time, respected by the global community, and blessed by God.

Prem:

Thank you that interesting Post. I want to deal with a couple of relevant items from your post:

I am a Muslim not a particularly well read or observant, and do have an interest to learn how to better understand intellectual trends, both within Islamia and external to it; a ``Text in Context`` approach if you will.

Quran itself, to my knowledge, does not set any rules of religious interpretation. The rules that do apply in differing traditions are an entirely human conception; even as they can make a claim at replicating precedence.

I do take your assertion about Brahmins but would like to offer that you take into account gnosis, not as a mechanism of control, but rather as a lifetime of devotion to the study of and quest for, meaning.

``I think Islam`s early promise was one of individual liberation, rationality, and thought.``

I would generally agree with this statement, but suggest that we attempt to be very clear about exactly liberation from what? I will tie this up with the notion that just because greater numbers of persons can read and write that human understanding of it`s condition has increased and that far from being victorious, Reason, the uncovering of the underlying natural order, has been fading into a kind of romanticism; of which aestheticism and political religions are amongst the most corrupting.

In my first post I offered that Mr. Rushdie was in the tradition of writers and thinkers for whom the “modern” was a construct, essentially nihilistic. This is evident in its rebellion against reason. In it’s rejection of the past, of restraint. It is an angry and infantile self that

In seeking to affirm nothingness, unrestrained rapid novel and numerous experiences of sensations is it’s ravenous need. It is the contradiction of-culture. Far from calling for individual responsibility, Mr. Rushdie seeks to deny Muslims the right to choose their future – by making the choice of “profanation” for them. His call in the NYT article is but a call to Muslims to acquiesce to the profanation.

Blaspheming a world religion, thumbs his nose at it’s aggrieved adherents, what logic, if not that of aestheticism and political religion. All is permissible, whereas, restraint and restriction are the hallmark of culture. Is his work not a monument to the self? God’s beloved prophet and his message His creatures demeaned; Rushdie remains unmoved, unrestrained. Can Mr. Rushdie have rights that he refuses to acknowledge others do? Can reason exist without restraint? Are impulse and sensation and shock, synonymous with reason? Can an “ought” ever be derived from an “is”? Is it not legitimate to respond to Mr. Rushdie’s call to limit religion to the personal, the private, by asking if it is an accident that having delineated the authority of religion in the public realm, the “modern” world has been the first to create “”total power” in the political realm? (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Britannia and USA, USSR, CHINA) How might a Martin Luther King respond to Mr. Rushdie’s suggestions?

Therefore, it is legitimate, necessary to ask, liberation from what? If we are agreed that obscuritanism and the intellectual companion of aestheticism, political violence and any other extremes should be avoided, then we are in agreement. Hobbes was quoted as having said that Hell is truth seen too late. We have seen the effect of the “modern” upon Western society. Yes, great benefits but great costs. Can there be no other way for us? Is it “individual responsibility” to not seek alternatives? Must the “modern” mean the same things for us as it did to Western civilization? In the Western tradition, secularization, rationalization and profanation have been marked as forces of institutional and cultural change and If it is true that changes in culture arise in reaction to changes in institutional life (to justify or to attack), must our destiny be the same?

Our hope and ambition should be to effect the character both of the differentiation of the social structure and of our institutions lest we too will suffer cultural exhaustion and the more intense profanation of our culture. “A subject which fears to repudiate its forbears can never become a science” - A sociology which hesitates to repeat it forbears has forfeited its claim to wisdom”. Where will Muslims stand? With those who repudiate our past? In exchange for what? The passions of the self? Is it any wonder then that the devil is referred to as the “beast”? Will Reason prevail?

Killings of civilians in Kashmir terrorism, accepts Musharraf

K J M Varma (PTI)

Islamabad, November 26



Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Monday night described as ``terrorist act`` the killing of civilians in bomb blasts in Jammu and Kashmir and asked Pakistani extremists not to get involved in foreign countries.

``A bomb blast in which 25 to 30 people including 15 to 20 civilians get killed is a terrorist act whether it is in Kashmir or anywhere else,`` Musharraf said in an interview to PTV.

Musharraf had earlier described the October 1 attack on Jammu and Kashmir Assembly as a terrorist act.

///a president truly to be ashamed of. Head of a sovereign nation is mouthing the words of another country, the betrayal of the pak people continues, from afghanistan to kashmir. One who master minded the kargill invasion with the jihadists is now betraying them. Any price to stay in power, sold a nation and and soul for a few green pieces of paper.

Sanskrit,Archaeology and Spiritualism in School Syllabii-New threat for Muslims

In what may raise the hackles in some quarters, a new policy document on school education favours doing away with `pass-fail` category in examinations upto Class X and lays emphasis on religious and Sanskrit education besides imparting the spirit of patriotism and nationalism.

The National Curriculum Framework for School Education released by Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi today, says there is a need for integrating indigenous knowledge and recognising India`s contribution to world`s civilisation.

Inculcating and nurturing a sense of pride of being an Indian, patriotism and nationalism tempered with the spirit of `Vasudhaiva Kudumbakam,` universalising the elementary education and linking it with life skills and value development and at all stages of school education have been recommended.

``School education in the country seems to have developed some kind of neutrality toward the basic values and the community in general has little time or inclination to know about religions in the right spirit.

``This makes it imperative for the Indian school curriculum to include inculcation of the basic values and an awareness of all the major religions of the country as one of the central components,`` it said.

As some educationists criticised the document saying the BJP`s agenda was transparent in it, Joshi retorted that it was a `politically motivated` criticism by those who have neither read curriculum nor knew education.

Student`s achievement in different subject areas will continue to be assessed periodically by employing criterion-referenced tests. The performance of students will be graded on a nine-point using absolute grading, the document said.

At the higher secondary stage, the performance of students in school based examinations will be graded on a nine-point scale using absolute grading and grading by directly converting marks into grades.

The document, prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), seeks to provide a fresh look to certain issues like those pertaining to minimum levels of learning, value education, the use of information and communication technology and management and accountability of the system.

A TIME TO REFLECT,

The killing machines of the west are surrounding kandahar where the taliban forces are going to make the last stand. A close quarters massacre, unknown since WW2 is in the making, where the 30,000 of the taliban will be facing a high tech machine of distruction. The taliban forces will have pakistanis, arabs, chechans and the locals, all united by a view of islam.

It is time for the pakistanis who created the taliban from the madrassas of pakistan to reflect on. All calls for a moderate, representative governement was rejected by pakistan, their unanimous support including that of the pak regulars created this allegedly monolithic machine, which pakistan used extensively to support the kargill invasion. Pakistanis can talk about the american help, but the US only planted the seeds, it was the pakistanis who nurtured the taliban, allowed it to flourish, refused to lop it when the world asked for it.

What is going to takle place in kandahar is a massacre, the spiritual seat of taliban will be cleansed by their own blood. May be the pakistanis on chowk who believe that kashmir terrorism is freedom fight can console that the taliban did not die in vain, their was a fight for freedom, a freedom to kill others, masqurading from kashmir to the philippines to the chechniya.

The looming massacre seemed to have changed the mind of the hardened general like musheraff, he is calling the acts in kashmir as terrorist acts. May be the will of god to deliver shehdad whole sale has altered the minds of the diehard jihadists. It is no more getting killed in the process of killing the kafirs, it is shehdad coming from the skies as cluster bombs. May be the seventh cetury notion of jihad has no modern equivalents and the reality appear to be hitting home.

Tahmed:

You had left for Pakistan and I did miss your contribution - we had a absolutely lovely time exploring and discussing the works of Abdelkarim Soroush. I have since then made the acquaintence of Dr. Mahmoud Sadri, who along with his twin brother Dr. Ahmed Sadri have edited a collection of Soroush`s work under the title ``Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam`` - Oxford Press - There is also talk that Soroush may accept an invitation to teach at Notre Dame. I don`t knopw if you ever got a chance to read some of this other works at the www.seraj.org website under the ``whats new at seraj`` link? I think you will alsolutely love his Text within Context``, ``Truth, Reason, Salvation``, ``Faith and Hope``, ``Types of Religiosity`` and especially, ``Intellectuals: The Powerless yielders of Power`` -- This section has an excellent discussion of the epistemology which he incorporates and which is key to understanding his ``Hermenutic Theory of the Contraction and Expansion of Shariah``.

Precisely the kind of reasoning you mention is being done in Cairo. Scholars are arrived at the recognition that a seeming danger to the unity within the message of Islam has begun to exist. There is a Pakistani ``formula`` and an Egyptian ``formula`` amongst others. Curious thing here is that in both the two most prominent ``formula``, the co-opting, warding of Islam by the state remains a prominent feature. In both cases the failure of the legitimacy of the State in the eyes of it`s citizens is being smoothed over by seeking legitimacy for the state within Islam.

Alternately, a unified message, that in turn can serve to allow people to rediscover their faith may emerge. I fell I understand the intellectual and emotional need to transition from certitude to faith - It is clear that if Islam is to grow in an environment that secualar, rational and profane, we must therefore be mindful of those elements of religiosity and most especially faith that will allow it ot grow as an organized religion in the most hostile of environments. Yet, if specialization of institutions is a fact of life, so is rationalization and we should be prepared to see the beginings of a formal supra national or national bureaucracies of faith. I don`t know how I feel about such a development.

The sad part about all of this is that a change in the character of Islam will be effected and all without our input. Obscuritanism and just regular conservatism seem, on the surface anyway, to be extrordinarily influential and daily Islam seems to be slipping out of our ability to influence it.

I have been working on the paper below for a while and I don`t know if I will ever finish it: - to the degree that it is done (and that isn`t much)give me some input and especially the quote from Iqbal - you can see the acceptance and affirmation of pluralism within constancy and change - just a lovely quote:



``Beyond Ijtehad; Revival and the Reconciliation of the Eternal and the Temporal``

Muslim scholars and revivalists of the past were convinced that in Shariah, lies hidden, the essence of the truth of Islam that is impervious to change. Their conscience and in their benevolence, they determined to invite Muslims to the study and reclaim this gem and hold on to it as the mercy it is.

Al-Ghazzali, Feiz Kashani, Rumi, Shabestari and Amoli questioned the prominence of schools of thought that sought to lead uneducated Muslims toward believing that religiosity is the totality of sermons, Fatwa (edicts), theology (Kalam) and emulation of outward piety. They wondered why Shariah, (laws and rituals of religion) had left so little room for the essence, why Tariqah (the true path) and Haqiqah (the inner dimension) became obscured by religious legalism. They questioned why the branch eclipsed the root, why the center of the circle traded places with the circumference. While the scholars and sages of the past sought to rescue Islam from obscuritanism, what are the challenges before our contemporaries?

The intellectual father of scholars and revivalist of our age, identified the challenge of our times:

“…The ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam is eternal and reveals itself in variety and change. A society based on such a conception of Reality, must reconcile, in its life, the categories of permanence and change.” (Allahmah Mohammad Iqbal lahori, “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought”)

Total capitulation to change and the instruments of change will leave no permanence, that is to say, no religion worthy of being called a religion. Yet, stubborn resistance to change will make religious lives most difficult, if not impossible. The West has chosen the former route and some within Islamia have chosen the latter. In Both cases it is religion itself that has lost its appeal and relevance.

Nevertheless Iqbal lahori and others expressed concern about an over dependence of Shariah, the imposition within it of a certain static quality and the negotiation of the temporal while imparting meaning of the relevance of the eternal in an increasingly secular world.

Ijethad (innovative religious adjudication) hold the promise of pruning the influences that call for the centrality of Shariah and to reassign it, it’s proper role and dynamism. Much as a conscientious gardener ensures that it is the roots that are nourished and is ever conscious of the responsibilty to continuously prune the stems and branches, so that the whole of plant or tree succeeds; reflecting the strength of the roots. Yet, if present trends continue, Ijtehad may itself be in need of Ijetehad, afterall not all problems of economic and intellectual transformations today, can fall into the category of legal transformations. In other words, not all problems are legal (Fighi) problems and we risk the same errors and condition for Ijtehad, as have afflicted the institute of Shariah.



The single most significant development within Islamic thought in our times has been the effort to distinguish between the constant and the variable, to establish that to which, change and it’s agents, does not apply, and that to which it does.

The eternal and the temporal, the sacred and the profane, the constant and the variant are reconciled with an epistemological approach. “The Theory of The Contraction of Expansion of Religious Interpretation” developed by Dr. A. Soroush is such an approach and is of enormous import.

The essence of the theory is that it distinguishes between Islam and Islamic knowledge, between the religion and it’s understanding, between the Eternal and the Temporal.

Notes: Organization - Develop - the idea of ``indexical``

While Shah Valiollah Dehlvi, in “Hojjatollah al-Balaeqeh” called attention to the indexical nature (and therfore appropriateness in that context), of the differences between the governmental rulings of the Prophet (may Peace and Blessing shower upon him) and the religion’s eternal rules. Dehlvi called upon the Fighi scholars to take note of the subtle differences between universal religious rules and the rites of a particular ethnic group and to avoid generalizing and universlizing ethnic and historical norms.

Ali Shariati -Organiztaion - Develop idea of the conditions for the establishment of a political Islam

Ref hamidm #: 168

[people continue to believe in the tooth fairy, virgin births, elephant-nosed gods and seventy houris after death .....]

Regarding virgin births, the news from a couple of days ago about cloning a human embryo in Boston talked of parthenogenesis. I remembered that in my younger days some dude advanced a rare case of parthenogenesis, which preserved Mary`s virginity, as the cause of the birth of Jesus Christ. But that fails to explain how Jesus ended up being a male; after all, the female of the species has the XX chromosome and the male has the XY chromosome.

And please get it correct the next time; it is the elephant-headed rather than the elephant-nosed god.

Your friendly neighborhood Ganesh worshipper.

Ref Spout #: 170

[sheesh! are you for real? you went and searched through thousands of past interacts to find a sentence]

Didn`t take me 10 minutes. The fact that the Chowk search engine is limited to article titles isn`t a problem for me.

[in which i joked around about debating an issue at MoMa? and you thought i was serious?]

Oh; so it is a joke now, is it?

You do have a short attention span, don`t you? I say the Metropolitan Museum of Art and you keep saying Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). If you are suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), ask your friendly neighborhood quack for some Ritalin.

[and you kept this in your mind after all this time?]

If you know of a method by which I can purge my brain, please let me know.

I hope the method is selective. After all, my memory enabled me to pass any exam after reading the textbook just once before the exams.

[that`s pretty scary dude. it`s kind of funny too.]

Maybe it is because I worship the elephant-headed god. You know about elephants and their long memories, don`t you?

Anyway, nothing scary about it.

[you need to get a life and some neurons to recognize a joke when you see it.]

My life is pretty full, thank you, and all the neurons are firing all the time. However, you can be sure that if I ever need a tune-up, I won`t be seeing the headshrinker.

Your friendly neighborhood petabyte database.

samina,

{{If on the other hand, Margeret Cho, one of my fav. grrrll comediennes got onstage and said, ``You know that 15 headed interactor/Aamir/Fatimah/etc. on Chowk? He writes like his brain is even tinier than his reproductive organ. I bet it is. In fact, I know for sure that he`s trich ridden pig meat.`` , we could say that is slander. Not acceptable, and highly offensive, right?}}

Nope!! On the contrary, I`d applaud her cos she`s probably factually correct; in addition to be outrageously funny!:)

{{ harrassers view cyberspace as the motherland. People can acquire countless nicks, write incredibly crude comments and blow their wad. They get off scot free, so to speak. I contend that there is an understanding that cyberspace interaction needs be regulated in terms of providing safe spaces.}}

I dont think the hydra gets off scott free. MOST interactors have trashed him. I doubt if anybody here takes him seriously. Its too bad for him, because his credibility is down to zero. So all his ``researched`` cut & paste jobs are probably scrolled over (at least I do). His buk buk is getting as irrelevant as Jay`s.

As aNny told Jay, ``we dont hate you, we pity you`` I think the same applies to this creature.

``safe spaces``--like a Women`s Shelter against abusive men?

{{On the other hand, if you Shankar used the word ``toba`` and I called you a godless eunuch piece of waste who should be liquified and sprayed over Iraq as a form of toxic bowel gas, I`d be out of line, right?}}

Jeeze, I think I`ve been called worse:)

OK OK-seriously--jokes apart--youre points are well taken. I`m not disputing the fact that the 12 headed monster has been totally out of line & empathise with you that he has been particularly nasty to you.

I guess my question then is; what can we do about this situation?

1)sue him for slander?

2)sue Chowk Editors for allowing this slander to go on?

Since I`m not a lawyer, maybe someone with legal expertise can help us out. My gut feeling is that a lawyer will say ``go after the deepest pockets``--which, most probably, is the owner(s) of Chowk.

My personal philosophical problem with lawyers is that they create more problems than they solve--not to mention enrich themselves in the process. In the Soviet Union, people were scared to speak their minds because the KGB would send them packing to Siberia. More & more Americans are getting paranoid about speaking their minds because of the fear of getting sued. Are lawyers going to be the KGB of the US? Where do you draw the line?!

Personally, I think there are better & easier options like

1)ignore the bum

2) get a thicker skin

3)trash him & give him a taste of his own medicine

4)leave Chowk--scratch that-because I feel he wins, in that situation.

BTW, I`m guessing you have made a formal complaint to Chowk Editors. If so, what is their position on this issue? If you havent, I`d really like the Editors to tell us where they stand.

Let me reiterate the bottom line, Samina. If people like you continue to leave Chowk in disgust; we will all lose.

Hamidm

Hi Brenda - There you go again! Argue the ideas (if you can) - better still why not try and understand the IDEAS - talk about an unrestrained self - I don`t get , which must mean Maulana, AlHaj hobbyty is engaging in sophistry (of the self serving kind)?

EPISTEMOLOGY - look it up - then read Tabatabi`s Usul e Falsafaeh va Ravesh e Realism and Al-Mizan, Hans Georg Gadmer and Dr. Sir. Karl Popper (Reason and It`s Enemies - The Poverty of Historicism) Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific revolutions)- but here is the cheap and of course not so good version:

Deep sigh - New knowledge brings new insight to the understanding of revelation

If I were to ask u to tell me about subject A, The content of your answer (GU GU GU, BA DAH DA DAH) would depend on what you presently know about subject A and the tools and methods you presently have available to study subject A, which in turn would be based on knowledge and tool and methods, accumulated, innovated in the past - Are we clear ?

Now this is the sum total of the knowledge you can bring to subject A - because afterall, you do not have access to knowledge, tools and methods that may exist in the future

Now if divine revelation says something to effect of ABCDGUGUBABAB

that revelation would be subject to interpretation -(as would my sanity in attempting this) and you could only use the knowledge, tools and methods, the totality of your present understanding and knowledge - and based on that knowledge you may arrive at a particular interpretation.

Yet, if a hundred years from now, another person, who now has the benefit of new knowledge and sciences, were to apply that to the revelation, a different interpretation may be arrived at

Dew Yew understainnd?? Phrruph!



very simple Example: ``There is no true faith but Islam`` - reading this you may conclude that the only true faith is Islam, yet if you used the work of a linguist, you may arrive at the following:

``There is no true faith but the submission to the will of God``

In both cases the understanding of the ``word`` is significantly different, exclusive and inclusive reading may be arrived at.

An even deeper use: To arrive at a position where in we can argue that Islam is the only true faith, yet we must further the argument along the line that it is the continuation of the line of revelation God first gave to Ibrahim, Musa and Eissa. How can we reconcile and futher our position? Of course many argue that Muslims believe in all the prophets of God, how then can they argue that we do not hold merit in the revelation of these prophets? (Of course, this reconciliation is not possibile without the realization that the text is fundamentally open to a ``multitude of interpretation and a plurality of reading`` - and this is because knowledge or sciences, if thats easier, is evolving, contracting and expanding - while revelation, the ``word``, remains constant)

Yes we all agree there are Islamic political parties not just in Pakistan, but quite a few other unfortunate places, seem interested in effecting character of Islam, in a narrow minded, ethnocentic, mysoginstic, illegal ways and which will ultimately lead to sad and dangerous results.

Fazlu said XYZ wrong - therefore Islam bad!

Maulana so and so said something that I did not understand, therefore, Islam bad.

Some law that religious parties pushed for is ridiculous, therefore, Islam bad.

I mean just because you can read and write is not justification for the assertion that you have difficulty reasoning?

You insist on playing the incorrigible (voracious self aggrandizing, petulant self)and then suggest that I am condescending. What has happened to your sense of inquiry? and are you so sure of the correctness or rightness of your stand that you don`t even bother to present arguements - just mouthing off will do and impune my motives? And what makes you think it will do with me? indeed, what makes you think?

Dost-Mittar,

Ek is mois, dear Sir; or was, until his nick was ruthlessly hacked by some delightful citizens of this wonderworld called Chowk. He is/I am doing pretty well; thank you. How did your Thanks-Giving break go? :)

Bharadwaj,

Turram Khan is good too. I remember as a kid once being asked to pay obeisance to some stupid Sadhu, and I hated the experience. If it was some person whose knowledge I valued, whose spirituality I recognized, or whose position meant something to me in a traditional sense I wouldn`t probably mind - I pay respect to my parents all the time.

Drumz

Thank you sweetie; I just enjoy reading your posts at Chowk. You are a pretty special person!

Rdesi

re: A. Serrano photo ``Piss Christ``

So it is. It was a bit early for my time...By the time Offini was showing his work in the Brooklyn Museum, I had moved to NYC. On one hand, I admire societies in which artistic expression is protected and is an integral part of a larger societal dialogue. Sorry folks, but many Islamic countries could learn a thing or two about contemporary artistic freedom and tolerance from many Western cultures. I know many people were outraged by Serrano`s work, but it was displayed and the artist still lives less visible to the public, and Christianity and the U.S. did not crumble into the ocean.

On the other hand, Republican Rudy sure had a fit when Ofini`s work was displayed in a public museum. Didn`t he threaten to pull the funding from the Brooklyn Museum because of the presence of cow dung and cut outs of bottoms pasted around the image of the Virgin Mary? I believe Offini ( an artist of Nigerian descent) said the use of cow dung was one of many African artistic traditions. An example of how checks and balances are strained and essential in any society; Rudy tried to get a panel of non artists and his divorce lawyer together as a commission to evaulate what ``good`` art was. Luckily, he was prevented from censoring what was being hung in public places. My fav. joke goes like this: ``New York Mayor Guiliani is once again expressing outrage at an art exhibit, this time at a painting in which Jesus is depicted as a naked woman. Said the mayor,`This trash is not the sort of thing I want to look at when I go to the museum with my mistress``` (Tina Fey)

regards