French Muslims want Voltaire Play Cancelled
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Wednesday March 08, 2006 22:44
by redjade
oooohhh here we go again.... and again
'When Voltaire wrote the play in 1741, Roman Catholic clergymen denounced it as a thinly veiled anti-Christian tract. Their protests forced the cancellation of a staging in Paris after three performances'
Muslims ask French to cancel 1741 play by Voltaire
The Wall Street Journal/March 6, 2006
Late last year, as an international crisis was brewing over Danish cartoons of Muhammad, Muslims raised a furor in this little alpine town over a much older provocateur: Voltaire, the French champion of the 18th-century Enlightenment.
A municipal cultural center here on France's border with Switzerland organized a reading of a 265-year-old play by Voltaire, whose writings helped lay the foundations of modern Europe's commitment to secularism. The play, ''Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet,'' uses the founder of Islam to lampoon all forms of religious frenzy and intolerance.
The production quickly stirred up passions that echoed the cartoon uproar. ''This play ... constitutes an insult to the entire Muslim community,'' said a letter to the mayor of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, signed by Said Akhrouf, a French-born cafe owner of Moroccan descent and three other Islamic activists representing Muslim associations. They demanded the performance be cancelled.
Instead, Mayor Hubert Bertrand called in police reinforcements to protect the theater. On the night of the December reading, a small riot broke out involving several dozen people and youths who set fire to a car and garbage cans. It was ''the most excitement we've ever had down here,'' says the socialist mayor.
[....]
For Voltaire's Muslim critics, the play reveals a centuries-old Western distortion of Islam. For his fans, it represents a manifesto for liberty and reason and should be read not so much as an attack on Islam but as a coded assault on the religious dogmas that have stained European history with bloody conflict.
When Voltaire wrote the play in 1741, Roman Catholic clergymen denounced it as a thinly veiled anti-Christian tract. Their protests forced the cancellation of a staging in Paris after three performances - and hardened Voltaire's distaste for religion. Asked on his deathbed by a priest to renounce Satan, he quipped: ''This is not the time to be making enemies.''
[....]
Shortly afterward, he attended Friday prayers at a big mosque in Geneva and talked about his concerns with Hafid Ouardiri, a mosque official and veveran of the earlier anti-Voltaire campaign. They drafted a letter to the mayor demanding the play be cancelled ''in order to preserve peace.''
Mr. Ouardiri, an Algerian-born former leftist radical, came to France in the 1960s and says he used to chant the 1968 student slogan, ''It is forbidden to forbid.'' Now a devout Muslim, he says he champions ''the need to forbid.'' Algeria and other Muslim countries, he says, were colonized by Europeans ''nourished by Voltaire.''
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http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Sectio...60706
Voltaire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire