Islam at the British Museum
If you fancy a mixture of calligraphy in arabic script, blinkered contempory art and Islamic propaganda, the British Museum's Word into Art - Artists of the Modern Middle East is for you. It continues until 2 September, admission free. The price is right, but I'll skip the rest, thanks. Look at those masked women in a detail from Laila Shawa's Hands of Fatima, unable to comprehend how their male-dominated religion is repressing them. The banner for this exhibition is an illustration by Hassan Massoudy of Ibn Arabi's claim "I follow the religion of Love". If Mr Arabi were alive today, he would despair. Every TV news broadcast brings fresh Muslim atrocities. Religion of love? Religion of hate, from what I see of it.
If you want to see work by a fine contemporary Islamic artist, visit the Art Renewal Centre and look for two paintings by Iman Maleki: Omens Of Hafez and A Girl By A Window. Beautiful, and with a touch of love.
posted by Unknown @ 13.6.06
3 comments
3 Comments:
I'm not interested in Aljazeera's propaganda, thanks. We Westerners have done nothing to Muslims except allow them into our countries to better themselves. We took large numbers into Britain when Idi Amin kicked them out of Uganda. We helped stop the slaughter of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. We freed them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad. And what thanks do we get? Lies, ingratitude and bloody fatwah! And it's not some war in a distant country. Anjem Choudary, former UK head of the radical Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, lives in Ilford, where I live. His buddies infest the town. W.H.Smith in Ilford and Central Library, Ilford, both had windows smashed as a protest over The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie is still under a barbaric Islamic sentence of death, being guarded by UK Police. Muslims outside the Albert Road Mosque in Ilford were seen celebrating Osama bin Ladin's cowardly attack on America on 9/11. And I see for myself how downtrodden many of your women are, hiding their hair and their faces, because they're afraid. I've seen a previously cheerful work colleague return from an arranged marriage in Pakistan with her eyes blackened by constant weeping.
Instead of reading Islamic propaganda, you should be asking yourself why so many Muslim young men are full of irrational hatred and want to commit suicide. Your religion doesn't allow them any freedom. That's the reason. Then psychopathic extremists channel these young men's frustration into murderous psuedo-religious suicide. Wise up. Put you own house in order and stop blaming the West for your own inadequacies.
One of the things you should do is stop inviting out-of-date clueless village imams from the old country to teach your boys in the UK. (A leading UK Muslim has made a similar comment.) I had to counsel a very worried Muslim lad who attended the Albert Road Mosque at the time the USA invaded Afghanistan. He'd been given the insane idea that the USA would bomb Mecca. I told him that was rubbish and persuaded him to stop worrying. He still pops in to have a chat and to let me know how he's getting on. Ironically, he intends to join the British army when his mum lets him! (It's ironic because he was thinking of joining the Taliban at one time, thanks to the nutters who were "educating" him at the Albert Road Mosque.) I've also reasoned with a young Muslim man who was wondering whether he should join a radical Islamic group. I have no idea whether I succeeded, but I believe he was too rational to succumb to that lunacy. I wish I could say the same about you. You're swallowing Aljazeera's propaganda. I just hope your bomb has a dud fuse, for your sake as well as for everyone else's.
But let's not finish on a pessimistic note. I've found a website to give you a laugh, if you're allowed to:
http://www.talibanreunited.com/. Try it.
Are you being a tad harsh? Which of the major religions is not male dominated?
It is often the case that when the State removes children from a situation where they are being abused, that those children rebel. Simply because abuse is all they know.
It is a very similar case with the Taliban and Iraq. We forget that we are fortunate that we live in relative peace and comfort in an open and liberal society. An alien concept for some.
Did you know that when Osama was being educated here in London he had a season ticket at the Arsenal, just down the road from where Hook preached his stuff and I grew up. And their new stadium is the called the 'Emirates Stadium'. Now there's a coincidence!
Harsh? Harsh?
Look, just because Osama bin Ladin was an Arsenal supporter, that doesn't make him one of the good guys. He was probably a frustrated football hooligan. This could explain everything.
Have you tried http://www.talibanreunited.com/ yet?
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