A “Misunderstanding” Over Islamic Art nearly sparks a riot in Toulouse, France

Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi was taking part in the month long “Printemps de Septembre” art festival in Toulouse. His artwork: Projections of stylised calligraphy showed extracts from the Koran and “Hadiths” (sayings) of the Prophet Mohammed.

Fatmi had planned the projections be cordoned off, to stop people walking over them, however a text was projected onto the cities busy 16th century Pont Neuf bridge by mistake.  Walking on text from the Koran is considered blasphemous by Muslims.

Quickly young Muslim’s from the city gathered to stop pedestrians walking on the writings, one woman was slapped by protestors. Only when Imans from the local Mosque arrived to calm the crowd, did tensions ease and the art exhibit stopped. In response to the incident Fatmi said that the piece, called “Technologia”, was owned by the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. “When it was shown there for the first time, just a few kilometres from Saudi Arabia, no one was shocked…That people were shocked in Toulouse is astonishing. I just don’t get it.”

Toulouse was the location of a shooting by a young Islamic extremist earlier this year. The incident left seven people dead at a Jewish school in the city.

For more information see France 24

7 thoughts on “A “Misunderstanding” Over Islamic Art nearly sparks a riot in Toulouse, France”

  1. Another weekend, another riot by our favorite cartoon characters.

    TAIF – Thank Allah its Friday!

  2. The Jews are behind this. They always pull the strings to cause tectonic shifts in the world events to suit their needs.

  3. Stop this constant Islam bashing, this is deliberate fanning of the flames by undercover zionists entities.

  4. As a recovering former Muslim, let me tell you what I think Islam really is. Mohamad was a warlord that could not get the Jews and Christians to submit to his fake claim of divinity. The only way for him was to claim prophet status and create the Allah character that Muslims should worship. He was never going to succeed to get them to worship him. Allah is the alter ego of Mohammed and is part of a mind controlling cult. If I was trying to expand my empire, I would use religion as a tool to lock people in.

  5. I don’t think that even Mohammad himself could have perceived in his time that this diseased ideology that he was creating would infect 1.5 billion people by the year 2012. He probably expected Islam to be around a century or so, enough for him and his immediate generations to live lavishly.

    Today it has a world religion status and we are held hostage atleast once every week to something that offends Allah and his angels.

    Imagine if we didn’t kill Nazism right after world war 2 and demonize Hitler in our schools ever since? It is very possible that you would have enough Nazis to warrant it a world religion. Alas it is too late to demonize Islam in our schools because there are too many Muslims out there today.

    Looking at it another way, is Islam and Nazism to be treated as a mental disease, a corrupt evil ideology or is are they both possibly spiritual, maybe satanic in nature?

  6. Genevieve, I would wager that it is a corrupt ideology. Treat it for what it is and jail its most fanatic followers. Ban their version of Mein Kamp (The Quran). Do it the way China does…no tolerance for any religions.

  7. Why are Muslims always “Misunderstanding” Islam according to the media? Is it possible to have so many misunderstanders avross the world or is there a chance that they are actually following the Quran?

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