Wednesday, September 27, 2006

DE: Opera cancelled for fear of offending Muslims

A production of Mozart's opera Idomeneo has been cancelled in Berlin for fear of offending Muslims. Or at least that's what the headlines say. But the opera wasn't cancelled for fear of offending Muslims. It was cancelled for fear of offended Muslims.

Kirsten Harms, the director of the Deutsche Oper, said that the Berlin state police had warned of a possible - but not certain - threat and that she decided it would be in the best interest of the safety of the opera house, its employees and patrons to cancel the production.


So it would appear that tantrums get results since now it's consider reasonable to not only surrender to terror but to surrender to the possibility of future terror. Not in my book it's not, and thankfully others who have a public voice are starting to speak up also.

"Our ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom must be lived out on the offensive. Voluntary self-limitation gives those who fight against our values a confirmation in advance that we will not stand behind them" - Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's mayor


Well said Klaus.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also spoken up:

"We must take care that we do not retreat out of a fear of potentially violent radicals," Merkel was quoted as saying in Hanover's Neue Presse newspaper. "Self-censorship out of fear is not tolerable."

Is this the first sign of European politicians once again evolving vertebrae? I hope so.

You can read more about this here and here.

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3 comments:

Republidan said...

Hopefully talk turns into action and Europeans (and Americans alike) finally get the nerve to say "Fuck you goddammit" to the muslims hordes. Maybe that will bring about some violence but screw 'em. Better to stand and take what happens than to cower in fear of it.

chooseDoubt said...

We can hope. I suspect though that nothing will be done of any significance until there is massive soscial dissorder and people begin to take matters into their own hands and so force the politicians to act and I'm a little surprised this hasn't happened already. It's a shame because that doesn't need to happen. It can be avoided easily with the following steps:

1) Close down all faith schools and force all children to be educated in secular, mixed schools.

2) Deport anyone promoting a violent/wahabist ideology. If they are British citizens then revoke their citizenship or give them a choice, life in prison or leave the country.

3) If a Mosque is used to preach hatred then shut it down.

4) Ignore demands for apologies to Islam as this contradicts freedom of speech.

The Flamingo said...

If people historically backed down to threats of violence, there would be no civil rights movement, no abolitionist movement, etc. I think it is going to take a collective effort among people to decide that threats and fear are not going to be allowed to erode our value system.

The question is, just how bad do things have to get before this group comes forward?