Threats prompt Berlin gallery closure

[Steve]

A Berlin gallery has temporarily shut an exhibition by a Danish satirical duo after a group of young men threatened violence over a poster showing Islam's most revered shrine, an official said Friday.

 

The poster depicting the Kaaba in Mecca was one of 22 by the Surrend group that went on show Feb. 22 at the German capital's Galerie Nord. The poster features the German words "Dummer Stein," or "stupid stone."

 

On Tuesday afternoon, a group of six young men came into the gallery, demanded the poster's removal, and said that "if that did not happen, violence would be triggered, stones would fly and there would be big trouble," said Ralf Hartmann, the art director of Kunstverein Tiergarten, the group responsible for the gallery.

 

The men were believed to be Muslims, but "we don't know more," Hartmann said. Police were looking into the matter, he added. The exhibition is "certainly not anti-Muslim, but anti-radical," Hartmann said. "As a basic rule," he said, "art should never be censored in any way."

 

Gallery officials decided to shut the exhibition until they have worked with city officials to guarantee visitors' security, Hartmann said. He said he hoped the show could reopen Tuesday.

 

The exhibition, titled "ZOG â?? Surrend," aims to attack neo-Nazi propaganda and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory named ZOG â?? short for "Zionist Occupied Government."

 

The Kaaba poster also showed people walking around the cube-shaped shrine under speech bubbles containing the ZOG slogan...

 

[SpiceMan]

The Muslim thugs who "threatened violence" should be locked up for a very long time.

 

[Faustian]

Should be, probably wont be....

[Flashermac]

<< after a group of young men threatened violence over a poster showing Islam's most revered shrine, >>

 

 

Ah, yes ... the Kaaba:

 

"According to Karen Armstrong, in her book Islam: A Short History, the Kaaba was dedicated to Hubal, a Nabatean deity, and contained 360 idols which either represented the days of the year, or were effigies of the Arabian pantheon. Once a year, tribes from all around the Arabian peninsula, be they Christian or pagan, would converge on Mecca to perform the Hajj. To keep the peace among the perpetually warring tribes, Mecca was declared a sanctuary where no violence was allowed within 20 miles of the Kaaba. This combat-free zone allowed Mecca to thrive not only as a place of pilgrimage, but also as a trading center. According to the Boston Globe, the Kaaba was a shrine for the Daughters of God (al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat) and Hubal. The Kaaba was thought to be at the center of the world, with the Gate of Heaven directly above it. The Kaaba marked the location where the divine world intersected with the mundane, and the embedded Black Stone was a further symbol of this as a meteorite that had fallen from the sky and linked heaven and earth."

 

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