I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total
obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the
inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.<\/p>Frank Herbert^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - Frank Herbert, Dune<\/em> (New York: G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons, 1965), 8.
<\/span><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The fear of being blacklisted for expressing anti-clerical sentiments is the first in a long list. And then there is the fear of being violently attacked and killed by fanatics belonging to religious groups that are looking to the censorship of the arts as a tool to destroy the cultural identity of a secular and multicultural society. To that what needs to be added is the fear of being attacked by the multicultural sanctimonious fascists, who are no less dangerous than any other fundamentalists spun from intolerant ideologies or faiths. There are the fears of e-attacks, which are not less vicious than real attacks. Then there is the fear of upsetting curators, sponsors, academics, publishers, friends and family. There is the fear for one\u2019s personal safety and for those who share a close bond based on working relationship or on family ties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all these fears have been dealt with, then there may be the \u00adpossibility of finding a space within which to construct and place an \u00adartwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then other fears come to light. Is the artwork too cowardly, \u00adbending to the pressures of censorship? Have the ethical and artistic \u00adprocesses been compromised by the imposed negotiation processes needed to respect the sensitivities of intolerant religious \u00adcommunities that do not uphold freedom of speech and freedom of thinking in the \u00adprocess of creating visual imageries and artworks that reflect the \u00adconflicts of \u00adcontemporary society? Is the genuflected servitude to a \u00adfailing and \u00addivisive multicultural ideology a compromised statement of art not \u00adexercising social critique? Is it enough to hide within a process of critique that is stripped by any social or clerical element in order to drive in a disconcerting message of fear, unsettlement, censorship and self-censorship that is devouring both the artistic production and the artist\u2019s identity based on principles of secular freedoms?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an artist and academic operating in London who is interested in the conflicts of globalisation and local communities my answer to all of these questions, doubts and fears is just one: silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is a silence made of complex issues, of artworks that never happened. It is a silence that is formed by a series of screams that \u00adhistorically and at present have been raised against the historical revisionism to reframe the role that the violent applications of religious tenets have played and still play in our societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus of this article is on the issue of religious violence and censorship and their relationship to artistic expressions. The twenty-first century has brought back the fear of religious fanaticism, which is \u00aderoding the secular and peaceful structures of contemporary society, within which minority groups are attempting to engineer a new understanding of diversity and artistic cultural practices as expressions of acceptance of differences beyond race, religion and gender. This secular globalisation process was providing hope for a new peaceful, globalized and socially integrated generation beyond the barriers of cultural particularisms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

London, as a traditional crucible of diverse religious groups and \u00adideologies, is the territory of this personal artistic exploration into the nature of current debates on artistic censorship by religious groups. How then do secular artists perceive faith and revelation in this context?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The secular rational and irrational fear of religion is not based on an ostracism of this or that creed, but on the impossibility of a dialogue between non-believers on one side and the faithful and fanatics on the other. The latter, particularly, blinded by the light of god, are bound to the religious tenets and deaf to the law and reasons of men. The fear is that the contemporary confrontation between faithful and secularists may become a self-fulfilling prophecy through the instrument of fear, which will radicalize both the secular state (or what remains of it) and the \u00adreligious counterparts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British approach, by generating a basic confusion between religion and race, has created a minefield whereby criticism of religion is criticism of race. The freedom of artistic expression has become the first victim of this new construct which has created a society where art is \u00adcensored and self-censored. In British society assuaging \u00adfundamentalist religious groups in order to avoid violent retaliations appears to be a \u00adpolicy that, since the Salman Rushdie case, has become increasingly widespread. The differences in the knighthood of Iqbal Sacranie and the recent \u00adreactions to Salman Rushdie\u2019s knighthood are the most recent examples of a series of misjudged arguments used to justify a retreat from the defence of democratic values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here other fears arise: that the strength of western democracies is weakening and that conservative religious groups are exploiting this weakness by eroding the peaceful rules of engagement in the public space. The fear is that the growth of religious fanaticism will create \u00adfanatical and extremist groups within each religion that sooner or later, once having dealt with the secular society, will start confronting each other on the supremacy of their gods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that a gym next to a synagogue in Montreal needed to be screened because it offended worshippers, their children in particular, is as ridiculous as the idea of screening the synagogue and its \u00adworshippers because it offended anyone\u2019s secular sensitivities. What then about jogging around the synagogue in skimpy lycra running clothes. Would that be an offence too? Would it then be possible to have a flash mob art event with people in their lycra gym gear running up and down the streets surrounding the synagogue? The real question is why defenders of democratic rights and the people using the gym have not walked in their \u201cobscene attires\u201d in a warming-up lap around the synagogue before starting their training? A few minutes run to increase both fitness and democracy. Although a petition initiated by Ren\u00e9e Lavaillante has brought back the clear windows with blinds to the gym, these religious forms of disconnected and confrontational social participation raise the fear of a lack of democratic engagement and reciprocal respect of rights between social groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n