Religious Politics

the following are first drafts of my thoughts, not considered to be concise or definitive and not necessarily what i ultimitely believe.

it wasnt till i was in amsterdam and there were some muslim protesters running around with black flags and green scarfs over their mouths, and police arrived at the scene pronto that i became aware of the denmark cartoons, and from then on ive been checking the news on the internet. trying to keep informed etc. being in a foriegn country means you have to be much more definitive in choosing to keep well informed, because news reports are all in another language.

well it is my goal this semester to be well informed. Well in formed with whats going on in the world, especially religious politics, because it is very topical at the moment, always it is at the forefront of the news, when terrorism and civil war is done in the name of religion it becomes political and complicated.
im trying to understand what the hells going on with the world.
I want to informed of the history that has lead up to these events. sometimes it is too much, we really are a complex peoples, and with globalization our mixing of complexities seems to end in disaster.

knowing about these things is really essential to my art practice, for the last three years ive been trying to visualise some really abstract concepts about God and truth.
and i think im finally getting somewhere. somewhere that i want to be. a position where i can make really resolved work that is visually stimulating, that reaches past the intellect that is so often presented in the elite art world, and can grab your emotive side and really hold you for a while and command your attention, your emotion, your sense of complacency. A work that first stimulates your spirit before your mind.
Yet it can still speak to the intellect if you want it to. Becasue it is well informed and aware of similar art practices, and it is founded on what has gone before, the history that is related to religion and religion in art.
Well for these last three years ive been avoiding the issue of politics because i wasnt convinced that my work was associated with it. but it has become clearer and clearer to me that the path i am going down in my art practice can not avoid politics no longer, and in fact if you are making work around any issues of religion then it is essential to be well informed of reigious politics.
because as much as we hate our beliefs to be connected to something as ugly as politics it has been entrenched in it for centuries and cannot be sidestepped.


it is my opinion that 'the church' has done a lot of things in history to present untruths about God...
a lot of these things have been political and do to with power over the people, in terms of money and education and telling the people what to think. religion like this is based on fear and submission and not on the reality of what it is to encounter God.
it has been 'the church' that sent out men to kill in the name of God, to start 'holy' war
(these people are arrogant and ignorant of God, although God allowed and commanded war in the bible, something i dont understand but however... it was only the israelites he gave this authority to) in western society we think we are so much better than everyone else. becasue we are well educated and can speak english and are rich and can travel and live in nice houses, but oh how ignorant we are of reality.

the denmark cartoons.... well
we say we are open minded and tolerant people, and that we should embrace freedom of speech. but the reality is this simply cannot work. freedom of speech implies that you can voice your opinions and beliefs with freedom. without being prosecuted for it. this has never been true. what is true is, 'you can have your belief if you want to, i wont judge you for it, as long as you dont force it on me'
this prosectution has been seen time and time again, with the clash of civilisations and differences in belief and societal systems.
- christian have been prosecuted for centuries
- but they've also been the prosecutors
- white people taking over indigenous civilisation and killing thousands because they believe they are better
- and recently the european nations banding together to make fun of islamic religion.

in denmark there are only 200,000 muslims living there, not really enough to make a big uproar, it is with globalisation that they were able to implore larger muslim sanctions to defend them. Freedom of speech creates the environment for reaction and retaliation.
Nobody likes to be made fun of or told they are wrong.
What we see here are two bullies fighting in the playground of the world. The european bully
makes a dig at the Middle East bully and gets a reaction, which is what they wanted, with all his mates egging him on. The white man thinks he is better than the coloured man, he says this is done in the name of 'freedom of speech', whats wrong with that? Smart alec hiding behind conventions... And the Middle East bully reacts in the way they know best, using the institution of fear, and all his mates egging him on. and before not too long, we'll see the build up of all these tensions explode and we'll have full fledged war.

The western idea of freedom of expression seems to have been borne out of a growing tolerance to wickedness.
but i guess these things have been a rebellion of the things the church was telling them for years they could not do

if everyone everywhere were to exercise this freedom of speech we would live in a hell hole larger than the one we are already living in. the streets would be full of chaos as religious and cultural differnces were aired and spoken aloud.

The Law says ' love thy neighbour as thy self' a fundamental guideline to knowing what is sin.
the Law also says ' thou shall not murder'. A law the church has broken. A law the muslims have broken. it seems these things were done for political gain in the name of religion.

if we kept the law, we would live better, the law is good and set for our benefit.

one of the comments that is being talked about is the sensitivity of the islamic religion.
The conservative paper Die Welt "Is it possible to satirize Islam? How much humor is compatible with the religion of Islam...
While the paper agrees that there is a certain "threshold of shame" in regard to the satirization of religion, "The standard of measure set by the Muslims nonetheless is a challenge for an open society."
Indeed, we think why can islam not handle the jandle when it comes to making fun of their weaknesses. Christianity gets a lot of criticism and you dont see their retaliation to the same effect, in fact they are quite often criticising themselves, a healthy way to live i think.

Berliner Zeitung - The paper concludes,"In a free Europe critical, even derogatory speech about religion belongs to the heart of freedom of opinion, this freedom was wrested from the Church hierarchy. About race one can speak less freely. Christians and Muslims are easy to satirize, but one doesn't speak so loosely about Black Africans whom used to be called "Neger". Those are the fine shades of freedom of opinion, of which our Muslim trading partners are making us aware. And this is how trade indeed contributes to enlightment.



the work i want to make is rational, it criticises the christian systems, it doesnt 'bible bash' or force upon the viewer the christian message, and yet it is more than just corporeal or political because it has the ability to touch the spiritual.