“Self-censorship based on fear is indefensible.”
The Bear on Sep 30 2006 at 8:26 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Berlin opera at center of free-speech debate
Europe found itself embroiled in yet another raging debate over faith and free speech yesterday as German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against “self-censorship” following the cancellation this week of a Mozart opera in Berlin that producers feared might offend Muslims.
Mrs. Merkel, an avid opera-goer, joined in the near-universal condemnation of Monday’s decision by the Deutsche Oper, one of Berlin’s three main opera houses, to cancel a planned revival of Mozart’s classic 1781 work “Idomeneo” because the production inserts a scene that displays the severed head of the prophet Muhammad.
Opera officials, citing warnings from German security officials, called off the production for fear it would incite violence among the country’s 3.2 million Muslims.
“We should watch that we don’t keep retreating for fear of radicals willing to employ violence,” Mrs. Merkel told the Neue Presse, a Hanover, Germany, newspaper. “Self-censorship based on fear is indefensible.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mozart opera, Muslims, prophet Muhammad
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