Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, the Egyptian President is no ballet fan. In an interview filmed eight years ago, the then MP said that dance “violates Sharia (Islamic) law”, reported Alarabiya.
The video resurfaced after an Islamist lawmaker threatened to close an Egyptian ballet school. Gamal Hamed, of the ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party, said,
[Ballet] is the art of nudity, spreading immorality and obscenity among people.
He called for the banning of dance because it is prohibited in Islam.
Artists immediately took to social media to criticize the Islamist lawmaker. Egypt’s Actors Syndicate chief Ashraf Abdel Ghafour said that a lawsuit will be brought against the Islamist MP:
Ballet is one of many arts around the world that measure a country’s civilization. The council member is ignorant of the importance and beauty behind it. The member has to see beyond what a ballet dancer wears.
Art in Egypt cannot be suppressed by anyone; even under the toughest dictatorships, art managed to convey people’s failures. Artists in Egypt should focus on their work, present what they want and put their fears aside.
Photo: Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsi
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.
Any group is free to think or worship as they please, but they – whether Christian or Islam or whatever – are not free to suppress the free expression of human creativity. If this sort of stupidity is the “new Islam” or just a re-make of the old version, it needs to bow its head in shame. . .and shut the F**k up (in my not particularly humble opinion)! God, I love Voltaire: “Écrasez l’infâme — Uproot Infamy!”
Solidarity with the artist of Cairo’s Opera
Singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and administrators of Cairo Opera House are on strike against the authoritarian decisions of Alaa Abdelaziz, the Minister of Culture, who has fired the Cairo Opera House’s Director, Ines Abdeldayem, as well as the Directors of many other cultural organisations in Egypt.
The Egyptian government has attempted to justify these despotic dismissals with moral and religious arguments. Their authoritarianism far exceeds the usual interventionism of governments into culture and is establishing a dynamic of censorship, criminalisation and repression that can end with women stoning in the streets and men hanging on cranes.
Solidarity and protest can stop totalitarianism. Let’s Stand United!
Please join this campaign: http://chn.ge/13A6eXy
POR DIOS, LA DANZA ES UN ARTE, apoyo a los artistas en su movimiento. Los gobernantes de egipto son ignorantes y misogenos.
Egipto fue una civilización Culta, donde la Danza, la Anatomía, la Escritura sus Jeroglíficos eran valores de desarrollo y de evolución Ni Alá ni Acá dicen lo contrario: La Danza, la Cultura , la Medicina, la Lectura ,es Desarrollo.
La desnudez del alma sucia es lo malo.La Danza del cuerpo en movimiento es la expresión mas divina de Alá y de la Vida.De Dios o de Shiva.
Los pecados de alma sucia los crean los que destruyen lo bello que se erigen profetas.
Shinué el Egipcio, las Pirámides de Egipto, la anatomía de Egipto, la Danza de Egipto… .
Änimo a la Cultura, al cuerpo humano bellísimo, al movimiento. Änimo
Considering that ballet was designed as part of infantile prostitution and that it destroys the performers feet it should be banned for that alone.