Hands Off Marcel Khalife!

To the Bahraini members of parliament who opposed Marcel Khalife's show, I say: get a life! Of all the multitude of serious, home grown, problems that afflict our various Middle Eastern societies, Khalife's work is treated like it is a national threat to the high moral fiber of the Bahraini people. It is time for conservative Muslim preachers to stop treating their constituents like a bunch of unthinking sheep incapable of making intelligent decisions about what they deem as morally acceptable.

Marcel Khalife in a new controversy

Freemuse, the World Forum on Music and Censorship, expresses our concern over the attack on a music, song and dance drama by world renowned composer and musician Marcel Khalife and Bahraini poet Qassim Haddad. We are deeply concerned about what the consequences of the Bahrain Parliamentary investigative committee’s findings will be and express our full support to the distinguished artists.

International conventions secure musicians, composers and writers right to create, perform and act without interference from governments or religious groups. The attack by the Bahraini parliamentarians is a violation of freedom of speech as it applies to musicians.

Freemuse has signed the petition list initiated by the Lebanese Cultural Forum in France and signed by poets, writers, artists, researchers, academics, and media representatives in the Arab world.

We hereby respectfully and kindly ask the Bahraini parliament to reverse its decision and dissolve the Investigative committee, and to reaffirm the importance and role of artists and artistic freedom in society and ensure that the Parliament does not take any action violating the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

FREEMUSE

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Background

Marcel Khalife’s and Qassim Haddad’s performance premiered in Bahrain on 1 and 2 March 2007 as part of the inauguration of the annual Spring of Culture Festival which was organized by the Bahraini Ministry of Information. The show was attacked by fundamentalist members of the Bahraini parliament as being in violation of Islamic morals and Sharia laws after an Islamic preacher, Sheikh Ali Matar, had complained in a prayer sermon that the Spring of Culture Festival features a play with scenes that “arouse [sexual] instincts” and “encourage debauchery”.
Parliament second vice-chairman Dr Salah Abdulrahman said the event included “sleazy dance moves” which were offensive to Muslims and non-Muslims.

On 13 March 2007 the Bahraini parliament voted to create an investigative committee look into the controversy. Islamists control three-quarters of the 40 seats in the parliament in Bahrain.
More information and photos of the performance on www.freemuse.org/sw18500.asp

This is not the first time Marcel Khalife has been attacked for his work. In 1999 he was accused of blasphemy for allegedly insulting religious values by being accused of using a verse from the chapter of the Holy Qu'ran in a song.
Read more on: www.freemuse.org/sw1551.asp
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Joint action:
Declaration In Defense of the Spring of Culture

Responding to an initiative of the Lebanese Cultural Forum in France, Arab intellectuals comprised of poets, writers, artists, researchers, academics, and media representatives, have signed the following statement:

In Defense of a Culture of Love and Life

The face of aggression has, once again, appeared in full display of its dark-age menace, waging an anachronistic war against the “Spring of Culture” in Bahrain, and against the basic notions of love, freedom of expression, and the pathways of culture and art, represented here by Marcel Khalifé and Qassim Haddad.

This dark-age assault on the "Spring of Culture" in Bahrain is nothing but a protraction of the prosecution which Marcel Khalifé endured some years ago in Beirut, and of all the suppression and aggression to which Arab writers and intellectuals are subjected to by a number of Arab regimes.

Such obscurant, fundamentalist currents build no future or genuine culture, liberate neither land nor people, and augur no spring, and no love. Freedom alone, specifically freedom of expression, innovation and creativity in all its diversity, difference, and richness, can raise the foundation of our future, guarantee a culture of life, liberate women, and address the debilitating scourges of poverty, ignorance, disease, illiteracy, regression, corruption, power-mongering, aggression, suppression of thought, and dispossession of Arab lands.

We salute the institutions of civil society in Bahrain that stood up in defense of liberty and love. We salute the Spring of Culture in Bahrain and throughout the Arab World.

We salute Marcel Khalifé and Qassim Haddad.
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Freemuse (FREEdom of MUSical Expression) is an international human rights organisation advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide.