Two senior BBC executives were under police protection last week after receiving death threats. An Asian-British playwright went into hiding last month when her life was threatened. A Dutch moviemaker who ignored similar warnings was killed on an Amsterdam street early November. The three episodes had religion in common. And in each case, the issue was blasphemy.
So, have European artists been exceeding the accepted boundaries of tolerance or is religion becoming a taboo subject?
For decades, artistic freedom has seemed assured in Western Europe by a strong liberal tradition and growing secularity. Gone are the days when D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was sold under the counter here and Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" was banned as too violent. Sex, above all, has ceased to shock, whether in art or on screen, stage or television. Expletives have become common currency in books, movies and television.
At the same time, artists and audiences alike have shown little interest in religion. Monty Python's "Life of Brian," a 1979 religious satire, amused more than it offended. More recently, French Christian groups were largely ignored when they protested that posters for Milos Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and Costa-Gavras's "Amen" abused the cross. In brief, Europeans have tended to view a militant Christian right as an American monopoly.
"Sensation," an exhibition of works by irreverent young British artists, illustrated different attitudes. When it was shown at London's Royal Academy of Arts in 1997, complaints focused on a portrait of a notorious child murderer made out of children's handprints. But when the show traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999, it was Chris Ofili's painting of "The Holy Virgin Mary," decorated with elephant dung, that caused an outcry as sacrilegious.
Yet religion has re-entered European public life. One catalyst has been fear of Muslim fundamentalism, notably since 9/11. This and power struggles between traditional and modern currents inside different faiths have served to raise the religious stakes across the board. Today, religion in Europe is more intertwined with politics than in recent memory. And perhaps for this very reason, some artists believe it again worthy of attention.
One such artist was Theo van Gogh, a Dutch moviemaker. Working with a Somali-born Dutch legislator, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he made a short television documentary called "Submission," which used a naked body and words from the Koran to denounce violence against Muslim women. Its broadcast last fall brought cries of blasphemy and death threats. Unlike Hirsi Ali, van Gogh refused a police guard. On Nov. 2, he was slain, and a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan parentage was held.
The killing provoked outrage in the Netherlands. It also stirred intense debate about artistic freedom. Already four years earlier, "Aïsha," a Dutch opera about a strong-minded wife of Muhammad, was canceled after the Moroccan cast and composer were pressured into withdrawing by Muslim clerics. Today, many Dutch consider their liberal values to be increasingly hostage to religious intolerance.
The issue is nonetheless rife with complexity. Like Germany, France has "anti-hate" legislation, which is applied to extreme rightists and neo-Nazis, but rarely to artists. In 2002, a French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, was cleared of inciting racial hatred when he called Islam "the most stupid religion." And a popular French comedian known as Dieudonné was acquitted of the same charge last year after he dressed as an Orthodox Jew for a television sketch.
In Britain, while an "anti-hate" law is being considered, existing anti-blasphemy legislation has not resulted in a conviction since the 1920s. Now, however, after two recent incidents, blasphemy is once again being heatedly debated here.
The first involved Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, a writer born in Britain of Sikh immigrant parents, whose latest play, "Behzti," or "Dishonor," portrays sex and brutality inside a Sikh temple. One week after it opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theater, several hundred Sikhs, furious at what they considered blasphemy, attacked the building, breaking windows and clashing with the police. The following day, fearing more violence, the theater canceled the rest of the play's run.
This decision was widely denounced by British theater directors as capitulation to intimidation. "I think it's one of the blackest days for the arts in this country that I have ever experienced," said Neal Foster, the manager of another Birmingham theater. Salman Rushdie, who had faced Iranian death threats for his book "The Satanic Verses," chastised the British government for not defending Bhatti, who by then was in hiding.
Still, like it or not, the revolt against "Behzti" underscored the new religious sensibilities of an increasingly multiethnic Europe. Loose interfaith alliances have even emerged. Having drawn strength from Muslims' defense of Islam, for instance, the Sikhs' nonviolent protests were backed by some Christian prelates. Then, this month, when British Christian groups charged that a BBC television program was blasphemous, they were supported by some Sikh leaders.
At issue was a planned BBC-2 broadcast of a live theater performance of "Jerry Springer - The Opera," which satirizes Jerry Springer's "shock-horror" television show as well as religious fanaticism in general. The musical, which is not only filled with expletives and spoof songs like "I Married a Horse," but also includes a scene set in Hell where Jesus admits he is "a bit gay," has been drawing West End crowds without a squeak of protest.
Early this month, several Christian groups organized a campaign to halt the broadcast. One group even posted the names and home addresses of key BBC executives on its Web site, prompting abusive telephone calls and even death threats. The BBC refused to back down, and on Jan. 8 the show was seen by an estimated 1.8 million people, or 10 percent of the audience.
But the storm did not end there. Politicians, artists and even clerics joined the fray, variously terming the show offensive, boring and entertaining. Newspapers published scores of letters on the subject. Columnists suggested that British Christians had been inspired by the American Christian right. And, perhaps for the first time in a century, "blasphemy" was at the center of the news here.
What does it all mean? Perhaps artists are taking on religion precisely because it is the last taboo. On the other hand, if charges of blasphemy are accompanied by threats of violence, artists - or BBC executives - may choose to think twice before exercising their freedom on matters of faith. Either way, religious tensions have begun spilling into the cultural arena. And, for postwar Western Europe, this is new and disturbing.