GERMANY: ***UPDATE***MOZART OPERA - - - HEAD OF MOHAMMAD DISAPPEARS***UPDATE***

Mohammed's head now vanishes from controversial opera
[Germans, the cowards...e.d. A.I.]

Mohammed's severed head had already caused enough consternation at Berlin's Deutsche Oper.
Fear that the head -- a prop in a Mozart opera -- could anger Muslims prompted the cancelation of the show last month and brought charges of needless self-censorship. Now the head has vanished along with those of Jesus, Buddha and Neptune just before the performance returns to the stage.

The four dummy heads feature in the final scene of a jazzed-up version of Mozart's Idomeneo, which the opera dropped from its schedule last month over possible security concerns.

After a hail of criticism and an all-clear from police, the opera house rescheduled two performances of the show for Dec. 18 and Dec. 29. However, spokesman Alexander Busche on Friday confirmed a report in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper that the heads were missing.

"The costume director and the technical director are having a look around, but if they don't turn up, we'll just make new ones," Busche said.

"What matters for us is that we have heads on the 18th," he said.

He said the costume director recalled seeing them recently and that they had probably been misplaced somewhere in the opera's sprawling storerooms and workshops. He said he doubted they were stolen.

Deutsche Oper head Kirsten Harms had canceled Hans Neuenfels' interpretation of the 225-year-old work, last performed in 2004, following a vague security warning from police.

The decision provoked widespread debate in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks about Islam.

Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, called the decision to cancel the opera "crazy" and Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against "self-censorship out of fear."

Neuenfels refused to have the scene cut, saying it represented his protest against all organized religion. It's not part of Mozart's original work.

However, the opera company announced last month that it was returning the work to its winter lineup after a new police assessment found no "concrete danger."

Schaeuble plans to attend along with members of the Islam Conference, a group of Muslim representatives and public officials working for better integration of Muslims in German society.
Busche declined to comment on security arrangements for this month's performances.

However, he admitted that the saga was testing the nerves of staff at the opera house, one of three in Berlin.

"I will be so happy when this Idomeneo is over," Busche said. "We would really like to get back to just promoting and staging normal opera."


The story of the Opera Saga begins here:

A sacrifice to Allah

By Suzanne FieldsWolfgang

Amadeus Mozart created some of the sweetest music ever to fall on the human ear, but he's nevertheless the latest sacrifice on the altar of Islamic suppression of creative expression. "Idomeneo," scheduled for one of Berlin's famous opera houses this season, was called off because the security people determined there was an unacceptable risk of Islamist violence. The opera would exhibit the severed head of Mohammed.

...

The controversy is not about aesthetics. It's about blackmail, another instance of Western weakness to stand up to Islamist bullies. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble spoke up for angry artists, politicians and opera lovers to call cowardice by its rightful name. "This is crazy," he told reporters last week in Washington. "This is unacceptable." Chancellor Angela Merkel called it dangerous "self-censorship." But the leader of Germany's Islamic council approved the cancellation.

...

George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think-tank that looks closely at how ethical issues impinge on public policy, gets to the crux of the pope's message. "If adherents of certain currents of thought in contemporary Islam," he says, "insist that the suicide bombing of innocents is an act pleasing to God, then they must be told that they are mistaken: about God, about God's purposes and about the nature of moral obligation." Islamic violence against Jews is widely thought to be provoked first by modern politics in the Middle East. Not so. Historians trace its origins to Mohammed's seventh-century attack on the Jews of Medina, whom he massacred when they rejected his message. He set upon them, even as he adopted certain of their practices, because they would not accept Allah as God.

We know that followers of Islam, like certain Christians in the past, used violence to compel converts, but these Christians of the Roman Catholic Church have repented in the name of their faith, and condemned such violence. Can reformers of Islam do that as well? At the moment they have fallen as silent as the chorus of a Mozart opera.


"Europeans Have Stopped Defending Their Values"

For years, political scientist Bassam Tibi has been urging Muslims to integrate into European societies and Europe to stand up to Islamists. He spoke with SPIEGEL about the weakness of Europe, the orthodoxy of Islam and what Germany needs to do to open up.

SPIEGEL: The administrator of one of Berlin's opera houses, the Deutsche Oper, has cancelled the Mozart Opera "Idomeneo" out of fear of an Islamist reaction. Is this the first sign of Germany bowing down to Islam?

Tibi: It's not the first sign, but rather a repeated one. Recently we have been seeing more and more acts of submission, the most recent case being the Pope's apology. When it comes to Islam, there is no freedom of the press nor freedom of opinion in Germany. Organized groups in Islamic communities want to decide what is said and done here. I myself have been dropped from numerous events because of threats.

SPIEGEL: You are trying to say that critics of Islam are systematically silenced in Germany?

Tibi: Yes. Even the comparatively moderate Turkish organization DITIB says there are no Islamists, only Islam and Muslims -- anything else is racism. That means that you can no longer criticize the religion. Accusing somebody of racism is a very effective weapon in Germany. Islamists know this: As soon as you accuse someone of demonizing Islam, then the European side backs down. I have also been accused of such nonsense, even though my family can trace its roots right back to Muhammad and I myself know the Koran by heart.

...

Shelved Muhammad opera to return

A Mozart opera cancelled for fears of protests over depicting the beheading of Muhammad is go ahead in Berlin.

The Deutsche Oper in the German capital said the production of Idomeneo will be staged after it received a new security assessment from the police.

Four performances of the opera were dropped in September after the risks of staging it were deemed "incalculable".

The decision, taken in the wake of the Danish Muhammad cartoons row, sparked a debate about free speech in Germany.

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the decision crazy and Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against "self-censorship out of fear".

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Pertinent Links:

1) Mohammed's head now vanishes from controversial opera

2) A Sacrifice to Allah

3) Acts of Submission

4) Shelved Muhammad opera to return