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Sarasota News Leader October 5, 2012 OPINION MODERN EXAMPLES MAY BE STARK, BUT RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE HAS LONG HISTORY By David Staats Contributing Writer COMMENTARY September 2012 was a busy month for the forces of religious intolerance. While on parole from a federal prison, con- victed felon Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (aka Sam Bacile, et al.) produced The Innocence of Muslims, a hate film about the Prophet Mu- hammad. Terry Jones, the Gainesville, FL- based Qur'an-burner and self-styled "pastor," is said to have helped Nakoula with the film's promotion. Outraged Muslims around the world attacked American embassies. Numer- ous people died in the violence. An expensive price to pay for such a cheap shot. Religious intolerance provokes different re- sponses in different people. In 1987, artist/ photographer Andres Serrano submitted his work, Piss Christ, to a competition organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC. This "artwork" was a photograph of a crucifix floating in a glass of Serrano's own urine. Piss Christ won a $15,000 prize that was partially funded by U.S. taxpay- er money administered by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. Serrano kept his prize money despite con- gressional protests. Christie's sold the origi- nal photo in 1999 for $277,000. In the interim, copies of Piss Christ were mutilated at other gallery showings. Serrano himself, however, was not personally threatened and today at 62, he continues to breathe God's good air. Piss Christ is currently on exhibit in New York ("Body and Spirit: Andres Serrano 1987 – 2012," Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art LLC, 37 W. 57 St., Second Floor, N.Y., N.Y. 20019). One year after Serrano first exhibited Piss Christ, British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, a novel. It is based, in part, on the life of the Prophet Mu- hammad. Western critics praised the book. It won the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year and was a finalist for that year's Booker Prize. In the Muslim world, however, reaction to the book was different. Clerics denounced the novel as blasphemy. On Valentine's Day 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa (a decree by an acknowledged, senior Islamic jurist) pro- nouncing Rushdie a blasphemer. It called for his death, as well as for the deaths of all those who assisted Rushdie in the book's publica- tion. Rushdie lived the next several years in hiding under the protection of British law enforce- ment. His Japanese translator, however, was murdered. Rushdie's Italian and Norwegian translators were stabbed and shot, respective- ly, but they survived. Page 63