For many, a view is a chance to simply put out there whatever you think. But what is the cost? And importantly is the cost worth the chance to be heard?
For some that cost is extreme, as Salman Rushdie can attest, when you piss people off all hell, or all jihad can cut loose!
An Iranian rapper living in Germany has a US$100,000 (NZ$127,000) bounty on his
head after an Islamist website offered a reward for anyone who kills him over a
song that satirises the Islamic Republic and irreverently addresses a historic
religious figure. NO(R)WAY!!!!!!!!!!!! The Iranian news and religion website Shia-Online.ir said hip-hop star Shahin Najafi deserved to die for a song which it said "grossly insulted" Ali al-Hadi al-Naqi, one of the 12 imams, the religious figures highly revered by Shi'ite Muslims.
This story was recently reported on stuff, a New Zealand onlines news website.
For many people around the world who take their religion seriously, please if you are reading this turn away now, if you cannot laugh about it or make fun of it perhaps you need medical help! I'm not talking a lethal injection via some mossad spy either, but something to make you relax, chill (yes like the hashish the ancient middle eastern asassins used)... but that would be hypocritical wouldn't it? Huh? Throwing stones at those who blah blah blah... Exmuhummadactly!
Why can't the religious extreme just keep to their angry and negative selves? I mean as was seen in that blockbuster movie THE DAVINCI CODE, sometimes a bit of flaggelation does not go astray! I don't care if someone whips themselves, I just wont watch. That same can be said in the above case. Here is a young man embracing his musical talent to voice his opinion (the same as any religious cleric on their respective pulpit) perhaps hoping for fame and money (a vehicle for him to escape the poverty and depression of the middle east) and possibly some live virgins (as opposed to those offered in deathly paradise/heaven-which possibly might not be real!) and what happens?
He gets money, but with a catch! A death threat, a price on his head. For embracing the westernvalue of rap (ummm really? haven't songs and poems been around since cavemen first stubbed their hairy toes or ate fermented fruit?! What did the young rapper think about all this?:
"I thought there would be some ramifications. But I didn't think I would upset the regime that much. Now they are taking advantage of the situation and making it look like I was trying to criticise religion and put down believers.
"For me it is more of an excuse to talk about completely different things. I also criticise Iranian society in the song. It seems as though people are just concentrating on the word 'imam'."
One small positive is that this young man lives in Germany and here's hoping the border police can spot suspicious looking jihad type suicide bombers/hit men/women/children/bomladen bicycles as they try to make their non-suspicious way to kill said guilty rapper. I wish the young man all the best and look forward to his next album- hopefully entitled something like, 'pimp my camel- 1000 ways with religious piercings'. But we'll see...
Troy Scott
Your block quote should be indented on each side. I can show you how to do that. You don't need quote marks around it if the same person is speaking all the words, but you do need to introduce the speaker. Take up the extra white space after. There should be a comma in 1,000, and there's no need to sign your own blog entries.
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