Just a couple years ago, there was released another movie about William Burroughs, whose Naked Lunch was the subject of a much-ballyhooed-by-liberals censorship case. We’re against censorship, whether it’s William Burroughs or Rush Limbaugh, but liberalism isn’t what it used to be, is it?
The classic work should be removed from school curricula, according to Gherush 92, a human rights organisation which acts as a consultant to UN bodies on racism and discrimination.
Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president.
Divided into three parts – Hell, Purgatory and Heaven – the poem consists of 100 cantos, of which half a dozen were marked out for particular criticism by the group.
It represents Islam as a heresy and Mohammed as a schismatic and refers to Jews as greedy, scheming moneylenders and traitors, Miss Sereni told the Adnkronos news agency.
“The Prophet Mohammed was subjected to a horrific punishment – his body was split from end to end so that his entrails dangled out, an image that offends Islamic culture,” she said.
What ‘Saracens’ were writing about Christians at the time, and how this is reflected in their art and literature, seems not to be a consideration. The Divina Commedia is arguably the greatest work of literature ever, Occidental or otherwise. Like any work, it reflects the preoccupations and ideas current at the time it was written. Is “The Dying Gaul” offensive to the French? If so, should it be banned?
Yes, Dante’s pretty hard on schismatics and heretics, but perhaps Muslims ought to worry a little more about actual beheadings and stonings and hangings, and a little less about figurative ones.
This is PC run amok. And who made the UN the arbiters of what can be published or taught, anyway? Is there something in their charter that gives them that power? From what do they derive such authority? What if one holds Dante’s great poem in the same esteem Muslims hold the Qu’ran?
Stop the madness. It’s a late medieval poem. The UN can go to l’inferno.
https://twitter.com/#!/elizabetamichai/status/179962650384539648
https://twitter.com/#!/gregorinitweet/status/180202183868952577
[The nut who’s proposing to ban Dante is a lefty Italian]
https://twitter.com/#!/imsure/status/180138476837150720
https://twitter.com/#!/conservatweet/status/180009202998198273
https://twitter.com/#!/catholicbloggs/status/180043314530234368
https://twitter.com/#!/wrmead/status/179877822452609025
https://twitter.com/#!/soopermexican/status/180008580190187520
https://twitter.com/#!/cchanldy/status/180028197893713920
https://twitter.com/#!/dispatchnews/status/180005899908288512
And . . . this post, in Italian, holds that if Dante were alive today, he’d be a blogger.
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