The same article states: "The campaign against Husain also challenges India's reputation as a secular nation that upholds tolerance of minority religions."
Minority religion in this case obviously being the Muslim faith. Which leads me to wonder what the sjeiks of Dubai would do to Husain if he was to portray Aisha (or any other of Mohammed's wives) as a nude. When one religious faith insults the other religious faith, it can trigger a war (or, on a smaller level, assassination - T. van Gogh, in this case Husain). I suppose if we're ever to hope for change, it has to come from within. Christian artists can freely mock Christian symbols, but would Muslims, Jews or Hindi get away with doing so?

Art, besides being an investment nowadays, is also of great symbolic importance. Independent minds are ideal scapegoats. Extremists everywhere are hungry for absolute power to prepare their people for the battle for survival and to control the scarce recourses, I think.

"Your comfort is my silence"

(Barbara Kruger)

Freely mocking.

I 'd say the situation for Jews who mock their symbols is approximately the same as for Christians--which is to say, except for a few pockets of Fundamentalist orthodoxy, it's relatively safe. Anyone who wishes to make it unsafe should be discouraged. The Jewish faith has the largest tradition of freely mocking its own symbols. Abraham in the Bible at one point challenges God: 'I am as the dust at thy feet, but it's a shame if the judge of all the world will not do what is right."

Martin

Don't say this to Christians in Poland or in certain villages in the US for that matter.
But in general I agree, Jews and Christians can mock their religion without ever being seriously attacked. More often than not they will just be ignored. I would like to bring people together who feel the need to mock symbols of their own religion.

@Martin and Arnon: interesting, and I'm aware Jews can (relatively) freely mock their own religion. I meant to ask something different: "Christian artists can freely mock Christian symbols, but would Muslims, Jews or Hindi get away with doing so?" 'Doing so' meaning: would Muslims, Jews or Hindi get away with mocking Christian symbols?

Tess

It all depends on the place I would say. I think there are some Muslim comedians who mocked Christian symbols or am I mistaken?
Maybe it is worth trying to see what’s the reaction and if believers react differently to a Muslim mocking Christianity than to a Jew mocking Christianity.

It's an interesting question. In groups of all kinds tend to allow freedoms among themselves that they're less likely to permit outsiders. I personally feel free to mock any creed religious or political, and think any idea robust enough to be worth believing even provisionally can survive being kidded. Though I don't formally identify as a Christian anymore, I do think things I write that Fundamentalists would consider blasphemous--such as a story called 'How Many Times?' in which Christ keeps trying to return and is continuously thwarted by dying absurdly, violently and before his (or in the final instance her) appointed time--are nearer sermons than blasphemies. (This story's text would be "What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me?" I certainly don't imagine any conceivable God being offended by even mean-spirited mockery, any more than I was when a baby squirrel I was trying to remove gently from an office where I worked bit me and drew blood. For sure I would not have been impressed with the reverence of a mob of squirrels who took it upon themselves to avenge me by killing the offending squirrel.