[CPProt.net] Aussie art in Islamic morality hoax

[MSN CPPnet]

Aussie art in Islamic morality hoax

July 1, 2005

Images:
http://www.crikey.com.au/articles/2005/06/30-1524-2579.html

By Stephen Mayne, who's related to an art expert

There's nothing like a good old fashioned morality tale to put the fear of
god into recalcitrant youngsters, but these days moral guardians are turning
to the internet to illustrate their far-fetched tales of warning:


The theft of art and tall tales from Islamic websites are not the sort of
thing you would expect to hit the Crikey bunker, but Patricia Piccinini -
older sister of Mrs Crikey and prominent contemporary artist - has been
quite shocked by developments over the past few weeks. 

In May, Patricia and her artist husband Peter Hennesey noticed a sharp
uptick in the traffic through Patricia's website, which now carries a front
page explanation of what is quite a disturbing hoax.

Site usage had surged from a healthy 150,000 page views in April to a record
950,000 in May. A quick look at the "top referrers" didn't just show Google
and various art magazines or galleries, but also websites such as Somalia
Online. A few days later they received the first email referring to the use
of one of Patricia's works - a cropped image from the sculpture The Leather
Landscape - in a hoax. The hoax was posted on an Arabic language website
www.alnilin.com and recounted the story of how a girl was transformed into
an animal after throwing a copy of the Koran on to the ground.

Subsequent emails have come in from places as diverse as Sudan, the US, UK,
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, indicating that the hoax has been spread
widely via email, websites, and the general media in the Muslim world.

As you can see here http://snipurl.com/fyf9, the article and cropped image
is still up on alnilin.com and has generated a lot of discussion. Most of
its readers seem just as confused and sceptical as Patricia and Peter. Go
here http://patriciapiccinini.net/ and you can see a fuller picture of the
image, which includes a model of our eldest daughter Laura. 

The stolen image is actually a sculpture of one of Patricia's
genetically-modified Meerkat creatures from her We Are Family exhibition
that was a big hit at the Venice Biennale in 2003. At the launch at
Federation Square in 2002, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer claimed the
Meerkat "looked a bit like Paul Keating."

That was left field enough, but who would have thought that an unsuspecting
multitude of Muslims have now been told it's what Allah does to little girls
who disrespect the Koran?

Peter and Patricia have been unable to find out where the story started, but
it may have originated around the time that another image of Patricia's was
included in myth-busting site Snopes.com, as you can see here
http://snipurl.com/fyfa. It's time for Snopes to bust another myth.

Obviously, Patricia is very disturbed that her image has been stolen and
used in this way without her knowledge and permission. However, how does
that message get conveyed to millions of Muslims? Patricia would love some
assistance in preparing an Arabic translation of her response for visitors
to her website who do not speak English. If anyone in the Crikey army can
help, please email smayne@ crikey.com.au.

Meanwhile, here are just two of the many emails that Patricia has been sent:

Michelle writes:
I am an Australian working in Kabul, Afghanistan. My Afghan collegues here
have been emailing one of your pictures from your We are Family exhibition.
Attached to it is some writing in Pashto, saying that this is an 18 year old
woman who has been cursed by Allah. She is apparantly in hospital in Iran
receiving treatment. I just thought it is really interesting how these
images are being interpreted on the other side of the world. I have since
shown them pictures of your exhibition, and told them they are sculptures!

Sudanese journalist Nizar Usman writes:
Thanks for clarifying the facts about your creature in The Leather
Landscape. Here, in Sudan, a very strange story has widely spread and I
translated and circulated your comment about the hoax and quoted it in my
newspaper column.

The story I heard said was that a lady in Oman was reciting the Koran while
her daughter is listening to an Arabic music channel known as al nojoom
(meaning: stars). The mother asked the daughter to turn off the TV,
furiously the girl threw the holy book, and she was immediately transferred
into that creature. They said the girl is in the main hospital there, and
her family refused to allow journalists to take more pics for her.

I heard about the story form my daughter (10 years of age), she heard it in
her school. Then I read it in a notice board in front of the main gate of a
mosque where there was a mammoth gathering. Then I read it in Alhayat daily
news paper, the editor stood in between unable to believe or not. Actually
what confused people here is that there are Quranic (Koran) verses saying
that Allah - long ago - transferred some guilty people into monkeys and pigs


How 'widespread' is the story? I guess it now the story is universal because
it has been posted in many famous Arabic forums, and the main source of this
story is site known as the garden of heavens. Its link is www.palislam.com
and the band width was unable to accommodate the huge traffic so the site
was suspended.

I guess the majority of Arabs are aware of that story. In Sudan the story
was a source of income, some people published and sold it for $0.25 per
copy. It was a good investment!