Taliban Actions Spark Debate on Islamic Views on Art

PARIS, April 2 (RNS) -- During the 1980s, Morteza Asadi settled on abstract painting to capture the fury and fervor of Iran's Islamic revolution. He translated religious experiences in sun-drenched colors. He added doves to his images during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, in a not-so-subtle plea for peace.

Now from his Paris window, the Iranian painter watches lovers stroll. They clasp hands and kiss as the Seine rolls by under brooding spring skies. And Asadi, a devout Muslim studying in France, captures them in warm reds and blues.

"There is no problem with this subject," he said, when asked whether Islam forbids depicting the human form. "In Iran, artists can even paint nudes, if they are a bit abstract."

Until recently, debates over Islam and art have mostly raged among a narrow group of intellectuals and clerics. But that has changed since Afghanistan's Taliban militia blew two fifth century Buddha statues to bits, sparking worldwide outrage.

The fury has reached Islamic countries as well. While some extremist groups applauded the Taliban's actions, many scholars and clerics denounced the militia's claim that the statues merited destruction for being "un-Islamic idols."

Critics cite the Koran and the hadiths -- Prophet Mohammed's sayings -- to defend Islam's tolerance of different faiths and cultural traditions. And they point to a treasure trove of pre-Islamic art, including phallic pharaonic statues in Egypt and Roman busts in Tunisia, preserved over centuries of Muslim rule.

Indeed, artistic expression in Islamic countries, from Niger to Indonesia, is far from monolithic. Recent interviews with artists and experts from the Middle East and North Africa alone sketch a vibrant and complicated portrait of contemporary art in many parts of the Muslim world.

If some artists have fled political repression and economic hardship, others have flourished in unlikely places.

Some of the area's most provocative works have emerged from Saddam Hussein's Iraq and from war-torn Lebanon, experts say. Petrodollars and business booms are financing new galleries in Dubai and Riyadh. And students from Asadi's native Iran are turning to Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol for inspiration, alongside ancient Persian miniaturists.