page_title: Religious censorship
section_title: Other examples
hierarchical_section_title: Religious censorship / Other examples
caption_attribution_description: English: Ryan McCourt, pictured with his sculpture "Destroyer of Obstacles," in front of the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, August 2007, a month before the work was ordered removed by Mayor Stephen Mandel.
context_page_description: Religious censorship is a form of censorship where freedom of expression is controlled or limited using religious authority or on the basis of the teachings of the religion. This form of censorship has a long history and is practiced in many societies and by many religions. Examples include the Edict of Compiègne, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the condemnation of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
  Religious censorship can also take form in the destruction of monuments and texts that contradict or conflict with the religion practiced by the oppressors, such as attempts to censor the Harry Potter book series. Destruction of historic places is another form of religious censorship. One cited incident of religious censorship was the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan by radical Islamists as part of their religious goal of oppressing another religion.
context_section_description: Scientific theories
  Biological evolution (Fundamentalist Islam, Fundamentalist Christianity,  Hareidi Jews)
  Literature
  Works by Taslima Nasrin (Fundamentalist Islam)
  The Power and the Glory: The Cult of Manalo was banned by the Philippine sect Iglesia ni Cristo from being published in the Philippines.
  The Profit is a feature film written and directed by Peter N. Alexander in 2001.  Little seen, worldwide distribution of the film was prohibited by an American court order, the result of a lawsuit by the Church of Scientology although the filmmaker claims that the film is not about Scientology.
  In 2006, Ryan McCourt was the first artist selected to display sculpture for one year outside Edmonton's Shaw Conference Centre. McCourt's exhibition, "Will and Representation," was an installation of four large sculptures based on Ganesha, a deity from Hindu mythology. Ten months into the exhibition, then-Mayor of Edmonton Stephen Mandel ordered the works removed after reportedly receiving a 700-name petition complaining of the sculptures' "disrespectful" nudity. When asked for comment, McCourt stated that "Nudity seems like a rather quaint thing to get one's knickers in a bunch over, in the 21st century. Besides, there's lots of art that I don't like, I don't go around gathering signatures of people who agree with me, and try to force the art to come down. That would be truly offensive, especially in a democracy like Canada."
  Broadly, the public reaction to Mandel's censorship decree was one of disapproval. In an interview with the Edmonton Journal's Paula Simons, David Goa, religious scholar, cultural anthropologist, and director of the University of Alberta's Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, states "In India, Lord Ganesha is on everything -- playing cards, advertising signs, lotto tickets, even diapers, I suspect." Within the traditional Thirty-two forms of Ganesha in Hinduism, Ganesha is sometimes presented nude, in both infant (Bala Ganapati) and erotic (Uchchhishta Ganapati) forms. Simons concludes, "In his haste to appease a few protesters, the mayor, usually a champion of the arts, made a serious error in judgment. Instead of giving McCourt's divinely inspired statues the bum's rush, we should be celebrating this Canadian cross-pollination of cultures and aesthetic forms". The Globe and Mail's columnist Margaret Wente agreed with Simons: "The mayor, of course, was quite wrong. Mr. McCourt's sculptures did not insult the Hindu community. They insulted a small but vocal conservative religious group that is about as representative of Hindus as Hassidic Jews are of Jews.... There's a big difference between respecting different cultures and caving in to illiberalism and superstition." 
  Despite such negative responses in the media to visual art censorship in Canada, in 2014 the Edmonton Arts Council subsequently refused a donation of one of McCourt's sculptures, "Destroyer of Obstacles," evidently because the sculpture had genitalia beneath its clothes. After meeting with seven Hindu community group representative to seek out their opinion of the donation, the Edmonton Arts Council received a response that McCourt's sculpture was "an offense to their religion" and that the ban enacted by Mayor Mandel should remain in place. As a result of this consultation, "the Public Art Committee unanimously voted to decline acceptance of the gift, as the artwork did not meet "community or civic suitability" criteria." In McCourt's view, “It is not the purpose of a city’s public art collection to placate special interests,” he says. “I want Edmonton to build the best civic art collection that we can get, never mind the politics, the religion, etc. of the artists making the work.”
caption: Ryan McCourt, pictured with his sculpture "Destroyer of Obstacles," in front of the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada August 2007, a month before the work was ordered removed by Mayor Stephen Mandel.
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