An offended Muslim reportedly threatened to inflict “Allah’s punishment” on the organizers of the bacchanalian spectacle
The production company behind the LGBTQ-themed Paris Olympics opening ceremony has complained that its employees have received death threats warning them about “Allah’s Punishment” Le Parisien reported on Sunday.
The company, Paname 2024, received the threats via email on Friday, the newspaper reported. The messages included a verse from the Quran and stated that “Allah’s punishment will fall on the organizers in Saint-Denis,” the newspaper added, noting that the emails were also sent to the company’s director and Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director.
Paname 2024 forwarded the threats to French prosecutors.
The ceremony, which took place in central Paris last month, ended with a troupe of drag queens, homosexuals and transsexuals posing on a table, imitating the appearance of Jesus Christ and his apostles in Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”.
A giant plate was then placed in front of the table, from which emerged a nearly naked man, dressed to resemble Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and festivity.
The spectacle sparked outrage among Christians around the world, with the French Episcopal Conference claiming that “mocked and ridiculed” faith.
While the ceremony did not explicitly ridicule Islam, the Muslim world is generally much less tolerant of homosexuality than the Christian world, and Jolly told prosecutors earlier this week that he had also received “threatening messages and insults criticizing his sexual orientation and his wrongly assumed Israeli origins.”
Barbara Butch, the French DJ and pro-obesity activist who played the figure of Christ at the ceremony, was subjected to “violent cyber harassment”, she complained on Instagram last week. Butch’s attorney, Audrey Msellati, announced that she had filed the lawsuit “several complaints against these acts, whether committed by French or foreign citizens”, and that Butch “intends to sue anyone who tries to intimidate her in the future.”
After the performance, Jolly told French media that the scene was not inspired by “The Last Supper” but rather intended to evoke a “great pagan festival linked to the Olympian gods.” LGBTQ artists were chosen to send a message that “in France, we can love how we want and who we want”, he added.
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