|
Islamic
Clerics Condemn Freddie Mercury Birthday
 29
August 2006- Zanzibar, Tanzania - He may be Zanzibar's most famous
son but religious leaders on the mostly Islamic island demanded the
government block an international party to mark what would have been
Freddie Mercury's 60th birthday.
The mullahs say
that the openly gay Queen frontman who died of complications from AIDS
in 1991 brought shame on the island because of "his lifestyle".
Outraged Zanzibari
Muslims on last week Friday sought to ban a 60th birthday party for the
late Zanzibar-born rock star Freddie Mercury, complaining the flamboyant
singer's lifestyle offended Islam.
In a strongly worded letter to the semi-autonomous Tanzanian
archipelago's culture ministry, a group of conservative Muslims said
plans to honour the lead singer of the supergroup Queen at a gala bash
next month must be stopped.
"There are people claiming that Freddie Mercury is a Zanzibari but he
grew up outside Zanzibar and then changed his name," the islands'
association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation (UAMSHO) said in
the letter.
"Associating
Mercury with Zanzibar degrades our island as a place of Islam," UAMSHO
chief Abdallah Said Ali wrote, adding that the singer was known to have
been gay, died of AIDS and had lived a wild life many Muslims would
condemn.
"Allowing such a function for a person known outside Zanzibar as a
homosexual tarnishes the name of Zanzibar," he said in the letter, a
copy of which was obtained by AFP. "Let us protect our good culture."
The complaint follows the appearance throughout Zanzibar in recent weeks
of posters advertising a huge beach party in the islands' capital to
mark what would have been Mercury's 60th birthday.
Restaurateur Simai Mohamed Saidi, who is organising the event and runs a
Freddie Mercury theme restaurant and club named "Mercury's" on the
waterfront, said he would go ahead with the party on September 2 despite
the complaint.
He said he would launch a counter-drive and ask officials to start
promoting Mercury's link with Zanzibar to promote tourism.
"I plan to ask the authorities to advocate Mercury because he was an
artist who advertised Zanzibar abroad," Saidi told AFP.
There was no immediate response to the dispute from the government,
which has long tip-toed between secular constitutional ideals, the
demands of a booming tourist industry and the wishes of conservative
Muslims.
Almost 99 percent of the million-strong population of the sun-drenched
Indian Ocean islands - known for their idyllic palm-fringed beaches and
spice- and slave-trading past - are Muslim, though most are moderate.
Few on Zanzibar seem even remotely aware of Queen or Freddie Mercury,
who was born Farrokh Bulsara on the main island of Unguja to Persian
parents employed by British colonial authorities, on September 5, 1946.
Although he was educated in India and moved with his family to Britain
in 1964, Mercury, who died in 1991, remains perhaps Zanzibar's most
famous son to many westerners and rock music fans.
|
