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Thursday, September 20, 2012

Louvre Honors Islamic Art



In its boldest development in a generation, the Louvre Museum has opened a new wing dedicated to Islamic art. The project cost nearly $130 million to complete and was opened by the French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday. Although years in the working, the magnificent celebration of 13 centuries of Islamic art by the world’s premier museum could not have opened in a better time, celebration and not the clash of civilizations amid a tense time between the West and the Islamic World.

Photo credit: French President Francois Hollande, second right, and his companion Valerie Trierweiler, center, look at the Saint Louis baptistery, work of Master Muhammad Ibn al-Zain at the new Department of Islamic Arts galleries at the Louvre museum. Paris, Tuesday Sept. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Gonzalo Fuentes)

6 comments:

  1. Islam only became what it is because of old Iran.Without the Sassanid,Islam would have stayed in the backwater of the Arabian hinterland.
    If the Sassanids would have defeated the Arab armies of that rotten Omar, Islam would have been forgotten.

    Right now,Islam is being used as a weapon by the mullahs to crush Iranian identity.They claim that Islam civilized Iranians and that Iran was nothing before Islam.
    They also claim that Shiite Islam is an Iranian identity.But we know better than that. The Safavids brought that ideology to Iran and imposed it just as Omar's army imposed the first wave.
    Thanks to Khomeini,Iranians see the true face of Islam for what it is.And they can tell you it isn't a pretty site.Iran is heading a different direction after the demise of political Islam.It took Europe 300 years to achieve what Iran will achieve in 34 years and banish religion and religious dogma and bigotry from politics and society.
    For those poor lost souls that believe in the dogma of religion and believe that the party will last for ever,well nothing lasts for ever,including the imposed ideology.
    I know who will be answering against this post.

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  2. The answer to your last question: Anyone with a sense of history and culture. Ideology if not unchecked, breeds ignorance, leading to analysis not based on facts but beliefs. No reason to belittle the Islamic Art to glorify the Persian Art. I wish you could visit Louvre's new wing, it will have an effect on the way you think of the Islamic Art.

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  3. I hope you meant ‘opened’ and not ‘Dedicated’ by the French President Francois Hollande.  It was the former President Jacques Chirac, who constantly pushed for the idea of a "dialogue of cultures" to break down misunderstandings between the West and the Muslim world. He wanted to highlight the contributions of Muslim civilizations to Western culture.

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  4. Thanks. The project indeed started during the Chirac presidency.

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  5. Nader Uskowi,far from it I didn't belittle Islamic art because I consider that art as Iranian influenced,related to Sassanid period.What I said was, Iran influenced Islam not the other way round.
    But what the present ideology is doing is destroying pre-Islamic art and considers it an inferior art period. Go and see what they have done to a 3000 year old temple in Hammedon. And yes I consider that as ignorance.
    These people have no sense of Iran's history or culture.

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  6. Sounds like a pr marketing move to me with 1.5 million muslims living in France today. $$!!

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