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Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Muslims Beat Up ‘Coexist’ Artist
By Selected News Articles @ 1:42 PM :: 5715 Views :: First Amendment, Religion

Combo-coexist

France: Street artist brutally attacked for “Coexist” artwork

by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, February 7, 2015 

Combo won’t describe the “young people” who attacked him, as “it would only add fuel to the fire.” In saying that, he makes clear who they were. Even though Combo dresses in the garb of a devout Muslim, his art offends Muslim hardliners who don’t like seeing the Islamic crescent next to the Star of David and the cross. “Coexist,” indeed.

“Street Artist Combo Brutally Attacked for Pacifist Tag Post Charlie Hebdo,” by Coline Milliard, artnet news, February 5, 2015 (thanks to BD):

It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,” written on a wall using a Muslim crescent as the letter “C,” a Star of David as the letter “X,” and a Christian cross as a “T.”

But in Paris, this particular iteration of the popular inscription—here, created by the street artist Combo, who also pasted a life-size photo of himself next to it—didn’t go down well with everybody. Le Monde reports that four young people asked the artist to remove it last weekend, and beat him up severely when he refused to do so.

Combo ended up with a dislocated shoulder and many bruises.

The attack is characteristic of the inter-religious tensions that plague France and have been exacerbated by the Charlie Hebdo tragedy (see 12 Killed at Magazine Previously Attacked for Satirical Cartoons). Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. “It would only add fuel to the fire,” he told the French newspaper.

A former adman, the artist has taken his politically-charged street art to Los Angeles and Hong Kong, where he pasted printouts of web pages forbidden by the Chinese government. “My pieces function in a disruptive manner, they surprise, and appear up where they shouldn’t be,” he said.

During a residency in Bayreuth, he grew his beard and started wearing the traditional Muslim dress—not because he was increasingly attracted to a more fundamentalist version of Islam, but, again, to disrupt established codes. To his friends asking him whether he was “going to jihad” in Lebanon, he answered, “I’m going to ji-art.”

“First I thought I was French, but I quickly understood that I was Arab, then beur (French slang for second and third generation North African), now I’m told I’m Muslim,” Combo continued, talking of the French des-integration….

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