Nights Of Ramadan Festival Berlin 2012

People say that artists create revolution, but I believe the revolution has created the
artist. Because one of the conditions you need to make art is to have freedom of expession
and we didn't have this freedom before in the Arab world. Now people are not scared
of the government anymore and so by instinct they now express themselves in the public
space. The same way they took their freedom the artists have taken back their public space.
The U.S. Embassy in Berlin supported the Nights of Ramadan Festival to emphasize the tolerance
of religion and freedom of speech.
Public Affairs Officer Peter Claussen said: "regardless of how we pray Americans stand
firmly in support of all people from various backgounds."
Director of the Museum for Islamic Art at the Pergamon, Stefan Weber, explains the origins
of Calligraffiti. Calligraffiti is derived from arabic calligraphy and freestyle graffiti.
Discussions with the artists give insight into what role it plays in Muslim society.
Since calligraffiti is derived from calligraphy it gives artists a lot more possibilities
of expression than other forms of art.
A touch of pure genious was witnessed when a burning image of Mohamed Bouazizi appeared
on the screen. Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with starting the Arab revolution when he
set fire to himself in Tunisia.
If you check politics and Islam you see the concept of surah whereby everybody is giving
their opinion on one subject to give a collective decision. So that is a form of democracy.
We have democracy in Islam, the only thing is that the main media do not show it as it
is. They believe that we (the Arab countries) should go into partipatory democracy and stop
having representative democracy. We should be part of our own destiny and create it from
our own hand and not wait for people to do stuff for us.
Thankyou.