c. 2004 Religion News Service

PARIS _ The letter arrived just a week after Aziz Chouaki spoke about his writing on a French Jewish radio show.

“Aren’t you ashamed of speaking to Jewish people?” asked the chilling missive, which threatened to unleash an “Islamic revolution” against the 53-year-old playwright. “Are you with the Jews?”

Sent to his Paris-area office a few years ago, the warning counts among a handful of death threats _ along with mountains of praise _ Chouaki has received for writings that explore depravity, despair and Muslim radicalism coursing through gritty French housing projects and through his native Algeria.

Chouaki, who grew up listening to the music of Jimi Hendrix and to the call to prayer in a sun-washed, increasingly intolerant Algiers, is no stranger to the clash between religion and art. But the horrific killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh has stirred a fresh debate among Muslim writers like Chouaki over the limits to free expression in Europe as well.

At the heart of the controversy is van Gogh’s documentary, “Submission,” about violence against women in Muslim societies. The 11-minute movie stirred furor in the Netherlands, and arguably triggered the Nov. 2 slaying of the Dutch movie producer by an alleged Islamic extremist.

Yet it was not van Gogh, but 34-year-old Somalian immigrant Ayaan Hirshi Ali who penned the inflammatory film, which features images of battered women with Koranic verses traced on their bodies.

An ex-Muslim and member of the Dutch Parliament, Ali once described the prophet Mohammed as a “lecherous tyrant,” and Islam as a “backward” faith. Like van Gogh, she has received several death threats. Today, she lives under 24-hour police protection.

Still, Ali presents only one face of Europe’s new generation of Muslim playwrights, poets and novelists who are changing the continent’s artistic landscape. They include devout believers and unapologetic agnostics, exiled political dissidents and second-generation immigrants.

They write about sexual awakening, political oppression and racism. Many generate applause rather than death threats, as they break cultural and religious stereotypes.

They include 74-year old Paris resident Adonis, considered the Arab world’s greatest living poet, and Iranian novelist Chahdortt Djavann, whose latest book, “What Does Allah Think of Europe?” skewers Muslim radicals preying on disaffected immigrant youth. And they include many writers like Aziz Chouaki who refuse to be viewed through a religious prism.

“I don’t hate Islam, I’m just not interested in religion,” said Chouaki, one of a hal-dozen ethnic Muslim writers interviewed for this story. “But I have a very sincere respect for the Islamic civilization. It’s given so many things to the world _ in sciences, philosophy, poetry.”

A compact man with a shock of gray hair, Chouaki spoke at a theater in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where his latest play, “Une Viree” _ or “An Excursion” _ recently opened to critical acclaim.

An atheist, Chouaki argues his play could be as easily based in the South Bronx as in downtown Algiers. Yet the starkly written tale of three wine-sodden drifters, who speak a rough mix of street Arabic and French, teems with references to faith and fanaticism.

“If I was president,” one of Chouaki’s characters says, “I would destroy all the mosques, and replace them with bordellos.”

Chuckles ripple through the audience packing the theater one recent week night. It is the reaction Chouaki hopes for, and usually gets.

Chouaki’s own story is less amusing. He fled Algeria in 1991, just before Islamist fundamentalists launched a bloody insurgency against the military government that killed more than 100,000 people. Government critics denounce him for betraying his country. But that is not his main concern.

“I’m afraid of self-censorship,” he said. “Even if I don’t see physical threats, I imagine them. Many writers do.”

Few people outside the Netherlands have seen “Submission,” but the documentary has nonetheless generated strong feelings among European Muslims.

“Of course its inadmissible to know that in the 21st century there are women beaten for adultery,” said French-Moroccan writer and anti-discrimination activist Loubna Meliane.

Last year Meliane, 26, published her first book. Her autobiography, “Living Free,” is about breaking away from the strictures of France’s immigrant North African community. She eats pork, drinks wine and considers herself a French citizen first, and a Muslim second.

Still, she has reservations about “Submission,” and about Ayaan Hirshi Ali, whom she read about in a magazine.

“There are limits” to what is considered artistic expression and what is religiously offensive, Meliane said. “And I think she went very far and made generalizations.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Others, like Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasrin, believe there are few barriers when it comes to criticizing Islam.

Like Iranian writer Salman Rushdie, Nasrin lives in exile, with a fatwa on her head for once stating _ she claims she was misquoted _ that the Koran “should be revised thoroughly.”

“The Koran was written 1,400 years ago, we don’t need to reform it,” said Nasrin, a staunch atheist, who lives in Stockholm. “Why do we need to follow a book that was written 1,400 years ago? It’s out of place, out of time.”

The Bangladesh government has banned five of her 28 novels, which focus on child molestation, rape and discrimination against women in some South Asian societies. Nonetheless, the 42-year-old writer claims her feminist themes have struck a chord with many Muslim women, and her books are best sellers in some parts of Bangladesh and India.

Nasrin is far less popular among conservative Muslims in Europe. She deliberately avoids giving lectures in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Even so, her speeches draw scores of angry protesters.

“The majority tell me I am destroying Islam,” Nasrin said. “I get lots of Muslim girls in veils coming up to me and saying, `Read the Koran, you’re interpreting it in your way!’ And I tell them: ‘Why don’t you go live in a Muslim country if Islam is so great?”’

For others, Islam is indeed a great religion that has fostered dazzling scholarship and creativity. It spawned tales of sexuality and adventure such as “Alf Layla Wa-Layla,” (“A Thousand and One Nights”). It also produced writers like ninth-century Abu Nawas, known for his poems about taverns and love.

“There’s a huge tradition of writing frankly and openly about religion and sexuality in Arabic,” said acclaimed Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, speaking in a phone interview from her home in London. Soueif’s novels, which probe adultery, sexual awakening and feminism have won literary awards both in Arab and Western countries.

“I have gone as far as I wanted to go in my writing,” said Soueif, a practicing Muslim. “I haven’t felt trammeled or held back by my religion.”

Noted Muslim thinker Malek Chebel also believes Islam poses few limits to free expression.

“I criticize Islam from morning to night,” said Chebel, who recently authored a manifesto calling for a more tolerant interpretation of Islam. “But I do it in a correct and respectful manner. Otherwise, it’s not criticism. It’s just insults against Muslims.”

MO/JL END BRYANT