Religious Zeal Brings Persecution...Media Impacts

In London, Gurpreet Daur Bhatti a writer born in Britain of Sikh parents, portrays sex and brutality inside a Sikh temple. One week after the play opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, hundreds of Sikhs attacked the building, breaking windows, and fighting with police. The theater was forced to stop the play.

Early this month, Christian groups organized a campaign of 50,000 people to telephone or send e- mail messages to the BBC demanding that it not broadcast a live theater performance of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" Politicians, artists and even clerics joined the fray. Many people received death threats from the Christian telephone campaign.

Theo van Gogh, a Dutch moviemaker related to the painter, Vincent van Gogh made a television documentary called SUBMISSION. It was about violence against Muslim women. It filmed words from the Koran written on the lacerated flesh of women who had been hurt by Muslim men. Its broadcast brought death threats. On November 2, Mr. van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim.

Religious people who are so fervent, so fanatic that they will kill someone over a film, a play or a show, are truly the world's terrorists.