We live in a free speech country, and we take it so much for granted that we can’t imagine what it’s like to live in other places where freedom of speech simply doesn’t exist. A $100,000 bounty has been put on Iranian rapper Shahin Najahi’s head after he released his song ‘Naghi’, named after a Shiite saint.
According to the NY Times, in the song, he cynically raps ‘that Iranians are ready to sacrifice themselves with the imam’s help to solve problems like ‘shallow slogans’ and ‘Chinese-made prayer rugs’, and needless to say this didn’t go well with Iranian authorities. The bounty was offered by some rich Persian-Gulf guy, who conveniently wants to stay anonymous, and who is using a fatwa recently put by Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi-Golpayegani on anyone’s head insulting Imam Naghi.
Just like Salman Rushdie, the rapper has fled Iran in 2005 after receiving threats from Iranian intelligence and is now living in Germany, where he has been releasing videos online. He declared to German Deutsche Welle: ‘I thought there would be some ramification. But I didn’t think it would upset the regime that much. Now they are taking advantage of the situation and making it look like I was trying to criticize religion and put down believers.’
According to the Independent, more than 100 people joined an online campaign to execute him, but Najahi is ‘still in disbelief’ and said his song was not meant as a criticism of Islam, as it rather focuses on oppression, human rights abuse, declaring, ‘I will never apologize for my art or for speaking the truth about the Iranian government’.
He will not apologize? Good for him! You can always judge by yourself if the song is insulting Islam or not by watching the video below with the English translation,…(have you notice the mosque looking like a breast!!)… It’s really surreal people want to kill someone over a song in 2012.