
COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS - CHICAGO | DEFENDING CIVIL RIGHTS. FIGHTING BIGOTRY. PROMOTING TOLERANCE
The work, titled “1700 Percent: Otherance,” features racist statements written across a white wall. Ali said the piece seeks to bring attention to hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. As part of the evolving display, Ali and other artists have read aloud the words and also stained them with a mixture of tea, coffee and ink, Ali said.
“Acts like these promote censorship and are an attack on anyone who believes in freedom of expression and freedom of speech,” Civil Rights Director at the Chicago chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations, Christina Abraham said.
“This is not just an assault on me as an artist, this is an attack on multiple communities to which the work speaks for,” Ali said in a statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The exhibit by Muslim graduate student Anida Yoeu Ali is part of a larger series of work at the school titled “”1700% Project,”" which uses art as a form of response to hate crimes, the statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations said.
The school said in a statement: “We are saddened by this incident and we are empathetic to Anida’s situation. …Vandalism is never an appropriate response to a work of art.”
Ironically, the piece by Anida Yeou Ali is about hate crimes against Muslims. She took excerpts from FBI files on hate crimes against people perceived to be Arab or Muslim.
ALI: There were three large caricature figures drawn on the wall which the installation occupies, and then there was a word bubble coming out of the caricature around where the text reads “kill all Arabs.”
CAIR-Chicago announced today that vandals defaced an exhibit by Muslim graduate student Anida Yoeu Ali at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The exhibit, which addressed racial profiling and the rise of violence and hate directed at Muslims in the post-9/11 era, was vandalized with large caricatures and a word bubble highlighting the text “Kill all Arabs.”
“Ironically, if those who are viscerally opposed to the sight of a hijabi actually took the time to look at the facts of her life, they may realize that hijabis make for a positive stereotype worthy of their admiration rather than a negative one they ought to fear,” writes Ahmed Rehab.
A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage against a Muslim rights group that reprinted his attacks against Islam and called for an advertising boycott.
Robert Spencer, the publisher of “Jihad Watch,” will appear Sunday, August 20, on a PRE-TAPED C-SPAN “Q&A” segment.