A 60th birthday gala for the late gay rock star Freddie Mercury was canceled Thursday on the east African island of Zanzibar, where Mercury was born, after outraged Muslims threatened to disrupt it, Agence France Presse reported.
On Wednesday, organizers said they would continue with the planned Sept. 2 event despite fierce opposition from Islamists, who said the lifestyle of Queen's flamboyant lead singer was offensive to many on the overwhelmingly Muslim archipelago. Organizers said Thursday they have no choice but to call it off.
"We have decided to cancel the party after misleading and erroneous information was spread about it," said organizer Simai Mohamed Saidi, who runs a Freddie Mercury theme restaurant in the capital.
"I urge Muslim groups in the future to seek correct information from us instead of relying on rumors," he said in an open letter, adding the event was intended to honor Mercury, who died of AIDS in 1991. Saidi lamented that the cancellation would hurt his intention to use the party to raise money for HIV/AIDS victims on Zanzibar.
Zanzibar, a semiautonomous region of Tanzania, criminalized gay and lesbian sex in 2004, but remains a popular resort destination for South African gays.
Conservative Zanzibari Islamists last week demanded that authorities ban the party and then vowed to stage mass demonstrations if it went ahead, saying it would tarnish the islands' reputation and culture and promote homosexuality.
"We were ready to join forces against the party because we had information that a number of gays from abroad had come to take part," Sheikh Azzan Hamdani of the association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation, told AFP. "We had also written letters to the tourist commission and the owner of the Mercury restaurant, demanding that they stop the party."
Authorities, who have long tiptoed between the demands of a booming tourist industry and the wishes of conservative Muslims, never formally responded to Islamists, AFP reported. But Zanzibar's information ministry this week ordered local state-run media not to give the event any coverage.
Few on Zanzibar are aware of Queen or Freddie Mercury, who was born Farrokh Bulsara on the main island of Unguja to ethnic Persian parents on September 5, 1946.
But the appearance of posters advertising the beach party to celebrate what would have been his 60th birthday in recent weeks prompted the Islamist complaints.
Although he was educated in India and moved with his family to Britain in 1964, Mercury remains Zanzibar's most famous son to many Westerners and rock music fans. (The Advocate)
Post new comment