MALAYSIAN PASSION

Malaysia's government has announced that it will be permitting the country's citizens to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. At least it will be allowing some of them to see it:

...to view Mel Gibbon's "Passion of Christ" in Malaysia, viewers must be Christian. No Muslims are allowed to see it.

"It might spark off some religious disagreement in this country," Film Censorship Board spokeswoman Kathy Kook said, explaining the board's decision to bar a general release.

Gibson, Hollywood star-cum-producer and devout Catholic, did not even bother to ask Malaysia, home to 25 million people, for approval to screen his film in local cinemas. He and his distributors assumed the mainly Muslim nation would ban it.

But after an appeal to the prime minister by local churches keen to see the graphic movie about Christ's crucifixion, the censors have finally cleared it -- but for Christian eyes only.

Just over half of Malaysia's population follows Islam, which forbids flesh-and-blood portrayal of holy figures and says Jesus, a prophet in the Muslim faith, was neither crucified nor the Son of God. Christians make up about 9 percent of the population.

This is a better option than an outright ban, but I am left wondering if there will be any penalties for Malay Muslims who sneak into a screening. Kuala Lumpur is not a fundamentalist city, several of my gay friends moved there after finding Singapore too oppressive.

However, there are still occasional religious raids on nightclubs, where Muslims are rounded up and prosecuted for un-Islamic activities such as drinking and fraternizing with the opposite sex. So, consider this story developing.

A few months back, I was wondering how my former home Kuwait would react to the film. When I lived there, the censorship was worse than any other country I had previously been in. Any physical contact between men and women would be cut, cussing was poorly edited, anything supernatural was a no-no and most violence was cut. Rambo-type violence was okay though - especially if it involved 'Zionists committing atrocities' or 'Arab acts of resistance.'

Given all of this, I thought the Passion would be deemed acceptable to Kuwaiti censors... at least as long as the could cut that bit about the Resurrection.

I imagine they couldn't get Gibson's approval for that particular cut:

A longstanding ruling from Al Azhar University -- the ultimate spiritual authority for Muslims worldwide -- forbids the depiction of prophets in movies, and Muslims consider Jesus Christ a prophet. But authorities have made an exception for the controversial film depicting the final hours of Jesus' life. Only Kuwait has blocked its release, citing the ban on portraying prophets.