“I am officially announcing that in reaction to the intolerable insult to the Great Prophet of Islam we will refrain from taking part in this year’s Oscars and we ask other Islamic nations to show their protest like this,” Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini declared, according to the ISNA news agency.
Iran announced it would pull its sole movie entered in the Academy Awards, “A Cube of Sugar,” after discussions with its production company, Hosseini said.
Despite tough censorship and the repression of leading film makers, Iranian art cinema has earned international acclaim over the past 20 years.
Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” won the Oscar for best foreign language film in February, the first Iranian film to do so.
Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad Hosseini said Iran would boycott the next Academy Awards “to protest against the making of a film insulting the Prophet and because of the organizers’ failure to take an official position (against the film),” the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.
He also urged other Islamic countries to boycott the Oscars.
The amateurish video, made in California with private financing and posted on YouTube, mocks the Prophet Mohammed. It has ignited weeks of violent protests across the Muslim world in which dozens of people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, have been killed.
Several non-violent protests against the film have taken place in Tehran.
Iranian officials have demanded that the United States apologize to Muslims, saying the video is only the latest in a series of Western insults aimed at Islam. Washington has condemned the content of the film while defending the right to free speech.
“The position that Western politicians have adopted on these great insults are no different from a position of enmity,” Iranian media quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying on Monday.
Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad Hosseini said Iran would boycott the next Academy Awards “to protest against the making of a film insulting the Prophet and because of the organizers’ failure to take an official position (against the film),” the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.
He also urged other Islamic countries to boycott the Oscars.
The amateurish video, made in California with private financing and posted on YouTube, mocks the Prophet Mohammed. It has ignited weeks of violent protests across the Muslim world in which dozens of people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, have been killed.
Several non-violent protests against the film have taken place in Tehran.
Iranian officials have demanded that the United States apologize to Muslims, saying the video is only the latest in a series of Western insults aimed at Islam. Washington has condemned the content of the film while defending the right to free speech.
“The position that Western politicians have adopted on these great insults are no different from a position of enmity,” Iranian media quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying on Monday.
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