Norway: Musicians exposed to censorship and persecution in the name of God
In a chronicle in the leading Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, the priest Carl Petter Opsahl from Oslo, lists about a number of cases where musicians have been censored and persecuted on religious grounds
It is an unacceptable limitation on freedom of expression when religious leaders – regardless whether it be mullahs or parochial church councils – label a whole musical genre as impiously or "the work of the Devil" and impose regulations on its practitioners, states Carl Petter Opsahl in his chronicle.
"As a priest and an active musician I find that fundamentalism and totalitarian means are seldom based on true pious submission, but rather on fear, lust for power, and a wish to seal the words of God within a very limited horizon of human understanding," he writes.
He also questions the practise of The Norwegian Humanist Association which has refused to organise funerals for relatives who wished to include songs of Bjørn Eidsvåg or Leonard Cohen in the programme of the funeral.Carl Petter Opsahl says that there are conservative Christian groups and theologians in Norway who try to fight down certain types of music. In some places even YMCA choirs are finding difficulties being permitted to sing in their own church.
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