Less than a month after being installed in its "permanent" location at Doha Corniche in Qatar, Adel Abdessemed's 16-foot-tall statue has been removed. The statue depicts the infamous headbutt delivered by Zinedine Zidane of France to Italian player Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup. Local religious conservatives on Twitter complained that, because Islamic laws prohibit owning statues of animals or humans, the statue qualified as "anti-Islamic idolisation." This gave the Qatar Museum Authority no choice but to remove the statue and have it sent to the Arab Museum of Modern Art in fear that angry citizens would destroy it.
[via BBC]
