Drawing a Bead on Jesus
12th September 2024
Sanija Ameti is a Bosnian Muslim who lives in Switzerland. Her parents were refugees who fled the Yugoslavian wars in the 1990s and settled in the Zurich area when Sanija was a small child. Her adopted home has been kind to her: she is now a well-known activist and provocateur, and is the vice president of the Zurich Liberal Greens Party.
Or was vice president, until one of her provocations got her into a spot of bother last Sunday. It seems that Ms. Ameti was doing a little target practice with her gun, and just happened to tear out a page from an art catalogue to use as a target. The only problem was that the page featured a photo of an icon of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, both of whom got riddled with bullets.
Whoops.
Ms. Ameti claimed she had no idea her target had religious significance until afterwards, and apologized profusely. It did her no good; she was forced to resign as vice president, and may end up being expelled from the Liberal Greens Party. Evidently there are some iconoclasms that are too much even for the Greens.