A court in Tunisia has sentenced a British DJ to one year in prison after he featured a Muslim call to prayer in a dance track.
The artists known as Dax J was charged with public indecency and offending public morality with his use of a sacred Islamic prayer, according to BBC News. The DJ fled the country before the court case.
Outrage was sparked when footage of Dax J’s gig, in which the DJ played a track incorporating the prayer that Muslims recite five times a day, while clubbers danced along went online. Dax J was accompanied by another European DJ in the performance at the El Guitone nightclub, at Orbit Festival in Nabeul, last Friday.
The club was subsequently shut down. It apologised on Facebook for the offence caused, and said that Dax J ‘did not realise it might offend an audience from a Muslim country like ours’.
‘We will not allow attacks against religious feelings and the sacred,’ said the governor of Nabeul, Mnaouar Ouertani.
Dax J, who has now fled Tunisia, offered ‘sincere apologies to anyone who may have been offended by music that I played at Orbit Festival in Tunisia on Friday’. He reportedly had to close this Facebook account after receiving numerous death threats.
‘It was never my intention to upset or cause offense to anybody,’ he said.
The prosecution has appealed however, saying that the music should have been vetted before being played.
A court spokesperson said that it had dismissed the charges against the nightclub owner and event organiser, according to AFP.