The production company behind the Paris Olympics\u2019 LGBTQ-themed opening ceremony has complained that its employees received death threats warning them of \u201cAllah\u2019s punishment,\u201d<\/em> Le Parisien reported on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company, Paname 2024, got the threats by email on Friday, the newspaper reported. The messages included a verse from the Quran and stated that \u201cAllah\u2019s punishment will befall the organizers in Saint-Denis,\u201d<\/em> the paper added, noting that the emails were also sent to the company\u2019s director and to Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paname 2024 has referred the threats to French prosecutors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ceremony, which took place in central Paris last month, concluded with a troupe of drag queens, homosexuals, and transsexuals posing at a table, mimicking the appearance of Jesus Christ and his apostles in Leonardo Da Vinci\u2019s \u2018The Last Supper\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A giant serving dish was then wheeled out in front of the table, from which emerged a mostly naked man made up to resemble Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and festivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spectacle provoked outrage among Christians worldwide, with the Bishops\u2019 Conference of France claiming that it \u201cmocked and ridiculed\u201d<\/em> the faith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the ceremony did not explicitly mock Islam, the Muslim world is generally far less tolerant of homosexuality than the Christian world, and Jolly told prosecutors earlier this week that he had also received \u201cthreatening messages and insults criticizing his sexual orientation and his wrongly supposed Israeli origins.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbara Butch, the French DJ and pro-obesity activist who played the Christ figure in the ceremony, has been subjected to \u201cviolent cyber harassment,\u201d<\/em> she complained on Instagram last week. Butch\u2019s lawyer, Audrey Msellati, announced that she had filed \u201cseveral complaints against these acts, whether committed by French nationals or foreigners,\u201d<\/em> and that Butch \u201cintends to prosecute anyone who tries to intimidate her in the future.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the performance, Jolly told French media that the scene was not inspired by \u2018The Last Supper\u2019, and was instead intended to evoke a \u201cgrand pagan festival connected with the gods of Olympus.\u201d<\/em> LGBTQ performers were chosen to send a message that \u201cin France, we are allowed to love how we want and who we want,\u201d<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n