'Disgusting': Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Slams Olympic Opening Event Over 'Insult To Jesus' Amid Drag Show Row

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei on Tuesday said the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony insulted Jesus Christ and directed insults at ‘holy figures of divine religions’.

“Respect for Jesus Christ (pbuh) is an indisputable, definite matter for Muslims. We condemn these insults directed at the holy figures of divine religions, including Jesus Christ (pbuh),” Khamenei said, in a social media post, on X.

Khamenei joins the likes of former US president Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk and other conservative commentators who felt that the opening ceremony show went too far.

The Iranian cleric’s social media post followed condemnation from Catholic groups and French bishops of an Olympics opening ceremony scene involving dancers, drag queens and a DJ in poses that appeared to recall depictions of the Last Supper, although creators have said it was not meant to represent the religious setting.

The sequence drew international criticism from Christian groups and far-right politicians on social media.

Earlier, Iraq’s top churches have joined international religious bodies in condemning a controversial segment of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, which many interpreted as a reference to the Bible’s Last Supper.

“What happened at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics is shameful and a mockery of the Christian religion,” Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic church said in a statement Sunday.

Thomas Jolly, a leading theatre director, who was the mastermind of the ambitious Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Sunday rejected criticism his boundary-breaking show had gone too far, saying it had created a “cloud of tolerance”.

Jolly, 42, denied taking inspiration from the Last Supper in his nearly four-hour production, which took place in driving rain along the River Seine, the first time a Summer Olympics has opened outside of the main athletics stadium.

The scene, intended to promote tolerance of different sexual and gender identities, also featured French actor Philippe Katerine, who appeared on a silver serving dish, almost naked and painted blue.

He was meant to be Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and pleasure, who was father of Sequana, the goddess of the River Seine.

“The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus,” Jolly told the BFM channel.

“You’ll never find in my work any desire to mock or denigrate anyone. I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but also a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity,” he added.

“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” Paris 2024 spokeswoman Anne Descamps told reporters on Sunday.

“If people have taken any offence, we are of course really, really sorry,” she added.