In early April the ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, sacked the Palestinian-American curator of the emirate's long-standing and controversial modern art biennial in early April after some Emirati families complained that an exhibit was insulting to Islam. Jack Persekian had curated the art exhibition since 2006 and helped greatly to raise its regional and international profile. He is no stranger to controversy: indeed, the current exhibition, which runs from mid-March to mid-May, saw some displays either removed before it opened or amended to avoid offending locals, and was being overtly presented by many of its foreign Arab organisers and contributors as a statement about political oppression internationally. Opening at a time of Arab upheaval this only added to the discomfort.

The Sharjah biennial has long been the cause of mutterings of discontent in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah's pre-eminent paymaster, and among members of Sharjah's ruling family where there is discomfort at even the idea of such an event in a highly conservative emirate that has long fostered strong links with Saudi Arabia. Sheikh Sultan himself was the subject of a polite, but for him highly embarrassing, protest by exhibiting artists when he opened the biennial in mid-March. Some of them held up pieces of paper in his presence with the names of those killed by the Bahraini authorities in protest at the Emirati troops being deployed there that week in support of the government.

The biennial was first staged in 1993-long before the recent wave of high grossing art exhibits in neighbouring Dubai and the decision to build a branch of the Guggenheim, a US gallery, in Abu Dhabi. The ruler's daughter, Sheikha Hoor, is the head of the Sharjah Art Foundation, the governmental body that runs the biennial, and it appears that the ruler was acting to protect her embarrassment as much as his own. She had worked closely with Mr Persekian but strongly condemned the exhibit and the director for its display after he was dismissed. The exhibit, by an Algerian artist, Moustapha Ben-Fadl, was placed outside the Sharjah Art Museum in a public area easily visible to passers by. It depicted headless footballers whose shirts included explicit sexual comments in Arabic, mixed with references to Allah and to the Prophet Mohammed. The objective of the exhibit was to draw attention to mass rapes during Algeria's civil war, some of which were allegedly committed by militant Islamists. The sacking of Mr Persekian came immediately after controversy concerning the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which had been very publicly petitioned by foreign artists to improve its treatment of foreign labourers.