The Netherlands— An artist who photographed gay male Iranian exiles wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad and his son-in-law has received death threats from Muslim extremists that have forced her into hiding, the London Times reports.

Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, a 34-year-old Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym Sooreh Hera, said the extremists wrote her menacing emails.

She said the photographs were intended to expose “hypocritical” attitudes in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct. “They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men,” she said.

Wim van Krimpen, director of the municipal museum in The Hague, initially praised Hera’s collection of photographs as “exceptional,” but last month he announced that the masked men could not be included in Hera's forthcoming exhibition because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive.”

The director of a museum in Gouda, Ranti Tjan, agreed to show the photographs. He has received threats from extremists and was under police protection last week.

Public reactions in the Netherlands have been mixed: Hera wrote to culture minister Ronald Plasterk, who agreed to meet her but would not help to reinstate her photographs in the exhibition. Left-wing newspaper de Volkskrant praised the museum for its “great professionalism” for barring the images.