While there have always been debates on this issue within Islam, the strict prohibition on picturing Muhammad is primarily Sunni and relatively recent. Too many people demand we respect the diversity of society, but fail to see the diversity of minority communities One can only wonder that the university bureaucrats who declared representations of Muhammad to be proscribed by Islam did not ask themselves why, if this was true, there were figurative Islamic paintings to show the class in the first place? There has developed a historical amnesia about the many Islamic traditions, especially Persian, Turkish and Indian, which have celebrated portrayals of Muhammad portrayals found in manuscripts, paintings, postcards, even in mosques. As Audrey Truschke, associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, observed, Hamline’s action “endangers… professors who show things in class, from premodern Islamic art to Hindu images with swastikas to Piss Christ”. Hamline has effectively declared whole areas of Islamic history beyond scholarly purview because they may cause offence. That is to introduce blasphemy taboos into the classroom. They should not allow that faith to dictate the curriculum. Universities should defend all students’ right to practise their faith. But others, including Muslims who desired to view the image, had every right to engage with a discussion of Islamic history. ![]() In what way was showing the painting “disrespecting” Muslims? Those who did not wish to view it did not have to. ![]() “Respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom,” wrote Fayneese Miller, the university’s president, and Everett in a letter to staff and students. That is precisely what the university is saying. As Berkson asked in another (unpublished) letter he sent to The Oracle, after his first had been removed: “Are you saying that disagreement with an argument is a form of ‘harm’?” Even to question that claim is to cause “harm”. Yet, to show it is now condemned as Islamophobic because… a student says so. It is an artistic treasure that exalts Islam and has long been cherished by Muslims. What is striking about the Hamline incident, though, is that the image at the heart of the row cannot even in the most elastic of definitions be described as Islamophobic. From The Satanic Verses to the Danish cartoons to Charlie Hebdo, the last decades have spawned a succession of often murderous controversies over depictions of Islam deemed blasphemous or racist. It is a depressing but all too familiar story. The instructor was “released” from further teaching duties. ![]() A letter written by Mark Berkson, chair of the department of religion, defending the instructor and providing historical and religious context for her actions, was published on the website of The Oracle, the university’s student newspaper, and then taken down because it “caused harm”. David Everett, Hamline’s associate vice-president of inclusive excellence, condemned the classroom exercise as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic”.
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