Respect for the observant
Another academic pushed roughly out the door, this time for purported Islamophobia, because he included an image of Mo in a lecture on Islamic art. Professor of Islamic Art at the University of Michigan Christiane Gruber has the details:
The “Islamophobic incident” catalyzed plenty of administrative commentary and media coverage at the university. Among others, it formed the subject of a second Oracle article, which noted that a faculty member had included in their global survey of art history a session on Islamic art, which offered an optional visual analysis and discussion of a famous medieval Islamic painting of the Prophet Muhammad. A student complained about the image’s inclusion in the course and led efforts to press administrators for a response. After that, the university’s associate vice president of inclusive excellence (AVPIE) declared the classroom exercise “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”
But it was optional. And part of a discussion of a famous medieval Islamic painting. In an art course. So it wasn’t “undeniably” any of those things.
Neither before nor after these declarations was the faculty member given a public platform or forum to explain the classroom lecture and activity. To fill in the gap, on Dec. 6, an essay written by a Hamline professor of religion who teaches Islam explaining the incident along with the historical context and aesthetic value of Islamic images of Muhammad was published on The Oracle’s website. The essay was taken down two days later. One day after that, Hamline’s president and AVPIE sent a message to all employees stating that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.”
Yeah good plan. Also respect for observant Muslim students in the classroom should supersede women’s right to an education – they should all be kicked out of universities and schools just as they are in Afghanistan. Let’s hand everything over to the most fanatical monotheists on the premises and leave it at that.
And then this VP for inclusive excellence – what’s so inclusive about censoring art classes on behalf of the most fanatical monotheists in the room at the expense of everyone else? What’s excellent about it? Unless Hamline University students are 100% fundamentalist Muslims, the VP for inclusive excellence isn’t being all that inclusive.
Gruber continues:
The instructor was released from their spring term teaching at Hamline, and its AVPIE went on the record as stating: “It was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community.” In other words, an instructor who showed an Islamic painting during a visual analysis — a basic exercise for art history training — was publicly impugned for hate speech and dismissed thereafter, without access to due process.
Much excellence.
This is absolutely unbelievable, and I’m going to write to Hamline’s Dean objecting to the firing. It’s not though the pictures, innocuous though they were, were sprung on unprepared students. Gruber goes on to discuss the history of depiction of images of Muhammad, and it’s a good and edifying read. She concludes that the students, given the history of Islamic art, had absolutely no reason to consider showing the paintings in class as an “Islamophobic” incident. That is, she says, an “ultraconservative Muslim view on the subject.”
Why should the ultraconservative view get the last word?
This is the Mo in question:
He looks so very human, and quite lovable.
This is a pretty well-designed corporate-speak job title: grovelling and self-congratulatory at the same time, topped off with an almost pronounceable acronym.
I can just imagine someone holding this position going about campus, sniffing out Sin. And if they’re paid enough (low six figures would be my guess), they’ll inevitably find it. Once you’ve set up anyone in a post like this, they will forever be on the lookout for opportunities to justify their existence. They wouldn’t be earning their keep if they didn’t. The dismissed professor becomes a notch in the belt of the Inquisitor, a concrete measure of the university’s successful efforts to become Purer. If they went an extended period without such dismissals, or disciplinary actions, it would be taken as evidence of insufficient effort or lack of zeal. Expect the discovery of more Heresy at this institution.
These aren’t Danish cartoons, intended to challenge the Islamist over-reach into the behaviour of secular societies they seek to bend to their dictates. The irony is the image was likely created by an observant Muslim for a Muslim audience. That such depictions were later deemed blasphemous is apparently beside the point. We’re seeing a cleanup round to insure the continued success and hegemony of the winners of a religious debate from centuries ago, used as a weapon of Islamist over-reach.
Of course, all Muslims are obliged to believe an official Islamic narrative, with Sunni, Shia and whatever sectarian variants.
In 610 AD, Mohammad (‘Mo’ for short) was living in a cave. That was the Cave of Hira on the Jabal an-Nour, the “Mountain of Light” near Mecca. When Mo hit the age of 40, the Angel Jebreel (Gabriel) is believed by followers (Sunni, Shia or whatever sectarian variants) to have appeared to Mo on the mountain and to have called him “the Prophet of Allah.”
Yeah, right.
Alternatively, Mo was just another crackpot in a cave. Some managed to make it into scriptural accounts of one kind or another. He was a bit like that poor bastard a few years back who interrupted a Papal cermony (could have even been High Mass) yelling to all and sundry that he was Jesus Christ returned from Heaven, and for his trouble got himself bundled off by the cops.
How were those cops to know? In the accounts I have read, the professed JC did not give them a sign. But then again, he could have been right on the money. He also could have said to himself something like “if after 2,000 years, this is the best my followers can do, I’m outa here.!”
Mo on the other hand began in secret to gather followers in Mecca; as you do, if you are a mate of Gabriel’s.
Around 613 AD at the age of 43, he ‘came out’ as it were, and began spreading his message of Islam publicly to all Meccans.
The rest is much the same as the later novel by Mario Puzo, entitled ‘The Godfather.’ And in which all apostates and heretics get theirs.
I’ve been under the impression that a great deal of Islamic art consists of geometric and non-representational paintings, ceramics, and other art forms, because of religious strictures against idolatry. A derivative rule is that, of course, no one should make images of Mo.
If all Muslims agree that those are principles of Islam, then how does anyone know when something is a forbidden “depiction of Mohammed”? Without any images, no one can know what he looks like. If no one knows what Mohammed looks like (because no images), then how can they claim to know that anything is an image of Mo?
The painting in question is very interesting. It reminds me of Indian or Chinese paintings of Buddha.
Isn’t it? He looks so not the brutal woman-hating infidel-slaughtering monster his most ardent fans portray him as. He looks gentle.
Of course we all know the answer to this – because they are willing to kill. And the attack on Salman Rushdie reinforced that.
If you have to kill for people to “validate” your belief (see how nicely it meshes with trans ideology (TI), then I suspect it has nothing substantive to offer. That’s why Roman Catholics had the Inquisition, and why theocratic society so often banished or burned dissenters. It’s all very medieval when you think about it.
There is no pope in Islam. My information is that every imam of every mosque is a private businessman. All those minarets that rise skywards in Islamic cities are due to imams competing on the open market for followers. While severe restrictions are placed on the rights of Christians and others to proselytise and preach, it is open slather for competing mosques. Tallest minaret wins the competition, assisted by the installation of the latest in public address equipment installed in the top of the minaret.
On our last visit to an Islamic city my wife and I stayed in a small hotel in Istanbul. Next door was a shopfront startup run by some imam new to the game. He had a tannoy system of some kind, and began his call to prayers well before sunrise and at full blast, adding a fair bit to the local colour. Any Muslim who rolled out his prayer-mat on the floor of that pub was likely to get a bonus, as mine host was also a cat fancier, with cats and cat shit everywhere.
Sort of like a franchise operation. Or maybe MLM.
I see others had a similar thought to mine.
An accusation of Islamophobia or Transphobia is equivalent to an accusation of practicing witchcraft.
He looks like he’s trying to remember if he locked the front door before he left for work, and is vacillating about whether or not to go home to confirm, one way or another.
[…] The Times reports on that firing of an academic who showed an image of Mohammed in an art history class we talked about last month. […]