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A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

nytimes.com

111–120 of 294 posts

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve never had to fight for basic human rights as a white straight person.

What if the commenter is female, or disabled, or doesn't own property, or is subject to the many other axes of marginalization? It's not all about race and sexuality.

He specifically asked about a straight flags.

Non property owners are discriminated against?

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#112

Not sure why it's a fireable offence since precautions were taken. Give a strike or whatever and debate it's relevance to the course of "art history". I don't think the painting itself is significant, it could just be referenced. The context of why the painting is banned inside of Islam is relevant as previously there was a lot of idol worship and even nowadays figureheads like Jesus are now claimed to be God, stuff…

"the context of why the painting is banned inside of Islam is relevant"

How is that relevant to anyone not muslim? Because this is what this is about - (some) muslims wanting other people to follow their religious rules.

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve never had to fight for basic human rights as a white straight person.

That is such a myopic, stupid take. How do you even know? Are you somehow deluded enough to believe that even in western countries nobody has to fight for basic human rights? Fuck, half of Americans’ basic human rights are in flux right now, have you been paying attention?

I didn’t say other marginalized groups don’t have to fight for human rights.

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#114

The fact that people describing themselves as progressive are fighting to forbid blasphemy has got to be the worst “freedom is slavery” newspeak in the last decade. When did it become acceptable for one sect to dictate what we are allowed to talk about? They are the enthusiastic useful idiots for dark age theocrats, the exact translation of our despicable white nationalists and Christian supremacists.

Yeah the more I learn about history in my spare time, the more corollaries I see with medieval papal censorship and suppression of freedom of thought, and some movements today going in that direction.

I yearn for the, looking back, somewhat balanced days where not everyone was head deep in politics, and we could have useful debates about maybe health care or national budget, without degenerating into blanket character attacks. Then after the debate, everyone is at least cordial.

Just finished the first season of white lotus. Did not expect to see some good dichotomies of two generations interacting with one another (re: the scuba family)

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#115
post #100

It's crazy that this happened at all, let alone in an art history context. For the record, there are at least two academic sources attesting that the prohibition on depiction of the prophet Muhammad are recent. 1. Wijdan Ali's From the Literal to the Spiritual: The Development of the Prophet Muhammad's Portrayal from 13th Century Ilkhanid Miniatures to 17th Century Ottoman Art . 1999. Open Access, available here: htt…

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Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#116
post #61

Is Islam at all compatible with secular values in the same country? In the end, you will have one of the two encompass the other. Either you have a secular country living by democratic, progressive law which allows people to be Muslims modulo this. Or you have a Muslim country living by Shariah law, but tolerating secular non-believers in it. First won't work because Muslims (in the traditional sense) won't tolerate…

> Is Islam at all compatible with secular values in the same country? It is. There are plenty of more or less practising Muslims who behave perfectly well and are strongly opposed to theocracy. In the same way that there are plenty of white Christians who don’t feel the urge to take a gun and mow down blasphemers. > And second won't work because Shariah law gives very concrete directions on dealing with non-believers…

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Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#117
post #92

This was the wrong decision. Liberal institutions in the west have begun to increasingly yield to the demands of extremist minority views and doing so only emboldens them. You are free to insult white people, Christianity, and non transexual heterosexual men in this country but everyone else is a protected class. Even speaking positively or respectfully discussing the protected classes in a vaguely defined wrong way…

> This was the wrong decision. It seems like it. It seems like the university didn’t even clearly understand that Muslims are divided on this topic before taking action. > Liberal institutions in the west have begun to increasingly yield to the demands of extremist minority views and doing so only emboldens them. You are free to insult white people, Christianity, and non transexual heterosexual men in this country bu…

> This, however, is just straight up alt-right talking points.

Doesn't make it inaccurate. Trying to cudgel GP into submission by casting aspersions of being "alt-right" affiliated is evidence of it being true, even. The gaslighting is unwelcome.

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#118
post #61

Is Islam at all compatible with secular values in the same country? In the end, you will have one of the two encompass the other. Either you have a secular country living by democratic, progressive law which allows people to be Muslims modulo this. Or you have a Muslim country living by Shariah law, but tolerating secular non-believers in it. First won't work because Muslims (in the traditional sense) won't tolerate…

Saying Islam feels far too strong. There are still groups of Christians who demand the death penalty for practicing gays.

Certainly some Islamic groups are incompatible with secular values.

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#119
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tolerant enough to support an art history professor who showed an image depicting Muhammad?

The ones I know would be, yes. They’d also think it’s odd some people feel the existential need to do it.

But this case is exactly by people who are not tolerant.

Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

#120
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was the wrong decision. It seems like it. It seems like the university didn’t even clearly understand that Muslims are divided on this topic before taking action. > Liberal institutions in the west have begun to increasingly yield to the demands of extremist minority views and doing so only emboldens them. You are free to insult white people, Christianity, and non transexual heterosexual men in this country bu…

Really? If you speak ill of "white people, Christianity, and non transexual heterosexual men" will you lose your job? Will you lose your job in liberal universities if you speak ill of Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, African Americans? In case of perceived bias, I'm a swing voting (95% Dem) Jew.

Modern progressivism does distinguish instances of “punching down”, yes. That’s no secret and is not intended to be.

That’s not the point, though. Turning this into a “what about the white men!” whinge is blatantly misrepresenting this scenario as the result of “modern progressivism” when it’s actually something else.

I believe that you’re not going to find many proponents of the sort of progressivism that the “white about the white men!?”crowd fight against, that are actually in favour of this decision. Furthermore I believe that you’d find plenty that are against it.

Around the proponents of this ideology are concentric circles of people making misguided attempts to “capitulate to this PC culture”, often as an ass-covering tactic. By the time you get to a layperson perceiving ‘the culture’, it’s a xerox of a xerox of a xerox created by various corporate HR, PR, and marketing departments. Then, of course, you’ve got the people revolting against Big Org #836 mandating wearing pronoun pins in the office when that’s clearly not something any trans person would advocate for. The collective facepalming at misguided attempts to pander to “LGBTQIA+” is a big part of the current queer community / culture. This is just the community I am familiar with. I imagine it’s the same elsewhere.

I don’t believe that this is much of a ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy. It’s pretty easy to draw a logical bound between those that believe in the cause, and the rest.

I do not believe that this action was taken as a genuine act of modern progressivism. It’s a typical corporate ‘make this go away and don’t upset the minorities with megaphones’ action. But we’ve got some great keywords like “university” and “Muslim” which opportunists obnoxiously use to fuel the culture war.

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