A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #55

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…

> institutions act outraged over Florida's "don't say gay" bill

Were you upset of the 'don't say gay bill'? It's an example, not just of a single school acting to restrict academic freedom and freedom of expression in general, but the actual government enforcing this on ALL schools. That should be enraging to anyone who cares about freedom. A elementary school teacher was fired not too long ago for reading 'A need a new butt', because Christians found it offensive.

I think the decision to fire this guy was wrong, but this sort of action is hardly the sole domain of the 'left', the 'right' is doing plenty of censorship in schools all by itself.

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

#132

Post by morby » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

pepperonipizza wrote: post #107

morby wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I have notice your comments in this thread where you are making wild assumptions of the users commenting. Your reply here could fall under defamation.

Please point out every comment I made in this thread and then point out which of those comments made “wild assumptions” and how they are “wild” based on the content of the comment being replied to.

Also, defamation does not mean what you think it means.

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

#133

Post by totalZero » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #21

benj111 wrote: post #3

Isn't it prohibited to depict any of god's creations in some/many/all Islamic sects? Thus all the interesting geometric patterns. Does that mean that virtually all Western art is islamaphobic? At what point does the demand that Western art doesn't do something that offend Islam itself become westernphobic.

This isn't Western art, it's classical Persian art, done by Muslims for Muslims. This is beyond stupid, it's plain fanaticism. These students should be sent to Iran or Afghanistan to get their feelings right. I have absolutely no patience for this sort of fascism disguised as victimisation.

Your lack of patience notwithstanding, it helps to take into consideration the fact that Islamic cultural practices vary from place to place. Saying that something is Persian doesn't fully capture the context. Sudanese Muslim culture is extremely conservative and until recently included laws against apostasy. The student who complained comes from this cultural background. Persians are generally from a different sect of Islam and have their own cultural complications.

Right or wrong, that's the context.

One fact of religious tolerance is that one person will inevitably view as sacred something that another person views as stupid. Drawing lines around certain practices is a challenging task for society as a whole. I personally don't believe that reducing everything to "fascism" is productive.

Your suggestion that people be deported to Iran or Afghanistan is among the most common racist retorts against Muslim people and indicates a lack of tolerance for what is in reality a fairly complicated issue that can only be solved by mutual respect.

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

#134

Post by nickdothutton » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

Different civilisations have different views, values, and “red lines” to borrow a term from elsewhere. Some of these may make the civilisations incompatible. How anyone is surprised by this I do not know.

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

#135

Post by lo_zamoyski » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

PaulRobinson wrote: post #33

fancybouncy wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Why are you assuming they are foreigners? Why do you assume these were not natives in their own country who held these feelings anyway? Do you observe and respect any festivities in the calendar at all? Christmas? Thanksgiving? Easter? Passover? Diwali? Why are these not "dumb superstitions", but other people's are? You don't get to decide how somebody else is going to react to something, you only get to decide if yo…

While the OPs comment is needlessly coarse, a charitable reading still gets at something important, something you evade addressing by repeating what are effectively tired liberal relativist platitudes about neutrality.

What this firing, and events like it, demonstrate is that there is a zero sum game where foundational beliefs are concerned. Here, the game is between liberalism and (this form of) Islam. If the professor isn’t punished, liberalism wins. If the teacher is punished, this Islam wins. You can’t accommodate both. An Achilles’ heel of liberalism is the notion that it can accommodate everyone, that liberalism is some kind of neutral absence of beliefs that can somehow accommodate fundamental differences and become the basis of a universal society of Man rooted in nothing. Vulgar consumerism has tried to fill that void, but appetite is no basis for a society, to put it mildly.

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

#136

Post by jdthedisciple » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

afroisalreadyin wrote: post #58

If Muslims are not OK with their religion and its figures being talked about in ways that are not within the rules of their religion, they shouldn't bring it up, and we should act as if it doesn't exist. You think your prophet was righteous? I don't care, I can't talk about him anyway, so it won't be part of my world of ideas. This has been my position on this topic since I got scolded by a Muslim for not referring t…

If LGBTQ are not OK with their gender and the movement's figureheads being talked about in ways that are not within the rules of their safe spaces, they shouldn't be shoving it down everyone's throats constantly, and we should act as if they don't exist. You think being LGBTQ is important? I don't care, I can't talk about them anyway, so it won't be part of my world of ideas. This has been my position on this topic since I got scolded by some transgender person for not referring to them by their preferred pronouns.

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

#137

Post by mruniverse » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

Here's what the professor had to say:

“I am showing you this image for a reason. And that is that there is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids, outright, any figurative depictions or any depictions of holy personages. While many Islamic cultures do strongly frown on this practice, I would like to remind you there is no one, monothetic Islamic culture,”

https://hamlineoracle.com/10750/news/who-belongs/

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

#138

Post by NickC25 » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

I really don't like pandering to the religious beliefs of a minority, especially when said group was given tons of precautions from the professor. The student in question still made the choice to show up to class, made the choice to complain, and made the choice to cry in front of other students saying that she felt deeply offended. The girl was given every chance to avoid this altogether, but instead chose to put herself in the situation so she could be the victim.

I feel absolutely terrible for the professor, they did absolutely nothing wrong. I took an religious art history class in college too...and yeah, we had Muslims in the class. One of them just didn't show up that day, and others just continued on as if it was just another piece of art. No complains, no grandstanding. Just mature people with the mindset of "I'm not in any position to complain, I'm not special, the professor isn't targeting me, nor anyone else. My religious beliefs are not and will never be part of the law system here and I don't expect them to be." That's it.

We are a secular country. We have separation of religious institutions from our government (in theory). If someone of any faith wants to whine about being offended because of a picture they saw at school, they need to grow the fuck up.

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

#139

Post by spicymaki » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:54 PM UTC

lakomen wrote: post #16

thaumasiotes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point does the demand that Western art doesn't do something that offend Islam itself become westernphobic. The standard response is that there can be no such thing as Westernphobia because the West is powerful and Islam is weak, just as there can be no such thing as anti-white racism because whites are powerful and nonwhites are weak.

Thus apparently extends to gender or rather sexuality as well recently. I've been banned for asking why my sexuality - heterosexual, is excluded, actually not even asked why but if a flag representing my sexuality existed, since there were a bunch of flags that represented every possible spectrum, even asexuality. I am not at all racist, my best friend has dark skin, but I also can't help but notice that on social ne…

> I am not at all racist, my best friend has dark skin, but I also can't help but notice that on social networks there's always that black* group/tag/community never do you see white,red, yellow, only ever black. I do find that quite racist and exclusive.

That is not remotely true, if I log into Reddit I can find subreddits with white, black, Spanish, German, Japanese, Indian, French, Jamaican, etc. topics as well several subcategories such as Valencian etc. I am not sure what or where you are looking.

I don’t think Native Americans go by red or East Asian people yellow as well honestly. What social networks are banning you?

There is a heterosexual flag here if you need one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_flag

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

#140

Post by toolslive » Sun, Jan 08, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

laxmin wrote: post #78

umarniz wrote: post #14

Edit as this is flagged by many people already: My opinion is all art and historical text should be discussed and talked about. Apparently an attempt to share the context is not very appreciated here. No horse in the race but I find it important to try to understand the perspective from all sides. Apparently its similar to showing a swastika or hail hitler. People have been punished for that as well: https://www.thef…

Let us not forget the difference between the hakenkreuz and the swastika please. Swastika is welcome, the nazi version of it isn't. The better and most appropriate term is Hakenkreuz, that the Nazis themselves used.

what difference ? The clockwise version (࿕) is called swastika in Hinduism, and is the exact same symbol as what the Nazis used. It used to be (until the 1930s) used in art quite a lot all over Europe. You can still find it high up on the facade of old houses. And Yes, some people are offended by it, but when you explain both the building and the symbol predate Nazism, they usually calm down.