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College that fired prof for showing image of Muhammad could lose accreditation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34293131 - Jan 2023 (85 comments)
A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
251–260 of 294 posts
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#252Is 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…
Please don't start religious flamewars on HN. Last thing we need here, and highly avoidable.
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
The response from a caricature vs a respectful historical depiction may be very different. Remember that in US this happened not a long time ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Salman_Rushdie
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Religious flamewar and slurs ("a rabid dog") will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN, regardless of which group you have a problem with.
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#254Hi, a "fundamentalist Muslim" here, bite me Why is it so hard to accept that some people have redlines, once violated you leave no place for respect anymore? Is it a hard concept or is it entitlement that makes you feel you have the upper moral ground? What do you all think about the UN forcing LGBTQ+ rights on Muslims in their own countries? Do you consider that "freedoms" too? or is it proxy colonization? I wonder.…
Your account has posted literally about nothing but flamewar topics. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Moreover, "bite me" is pure flamebait and even trolling. I'm sympathetic to the discomfort of being in a small minority, surrounded by hostile views and so on, and how it creates a tendency to pre-emptively lash out in this way. But it's still extremely against the rules here.
I agree with the parts of your comment that are arguing for tolerance, understanding the other's point of view, and not mocking religious people. Nonetheless your account is not using this site as intended. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start using HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#255The painting in question: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Mohammed...
It's a gorgeous piece of art and I am truly surprised that even the faithful would see this as blasphemous. Islamic art is really underappreciated in the west.
That's definitely not Islamic art, though. Islamic art quite notably does not depict humans or animals, and instead combines calligraphy and geometric patterns (and floral, maybe? I'm not entirely sure). You should definitely check that out too, though, it's beautiful!
As for this art piece, I think it would certainly cause some controversy. I'm a Muslim myself, and afaik depictions of living beings are discouraged, and depictions of the Prophet (PBUH) are a no-no (though perhaps I should mention that I do believe firing that teacher was absolutely the wrong decision, and what she did was not at all an instance of Islamophobia).
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#256[flagged]
Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. Also, please don't fulminate. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#257I don't think this belongs on Hacker News. It's an issue worth discussion, but it's an a category of general controversial news that gets plenty of discussion elsewhere. Also there is no technical, scientific, or engineering context to it.
HN threads don't need to be technical, scientific, or engineering. They just need to be intellectually interesting (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Anything as prominent in humanity and history as religion is certainly that. However, flamewars destroy intellectual interest (put bluntly, they're predictable, nasty and dumb), and it's nearly impossible for a large community to discuss religion without religious flamewar (the most predictable, nastiest, and dumbest of all flamewar). That's unfortunately the other issue with stories like this, besides the run-of-the-mill controversy that you correctly point out.
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#258Ken White did a pretty useful breakdown on this whole story:
https://popehat.substack.com/p/hamline-university-and-cancel...
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a gorgeous piece of art and I am truly surprised that even the faithful would see this as blasphemous. Islamic art is really underappreciated in the west.
That's definitely not Islamic art, though. Islamic art quite notably does not depict humans or animals, and instead combines calligraphy and geometric patterns (and floral, maybe? I'm not entirely sure). You should definitely check that out too, though, it's beautiful! As for this art piece, I think it would certainly cause some controversy. I'm a Muslim myself, and afaik depictions of living beings are discouraged,…
Sunni Islamic art doesn't depict humans or animals, but my understanding is that's actually not a universal characteristic of Islam. You'd know better than I do, but Ken White (who is not a Muslim) pretty stridently takes the university to task for universalizing the anti-art stance to all of Islam, as opposed to the specific sects involved. Is he wrong?
Re: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's definitely not Islamic art, though. Islamic art quite notably does not depict humans or animals, and instead combines calligraphy and geometric patterns (and floral, maybe? I'm not entirely sure). You should definitely check that out too, though, it's beautiful! As for this art piece, I think it would certainly cause some controversy. I'm a Muslim myself, and afaik depictions of living beings are discouraged,…
Sunni Islamic art doesn't depict humans or animals, but my understanding is that's actually not a universal characteristic of Islam. You'd know better than I do, but Ken White (who is not a Muslim) pretty stridently takes the university to task for universalizing the anti-art stance to all of Islam, as opposed to the specific sects involved. Is he wrong?
No, he's not wrong. It's definitely not a universal stance. My own belief (based on my sect) is that the depictions that the Prophet (PBUH) banned were done so to discourage idolatry among muslims (much more relevant at that time than now).
Beyond that, there is little to suggest that Islam explicitly forbids art depicting humans. In the case of prophets though, I think it is discouraged (by muslims) largely to prevent misattributing features or misrepresenting them (and of course, mockery as well).
I should add, there is probably a bit of miscommunication when people use the term "Islamic art". Some may mean art that does not violate Islamic principles (whatever those may be to them), others may take it to refer specifically to the typical aniconistic style of art that has now become synonymous with "Islamic art" (at least that's what I, admittedly, thought of in my previous comment), or perhaps art originating from muslim territories / made by muslims, etc.