Hamline University administrators have taken the coward’s way out, caving in to the demands of zealots

An art history professor in Minnesota was fired after showing students an ancient depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in class. The dismissal came after a Muslim student complained to administrators that the act was offensive and disrespectful; those school officials eventually agreed. The whole controversy has raised important questions about whether potentially offensive content should be censored from students if there’s a risk of violating their religious sensibilities.

You may recall that, in 2010, there was a massive uproar after cartoonists, bloggers, and even South Park began depicting Muhammad in both innocuous and purposely blasphemous ways. Since depicting Muhammad is considered taboo by many Muslims, the issue was whether their religious beliefs should override everyone else’s freedom of expression. On the other hand, even if Muslims conceded that people had a right to draw whatever they wanted, was it worth drawing something just to get a rise out of an often maligned group?

Over the years, there have been extremists who retaliated in the worst ways, as we saw in France with the Charlie Hebdo shootings in 2015. In 2020, a teacher who showed some of those offensive cartoons as part of a class on free speech was brutally murdered in the same country. Each act of faith-based vengeance leads to another rush of people drawing the image in the same of freedom (or, sometimes, as a way to peacefully infuriate the kind of people who might be offended).

That’s why what happened at Hamline University in St. Paul this past October has been so unusual. It’s nothing like those stories we’re used to hearing.

As Religion News Service explains, a(n unnamed) art history professor was going to show students a “treasured 14th-century painting depicting the Prophet Muhammad’s call to prophesy” as well as a second image from the 16th century. He told students in advance he was going to do this. He told them the images of Muhammad would be in the paintings. He also explained that the first painting was created by a Muslim scholar in reverence of the Prophet because it was not taboo to depict Muhammad at the time. Finally, the professor told students they did not have to attend that class if they didn’t want to; they weren’t obligated to sit through that particular presentation.