Erika Lopez Prater, teacher at Hamline University (Minnesota), was recently suspended from his functions for an act that the vice-president of the university called “inconsidered, disrespectful and Islamophobic”. What is the crime for which this young art historian was nailed to the pillory? That of having shown, in a course of history of sacred art, one of the masterpieces of the arts of Islam. It is a representation of the Angel Gabriel coming to make a revelation in Muhammad [Muhammad] in the Hira cave, near Mecca.
This painting is in a manuscript of the 14th century e century, the Jami al-tawarikh (“Universal History”) of the great Persian Rashid al-Din scholars (1247-1318). The scene, very well known and many times commented, is strangely echoing the Christian iconography of the Annunciation, in which this same Gabriel reveals to Mary that she is pregnant with Christ. In a case, it is Mary who gives birth to the word made man; In the other, it is Muhammad who transmits the word made book. Example, therefore, extremely well chosen to show the richness of the Muslim iconographic tradition and its complex tangles with various artistic traditions, among other Christians.
It turns out that a student filed a complaint with the university administration, and the president ended the contract of M me lopez Prater, without the slightest procedural claim legal. And to denounce the fact of presenting the painting executed in a Muslim context as “Islamophobic”.
Aniconic religion
If the university thought of putting an end to this affair, badly took it. The unjustified dismissal of M me Lopez PRATER caused an uproar of criticism, many articles in English -speaking newspapers and a petition requiring the reintegration of the teacher signed by more than 13,000 people.
How did we get there? The student, as well as the university administration, believed that Islam strictly prohibits the representation of the Prophet, a belief whose very existence of this painting (among thousands of other images) proves falsehood. Certainly, in Islam, as, moreover, in Judaism and Christianity, the images can be problematic; Some claim that their use is sacrilege, that it replaces the worship of the true God. In Christianity, waves of iconoclasm took place, in particular the one that shook the Byzantine Empire in the VIII e and ix e centuries, then that caused by Protestant reform , at the 16th e and xvii e centuries. Apart from these episodes, the presence of holy images in places of worship and in devotion is very widespread.
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