2023 is off to a bad start! | The Journal of Montreal

If you thought the stupidity died with the New Year, forget it. We set off for another ride.

Can you believe that in America, an art history teacher was fired for daring to show one of his students an upsetting piece of art? And can you believe getting down on one knee with a college girl?

If things continue like this, 2023 will be worse than 2022.

Only one complaint is required

It happened in Minnesota. At Hamlin University, a lecturer lost his teaching contract after displaying paintings of the Prophet Muhammad from the 13th and 16th centuries. However, for some strict Muslims, showing Muhammad is blasphemous.

At the beginning of the lesson, the lecturer warned his students and advised them to leave if they found the representations of the prophet offensive. The complaining student (president of the university’s Muslim Students Union) therefore heard this warning, but stayed in class anyway.

The worst part is that the author showed pictures of the prophet dating from the Middle Ages, and get this… Islamophobia!

No, actually, the worst part of this story is that the author in question…apologised!

I don’t know what is more shocking, more ridiculous or more inspiring about this story.

1– the fact that you can’t show works of art in art history classes without losing your job, or 2 – the fact that it only takes one person to make an entire community complain (as per the episode). small lifeFor the University of Ottawa, for the Word Negro On Radio-Canada Radio…).

Just a few days ago, we marked the seventh anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attacks Charlie Hebdo : Men and women killed by caricatures of Mohammed. In 2020, Professor Samuel Bhatti was beheaded in the middle of the street for displaying caricatures of Muhammad. In the Minnesota teacher’s case, we’re not talking about caricatures. We are not talking about images that mock or insult the prophet. On the contrary: these pictures come from a time when people who worshiped Muhammad painted and painted him to pay him respect!

500 years later, what meaning have we diverted from showing these images to be repulsive?

By what intellectual reasoning does one come to rebuke a history teacher at an institution of higher education for showing his students an artifact of the past? Reprimanding an art teacher for showing a work of art to his students?

Vox or Zombies?

Recently, in an interview, Patrick Hart scoffed at columnists who portrayed the Awakened as “ghostly,” saying, “Like they’re a race of zombies! »

“The word wake is to be aware of what is happening around us,” he told La Presse.

Sorry, Patrick, but I, when teachers lose their jobs for stupidity, I worry.

Who gets the last laugh when artists suffer?