[We resume here the text published in Le Figaro, paper edition, January 15, 2023]
Facts
The first act of a drama: at the private (Methodist) Hamline University in Saint Paul (Minnesota), during her online course on “Islamic art,” the assistant of Mark Berkson – dean of the department of religious anthropology – showed students an image of a 14th-century Islamic calendar depicting Gabriel’s announcement to Muhammad. The professor had previously taken care to apologize for the offensive nature of the image (“the professor gives a content warning”) and to allow time for the students concerned to turn off the course video. The aim was to denounce the idea that there is only one Islamic bloc unanimously agreeing on the condemnation of prophetic representations:
There is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids, outright, any figurative depictions or any depictions […] I would like to remind you there is no one, monothetic Islamic culture.
digitalcommons.hamline.edu
Second act: notwithstanding the preterition figures and the precautionary measures, a student of the course, Aram Wedatalla, also President of the local Muslim Student Association (MSA), immediately denounced the teacher to her administration, considering herself "offended" by this "Islamophobic incident"; in reality by the blasphemy.
Third and final act: the dean, despite the apologies offered by the teacher[1], condemned the "intolerance" of the course and excluded the teacher from the "university community".
It is all a matter of representation: it is by wanting to bring nuance that the Professor found himself guilty in the eyes of the communitarians of misrepresenting them. It is by wanting to fight against representations of the Prophet that believers have erected as an absolute right that of representing their Islamic community. Finally, it is because the representation of the institution does not work that it comes to qualify as Islamophobic a course in religious anthropology. This affair perfectly illustrates the way in which ideology works insidiously within institutions to muzzle science to its advantage with the aim of cultural conquest.
Democracy and communitarian representations
In a republican democracy that embraces secularism and whose constitution is based on human rights, representation is based on what unites citizens within a single community. Indifference to questions of gender, race or religion is not a deprivation: on the contrary, it is the guarantee of the exercise of this freedom while respecting the rights of each individual.
In community democracy, representation only concerns the differences that distinctly set communities against each other. This premium on difference is a double negation: of the individual, who is required to integrate the community that represents him; and of other competing communities.
Communitarianism actually fears ambivalence: it prefers clear and well-drawn contours, insurmountable borders and peremptory assertions which make it possible to clearly represent a distinct and clearly identifiable identity through logos and flags in the image of a brand.
In the case of Hamline's Mohammed, we are witnessing a radical escalation of the student who imposes her faith against the science of the academic: she opposes her customary law to science, and wins the debate. Quite logically, I would say, since the Institution only represents itself, while the young student legitimately represents her community.
Medieval Christianity had already confronted the question of iconoclasm: the Council of Hiereia had consecrated the notion, immediately contradicted by Nicaea II. The Mohammed in the underworld of the Basilica of Bologna inspired by Dante is today threatened with attacks. It is the honor of the Italian Republic to protect him. What would happen to him if the dean of Hamline University were in power? The iconoclasm of certain Islamic sects in France can indeed be fought in the name of protecting citizens against any separatist discourse, while separatism is the very foundation of the communitarian enterprise. But today, terror inspired by fanaticism has come to impose its rhetoric in classrooms, university lecture halls and the media themselves…
A year ago, the Grenoble IEP affair broke out in France. Two professors, Vincent Tournier and Klaus Kinzler, were accused of "Islamophobia" by students. Even if justice today restores the dignity of the two colleagues, for her part the American colleague has nothing to expect from the Institution that condemned her.
The principles
the Republic turns its principles against itself. Part of its symbolic territories is conquered in turn by a communitarian ideology: we see this in the imposition, for example, in the political debate of a rhetorical tool such as "Islamophobia", used to reintroduce the crime of blasphemy, which has been suppressed in France since 1791, even though Muslim representatives like Chems Eddine Hafiz refuse to use it. But we also notice it by the introduction into the law of a notion like "hate speech", whereas this has nothing legal but competes with other more legitimate expressions like the fight against "racist and anti-Semitic speech".
As historian Pierre Vermeren has shown, images of Muslim calendars showing Muhammad circulated freely until the middle of the 20th century in the Maghreb and still today in Shiite countries, proof if any were needed that there is no "single Islamic bloc": science obviously proves Professor de Hamline right. But who cares anymore? While the passions of communities against science are constantly expressed, including within the French University itself, it is important to insist on what brings us together within the same citizenship. At a time when Iranian universities are getting excited to defend the freedom to study at the same time as the worst obscurantists are adorning themselves with the name "Taliban", which in their language, let us not forget, means "students", we are witnessing in the West an unprecedented regression of the universalism of knowledge of which the University should be the temple.
Epilogue
The university has recognized to have made a mistakeThe damage is done: that was the intended goal. We see that it is quite easy to push institutions into making mistakes.
