Invectives and Iconoclasms in Real Time: An Insider’s Look into the Hamline Muhammad Image Controversy

I inadvertently found myself at the center of the recent “Hamline Muhammad Image Controversy,” after having taught in my survey of global art the famous 14^th-century Persian painting of the Prophet receiving Qur’anic revelation as included in Rashid al-Din’s Compendium of Chronicles. While the news coverage examined various aspects of this controversy, in this talk I explore the ways in which the situation presents a case study in iconoclasm unfolding in real time. After the initial iconoclastic rupture, when the reverential Islamic image was hastily deemed blasphemous, the meaning behind it underwent various permutations. It thus demonstrates Foucauldian logic, wherein icons “seem to come alive only with their defacement.” In the press, sympathetic news sources were reluctant to show the image of the Prophet in its fullness: even as journalists defended academic freedom or simply reported the news, they substituted other images for the one shown in the class, pixelated the visage of the Prophet from the manuscript painting in question, or otherwise contributed to the cancellation of the object in its original form—all iconoclastic acts. Moreover, as news of the classroom incident gained traction, many people jammed Hamline’s social media platforms with the image, thereby endowing it with an “invective” valence. I examine each of these iconoclastic moves to think through how the original painting has accrued dramatically new meanings, and how today’s mechanisms to break or cancel images can lead to potentially productive ways to remake them.