Art history professor Erika López Prater was fired because she showed an Islamic image of the prophet Mohammed with the angel Gabriel in a class.

For many Muslims, images of their prophet are considered “blasphemy”. After class, a Muslim student filed a complaint with the administration about this. Other Muslim students who were not present at the lecture supported her in this.

The incident at Hamline Private University in Minnesota (USA) is making waves.

The private university’s approach has been sharply criticized online, and the authors’ association PEN America has also spoken out. The association describes the university’s reaction as “one of the most outrageous violations of academic freedom in recent times“.

Even Muslims came forward and wrote that it was an exaggeration to describe the teacher’s actions as Islamophobic. Many support the professor and demand that she gets her job back at the university immediately.

The Islamic image dates from 1307. Mohammed (right) receives his first revelation from Gabriel on Mount Ḥiraʾ, miniature from a manuscript of Raschīd ad-Dīn’s world chronicle Jami’ at-tawarich, 1307.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council issued a statement in support of Professor López Prater. “The painting was not Islamophobic,” they noted. “In fact, it was commissioned by a fourteenth-century Muslim king in order to honour the Prophet, depicting the first Quranic revelation from the angel Gabriel.”