Forbidden Muhammad

January 8, 2015 4:39 PM

Would it be insensitive to display a controversial cartoon of Muhammad in a graduate school seminar, and to assign a short project based on it? The course responds to contemporary culture images, and we do weekly quick writes.

Would this cause a Muslim student to become upset?

posted by Jason and Laszlo to Education (51 answers total)

Yes it would be insensitive and yes many Muslim students would be upset.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 4:43 PM on January 8, 2015 [12 favorites]

Unless the instructor wants to make a deliberate statement akin to this editorial, the diplomatic thing to do (while still making it an option) would be forewarning and an alternative assignment.
posted by supercres at 4:46 PM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually, I take that back. Just offering the assignment as an option is a pretty strong statement. Forcing everyone to do it would be the insensitive action.
posted by supercres at 4:47 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

You could do it as a web link to the image with an alternative (there are plenty of amazing cartoons this week on the same topic), as an opt-in choice.
posted by viggorlijah at 4:48 PM on January 8, 2015

I think this is a very bad idea unless you really know your students and there is a high level of trust in the class - and even then, I would not. Reactions to the fact of there being a drawing of Mohammed might vary from Muslim to Muslim, but it seems like in the present political climate, the odds of a very uncomfortable and potentially bigoted discussion are high, it could easily create a bad climate in the class, unless you are super confident in your ability to talk about the issue you are likely to put your foot in it...And it has the potential to make Muslim students (or other students who see themselves as in some way outside the mainstream) see themselves as "subjects" for the class to study rather than as students.

Again, if you have particular reason to believe that a small group of students is up to an intelligent, mutually respectful treatment, that's one thing - but unless you are absolutely sure, I really, really would not.
posted by Frowner at 5:06 PM on January 8, 2015 [13 favorites]

You don't need to, and probably shouldn't, show pornography to get students to write about sexualization in society. The latter is fine, the former is gratuitous.

You don't need to, and probably shouldn't, show graphic violence to get students to write about violence in society. The latter is fine, the former is gratuitous.

You probably see where I'm going here. Separate the topic from the imagery. One is appropriate, the other is probably not necessary.
posted by saeculorum at 5:16 PM on January 8, 2015 [26 favorites]

The only way I can see this being kind of OK is if you do it as one of several options, wherein seeking out the picture in question is part of the research for people who choose that option from a list of other projects which are not potentially offensive.

I think assigning it to everyone with an option for Muslim students not to participate is even worse than forcing everyone to participate, for what it's worth.
posted by Sara C. at 5:17 PM on January 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think saeculorum's on the right track. You might ask how you can have an assignment and discussion about imagery if the students don't see the image, but I think in this case the specificities of physical image itself are likely irrelevant to the discussion you want your students to engage in. Could a visually impaired student write a meaningful paper about a controversial image of Muhammad she's never seen? Of course. So too can your sighted students.
posted by drlith at 5:20 PM on January 8, 2015

Response by poster: What if the assignment framework states: "You are the image critic for a national newspaper and must respond to this image event with a written editorial. You may or may not choose to view the image by clicking this link."
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 5:21 PM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Now is definitely a good time to have students discuss and analyze freedom of speech and its relationship to offensive and racist imagery, but not to force that imagery on them.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 5:30 PM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I absolutely would not do this whatsoever, even with your idea of making it optional. Remember the controversy of when South Park did it? And they were doing it as obscurely as possible.

There is waaaaaaaaaaaay too much (very likely) offense and drama that will come from this. I don't think it's worth your career to risk it, and in this case, it might.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:31 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

What is it that you want your students to get out of this exercise that they can't get from a less potential-clusterfuck topic? Unless it is specifically important that your students respond right now to this particular fraught issue, why not choose some other challenging current situation? Why not choose some other controversial image? (Seriously, I had a student drop out of a class without telling me why - I asked her later because I had a horrible sinking feeling and we did sort of resolve things - because of some dumb shit that went down around [racial issue which affected her]. I do not feel good for having started something in class that I was not myself sophisticated or knowledgeable enough to run successfully. Framing this as "will students be so sensitive as to be offended" is not, IME, a very accurate way of reflecting on students' experience in a class.)

If this is a class that you have already framed as "you will be learning to respond quickly to painful and uncomfortable topics in order to form you as a news professional; you may encounter personally offensive stuff and you may encounter offensive views from your fellow students or be called to account for your own" this might be reasonable. If not, then not.
posted by Frowner at 5:32 PM on January 8, 2015 [18 favorites]

If can you write the assignment such that not viewing the image is viable option, why not just have everyone do it that way?
posted by aubilenon at 5:33 PM on January 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Frowner makes a good point. Why not do the same assignment, but with "Piss Christ", Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary", or "A Fire In My Belly", instead? All of the above are images that Christian groups have attempted to censor for similar reasons to controversy over the depiction of Muhammad.
posted by Sara C. at 5:46 PM on January 8, 2015 [18 favorites]

The Koran does not forbid images of Mohammed. That's in the Hadith. And even that is open to interpretation.

This is a very timely assignment if your course is about journalism, or current events. If your course is not about this, then. . . not sure why you're doing it.

Please understand that, unfortunately, you may be putting your life at risk if you decide to assign this to your class.

Finally, if a student gets offended -- so what? Unless your university has strict speech codes, it hardly matters.
posted by gsh at 5:53 PM on January 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

It's a shitty situation for Muslim students, image or no image. I'm not an observant Muslim, I don't have super strong feelings about the image of Muhammad other than thinking that it's rude as fuck to spring it on Muslims and that it's disrespectful to people of faith.

It's not the image itself I would be offended by so much as the shitstorm using it and having a discussion about it would entail. And I agree with Frowner that it would make me feel like a "subject" more than a student. Ask yourself, if you have Muslim students, are you expecting them to respond to this assignment as Muslims, or as the "default"/majority secular or Christian student? Are you prepared to engage with this topic with any Muslim students you have on their own terms, or are you and your other students going to do that thing where the minority's lived experience is invalidated in favor of talking about things in theory?

If you really must use this specific scenario, then just set it out in the question and leave out the image itself: "There has been recent controversy over the depiction of Muhammad in political cartoons. A national newspaper has published one of these political cartoons. You are the image critic for a national newspaper and must respond to this image event with a written editorial."

Personally speaking, I'd probably skip this assignment and the discussion section about it. I don't require that all my classroom environments be safe spaces, but that doesn't mean I feel like dealing with this kind of discussion. So never mind whether you're offending students or not, weigh whether it's worth it to you to make the classroom environment that uncomfortable for some of your students.
posted by yasaman at 6:07 PM on January 8, 2015 [23 favorites]

You profile suggests you're in Chicago. Any Muslim students in the class (who might not be open about their religion, by the way) will very likely be in the minority. They may feel like they have no choice but to click on the link and participate to the fullest extent. Additionally, students with less-than-charitable views of Islam may take it as an opportunity.

If I were a student, I would be really uncomfortable with my prof doing this.
posted by a hat out of hell at 6:07 PM on January 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

I personally would put this in the same category as forcing students to look at sexually explicit images, or depictions of gore and violence. Yeah, some folks will be fine with it, maybe even most folks, but the ones who aren't will find it deeply disturbing, so if you give a damn about other people at all then you won't do it.

On the other hand, if you're simply asking students to write about the significance of these sorts of images, then I don't see a problem. Just don't force them to look at it.
posted by sam_harms at 6:09 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Absolutely do not turn the Charlie Hebdo attack into a school project, are you kidding? Right now we are in the immediate aftermath of this happening and people are going to have very strong emotional responses. At this moment in history, discussion of whether you can show an image of Mohammad in class is actually your secondary concern.
posted by capricorn at 6:10 PM on January 8, 2015 [26 favorites]

I am going to picture what I would think if a seminar leader used some kind of offensive image related to my religion and how I would feel. I would think that the teacher was going for a cheap thrill and trying to pose as "subversive" rather than teaching something substantial.

Here's the thing about the work of Charlie Hebdo and that Danish newspaper with the depiction of Mohammed: they were poor quality and not very funny. "Piss Christ" at least had some redeeming artistic photographic value whose controversy was embedded solely in the title.

It is the nature of our western notions of freedom that we (ideally) grant freedom and defend even low rent hustlers like Larry Flynt for their stupid cartoons. That does not mean that they have any important pedagogical value.

It's even less valuable for non Muslim students because the material ends up being presented to them as some kind of valuable yet forbidden artwork while not actually being anything controversial for them.
posted by bright colored sock puppet at 6:17 PM on January 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'd like to disagree with many of these replies. The course is "contemporary culture images"?

What's a more contemporary cultural image than one which is linked to a massacre and an outrage?

Compare and contrast with similarly offensive (to some) images and the responses. Shit, add an historical context. What images had that response in the middle ages?

See this article: " [I]t is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive."

I couldn't agree more.

Is it contentious? Yes. Is it offensive to some? Absolutely. If people can't deal with that in graduate school then what's the point of higher ed?
posted by colin_l at 6:28 PM on January 8, 2015 [16 favorites]

Please don't exchange images offensive to one religion in an effort to avoid images offensive to a different religion. That's just gross.
posted by themanwho at 6:37 PM on January 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

What's a more contemporary cultural image than one which is linked to a massacre and an outrage?

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there really is no "contemporary cultural image" in this particular case. It's actually pretty different from something like "A Fire In My Belly", which is a video installation that was created as a commentary on homophobia and the AIDS crisis. In that case, there's a specific image that actually exists, it's a powerful statement about an important contemporary issue all on its own, and then you add religion and censorship to the mix.

The infamous Danish Muhammad cartoon isn't even funny or interesting, or really a particularly "contemporary" image, considering that it's a stodgy political cartoon that bears a stronger resemblance to 19th century racist caricatures than anything else.

Not to mention that the current kerfuffle doesn't even have to do with any particular work, it's just "should it be OK to do this thing that strongly offends members of a minority religion".
posted by Sara C. at 6:50 PM on January 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Personally, I think a more telling "contemporary culture image" would be a selection of the responses different cartoonists have made to the tragedy - while some feature things like broken pencils, others are pretty Islamophobic themselves, and comparing the range of responses could make for a discussion in its own right.

Also, personally, I think that the warning that your life would be at risk is a bit histrionic.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:55 PM on January 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

If it's a graduate school seminar, then it's a little different than an undergrad course.

The closest thing would be to do a project on the response to Charlie Hebdo, whether photographs of protests in the media, responses from cartoonists.

By asking students to discuss the "initial images" in the first place, you force students to take a stance in relation to the initial attack as well as to Islam, which is a loaded question. ("Do you agree or not agree that the attack was violent?" "Do you agree or not agree that we should be able to discuss images of Muhammad?", etc)

By discussing the response to the attack, you'd be asking students to be thoughtful and to consider many different viewpoints/mediums/voices/framing devices in response to an event. Consider: this essay vs. this slideshow, etc.

Or, on preview, what EmpressCallipygos said.
posted by suedehead at 6:56 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't think a professor at a secular university has an obligation to avoid an important learning experience to appease religious students' religious beliefs. No one would seriously suggest a graduate school professor avoid discussion of abortion or homosexuality or evolution or feminism or Piss Christ because it might offend religious students, even though all those things are wildly offensive to some believers. (Indeed some will apparently suggest Piss Christ as an alternative, as if there is some reason why you should feel comfortable offending some members of one religion but not some members of another.) (Also, most of those topics are avoided in public elementary, middle, and high schools in the U.S. because of fears of offending the most conservative Christians. Does anyone really think this is a good thing?)

When I've had professors teach hard topics like rape or racial profiling, they gave advance warning about it and sometimes offered an alternative assignment. There is some merit to this, but why should a professor at a secular school have to offer an alternative that appeased religious belief? If you assign Piss Christ must you offer an alternative work? If you assign the memoir of a gay author, must you assign something that won't upset the homophobes? If you're teaching evolution, must you assign a work on creationism? What about feminism, does it have to be paired with something from Focus on the Family? Obviously, there are a lot of people who think you do need to appease certain religious beliefs. Whether you assign this at all and whether you assign an alternative image will depend on how important you think the learning experience is and how ready you are to weather a shitstorm.
posted by Mavri at 7:00 PM on January 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

One thing I want to add: I agree that you shouldn't feel obligated to appease religious beliefs. That's not all this is about though. Please consider that if you have any Muslim students, having this discussion in the immediate wake of a terrorist attack means they have some reason to be concerned for their safety. There have been attacks on mosques in France already, and trust me, Muslims (and Sikhs) are always at least a little more worried about hate crimes in the wake of any terrorist attack . Is it likely that anything would happen to them thanks to a grad school assignment and discussion, however contentious? No, but it's not totally unreasonable to be concerned, and it's not exactly the kind of thing that fosters a good classroom environment.
posted by yasaman at 7:23 PM on January 8, 2015 [9 favorites]

As a public relations professional for a large university, this is exactly the kind of thing -- at a very, very sensitive time -- that would make our lives difficult and make your life a living hell. If the wrong people grab onto this, from whatever angle, you could be dealing with Bill O'Reilly, state legislators, people calling your department chair, people finding your house, people flooding your email, funding reduced to TAs or your department...

I'm not exaggerating. On a good day, people could get upset and write thoughtful letters. On a bad day... you really, really don't want to know what a bad day is like. Your smallish action could become the example for Everything Wrong With People At That University. And at a time like this, that could happen way too easily.
posted by Madamina at 7:24 PM on January 8, 2015 [19 favorites]

I would worry less about offending Muslims with the image itself (although that is a real concern) than offending Muslims with the intimation that you're baiting them. It's a trying time for Muslims and a lot of them are feeling put under an uncomfortable spotlight. An assignment like that, at a time like this, could well make moderates --- who might under other circumstances shrug at the ostensible blasphemy --- feel tested and like you were specifically targeting them. That would make me very uncomfortable.

Now, maybe making your students feel comfortable isn't your goal, but this is less "outside my comfort zone, my mind is blown" uncomfortable and more "I am worried that if I step the wrong way and say the wrong thing the prof is going to flip out" uncomfortable.
posted by jackbishop at 7:55 PM on January 8, 2015 [9 favorites]

My general rule is that if I have to put the line "Any responses that break campus rules or are deliberately discriminatory or attack other students will be referred to the campus discipline board and/or the Dean of Students" in the assignment, then I need a new assignment. This seems like one of those situations.
posted by joycehealy at 7:59 PM on January 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

In fact, here's an idea: how could you make an assignment for your students that doesn't poke at a beehive but instead uses the exploration of contemporary issues to HELP the people -- Muslims and others -- who are probably feeling extra vulnerable right now?

If you're trying to explore the power of media to make and encourage change, it seems like you could make way more of an impact doing something positive than adding to the chorus of people exploring how just how upset other people can get.
posted by Madamina at 8:06 PM on January 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ideally I think you want all the students to have similar learning experiences from each project you assign. In this case, some of your class is going to have the experience of writing in an academic way about images that they may have a very personal response to, and others in the class will not. Some students will have the experience of engaging with the concept of otherness and maybe thinking about religious minorities for the first time, and others will not.

I think you should figure out what you want your students to get from this task, and then design it so that all students will share that outcome.

For example, you could ask the students each to pick an image that they feel personally offended by, and to write about that. If you want them to learn to set aside emotion when doing so, you could specifically say that you want them to try to write about it from a non-personal, non-emotional perspective.

For an assignment like that, some students may choose a cartoon of Mohammed, but no one will have to.
posted by lollusc at 8:11 PM on January 8, 2015 [15 favorites]

I know your intentions are good but I'd recommend doing something else, especially with the current timing. They're graduate students so they should understand the assignment without a visual example: why not let them choose "a controversial contemporary image" to write about? You could orally state a few examples and let them know they can see you if they have trouble finding one.

[Edit: lollusc and I have essentially the same plan with different wording, whoops! Please excuse the repeat and count this as a double endorsement!]
posted by smorgasbord at 8:56 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Related to the idea that Muslim students in the class might react to the assignment by feeling more like subjects than students, it's important to realize also that non-Muslim students from Muslim countries or those who appear to look like they are from Muslim countries may feel lumped in. As the teacher, you might know that the Turkish kid in the class is a Christian or that the Palestinian kid has Muslim parents but he isn't practicing but the other students might not know that and this might become another opportunity for them to feel "other."

I understand the interest in challenging religious ideals, especially based on recent events, but I think people frequently share a cultural identity without the religion, if that makes sense. I wouldn't describe myself as a practicing Catholic, for example, but I still wouldn't think it was cool to talk shit about the Pope. Even though the title doesn't mean a lot to me, I know it means a lot to other people, including people in my family, so to insult him, especially just to be provocative, seems unnecessarily hostile. And unlike displaying images of Muhammad, talking shit about the Pope is not specifically against my (former?) religion.

I don't know if I'm being clear but I don't think this is a great idea. It is possible that there might be a very well thought out way to do this right but I couldn't tell you what that is.
posted by kat518 at 9:01 PM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I like the ideas people have written above about allowing students to choose from a range of options, or come up with their own image to write about.

However, I am wary of the idea of shying away from discussing or engaging with a difficult topic because some people might be made uncomfortable. There is no such thing in our society as a right not to be made uncomfortable. If you cannot talk about this sort of issue in a university, an institute of learning and free inquiry, where can you talk about it?
posted by number9dream at 9:31 PM on January 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

This would be potentially disturbing, disconcerting, controversial, and provocative. Some of your students might feel passionately about it and insist on expressing their opinion. You might even incite a debate that could expose impressionable students to different points of view. Go for it.
posted by John Cohen at 9:34 PM on January 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

It sounds absolutely relevant to the graduate school course you are teaching, and anyone taking such a course should be able to handle it. If they cannot, they really shouldn't be there - a liberal education is supposed to directly challenge that sort of attitude. Do it.
posted by moorooka at 11:38 PM on January 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

This sounds very unwise.

Strongly suggest you come up with an alternative image/way to get the teaching point across.
posted by zia at 12:32 AM on January 9, 2015

Maybe you could do a project on some parts of the controversy, without using the cartoons as such as project material.

(From the linked Wikipedia article) "In December, after failing to make any progress with the Danish government or the newspaper, the "Committee for Prophet Honouring" decided to gain support and leverage outside of Denmark by meeting directly with religious and political leaders in the Middle East. They created a 43-page dossier (commonly known as the Akkari-Laban dossier, after two leading imams (Arabic: ملف عكّاري لبن‎)) containing the cartoons and supporting materials for their meetings. (...) On 1 February, BBC World incorrectly reported that one of the images had been published in Jyllands-Posten. This image was later found to be a wire-service photograph of a contestant at a French pig-squealing contest in the Trie-sur-Baise's annual festival. One of the other two additional images (a photograph) portrayed a Muslim being mounted by a dog while praying, and the other (a cartoon) portrayed Muhammad as a demonic paedophile. (...) Additions such as the "pig" photograph may have polarised the situation (the association of a person and a pig is considered very insulting in Islamic culture), as they were confused for the cartoons published in the newspaper."

The "pic squealing" picture has several times been mentioned directly or indirectly as a part of the original cartoons. When self-identifying Muslims would rather not see the original cartoons, they depend on descriptions from others. And in this case, some of those "others", those who created this dossier, did not give a correct description of the cartoons. In fact, several of the original cartoons did not even depict the Prophet: "one deliberately evades the issue and depicts a school child in Denmark named Muhammad rather than the prophet Muhammad, one is based on a Danish cultural expression, and one includes a Danish politician."

Also (again from Wikipedia) "Muslims who met with the group later said Akkari's delegation had given them the impression that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen somehow controlled or owned Jyllands-Posten."
posted by iviken at 2:29 AM on January 9, 2015

Given that the idea of "sharpening contradictions" between Muslims and everyone else is exactly what the architects of this week's atrocities would want you to do, I think your proposed plan is at best naïve and at worst actively destructive. Don't do this. Do what lollusc suggests.
posted by bimbam at 2:45 AM on January 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

There are some interesting things to discuss around Mohammad cartoons (i.e. how the idea of free speech started, colonialism and Europe's growing Muslim minority, where the prohibition against images of Mohammad began, ISIS's use of terror spectacle to recruit, etc). However I share Frowner's feeling that you would have to be some kind of magical master of classroom discussion to get an interesting discussion out of most classes this week. I give it about seven minutes before someone insinuates that Muslims are backwards savages compared to enlightened Westerners, and then it's going downhill from there.

Also, I'm not a Muslim, but if you put those cartoons up in a graduate seminar where I was the student, and you didn't have something REALLY REVELATORY to say about them, I would not be happy with you. "Here's some inflammatory racist material which has set off riots and interracial murders! What do you think?" sounds more like a Jerry Springer hour than an interesting lesson plan.
posted by feets at 5:37 AM on January 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

Columbia J-School has a case study teaching aid on Le Monde and the Mohammed cartoons, which might or might not be helpful.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 6:44 AM on January 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

You could also broaden the discussion to be about offensive imagery in general. Robert Mapplethorpe and the NEA, the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins logos and names, things like that.

The discussion could be around when is the offense relevant and when isn't it? When is there a moral responsibility to self-censor versus a professional, ethical one, versus a potential legal one?
posted by colin_l at 10:03 AM on January 9, 2015

The best case scenario, in my opinion, is that your students have a positive experience related to the assignment and emerge better people for it. The worst case scenario: I don't know but it could be very bad. The most likely scenario is something in between but I think the odds of it going over badly are significantly higher than the odds of it going over well, so the most likely scenario would lean closer towards the worst case than the best case. Based on that fake math, I'd skip it.
posted by kat518 at 2:31 PM on January 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't think a professor at a secular university has an obligation to avoid an important learning experience to appease religious students' religious beliefs.

This. Look, if your class has anything to do with political science, sociology, journalism, or religion, this is a great learning opportunity. Yes, people were murdered because of feelings about this. People are murdered over feelings all over the world all of the time, every single day. To suggest that it would be wrong to teach about an important controversy simply because some people are offended by it goes against the principles of academic freedom that created the university system.

Given that this is a graduate level class, I would say no go ahead.
posted by corb at 2:52 PM on January 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's not about whether they CAN handle it. It's whether the interest of doing so outweighs the value of respect for other people's beliefs.

I had to dissect a fetal pig in high school. I loved science, but I almost tried to get through high school without taking biology because I was so repulsed by the idea (years in advance). When the teacher walked in with a clear trash bag full of fetal pigs, I sprinted out of the classroom and ran to the library, crying. It was just way too much to deal with.

Eventually I returned to the classroom. I decided to do it after all, even though my teacher offered other options for me and any other students who wanted to avoid it.

I felt indifferent about the experience of dissecting a pig. What I appreciated far more was the fact that people didn't make fun of me for being grossed out by something that was, in fact, gross. The only reason I went back to the classroom was that I knew I didn't have to take part, but was supported either way.

The human decency still meant more to me than whatever I was supposed to learn in the lesson. Surely you could structure things around that.

I don't have the right to remain comfortable, but asking politely shouldn't be seen as infringing upon academic freedom. If it's not an essential part of a specific degree program, there's always another option.
posted by Madamina at 4:48 PM on January 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Islam doesn't actually say you can't make an image of the prophet. It says you can't worship an image of the prophet. This has led to some zealots trying to ban images because they might be worshipped, but nobody is going to worship a Charlie Hebdo cartoon. You would be pandering purely to misconceptions and helping to perpetuate them if you self-censored when covering this vital topical issue with your class.
posted by w0mbat at 1:03 PM on January 10, 2015

Islam doesn't actually say you can't make an image of the prophet. It says you can't worship an image of the prophet. This has led to some zealots trying to ban images because they might be worshipped, but nobody is going to worship a Charlie Hebdo cartoon. You would be pandering purely to misconceptions and helping to perpetuate them if you self-censored when covering this vital topical issue with your class.

Yeah, that's not helping. Shi'a Muslims don't have the same taboo/prohibition around images of Muhammad (there's a fairly prominent mural in a public place in Tehran), but a) you don't know who's Sunni or Shi'a and b) unsurprisingly, there is no real widespread agreement about this issue among Muslims but you can safely presume they know more about the issue and have thought more about it than a presumably mostly non-Muslim class. It's also the kind of issue that has a vastly different context when it's an in-group versus out-group discussion. This kind of "Well actually"ing is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about above where the majority ignores what the minority says about their lived experience in favor of some abstract scenario. I assure you, that is a shitty position to put a student in.

Here's a comparison: some Muslims think shellfish is halal, some don't. Say you serve shellfish to an observant Muslim. They tell you, "hey, I can't eat that, it's not halal." Is the appropriate response to "well actually" them and start on a long debate about how shellfish is indeed halal, insisting all the while that they should totally eat that shellfish? I think most can agree that would be rude, and that the guest would have reason to be upset.

Like others have said, whatever your purpose is with this assignment, there are so many potential ways it can be thoroughly derailed that I think it's a bad assignment, especially now. So per your original question, there are a lot of ways this could upset a Muslim student, entirely apart from the image of Muhammad itself.
posted by yasaman at 3:15 PM on January 10, 2015

With regard to who might be offended, I see the Charlie Hebdo cartoons as belonging to two classes. Some are plain old political cartoons that I imagine would only offend people who are upset about images of the Prophet. Others are basically the cartoon version of someone yelling "HEY MUSLIMS, WE HATE YOU" and might be offensive to anyone who doesn't enjoy racialized provocation.

I was going to write something more but I think the cartoonist Joe Sacco has expressed my basic idea much more eloquently here than anything I could have written: On Satire, A Response to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks
posted by feets at 12:24 AM on January 11, 2015

Joe Sacco's point is well taken, but I think it speaks to why this is important class material. I'd include Sacco's response as part of the assignment. "So here are some inflammatory, race-baiting cartoons that yesterday we could have ignored but today we can't." I think the discussion has lots of educational places to go. And I think Joe Sacco is graciously pointing out one of the interesting ones.
posted by colin_l at 1:37 AM on January 11, 2015

You could frame the assignment much the way the discussion here is framed: How do we discuss images when the discussion is fraught and difficult?
posted by colin_l at 1:45 AM on January 11, 2015