US varsity professor sacked for showing blasphemous images

WASHINGTON: An American professor has been sacked from her university post after showing students images of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), triggering controversy and a heated debate over academic freedom and religion.

Erika Lopez Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University in Minnesota, provoked an outcry among Muslim students when she displayed what she described as two centuries-old images during her art history class last October.

Lopez Prater told The New York Times she was aware many Muslims hold beliefs that prohibit such depictions, and that she warned students that she would be showing such imagery during the course, including in her syllabus for the semester.

But despite the warnings, including one just minutes before she showed what was called a 14th-century painting, at least one Muslim student in the class launched a complaint. Lopez Prater apologised in an email, the student told the school’s student newspaper, The Oracle.

But officials at the small private university in Saint Paul decided to dismiss the professor, deeming the showing of the images “disrespectful and Islamophobic,” The Oracle reported last month.