The Art of Dhimmitude

The Metropolitan Museum of Art pulls a Yale and removes "offensive" depictions of Islam's main man--an egregious and embarrassing display of dhimmitude. From the New Criterion:

...Last month, The New York Post reported that museum officials seem to have a bad case of “jihad jitters.” The museum, the Post revealed, has “quietly pulled images of Mohammed from its Islamic collection and may not include them in a renovated exhibition area slated to open in 2011.” Why? Museum spokesmen said that the “controversial images” were “objected to by conservative Muslims who say their religion forbids images of their holy founder. 

“Controversial images”? What, in the context of a Western museum of art, is “controversial” about artworks that happen to include representations of a medieval religious figure? Granted, there may be prudish types who object to the quantity of female flesh on display in Déjeuner sur l’herbe or the Venus of Urbino, not to mention a thousand other works. What do you suppose the Met is going to do about the offense they might give? Maybe atheists object to all those depictions of Jesus Christ and his mother that festoon the walls of certain galleries in the Met. How is the Met going to respond to those “controversial images”?

There’s more. Just recently, the Post reported, the Met decided that its Islamic Galleries will be given a new name before they reopen in 2011: “Visitors will stroll around rooms dedicated to art from ‘Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Late South Asia.’” Someone please call the Office of Circumlocution! The Post quoted Kishwar Rizvi, a historian of Islamic Art at Yale, who interjected a bit of common sense into the discussion. Museums “shouldn’t shy away from showing [images of Muhammed] in a historical context,” she said, noting that it was a shame the Met dropped Islamic Art for a cumbersome and problematic rubric...

We seem to live in a world of cumbersome and problematic rubric--"man-caused disaster" and all that. My suggestion: Why not call it "Art from the OIC" and be done with it?