Nudity in a classic painting has triggered accusations of Islamophobia in a suburban Paris school

在巴黎郊区的一所学校，一幅经典画作中的裸体引发了对伊斯兰恐惧症的指控

A teacher in suburban Paris is being accused of Islamophobia for showing her class, for the purpose of an analytical exercise, the classic painting ‘Diana and Actaeon’ by Giuseppe Cesari – all because the “five muses of antiquity” depicted happened to be naked. It’s a painting, not a porno.

巴黎郊区的一名教师因在课堂上展示朱塞佩·切萨里的经典画作《戴安娜与阿克托翁》而被指控恐伊斯兰教，而这一切都是因为画中的“五位古代缪斯女神”碰巧是裸体的。这是一幅画，不是色情片。


Although the artist, who has been dead for nearly four centuries, probably didn’t have any intention to offend anyone with his portrayal of the nymphs when he created the piece back in the 17th century, his work apparently now serves as a convenient springboard for the kind of gratuitous victimhood that has become so rampant in the current age of cancel culture, where just about the worst thing you can be accused of is offending anyone.

尽管这位已经去世近四个世纪的艺术家，也许他在17世纪创作这幅画时并没有冒犯任何人的意图，显然，他的作品现在成为了一种无端的受害者情结的便捷跳板，这种情结在当前的“取消文化”时代变得如此猖獗，在这个时代，你被指控的最糟糕的事情就是冒犯某人。

By the end of the school day, parents of the handful of kids at Jacques-Cartier Middle School in the Parisian suburb of Issou, who, according to the school board, had reportedly turned away from the painting when it was presented in class, were already hanging out in front of the school and demanding explanations for what the French press says they qualified as Islamophobic. By the next school day, the school’s teaching staff had exercised their right not to show up to work out of fear, and the French minister of education had to personally show up on campus in an effort to put a lid on a fiasco that risked boiling over.

在巴黎郊区伊苏的雅克-卡地亚中学，据学校董事会称，当这幅画在课堂上展示时，少数几个孩子的家长已经在学校门口徘徊，要求对法国媒体所说的“伊斯兰恐惧症”做出解释。到了第二个上学日，学校的教职员工出于恐惧行使了不上班的权利，法国教育部长不得不亲自出现在校园里，努力制止一场有可能爆发的惨败。

The school is a mere 34 kilometers from the middle school in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, in front of which teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded for showing provocative Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to a class for educational and debate purposes in October 2020. The incident gave rise to a known radical Islamist sending out viral online messages that were picked up and acted on by a motivated 18-year old Muslim refugee who was subsequently killed on site by police responding to the teacher’s assassination. Earlier this month, six juveniles were criminally convicted for collaborating with the killer in targeting Paty.

这所学校距离康弗兰-圣奥诺林的一所中学只有34公里。2020年10月，在这所中学前，教师塞缪尔·帕蒂因在课堂上展示《查理周刊》关于先知穆罕默德的挑衅漫画而被斩首。这一事件引发了一名已知的激进伊斯兰主义者在网上发布病毒式传播的信息，这些信息被一名动机强烈的18岁穆斯林难民接收并采取了行动，该难民随后在现场被回应该教师遇刺事件的警察击毙。本月早些时候，六名青少年因与凶手合作针对帕蒂而被刑事定罪。

Meanwhile, at another middle school in Mantes-la-Jolie, just 9km away from this latest art incident, teachers also briefly exercised their right of withdrawal in early December when they found out that their names had appeared in a parents’ chat group on WhatsApp in the wake of a media literacy lesson by history and geography teachers on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The parents were reportedly shocked that the teaching material used in the class had referred to Hamas as a “terrorist group.”

与此同时，在距离这起最新艺术事件仅9公里的曼特斯-拉-朱莉的另一所中学，老师们也在12月初短暂地行使了他们的撤课权，因为他们发现，在历史和地理老师就巴以冲突上了一堂媒体素养课后，他们的名字出现在了WhatsApp的一个家长聊天群中。据报道，家长们对课堂上使用的教材将哈马斯称为“恐怖组织”感到震惊。

Look, just because a teacher quotes a reference to Hamas as terrorists doesn’t mean that the teacher is Islamophobic or some kind of rabid Zionist. One may not personally agree with that particular characterization – because one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter – but that’s the actual current policy of France and the European unx. The teachers, if they want to do their job as obxtively as possible, don’t have much wiggle room behind adhering to establishment doctrine.

听着，仅仅因为一个老师引用了哈马斯是恐怖分子的说法并不意味着这个老师是伊斯兰恐惧症或某种狂热的犹太复国主义者。人们个人可能不同意这种特殊的描述——因为一个人的恐怖分子是另一个人的自由战士——但这是法国和欧盟目前的实际政策。老师们如果他们想要尽可能客观地完成自己的工作，在坚持建制主义的背后没有太多的回旋余地。

What are they supposed to do – open a debate? Everyone loves that idea until the teacher fails to come down on the side that one favors. With so many teachers fearfully withdrawing their services, it’s no wonder there aren’t enough of them. Last September, about 50% of high schools and middle schools were short at least one teacher, according to the teachers’ unx. This is definitely a step up from the school bedbug infestations that were making headlines for teacher withdrawals earlier this year.

他们应该怎么做，展开辩论吗?每个人都喜欢这个想法，直到老师不能站在大家喜欢的一边。有这么多教师害怕地退出了他们的岗位，难怪他们的人数不够。教师工会的数据显示，去年9月，约50%的高中和初中至少缺一名教师。今年早些时候，学校臭虫泛滥，成为教师退学的头条新闻，这绝对是一个进步。

Much like free speech, statues, drawings, and paintings are also part of Western culture and civilization. One of the main selling points of accepting more immigrants, as promoted by the Western establishment, is that it’s a means of culturally enriching Western democracies even more. Demanding that classical cultural works be covered up, torn down, or censored because they’re offensive to immigrant cultures flies right in the face of that argument.

就像言论自由一样，雕像、素描和油画也是西方文化和文明的一部分。接受更多移民的主要卖点之一，正如西方建制派所推动的那样，是让西方民主国家文化更加丰富的一种方式。因为古典文化作品冒犯了移民文化，就要求它们被遮盖、拆除或审查，这与上述观点是背道而驰的。

Come on, folks. We’re talking about France here. One of the national symbols, Marianne, was perhaps most famously depicted as a topless woman in Eugene Delacroix’s legendary painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’, which depicts the moment of popular victory over the elites during the French Revolution. Anyone who’s offended by the natural female form really made the wrong call when deciding that France was the country for them – from the topless sunbathing that doesn’t even warrant a Gallic shrug, to France being the actual birthplace of the bikini when Louis Réard’s invention made its global debut at Paris’ legendary Molitor pool in 1946.

加油，伙计们。我们说的是法国。作为法国的象征之一，玛丽安可能是尤金·德拉克洛瓦的传奇画作《自由领导人民》中最著名的一个赤裸上身的女人，这幅画描绘了法国大革命期间民众战胜精英的时刻。那些被女性的自然身材冒犯的人，在认为法国是适合他们的国家时，真的是打错了主意——从连高卢人都不屑一耸肩的袒胸日光浴，到1946年路易·兰萨德的发明在巴黎传奇的莫里托泳池首次在全球亮相时，法国实际上是比基尼的诞生地。

Granted, we live in an era of heated conflict where everyone seeks to score against ‘the other team’ by conveniently trying to define inconvenient incidents as warranting a certain label that serves to slam their opponent’s mouth shut – whether it’s from the fear of being accused of ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘Islamophobia’, or ‘anti-Semitism’. This does a huge disservice to the underlying causes that they’re trying to champion by diluting it with triviality. There’s a real, legitimate global sympathy for the thousands of civilians of Gaza currently being killed while the world stands by and bickers over it. Using the conflict as an excuse to infringe on people’s speech isn’t going to win over many hearts and minds.

诚然，我们生活在一个激烈冲突的时代，每个人都试图通过方便地将不方便的事件定义为给对手贴上某种标签，从而让他们闭嘴，无论是出于害怕被指责为“种族主义”，“性别歧视”，“伊斯兰恐惧症”还是“反犹太主义”，来寻求对“另一支队伍”的得分。这对他们试图捍卫的根本原因造成了巨大的伤害，因为他们用琐碎的事情来稀释它。对于加沙成千上万的平民目前被杀害，而世界却袖手旁观并为此争吵不休，这是一种真实的、合理的全球同情。以冲突为借口侵犯人们的言论是不会赢得很多人心的。

There are cases of real Islamophobia, which has a very clear definition of prejudice against Muslims. sextive dislike of some aspects of the cultural repertoire of another country doesn’t fit the bill, just like knee-jerk cries of anti-Semitism shouldn’t be used as a means of bullying critics of Israeli foreign policy into submission and silence. These are two sides of the same rhetorical coin. They serve to effectively quell democratic debate – which may be desirable when used in one’s favor, but certainly isn’t when one’s on the receiving end of the same tactics.
It should be possible, even amid a passionate clash of ideas, to still have nice things like paintings and art – and school teachers who don’t fear for their lives.

有一些真正的伊斯兰恐惧症的案例，对穆斯林的偏见有一个非常明确的定义。选择性地不喜欢另一个国家的文化遗产的某些方面是不符合要求的，就像反犹太主义的本能呼声不应该被用作恐吓以色列外交政策批评者的手段，使他们屈服和沉默。这是同一枚修辞硬币的两面。它们有效地平息了民主辩论——这在有利于自己的时候可能是可取的，但当一个人处于同样策略的接收端时，肯定不是可取的。
即使在激烈的思想冲突中，仍然有可能拥有像绘画和艺术这样的好东西，以及不担心自己生命安全的学校教师。