Let's be precise about this. The article sat around for several years with nothing more than a (now-deleted) image of a particular mosque associated with Muhammad. Then it picked up one of the calligraphy roundels and a Persian miniature of the Miraj, both at the end of the article. That latter image, which uses one of the Islamic conventions for "depicting" Muhammad, has stayed with the article until the big battle started, except for a brief period in May 2006 when it was accidentally deleted as part of a reversion. It was restored within a few weeks as part of another reversion.
The trouble began on August 21, 2006, when Hungry Hun, after a few dozen edits, dropped a new image on the page that depicted Muhammad outside of convention. This immediately set off an edit war and heated discussion-- not because Muslims rose up and took offense, but because a lot of non-Muslims were concerned about the inclusion. From that point on there was a constant battle, with more offensive images added (including a western engraving at one point) and the images moved towards the top of the article.
I quit looking at history after June 2007 because by that time the battle was well-established. However, it's quite clear from looking at the early stages that wasn't a case of "we had all the images and the iconoclasts swooped in". We had one image which was not offensive and which stayed unchallenged indefinitely, and then someone stuck in one which was immediately recognized as problematic. It rapidly changed into a WP:POINTed battle over making the offensive image stick and over adding more of the same.
On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/02/2008, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/02/2008, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I think a lot of people are losing sight of a very real issue. It is offensive to many to have to placate religious views they don't agree with.
Conversely, it is deeply offensive to me that we are pandering to people who feel "fuck 'em, free speech" is a valid standpoint to hold in a project founded on *neutrality* and *editorial consensus* - we are in danger of just placating the kneejerk political views of a subset of our editors, I guess.
As far as I'm aware, we've had an image of Muhammad's face in our article for many years. A desire to maintain the status quo (which is based upon our NPOV and no censorship policy) and to stand by our policy is not "fuck 'em, free speech". If issues had been raised and we had introduced the image just to get under their skin, you may be right. Ultimately, if someone thinks they would be offended by an image of Muhammad's face, why would they take a look at an article about Muhammad on a non-Muslim website without being careful?
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
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