On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 12:52 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 20/02/2008, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
"increase its educational value, null." May i disagree on this point? They at least show, i suppose, as some of
the
illustrations on the Muhammed articles are some centuries old, that the opinion on this subject has varied over the centuries.
Indeed. I was unaware, until the present discussion, just how widely this viewpoint - that images of Muhammad are verboten in all circumstances - is in fact highly disputed.
For some general background on the Islamic view of depictions of Muhammad, I would suggest the following Wikipedia pages are at least a useful starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
Also, I would suggest that David's characterization as "highly disputed", is something of an oversimplification. It is not really that this is actively "disputed" but more an acknowledgment that there exist different views among the different religious traditions within Islam (starting with Sunni vs. Shi'a). This is much the same way that there exist different religious faiths within Christianity that disagree on any number of issues, but I don't think we would characterize those differences of faith as "disputes", per se.
Also, it is worth noting that ~90% of Muslims come from the Sunni faith, and that most (all?) schools of thought within the modern Sunni tradition do consider images of Muhammad as inappropriate (with varying degrees of fervor). So while it may be useful to acknowledge differences of opinion within Islam, I believe it is also the case that a significant majority of Muslims view representations of Muhammed as (at least) disrespectful.
-Robert Rohde