The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet - Newsweek

[WillyT]

The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet
By Christiane Gruber - Newsweek
1/9/15 at 4:43 PM



<snip>

In the wake of the massacre that took place in the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, I have been called upon as a scholar specializing in Islamic paintings of the Prophet to explain whether images of Muhammad are banned in Islam.

The short and simple answer is no. The Koran does not prohibit figural imagery. Rather, it castigates the worship of idols, which are understood as concrete embodiments of the polytheistic beliefs that Islam supplanted when it emerged as a purely monotheistic faith in the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century.

Moreover, the Hadith, or Sayings of the Prophet, present us with an ambiguous picture at best: At turns we read of artists dared to breathe life into their figures and, at others, of pillows ornamented with figural imagery.

If we turn to Islamic law, there does not exist a single legal decree, or fatwa, in the historical corpus that explicitly and decisively prohibits figural imagery, including images of the Prophet. While more recent online fatwas can surely be found, the decree that comes closest to articulating this type of ban was published online in 2001 by the Taliban, as they set out to destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

In their fatwa, the Taliban decreed that all non-Islamic statues and shrines in Afghanistan be destroyed. However, this very modern decree remains entirely silent on the issue of figural images and sculptures within Islam, which, conversely, had been praised as beneficial and educational by Muhammad 'Abduh, a prominent jurist in 19th century Egypt.

In sum, a search for a ban on images of Muhammad in pre-modern Islamic textual sources will yield no clear and firm results whatsoever.

<snip>

More: http://www.newsweek.com/koran-does-not-forbid-images-prophet-298298

[Turbineguy]

1. Oh dear....

they've been murdering all those people for nothing then.

Well, other than the satisfaction of murdering people.

[LiberalArkie]

3. Kind of like the Fundy Christians blowing up clinics and killing people because

the bible says thou shalt not kill. Go figure.

[samsingh]

6. but Christianity at large condemns those acts without hesitation

[WillyT]

7. Yep... Fundamentalists Of All Stripes Are Willig To Kill For Their Beleifs...

Curious that they all have some form of Hell...

God is supposed to sort where one resides in the after-life...

The question is... why do the fundamentalists disrespect the ability of their God to do so ???

Why do they feel the need to step into God's shoes and send them to Hell before their God judges them ???

[NYC_SKP]

2. Extremists being extreme, misrepresenting the faith. Happens all the time.

.

Sooner or later it's going to come out that the attacks on Hebdo weren't about retribution for the offensive cartoons.

The offensive cartoons were just a convenient hook to hang an attack onto, to foment more anger and outrage, recruit more young souls to become terrorists, and move that much closer to a Holy Culture War.

I knew this before the attacks, and it's finally being explained by some in the media, like Joe Sacco, but hardly anyone on the DU seemed to realize it. You're an exception, WillyT.

Big picture people, never lose sight of the big picture.

Juan Cole nailed it:

Juan Cole has some insightful words on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

As he points out, the shooters were neither "attacking free speech" nor "defending Mohammed"; they were using a time-honored tactic of radical extremists (of all stripes): "sharpening the contradictions," hoping to provoke an overreaction that would lead to repression and persecution of Muslims in general -- thus helping the extremists recruit new members.

This is what bin Laden did with such spectacular success with 9/11: provoking an endless global war, with Western "interventions" and "targeted assassinations" and drone strikes that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people -- all of which, as our own security services tell us, have fed the flames of extremism and made the situation worse.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html

[LiberalArkie]

5. Kind of like whites killing blacks hoping it will start the proverbial "race riots"

so they can take all their expensive guns and start killing for the fun of it. Like after Katrina in New Orleans.

[NYC_SKP]

8. They did do that, like after the Rodney King verdict.

Michael Savage is calling for a holy war and a race war, depending on the day of the week.

Savage: 'I blame Dianne Feinstein for Paris massacre'

[brooklynite]

34. "Misrepresenting the faith"....how convenient

Nice to know there's a CORRECT representation of each religion that everyone agrees to.

[NYC_SKP]

36. Were you thinking that the attacks were really representative of the faith? Were you?

Were you really thinking that?

[brooklynite]

38. Representative of the faith as most people practice it? No

But, representative of the faith as it claims the divine entity defines it? Not sure how you say "no"...

[NYC_SKP]

39. I guess it's a little bit a matter of semantics.

None of my Muslin friends feel that their faith supports such acts.

However, it's clear that the people who sanction it do so under the banner of religion, just as Abortion Clinic bombers do.

Kind of a false flag operation, then.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Might it be that the purpose of castizing the worship of idols, while not prohibitng their imagrey

outright, is so murderers and criminals and the plainly insane do not abuse the imagrey for self serving purposes?

[Warpy]

27. The original fear was that images of the prophet

would be set up as idols to take the place of god because god was unknowable and therefore resistant to being rendered by artists.

It was a legitimate fear back in 600 AD but they've taken it to ridiculous levels now.

[Fred Sanders]

30. No, "they" have not. A few mad men have, because mad men are like that.

[NYC_SKP]

37. A. No, only a few have. B. It's not unique to Islam.

That POV has been adopted and promoted by some among the Christian faiths over past centuries, as well.

It's not something that many really care about, and it's being used in modern times as an excuse to be violent by extremists who aren't representative.

[oberliner]

9. Maybe the author can present a Mohammed drawing of her own

Since no such images are banned in Islam, there should be no trepidation in doing so.

[WillyT]

10. Why Should She... The Point Is Already Made...

Figure 1. The Prophet Muhammad enthroned, surmounted by angels, and surrounded by his companions, Firdawsi, Shahnama (Book of Kings), probably Shiraz, Iran, early 14th century. Freer/Sackler Museum of Asian Art/Smithsonian Institution


Figure 2. Black ink sketch of the Prophet Muhammad enthroned, Iran, 14th century. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin


Figure 3. Isaiah’s vision of Jesus riding a donkey and Muhammad riding a camel, al-Biruni, al-Athar al-Baqiyya ‘an al-Qurun al-Khaliyya (Chronology of Ancient Nations), Tabriz, Iran, 1307-8. Edinburgh University Library. Edinburgh University Library

Same as OP.

[oberliner]

11. To underline her point

It would be good to have an example slightly more recent than the 14 century.

[WillyT]

12. The Bible/Torah Are Far Older Than That...

Do you have any more modern information that helps us see the new thinking in those religions ???

And how does one dismiss the ancient teaching for the modern ones ???

I was led to believe that those were bedrock in their thinking.

[oberliner]

16. Yes indeed they are

But there are oodles of drawings and images of Jesus and Moses and such of all types - both dignified and profane over the past 600 years. Seems like much less so for Mohammed. Especially ones more of the South Park/Family Guy variety (shows that have presented cartoon images of Jewish and Christian icons with some regularity).

[WillyT]

24. And How Does "Modern" Christianity Feel About Sodomy ???

And do they even know what the word means ???

[rhett o rick]

13. Yeah so what? The Bible doesn't say Jesus was born on Christmas day.

[WillyT]

14. But.. but... I Thought There Was A War On Christmas ???

Although... ours was lovely this year.

[rhett o rick]

23. Even people that don't believe that Christmas had anything to do with the birth

of Christ can enjoy the holiday. After all it was a holiday long before the birth of Christ. The "War on Christmas" is in Bill O's head. And it gets lonely in there.

[joeglow3]

18. Are you comparing the day people celebrate a birth to murdering people over a picture?

[rhett o rick]

25. No of course not. The OP is about how some read something into the Quran that isn't there.

I was merely making a comparison as to how some think the Bible says that Jesus was born on Christmas day, when in actuality the Christians hijacked a pagan holiday and made it all about Jesus.

I don't for a minute have a problem with Christians pretending that Christmas is the birth of Christ. But they better not give me a bad time if I call it X-mas.

[joeglow3]

26. Sorry. I was just fucking with you.

I knew what you meant.

[rhett o rick]

33. Dang I am really poor at catching sarcasm.

[Rhinodawg]

15. Does DU forbid images of the prophet ?

[RandiFan1290]

29. Did you miss the one in the OP?

[Warren DeMontague]

17. Here is how I interpret the broad religious warnings against "graven images" and why

They are a classic example of how religion, as practiced by humans, tends to get fundamental concepts wildly, spectacularly, disasterously wrong.

I believe the original messaging- which turns up in many religions, including the western monotheisms- was specifically intended to communicate the idea that "God" the concept was too big, broad, and ineffable to be contained in a word, a symbol, a picture.

More widely the intent, the deep intent, is hopefully to get people to grok that ALL their language, their symbolic abstractions, while undeniably useful tools, are just that- a necessarily limited and limiting fascimile of the real "thing", which which exists above, beyond, and outside of language.

The point is that no map will ever perfectly reflect the territory. So as long as you remember that you are dealing with a map, and not the actual thing itself, you're fine.

Religion, of course, misinterprets this to "kill everyone who makes maps"

[Burf-_-]

19. Take a break from all this for a bit, and listen to SLAYER !!!

I find it quite theraputic and relaxing.

[kwassa]

20. So what? It is a commonly-held belief in Sunni Islam, and that's all that matters.

The images of Mohammed are not from any of the Arab countries, but from areas further east.

And the Hadith is important and the source of the interpretation.

edit to add:

You will find no graven images of any people in any Islamic architecture. No pictures of people at all. Simply geometric design and calligraphy of Koranic verses.

[Burf-_-]

21. Correction

SLAYER IS ALL THAT MATTERS !!!!!!

[kwassa]

22. I stand corrected.

[brooklynite]

35. Except where you do...

...I visited Uzbekistan lat year and representational art on the Madraddas in Samarkand was a high point.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. Islam as practised by the majority Muslims today, however, does.

The idea that there is a platonic form of a religion that can be deduced from a literal reading of its holy books, and that people not practising the religion the way you think they should are Getting It Wrong, is a foolish one.

"Islam" is best defined as "the religion practised by muslims".

[Turborama]

32. That's what the Taliban and ISIS would like you to believe

They think they speak for the "majority of Muslims" as well, but they don't.