Why Any Images of Mohammed are Offensive
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Why Any Images of Mohammed are Offensive
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[It's not merely images of Muhammed that are considered in poor taste
in Islam. Religious art in Islam does not contain representations of
human beings generally. Mosques are traditionally decorated with
elaborate and beautiful geometric designs, calligraphy and flowers.
In secular art, humans and other animals appear but not humans or
animals.-NY Transfer]
The Independent (UK) - Feb 3, 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article342866.ece
Mohamed: the messenger of Allah
By Paul Vallely
Images of the Prophet Mohamed have long been discouraged in Islam. The West
has little understanding of why this should be so - nor of the intensity of
the feelings aroused by non-believers' attitudes to the founder of Islam.
To historians, Mohamed was a prophet and religious reformer who united the
scattered Arabian tribes in the 7th century, founding what went on to become
one of the world's five great religions. To Muslims, he was the last in a
line of figures which included Abraham, Moses and Jesus, but which found its
supreme fulfilment in Mohamed.
They believe that he was visited by the Angel Gabriel who commanded him to
memorise and recite the verses sent by God which became the Koran - and that
he completed and perfected the teaching of God throughout history.
Because Muslims believe that Mohamed was the messenger of Allah, they
extrapolate that all his actions were willed by God. A singular love and
veneration thus attaches to the person of Mohamed himself. When speaking or
writing, his name is always preceded by the title "Prophet" and followed by
the phrase: "Peace be upon him", often abbreviated in English as PBUH.
Attempts to depict him in illustration were therefore an attempt to depict
the sublime - and so forbidden.
More than that, to reject and criticise Mohamed is to reject and criticise
Allah himself. Criticism of the Prophet is therefore equated with blasphemy,
which is punishable by death in some Muslim states. When Salman Rushdie, in
his novel The Satanic Verses, depicted Mohamed as a cynical schemer and his
wives as prostitutes, the outcome was - to those with any understanding of
Islam - predictable.
But understanding of Islam is sorely lacking in the West. The culture gap
has its roots in the fact that Christianity - like Hinduism, Buddhism and
Jainism - is essentially an iconographic religion. In its early years, the
Christian world took the statues of the old gods and goddesses of Greece and
morphed them into images of the Virgin Mary and the saints, which were
worshiped in all the churches. Muslims, like Jews, take a polar opposite
view. Islam and Judaism are religions of the word, not the image.
Islam has traditionally prohibited images of humans and animals altogether -
which is why much Islamic art is made up of decorative calligraphy or
abstract arabesque patterns.Throughout history Muslims have cast out,
destroyed or denounced all images, whether carved or painted, as idolatry.
Despite that prohibition, hundreds of images of Mohamed have been created
over the centuries. Medieval Christian artists created paintings and
illuminated manuscripts depicting Mohamed, usually with his face in full
view. Muslim artists from the same era depicted Mohamed too, but usually
left his face blank or veiled.
Sixteenth-century Persian and Ottoman art frequently represented the
Prophet, albeit with his face either veiled, or emanating radiance. One
16th-century Turkish painting, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, shows
Mohamed in very long sleeves so as to avoid showing even his hands.
The ban is not absolute. Today, iconic pictures of Mohamed are sold openly
on the street in Iran. The creation, sale or owning of such images is
illegal, but the regime turns a blind eye (Muslims in Iran are Shia not
Sunni).
Two things are different today. The cartoons published first in Denmark and
now more widely across Europe set out not to depict but to ridicule the
Prophet. And they do so in a climate in which Muslims across the globe feel
alienated, threatened and routinely despised by the world's great powers.
The combination of this with Islam's traditional unhappiness at depictions
of any human form, let alone of their most venerated one, was bound to be
explosive. The affair is an example of Western ignorance and arrogance
combined. We have lit a fire and the wind could take it a long way.
*
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Studley
ALLAH IS A MOON GOD
paedophile .
<NY.Trans...@blythe.org> wrote in message
news:1139073080.18368...@blythe.org...
Richard Dell
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article342866.ece
>
> Mohamed: the messenger of Allah
The Independent is no longer a serious newspaper, it is now just a
scurrilous rag. As for its opinion, it is ill-informed and a primarily
Sunni position, underlined by Salafism.
To surrender to the terror tactics used by Islam is to surrender
freedom, and to forever live in fear, biting your tongue even in the
face of injustice - as liberals throughout the Islamic world are forced
to do.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398853,00.html
The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty,
"Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for
free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not
seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are
not good for any case."
The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most
important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the
west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval
mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom
of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their
lives?
A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the
freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a
freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will
remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress;
ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental
freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights,
individuality; originality and truth.
Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity
with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose
on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the
Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.
This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to
defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not
apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do
we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when,
in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance,
resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes,
eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a
universal educational system where none existed before, the institution
of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the
British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back
to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology
and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was
British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments
that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved
where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.
On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare,
and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh,
Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and Darwin?
Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights
and parliamentary democracy? The West is the source of the liberating
ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law,
human rights and cultural freedom. It is the West that has raised the
status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry,
expression and conscience. No, the West needs no lectures on the
superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut
off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw
acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to
belong to lower castes.
How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when
they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den
of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be
despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer
James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship? Why do they all
want to immigrate to the west and not Saudi Arabia? They should be
taught about the centuries of struggle that resulted in the freedoms
that they and everyone else for that matter, cherish, enjoy, and avail
themselves of; of the individuals and groups who fought for these
freedoms and who are despised and forgotten today; the freedoms that
the much of the rest of world envies, admires and tries to emulate."
When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen
Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of
Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty."
Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it or
it will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed in the
Islamic world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic
world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their
cherished traditions to Enlightenment values.
I Love Edsels
else. Just put one on a t-shirt and wear it around. That's what I plan
to do.
Eric Schon
news:lt9au1pdpgcgaj2lu...@4ax.com:
> I really do not care why these images are offensive, nor should anyone
> else. Just put one on a t-shirt and wear it around. That's what I plan
> to do.
And where are planning on wearing your t-shirt?
;-)
es