People never seem to notice the joke in this.
Wikipedia…is refusing to remove medieval artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, despite being flooded with complaints from Muslims demanding the images be deleted. More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam…On two of the images, Muhammad’s face is veiled, a practice followed in Islamic art since the 16th century. But on two others, one from 1315, which is the earliest surviving depiction of the prophet, and the other from the 15th century, his face is shown.
No it isn’t. Of course it isn’t. A face is shown. That’s all. It’s just a generic face. (See?) It could hardly be any more generic. It’s just a kind of symbol of A Face. What makes it Muhammad’s face? Nothing. The caption under the picture, that says ‘depicting Muhammad preaching the Qur’ān in Mecca.’ That’s not much to go on. It could be a volley ball with eyes and a mouth drawn on it, that’s just labeled ‘Muhammad.’ Yet apparently 180,000 people take its genuine faceness seriously enough to fret about its presence on Wikipedia. They should find a more interesting hobby, if you ask me.
Comments
23 responses to “No, the chin is wrong”
And it’s on Wikipedia. They could delete it *themselves*…. Especially if they all took turns…
Nah, they couldn’t, it’s locked. They of course had been deleting it themselves, hence the locking.
I suddenly have this excellent idea for an art installation. A bunch of completely normal faces of people throughout the world, with “Muhammad” as the caption. They’ll be sending people to kill me in no time.
dzd, I.m not sure that’s art as such. However, it could be the start of what refugees from the ’60s called “A Happening.”
I have just been looking at faceless paintings of Mohammad. See link below. http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_face_hidden/
OK, so what you’re saying is that if it WAS a depiction of Muhammad, then it would make sense to say it ought to be taken down. Just asking. I wanted to be sure.
Nope, not saying that! (That’s what I spent a lot of time not saying during the original Motoon spat.)
No, I just think it adds an extra layer of absurdity.
I’m also assuming that as soon as Wiki deletes the images, the 180,000 are going to start lobbying for the destruction of the originals as well, right?
I think you will all find this link helpfull? http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1621
Only one way to go: boycot medieval art from Arabs & Persians! No buying of old carpets and, maybe we should ban oil as well – just to be on the safe side.
The reason they don’t see the joke is that they are basically stupid. The equivalent of imams here in the Western tradition, priests of one stripe or another, usually go through some academic process and are often graduates if not PhDs. Imams, also called scholars, know the Koran. They may know it backwards, in Arabic, English, Farzi and Klingon, but that’s all they know. Idiots savants. Hence, they don’t understand humour, irony, generic representation, the fact that a figure can be looked at without being idolised, since people do it every day with pics in newspapers and with art.
I think he looks much more like Saladin.
Shame that the picture of Mo with the Black Stone caught him just as he was blinking.
I’ve often thought it sad and also confusing that some strands of Islam reject some of the finest art ever produced, Persian miniatures, that were themselves painted by devout Muslims.
But then we had our own religious iconoclasts in the 16th & 17th centuries – a fact to which many defaced cathedrals and churches still bear witness. Or am I guilty of ‘whataboutism’?
Ceci n’est pas Le Prophète
You think that’s a poor image of the Prophet? Try this for Saddam’s first wife:
http://tinyurl.com/ytkw63
Oddly, the online petition (perhaps there are others?) has the following:
“In Islam picture of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and other Humans are not allowed.”
http://tinyurl.com/ysnvjn
What, no humans at all?
The picture to which particular exception is taken is the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Maome.jpg
I’ve never understood how the ‘No images of living things’ school of thought deals with photography and TV.
‘In Islam picture of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and other Humans are not allowed’ – but of course Wikipedia is not in Islam, so why is it supposed to be bound by rules that pertain in Islam?
Don wrote
I’ve never understood how the ‘No images of living things’ school of thought deals with photography and TV.
…..endquote
Interesting point, but I am dammed sure it has allready been addressed by utmost sincerity at some islamic web-site somewhere. (I recently stumbeled into one the other day, where an Imam gave a thorough exegesis on the appropriate length of a man’s beard).
My own non-exegetic take would be that TV pictures are so ephemeral that they often don’t have time to throw themselves to the floor endulging in idolatry. Hence deemed halal :-)
Photo is a much more tricky one. I think that one should be left to a real islamic scholar :-)
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Of course, if they were going to be in any way, shape or form *consistent* in all this, they’d stop distributing videos of Osama bin Laden, not to mention all their other “heroes” doing gruesome things to people on-screen.
But hey, when did consistency bother bigots?
OB: “No it isn’t. Of course it isn’t. A face is shown. That’s all. It’s just a generic face… It could hardly be any more generic. It’s just a kind of symbol of A Face. What makes it Muhammad’s face? Nothing. The caption under the picture, that says ‘depicting Muhammad preaching the Qur’ān in Mecca.’ That’s not much to go on. It could be a volley ball with eyes and a mouth drawn on it, that’s just labeled ‘Muhammad.’”
I think you might be onto something here. Maybe a volleyball with eyes and a mouth drawn on it was/would be an accurate real-life picture of The Prophet. Maybe The Prophet was so touchy about this that he banned all representations of him for all time, and while he was at it (he was not in the best mood that day) all representational art as well.
This starts to make sense of a ridiculous situation.
I suppose the tv, photo, video pictorial representation is covered because the image is not drawn or made by a human, it is a collection of light sensitive spots that capture an image. As for the ban on figurative art in Islam, this (I believe) came from the Christians, the Byzantine Empire. One of the Emporors banned any iconic depictions of saints or the Messiah, and Muhammed heard about this and thought it was a great idea. The anti-iconoclastic aspect of Christianity did not last long, and as we know, the Christian Church (both East and West) became the biggest patron of art.