The Image of Islam

Apparently the ban on images of the prophet Muhammad isn't universal among clerics.

In Saudi Arabia, the strict Wahhabi form is prevalent and it is customary to ban images, though even there other strictures are being relaxed. And according to an AP story from Beirut in today's Sun Times, "Some clerics and scholars, mostly Shiites, say Muhammad may be depicted if the artist's intentions are sincere and the drawings follow the general descriptions of the prophet in religious books".
In an opinion piece in today's WSJ, Amir Taheri goes further and relates a long tradition of Islamic imagery and satire, and cautions western observers to recognize the distinction between religious and secular Islamic groups:

But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The "rage machine" was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood--a political, not a religious, organization--called on sympathizers in the Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera. Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood's rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party's 60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

He states: "There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else." and "The claim that the ban on depicting Muhammad and other prophets is an absolute principle of Islam is also refuted by history. Many portraits of Muhammad have been drawn by Muslim artists, often commissioned by Muslim rulers. " (For many of these pictures, see my earlier post, "An Archive of Images):

Now to the second claim, that the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. That is true if we restrict the Muslim world to the Brotherhood and its siblings in the Salafist movement, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda. But these are all political organizations masquerading as religious ones. They are not the sole representatives of Islam, just as the Nazi Party was not the sole representative of German culture. Their attempt at portraying Islam as a sullen culture that lacks a sense of humor is part of the same discourse that claims "suicide martyrdom" as the highest goal for all true believers. The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more than a decade.

Taheri goes on to give more examples of satire in Islamic literature.

More voices of Muslim moderation are rising.

Thankfully in Afghanistan its senior cleric called for a stop to the violence:

"Islam says it's all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence. This must stop," said senior cleric Mohammed Usman, a member of the Ulama Council _ Afghanistan's top Islamic organization. "We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam."

And in a press released issued jointly with the heads of the UN and EU, the leader of the world's largest Islamic group stated: "Aggression against life and property can only damage the image of a peaceful Islam."