Today is “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” as artists (and not-so-artists) draw pictures of the Prophet and post them online in order to demonstrate that unilateral calls by one religion to impose its moral and aesthetic will over believers and unbelievers alike will not be tolerated.
My entry is in this post (Mohammed’s the gent at the top of the stairs), and it’s based on the illuminated manuscript seen here (and in much better detail here). It’s a “17th century Ottoman copy of an early 14th century (Ilkhanate period) manuscript of Northwestern Iran or northern Iraq (the ‘Edinburgh codex’).” Representations of the Prophet have by no means been universally forbidden during the history of Islam.
(And for those Christians who choose to mock the religious mania of avoiding visually depicting Mohammed, the origin of the injunction is to protect against idolatry of such images — an idea found in the Ten Commandments (no “graven images”). Iconoclasm has a long tradition in Christianity, and recall how the Reformation saw the stripping (sometimes violent) of a variety of “Popish” religious imagery and icons and decor from Christian churches.)
What EDMD isn’t (for me, at least) is an attempt to disrespect Islam, or even Mohammed. The point is not to say that Islam is awful, or Muslims are violent, or Mohammed was a false prophet; folks who have used the event to bash Islam are missing the point. It’s not even to slam Mohammed by drawing him (albeit poorly). I don’t anticipate worshiping my drawing, nor do I think it likely anyone else will. That point is, just as I don’t expect Muslims to, for example, get baptized, or refrain from eating fish on Fridays, or close their businesses on Sunday — because those aren’t their religious beliefs — I do not hold myself barred from Islamic religious Hadith injunctions against depicting the Prophet in a drawing. It’s not meant as disrespect; it’s meant as a statement of personal freedom.
So … hope this doesn’t drive anyone to a murderous frenzy. Don’t tread on me and I won’t tread on you. That’s sort of a negative Golden Rule, but it’s a serviceable one. Folks in both Islam and Christianity could do with remembering it.
Wow… your picture is really classy. I just did a Google image search for an Arab-lookin’ guy…
The “Reason” article linked above came up in one of my Google feeds the other day and I intentionally held onto it in order to make the point that it’s hardly a universal injunction. That and my D&D-honed robe-wearing-guys drawing skills, and voila!
Trivia point: the picture in question is about Mohammed banning the practice of intercalation, which, when I looked it up, referred to inserting extra days into the lunar calendar to make it line up with the solar one. Fun.
Self portrait?
Nah — no glasses.