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The Debunker: Does the Quran Prohibit Images of Muhammad?

by Ken Jennings

Do you celebrate World Religion Day, held every year on the third Sunday of January? No? What's the matter with you, don't you like world religions? There are several to choose from, it's hard to pretend you don't like any of them. To ring in the new year with some new knowledge, we've asked implausibly long-running Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings to correct some of the stuff everyone gets wrong about the world's great belief systems. No matter what faith you practice—or even if it's none at all!—Ken will set you straight, chapter and verse.

The Debunker: Does the Quran Prohibit Images of Muhammad?

A lot of millennia-old quibbles over religious scripture fall into the "minutiae" category today. New Testament scholars may disagree as to whether the apostle called Nathanael and the one called Bartholomew were really the same guy. Devout Jews may have different opinions on whether or not it's okay to use an elevator on the Sabbath. But the doctrinal disagreement over if and how it's okay to depict Muhammad, the founding prophet of Islam, is a whole different ball game. Having led directly to death threats in Denmark, riots from Nigeria to Indonesia, and terrorist attacks in Paris, the iconography of Muhammad is very much a live issue today, almost 1,400 years after his death.

image via wikipedia

It might surprise most Westerners who followed the Danish cartoon controversy or the Charlie Hebdo attacks—and possibly even some Muslims—but the Quran, while condemning idol worship, has nothing whatsoever to say about depictions of Muhammad or other prophets. The hadith—oral traditions attributed to Muhammad—are a little more specific, however. In one hadith, Allah says it is unjust "to create the likeness of (His) creation." In another, "all the painters who make pictures" are doomed to "the fire of Hell."

But! There are also several hadith in which portraits of Muhammad appear in a favorable context, and medieval Islamic art from Persia and Ottoman Turkey often depicted the prophet without controversy. Today, most orthodox Sunni Muslims believe that images of Muhammad are off-limits. In The Message, a big-budget biopic of Muhammad that hit theaters worldwide in 1977, the main character is never even seen or heard! (Scenes where the prophet appears are shot first-person, as with a Muhammad-cam.) But among Shia, the other main branch of Islam, there seems to be a little more wiggle room. In 2008, for example, a mural depicting a veiled Muhammad was installed at an intersection in Tehran, Iran. For most Muslims, Shiite or Sunni, the offense over the way Muhammad was depicted in Denmark and France centers around the fact that the cartoons were mocking. In other words, the issue is blasphemy, not the prohibition against graven images. Not that either makes much sense in a modern, pluralistic democracy, but it's definitely something for my editor to keep in mind as he tries to decide what kind of stock photo to run with this post.

Quick Quiz: What Washington, D.C. building has had a statue of Muhammad among other "lawgivers" since 1935, despite some controversy in recent years from Muslim groups?

Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.