Laughter and the Prophet

After the recent idiotic demonstrations in London, featuring a protestor who is such a good Muslim that he is on parole for dealing cocaine, some cool, and educated, sense from Amir Taheri, a man who actually knows something about Islamic culture.

The Muslim Brotherhood's position, put by one of its younger militants, Tariq Ramadan--who is, strangely enough, also an adviser to the British home secretary--can be summed up as follows: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.

As the saying goes, read it all. For those not familiar with Islam it will fill in some blanks about what is happening in this war for the religion's soul.

Comments

[Chad]

Interesting article, but I'm wondering about one thing that maybe you can answer for me, Al:

Mr Taheri states that iconoclasm entered Islam through encounters with the iconoclastic movement in Eastern Orthodoxy. My understanding is that the iconoclastic period in the Eastern church was at least in part precipitated by contact with Islam.

The timeline of iconoclasm in the Church would support the traditional view, not Mr Taheri's. I'm concerned that this is a whitewashing of history in order to assuage our concerns about Islam. Am I wrong?

[Kevin Jones]

The iconoclast comments also made me question the writer's understanding of history.

I am glad to hear about Islamic comedy.

[Albertus Minimus]

Chad, I'm reasonably certain that Islam was iconoclastic from its inception. As I understand it, however, when Islam conquered neighbouring civilisations, most notably the Persian, which had a strong tradition of representation, then one found that the native tradition modified strict Islamc law to allow for pictures and painting. How else to explain the rich tradition of Persian painting, and its prolongation in Mughal India? But I'll double check to make certain.

[Boeciana]

Very interesting piece; thank you.

From writing an undergraduate essay on it, my recollection is that, in the seventh century, where Islam had contact with Byzantium the former became more consistently anti-representational; and then (for various reasons) the Byzantine Emperor instituted iconoclasm as a policy in 727, followed by all sorts of interesting developments for Christendom both East and West... But I don't know what political or religious strands of Islam Byzantium was encountering at that point, so that's not very helpful, really; sorry.

[peter]

The article also talks about Mohommad being lenient to a poet. Maybe so, but there are also multiple traditions of mohommad ordering the death of those satirising him, and his followers gladly carrying it out.

[Baraclava]

All, the only reason why Muslims are suggested (by hadith tradition, and not the Koran) not to draw such image is to avoid people from worshipping an idolatory figure other than God. Worshipping other than God is strictly forbidden by God himself as stated in many verses of the Koran. Interestingly, in the Koran, God appears as if He doesn't care that His creations making pictures of anything, including all of His prophets, as long as they don't go insane and start to worship these pictures they drew themselves - sort of Abraham story.