Interesting read. Read, and be at peace. Extracts: 1. But the reality is substantially more complicated. The Koran, in fact, does not directly forbid the portrayal of Muhammad. And the second most important Islamic text, the Hadith, “presents us with an ambiguous picture at best,” wrote Christine Gruber of the University of Michigan. “At turns we read of artists who dared to breathe life into their figures and, at others, of pillows ornamented with figural imagery.” The most explicit fatwa banning the portrayal of Muhammad, she notes, isn’t tucked into some ancient text. It arrived in 2001. And its creator was the Taliban. The ban is a very modern construct. 2. Gruber, in an interview with the BBC, said the modern objection to images of Muhammad may have been a reaction to colonization by Christians, with their images of Jesus and the crucifix. It was during the colonial era that pictures showing Muhammad began to vanish, replaced by an aversion to his image. “To a large extent, this divide is rooted in real-world grievances rather than theology: a sensitivity caused by many Muslims’ perceptions that they are under attack by the West,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov. “And that their societies are in seminal economic and cultural decline that started with European colonization centuries ago.”
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 22:09:58 +0000
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