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The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, has long been a concern in the history of Islam. Oral and written descriptions are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions.[1][2]
The Quran does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad, but there are a few hadith (supplemental teachings) which have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of figures. Most Sunni Muslims believe that visual depictions of all the prophets of Islam should be prohibited and are particularly averse to visual representations of Muhammad.[3] The key concern is that the use of images can encourage idolatry. In Shia Islam, however, images of Muhammad are quite common nowadays, even though Shia scholars historically were against such depictions.[3][4] Still, many Muslims who take a stricter view of the supplemental traditions, will sometimes challenge any depiction of Muhammad, including those created and published by non-Muslims.[5]
The question of whether images in Islamic art, including those depicting the Prophet, can be considered as religious art remains a matter of contention between scholars.[6] They appear in illustrated books that are normally works of history or poetry, including those with religious subjects; the Qu'ran is never illustrated: "context and intent are essential to understanding Islamic pictorial art. The Muslim artists creating images of Muhammad, and the public who beheld them, understood that the images were not objects of worship. Nor were the objects so decorated used as part of religious worship".[7] However, scholars concede that such images have "a spiritual element", and were also sometimes used in informal religious devotions celebrating the day of the Mi'raj.[8] Most visual depictions only show Muhammad with his face veiled, or symbolically represent him as a flame; other images, notably from before about 1500, show him fully.[9][10][11] However, depictions of Muhammad were rare, never numerous in any community or era throughout Islamic history,[12][13] appearing almost entirely in the private medium of Persian and other miniature book illustration.[14][15] The key medium of public religious art in Islam was and is calligraphy.[13][14]
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Some major religions have experienced times during their history when images of their religious figures were forbidden. In Judaism, one of the Ten Commandments forbade "graven images". In Byzantine Christianity during the period of Iconoclasm in the 8th century, and again during the 9th century, visual representations of sacred figures were forbidden, and only the Cross could be depicted in churches. Even in modern times, different groups of Protestant Christians have had disputes about the appropriateness of having religious icons of saints. The concern generally boils down to the concept of whether or not the image is becoming more important than what is being represented.[16] In Islam, although nothing in the Qur'an explicitly bans images, some supplemental hadith explicitly ban the drawing of images of any living creature; other hadith tolerate images, but never encourage them. Hence, most Muslims avoid visual depictions of Muhammad or any other prophet such as Moses or Abraham.[1][17][18]
A number of hadith and other writings of the early Islamic period include stories in which portraits of Muhammad appear. Abu Hanifa Dinawari, Ibn al-Faqih, Ibn Wahshiyya and Abu Nu`aym tell versions of a story in which the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius is visited by two Meccans. He shows them a cabinet, handed down to him from Alexander the Great and originally created by God for Adam, each of whose drawers contains a portrait of a prophet. They are astonished to see a portrait of Muhammad in the final drawer. Sadid al-Din al-Kazaruni tells a similar story in which the Meccans are visiting the king of China. Kisa'i tells that God did indeed give portraits of the prophets to Adam.[19] Ibn Wahshiyya and Abu Nu'ayn tell a second story in which a Meccan merchant visiting Syria is invited to a Christian monastery where a number of sculptures and paintings depict prophets and saints. There he sees the images of Muhammad and Abu Bakr, as yet unidentified by the Christians.[20] In an 11th century story, Muhammad is said so have sat for a portrait by an artist retained by Sassanid king Kavadh II. The king liked the portrait so much that he placed it on his pillow.[19]
Later, Al-Maqrizi tells a story in which Muqawqis, ruler of Egypt, meets with Muhammad's envoy. He asks the envoy to describe Muhammad and checks the description against a portrait of an unknown prophet which he has on a piece of cloth. The description matches the portrait.[19]
In a 17th century Chinese story, the king of China asks to see Muhammad, but Muhammad instead sends his portrait. The king is so enamoured of the portrait that he is converted to Islam, at which point the portrait, having done its job, disappears.[21]
In one of the earliest sources, Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, there are numerous verbal descriptions of Muhammad. One description sourced to Ali ibn Abi Talib is as follows:
Athar Husain gives a non-pictorial description of his appearance, dress, etc. in "The Message of Mohammad". According to Husain, Muhammad was a little taller than average, sturdily built, and muscular. His fingers were long. His hair, which was long, had waves, and he had a thick beard, which had seventeen gray hairs at the time of his death. He had good teeth and spare cheeks, and brownish-black eyes. His complexion was fair and he was very handsome. He walked fast with firm gait. He always kept himself busy with something, did not speak unnecessarily, always spoke to the point and without verbosity, and did not behave in an emotional way. He usually wore a shirt, trousers, a sheet thrown round the shoulders, and a turban, all spotlessly clean, rarely wearing the fine clothes that had been presented to him. He wanted others to wear simple, but always clean, clothes.[23]
From the Ottoman period onwards such texts have been presented on calligraphic hilya panels (Turkish: hilye, pl. hilyeler), commonly surrounded by an elaborate frame of illuminated decoration and either included in books or, more often, muraqqas or albums, or sometimes placed in wooden frames so that they can hang on a wall.[24] The elaborated form of the calligraphic tradition was founded in the 17th century by the Ottoman calligrapher Hâfiz Osman. While containing a concrete and artistically appealing description of Muhammad's appearance, they complied with the strictures against figurative depictions of the Prophet, leaving his appearance to the viewer's imagination.[25][26] The Ottoman hilye format customarily starts with a basmala, shown on top, and is separated in the middle by Quran 21:107: "And We have not sent you but as a mercy to the worlds".[26] The four circles often contain the names of the Rightly-guided Caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, each followed by "radhi Allahu anhu" ("may God be pleased with him").
The most common visual representation of the Prophet in Islamic art, especially in Arabic-speaking areas, is by a calligraphic representation of his name, a sort of monogram in roughly circular form, often given a decorated frame. Such inscriptions are normally in Arabic, and may rearrange or repeat forms, or add a blessing or honorific, or for example the word "messenger" or a contraction of it. The range of ways of representing Muhammad's name is considerable, including ambigrams; he is also frequently symbolised by a rose.
The more elaborate versions relate to other Islamic traditions of special forms of calligraphy such as those writing the names of God, and the secular tughra or elaborate monogram of Ottoman rulers.
Throughout Islamic history, depictions of Muhammad in Islamic art were rare.[12] According to Christiane Gruber, there exists a "notable corpus of images of Muhammad produced, mostly in the form of manuscript illustrations, in various regions of the Islamic world from the thirteenth century through modern times".[27] Depictions of Muhammad date back to the start of the tradition of Persian miniatures as illustrations in books. The illustrated book from the Persianate world (Warka and Gulshah, Topkapi Palace Library H. 841, attributed to Konya 1200-1250) contains the two earliest known Islamic depictions of the Prophet.[28] This book dates to before or just around the time of the Mongol invasion of Anatolia in the 1240s, and before the campaigns against Persia and Iraq of the 1250s, which destroyed great numbers of books in libraries.
Gruber traces a development from "veristic" images showing the whole body and face, in the 13th to 15th centuries, to more "abstract" representations in the 16th to 19th centuries, the latter including the representation of the Prophet by a special type of calligraphic reresentation, with the older types also remaining in use.[29] An intermediate type, first found from about 1400, is the "inscribed portrait" where the face of Muhammad is blank, with "Ya Muhammad" ("O Muhammad") or a similar phrase written in the space instead; these may be related to Sufi thought. In some cases the inscription appears to have been a underpainting that would later be covered by a face or veil, so a pious act by the painter, for his eyes alone, but in others it was intended to be seen.[30] According to Gruber, a good number of these paintings, however, underwent later iconoclastic mutilations, in which the facial features of the Prophet were scratched or smeared" as Muslim views on the acceptability of veristic images changed.[31]
A number of extant Persian manuscripts representing Muhammad date from the Ilkhanid period under the new Mongol rulers, including a Marzubannama dating to 1299. The Ilkhanid MS Arab 161 of 1307/8 contains 25 illustrations found in an illustrated version of Al-Biruni's The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries, of which five include depictions Muhammad, including the two concluding images, the largest and most accomplished in the manuscript, which emphasize the relation of Muhammad and `Ali according to Shi`ite doctrine.[32] According to Christiane Gruber, other works use images to promote Sunni Islam, such as a set of Mi'raj illustrations (MS H 2154) in the early 14th century,[33] although other historians have dated the same illustrations to the Jalayrid period of Shia rulers.[34]
Depictions of Muhammad are also found in Persian manuscripts in the following Timurid and Safavid dynasties, and Turkish Ottoman art in the 14th to 17th centuries, and beyond. Perhaps the most elaborate cycle of illustrations of Muhammad's life is the copy, completed in 1595, of the 14th century biography Siyer-i Nebi commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Murat III for his son, the future Mehmed III, containing over 800 illustrations.[35]
Probably the commonest narrative scene represented is the Mi'raj; according to Gruber, "There exist countless single-page paintings of the meʿrāj included in the beginnings of Persian and Turkish romances and epic stories produced from the beginning of the 15th century to the 20th century".[36] These images were also used in celebrations of the anniversary of the Mi'raj on 27 Rajab, when the accounts were recited aloud to male groups: "Didactic and engaging, oral stories of the ascension seem to have had the religious goal of inducing attitudes of praise among their audiences". Such practices are most easily documented in the 18th and 19th centuries, but manuscripts from much earlier appear to have fulfilled the same function.[37] Otherwise a large number of different scenes may be represented at times, from the Prophet's birth to the end of his life, and his existence in Paradise.[38]
In the earliest depictions Muhammad may be shown with or without a halo, the earliest halos being round in the style of Christian art,[39], but before long a flaming halo or aureole in the Buddhist or Chinese tradition becomes more common than the circular form found in the West, when a halo is used. A halo or flame may surround only his head, but often his whole body, and in some images the body itself cannot be seen for the halo. This "luminous" form of representation avoided the issues caused by "veristic" images, and could be taken to convey qualities of the Prophet's person described in texts.[40] If the body is visible, the face may be covered with a veil (see gallery for examples of both types). This form of representation, which began at the start of the Safavid period in Persia,[41] was done out of reverence and respect.[12] Other prophets of Islam, and the Prophet's wives and relations, may be treated in similar ways if they also appear.
T. W. Arnold (1864-1930), an early historian of Islamic art, stated that "Islam has never welcomed painting as a handmaid of religion as both Buddhism and Christianity have done. Mosques have never been decorated with religious pictures, nor has a pictorial art been employed for the instruction of the heathen or for the edification of the faithful."[12] Comparing Islam to Christianity, he also writes: "Accordingly, there has never been any historical tradition in the religious painting of Islam – no artistic development in the representation of accepted types – no schools of painters of religious subjects; least of all has there been any guidance on the part of leaders of religious thought corresponding to that of ecclesiastical authorities in the Christian Church."[12]
Images of the Prophet remain controversial to the present day, and are not considered acceptable in many countries in the Middle East. For example in 1963 an account by a Turkish author of a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca was banned in Pakistan because it contained reproductions of miniatures showing the Prophet unveiled.[42] However in Iran depictions have considerable acceptance to the present day, and may be found in the modern forms of the poster and postcard.[43]
Very few films have depicted Muhammad. The only modern one to do so was the 1976 The Message, also known as Mohammad, Messenger of God. The movie focused on other persons and never directly showed Muhammad, or most members of his family. When Muhammad was essential to a scene, the camera would show events from his point of view.[46]
Two well-known fatwas from Al-Azhar University and Shiite Council of Lebanon were issued about The Message.
A more severe case occurred in Egypt in 1926, around the anticipated production of a film about the grandeur of the early days of Islam. Upon learning of this plan, the Islamic Al-Azhar University in Cairo alerted Egyptian public opinion, and published a juridical decision (fatwa), stipulating that Islam categorically forbids the representation of Muhammad and his companions on the screen. King Fauad sent a severe warning to actor Youssef Wahbi, threatening to exile him and strip him of his Egyptian nationality.[47]
Other contemporary Shi'a scholars, outside Shi'a majority Iran, have taken a relaxed attitude towards pictures of Muhammad and his household, the Ahlul Bayt. A fatwa given by Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'a marja of Iraq, states that it is permissible to depict Muhammad, even in television or movies, if done with respect.[48] A devotional cartoon called Muhammad: The Last Prophet was released in 2004.[49]
Muhammad figures frequently in depictions of influential people in world history. Such depictions tend to be favourable or neutral in intent; one example can be found at the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.. Created in 1935, the frieze includes major historical lawgivers, and places Muhammad alongside Hammurabi, Moses, Confucius, and others. In 1997, a controversy erupted surrounding the frieze, and tourist materials have since been edited so they call the depiction "a well-intentioned attempt by the sculptor to honor Muhammad" that "bears no resemblance to Muhammad."[50] In 1955, a statue of Muhammad was removed from a courthouse in New York City after the ambassadors of Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt requested its removal.[51]
There have also been numerous book illustrations showing Muhammad.
Dante, in The Divine Comedy: Inferno, placed Muhammad in Hell, with his entrails hanging out (Canto 28):
This scene is frequently shown in illustrations of the Divina Commedia. For example it is represented in a 15th century fresco in Bologna, Italy, in the Church of San Petronio,[53] and artwork by Salvador Dalí, Auguste Rodin, William Blake, and Gustave Doré.[54]
The start of the 21st century has been marked by controversies over depictions of Muhammad, not only for recent caricatures or cartoons, but also regarding the display of historical artwork. In 2002, Italian police reported that they had disrupted a terrorist plot to destroy a church in Bologna, which contains a 15th century fresco depicting an image of Muhammad.[53][55] In 2005, worldwide media attention focused on the controversy surrounding a dozen editorial cartoons published in the Jyllands-Posten.
In 2005, a Danish newspaper published a set of editorial cartoons, many of which depicted Muhammad. In late 2005 and early 2006, Danish Muslim organizations ignited a controversy through public protests and by spreading knowledge of the publication of the cartoons.[16] According to John Woods, Islamic history professor at the University of Chicago, it was not simply the depiction of Muhammad that was offensive, but the implication that Muhammad was somehow a supporter of terrorism.[18] On 12 February 2008 the Danish police arrested three men alleged to be involved in a plot to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists.[56]
In 2005, an episode of 30 Days with Morgan Spurlock, titled "Muslims and America," depicted Muhammad twice, in a cartoon explaining the origins of the Islamic faith. There was no outcry over this. In 2006, the controversial American animated television comedy program South Park, which had previously depicted Muhammad as a superhero character in the July 4, 2001 episode "Super Best Friends"[57] and has depicted Muhammad in the opening sequence since that episode,[58] attempted to satirize the Danish newspaper incident. In the episode "Cartoon Wars Part II", they intended to show Muhammad handing a salmon helmet to Peter Griffin, a character in the Fox animated television show Family Guy. However, Comedy Central, the parent company of South Park, rejected the scene, citing concerns of violent protests in the Islamic world. The creators of South Park reacted by instead satirizing Comedy Central's double standard for broadcast acceptability by including a segment in which American president George W. Bush and Jesus defecate on the flag of the United States.
The Lars Vilks Muhammad drawings controversy began in July 2007 with a series of drawings by Swedish artist Lars Vilks which depicted Muhammad as a roundabout dog. Several art galleries in Sweden declined to show the drawings, citing security concerns and fear of violence. The controversy gained international attention after the Örebro-based regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published one of the drawings on August 18 to illustrate an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of religion.[59] While several other leading Swedish newspapers had published the drawings already, this particular publication led to protests from Muslims in Sweden as well as official condemnations from several foreign governments including Iran,[60] Pakistan,[61] Afghanistan,[62] Egypt[63] and Jordan,[64] as well as by the inter-governmental Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).[65] The controversy occurred about one and a half years after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in Denmark in early 2006.
Another controversy emerged in September 2007 when Bangladeshi cartoonist Arifur Rahman was detained on suspicion of showing disrespect to Muhammad. The interim government confiscated copies of the Bengali-language Prothom Alo in which the drawings appeared. The cartoon consisted of a boy holding a cat conversing with an elderly man. The man asks the boy his name, and he replies "Babu". The older man chides him for not mentioning the name of Muhammad before his name. He then points to the cat and asks the boy what it is called, and the boy replies "Muhammad the cat". The cartoon caused a firestorm in Bangladesh, with militant Islamists demanding that Rahman be executed for blasphemy. A group of people torched copies of the paper and several Islamic groups protested, saying the drawings ridiculed Mohammad and his companions. They demanded "exemplary punishment" for the paper's editor and the cartoonist. Bangladesh, however, does not have a blasphemy law, although one had been demanded by the same extremist Islamic groups.
In December 2007, controversy erupted in the Netherlands when Iranian artist Sooreh Hera exhibited photos of two Iranian gay men in a series of sexually provocative positions, wearing masks depicting Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali. The photo series was intended to highlight the hypocrisy the artist saw, of Muslim married men engaging in sexual relations with other men. The Hague Municipal Museum expressed interest in buying the series, but refused to display it, citing fear that it could "offend certain groups". Dutch politician Geert Wilders, leader of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom), excoriated the museum's decision, saying it was "based on fear".[66]
In 2008, several Muslims protested against the inclusion of Muhammad's depictions in Wikipedia's Muhammad article.[67][68] An online petition claims to have collected over 450,000 signatures in three months (December 2007 to February 2008). The petition was started by Faraz Ahmad of Daska, Pakistan, resident in Glasgow, formerly editing Wikipedia as "Farazilu". The petition specifies opposition to a reproduction of a 17th century Ottoman copy of a 14th century Ilkhanate manuscript image (MS Arabe 1489) depicting Muhammad as he prohibited Nasīʾ, a special form of intercalary months practiced in Arabia.[69] Jeremy Henzell-Thomas of The American Muslim deplored the petition as one of "these mechanical knee-jerk reactions" which, "are gifts to those who seek every opportunity to decry Islam and ridicule Muslims and can only exacerbate a situation in which Muslims and the Western media seem to be locked in an ever-descending spiral of ignorance and mutual loathing".[70]
Wikipedia considered but rejected a compromise that would allow visitors to choose whether to view the page with images.[68] The Wikipedia community has not acted upon the petition.[71] The site's answers to frequently asked questions about these images state that Wikipedia does not censor itself for the benefit of any one group.[72]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in January 2010 confirmed to the New York Post that it had quietly removed all historic paintings which contained depictions of Muhammad from public exhibition. The Museum quoted objections on the part of conservative Muslims which were "under review." The museum's action was criticized as excessive political correctness, also apparent in other recent decision, including the renaming of the "Primitive Art Galleries" to the "Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas" and the projected "Islamic Galleries" to "Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia".[73]
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day was a protest against those who threatened violence against artists who drew representations of Muhammad. It began as a protest against the action of Comedy Central in forbidding the broadcast of the South Park episode "201" in response to death threats against some of those responsible for the segment. Observance of the day began with a drawing posted on the Internet on April 20, 2010, accompanied by text suggesting that "everybody" create a drawing representing Muhammad, on May 20, 2010, as a protest against efforts to limit freedom of speech.
