Story highlights
Objections to portrayal of Mohammed "rooted in the notion
of idol worship," professor says
The Muslim disapproval of depicting prophets extends to
Jesus and Moses, imam says
In globalization age, non-Muslims and critics of Islam have
felt free to depict Mohammed
(CNN)— French officials are still trying to determine what
caused gunmen to attack a satirical magazine in Paris, killing
12 people. But, according to French media, the gunmen yelled,
"We have avenged the Prophet!" as they stormed the office.
Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine attacked on
Wednesday , has a controversial history of depicting
Mohammed , often in an unfavorable light, which has angered
many Muslims around the world.
The prohibition again illustrating the Prophet Mohammed
began as a attempt to ward off idol worship, which was
widespread in Islam's Arabian birthplace. But in recent years,
that prohibition has taken on a deadly edge.
A central tenet of Islam is that Mohammed was a man, not
God, and that portraying him could lead to revering him in
lieu of Allah.
"It's all rooted in the notion of idol worship," Akbar Ahmed,
who chairs the Islamic Studies department at American
University told CNN. "In Islam, the notion of God versus any
depiction of God or any sacred figure is very strong."
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In some ways, Islam was a reaction against Christianity,
which early Muslims believed had been led astray by
conceiving of Christ, not as a man but as a God. They didn't
want the same thing to happen to Mohammed.
"The prophet himself was aware that if people saw his face
portrayed by people, they would soon start worshiping him,"
Ahmed told CNN. "So he himself spoke against such images,
saying 'I'm just a man.' "
In a bitter irony, the sometimes violent attacks against
portrayals of the prophet are kind of reverse idol-worship,
revering -- and killing for -- the absence of an image, said
Hussein Rashid, a professor of Islamic studies at Hofstra
University in New York.
In November 2011, Charlie Hebdo's office was burned down
on the same day the magazine was due to release an issue
with a cover that appeared to poke fun at Islamic law. The
cover cartoon depicted a bearded and turbaned cartoon figure
of the Prophet Mohammed, with a bubble saying, "100 lashes
if you're not dying of laughter."
In September 2012, as France was closing embassies in
about 20 countries amid the global furor over the anti-Islam
film "Innocence of Muslims," the magazine published an issue
featuring a cartoon that appeared to depict a naked
Mohammed, along with a cover that seemed to show
Mohammed being pushed in a wheelchair by an Orthodox
Jew.
Charlie Hebdo journalist Laurent Leger defended the magazine
at the time, saying the cartoons were not intended to provoke
anger or violence.
"The aim is to laugh," Leger told BFMTV in 2012. "We want to
laugh at the extremists -- every extremist. They can be
Muslim, Jewish, Catholic. Everyone can be religious, but
extremist thoughts and acts we cannot accept."
But for many Muslims, depictions of Mohammed, revered not
only as a prophet but also as a moral exemplar, are no
laughing matter.
Satirical representations of Muhammad are not new, although
they are very modern, said Rashid.
"In the context of Europe, where in many countries Muslims
feel like they are besieged, these images are not seen as
criticism, but as bullying. Violence, as a response, is clearly
wrong and disproportionate. However, it is not so much about
religious anger, as it is about vengeance."
But even in the United States, where Muslims are relatively
acclimated, extremists have opposed the portrayal of
Mohammed on "South Park," the satirical cartoon show, and
the subsequent "Draw Mohammed Day," that erupted in
response.
Mohamed Magid, an imam and former head of Islamic Society
of North America , told CNN that the Muslim prohibition on
depicting prophets extends to Jesus and Moses, whom Islam
treats as prophets. Some Muslim countries banned the films
"Noah" and "Exodus" this year because their leading
characters were Hebrew prophets.
In Sunni mosques, the largest branch of the faith, there are no
human images of any kind. The spaces are instead decorated
with verses from the Quran.
But there have been historical instances of Muslims depicting
the prophet, especially in Shiite branches of Islam, Omid Safi,
a religious studies professor at Duke University, told CNN.
"We have had visual depictions of the prophet in the form of
miniatures and pictures in the Iranian context, the Turkish
context, the central Asian context," said Safi. "The one
significant context where depictions of the prophet have not
been image-related has been in the Arab context."
Johari Abdul-Malik, the imam for Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center
in Falls Church, Virginia, told CNN that depictions of the
prophet 's teachings were sometimes used to bridge gaps in
illiteracy.
Even historical renditions of Mohammed by Muslim artists
were careful not to paint the prophet in too much detail.
For example, Ahmed told CNN that Muslim artists in the 15th
and 16th centuries would depict the prophet but took pains to
avoid drawing his face. "It would be as if he was wearing a
veil on his face, so the really orthodox could not object -- that
was the solution they found."
In a Muslim film called "The Messenger," which circulated
throughout the Muslim world in the 1970s and 1980s,
Mohammed was shown only in shadow.
In the Quran, there is "no statement from the prophet
requesting his image not be recorded," Abdul-Malik told CNN.
Instead, the teaching about images comes from the hadith , a
record of the sayings and actions of the Prophet Mohammed
and his closest companions. The hadith is considered
secondary only to the Quran in terms of textual authority, but
the sometimes contradictory accounts have led to centuries of
debates within the umma, or global Muslim community.
Scholars of religion say opposition to portraying Mohammed
wasn't generally violated in earlier centuries because of a gulf
between Western and majority-Muslim nations.
In the age of globalization, non-Muslims and critics of Islam
have felt free to depict Mohammed, including in offensive
ways. In 2006, for example, a Danish cartoonist's depiction of
the prophet wearing a bomb as a turban with a lit fuse
sparked demonstrations across the world.
CNN's Nick Thompson and Eric Marrapodi contributed to this
report.