MOO - on the one hand the editor is correct in his assertions - but on the other I personally think he's just being a typically PC academic weenie - fearful of controversy and a spineless
wuß.
From everything I've read - there isn’t a single verse in the Koran that explicitly prohibits images of Muhammad—or of Allah, or God, for that matter - and the Prophet Muhammad has been frequently depicted in Islamic art without reprisals. There are also many visual images of Muhammad in European history - all without Muslims rioting and threatening to destroy civil liberties.
The prohibition on idolatry isn’t original to the Koran so much as a restatement of Old and New Testament teachings. But
prohibition on idolatry isn’t an outright prohibition on images, whether of God, Muhammad or others. It merely opens the door to interpretation as prohibition.
That’s the door Islamic tradition took by way of the Hadith—the reports of the sayings and deeds of Muhammad and other early Muslims. The Hadith don’t explicitly prohibit images of the Prophet anymore than the Koran does, but the Hadith do forbid the depiction of any living beings, human or animal. The prohibition is related to idolatry and the images of living things would tempt idolatry - which would be blasphemous. The pragmatic - if drastic - short-cut to purity is an outright ban on all such depictions - so the Hadith have almost as much doctrinal authority as do verses of the Koran - and the
implicit edict against depictions of the Prophet Muhammad has, in Islamic dogma, become final.
Ironically, it is through the Hadith and the
Sunnah (the exemplary habits and ways of the Prophet that are often synonymous with Hadith) that verbal images of Muhammad have been passed down through the ages.
For example, according to Karen Armstrong in
Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, by age 25 he “
had grown up to be good-looking, with a compact, solid body of average height. His hair and beard were thick and curly and he had a luminous expression which was particularly striking and is mentioned in all the sources. He had a decisive and wholehearted character, which made him give his full attention to whatever he was doing, and this was also expressed in his physical bearing.”
I would have hoped the author would have taken her book to another publishing house and gotten it published with the illustrations included - that she didn't is as telling as the actions of the Yale University Press editor.
A picture is proverbially
worth a thousand words - a spineless weenie of an editor is worthless.
Richard's $.02
