It seems that every major TV news report on the Muhammad Cartoons that I’ve seen ends with a tiptoeing disclaimer that Islam considers any depiction of Muhammad sacrilegious (and, therefore, vulnerable to arson, vandalism, and mass riots).

But as Zombie notes in his Mohammed Image Archive, linked last week, “hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world.” The UK Times Online, playing off of Zombie’s archive this weekend, makes the same point in “Portraying prophet from Persian art to South Park:”

DESPITE the outcry, the Danish cartoons of Muhammad are just the latest in a long line of depictions of the Muslim prophet, both in the West and in Islamic countries. From Ottoman religious icons to market stalls in Iran, from the US Supreme Court building to the South Park cartoon, Muhammad has been frequently portrayed in flattering and unflattering lights.

Many painters, including William Blake, Gustave Doré, Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dalí, have depicted Muhammad in illustrations of Dante’s Inferno, where the Muslim prophet ends up in Hell with his entrails hanging out.

Depictions of Muhammad were common during the Ottoman Empire, when the taboo on portraying him was less strong, although often his face was left blank. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a 16th-century picture of Muhammad in a mosque, wearing long sleeves to hide his arms and hands. A 14th-century Persian miniature shows the angel Gabriel speaking to Muhammad, whose face is shown…Even in the holiest Muslim city of Mecca, Muhammad has been depicted. Edinburgh University has a 14th-century miniature of him rededicating the black stone at Kaaba holy place in Mecca to illustrate a History of the World by Rashid al-Din.

…Muhammad is recorded in the hadith, one of the four arms of Sharia, or Islamic law, as having said: “And who is more unjust than those who try to create the likeness of My creation?” He also said: “Angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture.” Taken with the Koran’s injunctions on respect for the Prophet, these sayings mean, in strict Islamic interpretation, that any representation of any living thing is forbidden. Essential illustrations in academic textbooks might, for example, show a cow but with the head missing.

Technically, the rulings also forbid photographs of family members in the home, video cameras and mobile picture phones. The rulings remain the subject of intense debate in Islamic scholarly circles.

Just as many young British Muslims photograph their friends and family on their mobile phones, so the Prophet has appeared in art throughout the centuries, most often in cultures where it was a mark of respect to hang pictures of a reigning monarch or other leader in homes and galleries.

One of the places where Muhammad has been memorialized is inside the U.S. Supreme Court on a north wall marble frieze:

Click here for photo.

Yup. Muhammad with a sword. Frozen in marble on a wall of America’s highest court in the land.

Guess they better step up security.

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Guess who demanded that the Muhammad carving be removed from the Supreme Court in 1997? Yup: CAIR.

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Dr. Sanity analyzes “Shame, guilt, the Muslim Psyche, and the Danish Cartoons.”

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