Islam for Beginners III: The Face of Islam
When Erika López Prater wanted to show a painting of Muhammad for an art history class at Hamline University in 2022, she took every precaution. It was a 14th-century work produced by a Muslim for a Muslim audience honouring the last prophet of Islam. She repeatedly warned students that the image would be shown, both on the syllabus and on the day, and asked about any concerns every step of the way. Afterwards, a student complained and Prater was fired.
Westerners often regard it as monolithic but Muslims have wildly divergent interpretations about every aspect of Islam. Some Muslims distinguish between images “mocking or ridiculing of the Prophet” and educational images. The Muslim Public Affairs Council urged Hamline University to “reverse its decision”. However, the majority of Muslims believe that images of Muhammad are upsetting de facto. A few even believe it’s upsetting enough to murder those who promulgate such images.
Early Images of Muhammad
There are no contemporary accounts of what Muhammad looked like. All modern depictions of his face will therefore be wrong. As with Jesus, no depiction will ever be accurate.
Before 1500, Muhammad’s face could regularly be seen in depictions. There are even descriptions of portraits of Muhammad in the hadiths which go unremarked, indicating that early Muslims had no problem with them. The horror of the image is a relatively new development in Islam. Similarly, the darabat al-hijab is nowhere in the Koran applied to all Muslim women. It was ironically a pagan custom which in the Koran only applied to Muhammad’s wives.
There is nothing in the Koran specifically banning images of Muhammad. There is a ban on shirk (idolatry or polytheism) but is poorly defined, perhaps intentionally. Shirk is banned because pagans do it. This is the stated reason for many seemingly nonsensical instructions in the Koran. It could be argued that apotheosising someone so much that you have to kill anyone who draws them is itself a particularly pernicious form of shirk.
Moreover, the prohibition is on idolatry rather than the supernatural power of images of Muhammad. This would itself be considered shirk. It could therefore be argued that any images of Muhammad which have not been created for the purposes of worship are by definition not covered by the ban. If you are a Muslim, it might be a problem for you but you should have no problem if anyone who certainly has no intention of worshipping Muhammad produces such an image.
If Religious Image Bans Were Defensible
Muslims are entitled to avoid making or looking at images of Muhammad if they find it upsetting. They are not entitled to demand that I should also be upset at images of Muhammad. I’m not a Muslim. I don’t care.
Muslims are entitled to be upset when someone creates an image of Muhammad. They are entitled to complain about it. They are entitled to write letters and start campaigns and encourage others to avoid those creations and their creators. They are entitled to make insulting images and bad-taste jokes of their own if they feel that is a reasonable response.
They are not entitled to do anything illegal no matter how upset they are. They are not entitled to kill or injure anyone. It is objectively worse to kill someone than it is to draw a picture. There is no context that can change this and if there were, it would not be religious.
Why Upset Muslims (Or Anyone)?
Religious censorship institutionalised as “blasphemy” is an attempt to control the public discourse. It is the civic duty of anyone interested in democracy and freedom of speech to challenge this control.
Religious censorship removes the ability to critically analyse the subjects of that censorship. A ban on seeing Muhammad must surely influence any attempt to critically analyse his actions, behaviour and legacy.
People want to be confident that their beliefs are justified but critical engagement can mean a slow, painful death for religion. For this reason, many religions (including Islam) explicitly encourage their members to educate themselves and examine their faith as long as they come to the correct conclusion. Whatever begins with a conclusion and works backwards is not critical engagement; it’s justification.
It is important for anyone who subscribes to a religious ideology to understand that while religion may hold power over believers, it cannot and should not hold power over anyone else.
Why Be Childish And Unkind?
Biting mockery is sometimes childish or unkind but it is always a form of criticism. Censorship of all mockery makes it impossible to have a conversation about how valid or productive that criticism is.
Childish and unkind images of Muhammad can promote the related ideas that no beliefs are above criticism and that people who have strongly-held beliefs do not get to control how those beliefs are criticised by others. As Salman Rushdie said: “The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.”
If you have been conditioned to believe that your religious opinions should be immune to criticism, this will appear to be abusive. It’s not. If you have been conditioned to regard any mockery of your religious opinions as a personal attack on you, this will appear to be hurtful. It’s not. We are all so much more than our opinions.
Transgressive art has a purpose. Shock is often used to test the boundaries of taste and confront the audience with their own beliefs about what is or is not acceptable. This alone has value. Whether or not you agree with this is irrelevant to the intention behind a shock art piece.
Of course, some virulent anti-Muslim bigots (like Pamela Geller) have jumped on this to demonise Muslims. In the same way, some virulent antisemites have jumped on valid criticisms of Israel to demonise Jews. However, if we refuse to allow blasphemy to silence criticism, we should also refuse to allow hateful extremists to silence criticism.
Sensible people do not want to be abusive. However, if certain demonstrably harmless forms of expression are banned either through legislation or intimidation, sensible people who care about freedom, often against their own better judgement, will feel obliged to test those limits by writing or saying or drawing things they would not otherwise write or say or draw.
What Now?
Muslims may find it offensive to see mocking images of their prophet but I find it offensive that anyone should be killed for drawing a cartoon. I would like everyone, including Muslims, to agree that murdering people is worse than drawing cartoons, regardless of context. Muslims who spend time and effort protesting against cartoons might consider deflecting some of their outrage against the execution of apostates in many Muslim-majority countries.
In Ireland, there are plenty of pressing issues that are objectively more important than drawing blasphemous cartoons. Special mention here goes to the Muslim Sisters of Eire who spend a lot of time feeding and giving comfort to the many homeless people in Irish cities who are victims of my government’s housing policy.
However, there are better ways to challenge religious censorship than needling Muslims. Drawing insulting pictures of Muhammad does nothing to challenge blasphemy laws anywhere. Furthermore, it needlessly antagonises our natural allies: Muslims who agree that murder is not a reasonable response to mockery.
A better way might be to organise locally and nationally to pressure our governments to remove any and all blasphemy laws and educate our communities that violence is never a justified response to any opinion. If you feel that’s a cop-out or unrealistic, that’s what we did in Ireland and our blasphemy laws were repealed in 2018.
Until then, there was a petition set up by “an international group of scholars and students, Muslim and non-Muslim” to reverse the decision of the university and have Prater re-instated, but the university settled with her in 2024.