Really? Besides Muhammad, name 1 other well known person who showing a benign picture of him causes a real risk of getting killed by his fans?

Always has been. Religion is the single biggest reason to not believe in religion.

the picture thing is to avoid idolatry, which was the main type of religion in the region at the time Islam was beginning. people were used to worship to (or via) visual depictions of gods, so a ban on visual representations of people was an effort to avoid people falling into old habits.

that’s why currently an overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t care about depictions of people in general, but they still don’t allow the prophet or god to be depicted (god isn’t supposed to have any physical form anyway) because that would be too close to idolatry.

kind of the opposite approach of christians with pagans, where christians appropriated pagan symbols to make Christianity more appealing, media were concerned with differentiating themselves from other religions.

uttering names isn’t taboo in Islam like it is in Christianity. while some Christians avoid saying God, Jesus or the like, Muslims are encouraged to use god’s name frequently. however they’re not allowed to call people certain names reserved for god alone, but that isn’t the case for the prophet. so it’s considered sort of a tribute or a sign of respect to name people after the prophet.

interesting fact, Muhammed isn’t the prophet’s only name, so while this is the most common name in the world, the number of people named after the prophet is even higher, because it includes some other names, most common after Muhammed being Ahmed.

Well, really fundamentalist whackdoodle strains of Islam actually go so far as to claim that no pictorial depiction of any living thing is allowed. They just get really extra touchy about old Mr. M.

Jury’s out on how, exactly, that would stand up to things like television and photographs. But I’m not an imam and I don’t have the entirety of the hadiths in front of me so I don’t fuckin’ know. The whole thing is obviously wonky on its face.

It’s a rule thing. Like not eating pork or shellfish, but less tangible and comprehensible than a dietary restriction.

Not depicting people with representative art is a thing that isn’t universally embraced in Islam or by every Muslim. But similarly there’s going to be some person out there who feels as strongly about it as they would if someone intentionally snuck pork into their food.

I’m really confused about the “No one can have my picture but almost every single one of my male believers is going to carry my name” situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm#

Just an artifact of history.

I remember when the South Park drama happened, and Matt and Trey were both like “you guys realize he’s been in every single episode for months now, right? He’s in the intro. It’s only an issue now because we had him as a focus of the episode.”

There was one with mohammed included too in a french satirical paper, but it was sometimes in the -70 or -80. Much cooler times.

No this is a common misconception. That’s Brian, and he is a very naughty boy

For a moment I thought this was a character from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure lol

I’m fairly certain that’s Stephen Fry with a beard.

There was a whole schism in the Byzantine Empire during the late 700s over whether religious iconography constituted graven images. This enveloped all the Abrahamic Religions and periodically reasserted itself for nearly a millennium, both in the academic sphere and in riots lead by hot-headed zealots of various sects.

Muslims simply ended up on the iconoclast side of the fence once the dust settled. If you study art history of the region, you get some truly incredibly geometric patterns emerging throughout the Muslim world, well into the 20th century, because of this stricture against iconography. There’s some speculations iconoclasm inspired efforts to produce these shapes and patterns, resulting in a heavy religious patronage of Islamic mathematics in much the same way the Renaissance Era in Europe contributed to the modernization of art and sculpture.

But the idea that Islam is somehow unique in the views on artistic reproduction of the human form is really more an artifact of history than of the religion itself. Absent certain twists of fate, we’d be angrily denouncing Muslims for making big bronze statues of their religious figures, which 600 years of Protestant iconoclasty informs us is only something a bunch of evil religious psychos would ever do.

Punish third and fourth generations for the sins of their ancestors. Sure whatever.

Showing love to a thousand who love and keep commandments. Sure fine.

But what happens if my grandparents loved and kept commandments, but my parents didn’t? Does the punishment supersede the love? Or do me and my kids get fucked, but my grandkids are back in the good graces?

Just sayin.

There was also a time when it was believed that Jesus, being perfect, was incapable of change. It’s why so many old paintings of Jesus look like middle aged babies; They believed that Jesus was born with an adult’s body, just baby-sized. Cuz if he was perfect, there would be no room for change. So lots of old paintings of Jesus have him looking like a tiny middle aged man.

There have been several violent incidents in reaction to published depictions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which is strictly forbidden by some interpretations of the Sahih al-Bukhari, one of the major Sunni Islamic texts.

I’m assuming that’s what’s being alluded to here.

Je suis Charlie.

Mohamed. For reference search it+ South Park

KnowYourMeme.com is the closest i could think of. Maybe combined with urbandictionary.com

That’s actually a fair point but then loser butthurt extremists will probably just attack random targets (like they already have many times) because someone’s gotta pay for the offense caused.