Monday,Dec 15 2008, 03:55:50 PMMohamed: the messenger of Allah

Images of the Prophet Mohamed have long been discouraged in Islam. The West has little understanding of why this should be sonor of theintensity of the feelings aroused by non-believers' attitudes to the founder of Islam.

To historians,Al-Rasool Mohamed was a prophet and religious reformer who united the scattered Arabian tribes in the 7th century, founding what went on to become one of the world's five great religions. To Muslims, he was the last in a line of figures which included Abraham, Moses and Jesus, but which found its supreme fulfilment in Mohamed.

They believe that he was visited by the Angel Gabrielwho commanded him to morise and recite the versessent by God which became the Koran - and that he completed and perfected the teaching of God throughout history.

Because Muslims believe that Mohamed was the messengerof Allah, they extrapolate that all his actions were willed by God. A singular love and veneration thus attaches to the person of Mohamed himself. When speaking or writing, his name is always preceded by the title "Prophet" and followed by the phrase: "Peace
be upon him", often abbreviated in English as PBUH.

Attempts to depict him in illustration were thereforean attempt to depict the sublime - and so forbidden.
More than that, to reject and criticise Al-Rasool Mohamed is to reject and criticise Allah himself. Criticism of the Prophet is therefore equated with blasphemy, which is
punishable by death in some Muslim states. When Salman Rushdie, in his novel The Satanic Verses, depicted Al-Rasool Mohamed as a cynical schemer and his wives as
prostitutes, the outcome was - to those with any understanding of Islam - predictable.

But understanding of Islam is sorely lacking in the West. The culture gap has its roots in the fact that Christianity - like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism -
is essentially an iconographic religion. In its early years, the Christian world took the statues of the old gods and goddesses of Greece and morphed them into
images of the Virgin Mary and the saints, which were venerated in all the churches. Muslims, like Jews, take a polar opposite view. Islam and Judaism are
religions of the word, not the image.

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