It is widely known that Islam strongly discourages Muslims from creating anthropomorphic representations of the prophet Muhammad. This tendency towards aniconism isn’t entirely unique to Islam. As I talk about in this article from March 2020, early Christians seem to have been rather hesitant to depict Jesus in art and, as I discuss in this article from May 2020, early Buddhists were similarly hesitant to depict Siddhārtha Gautama.
Nevertheless, in modern times, most Christians generally don’t have a problem with creating images of Jesus and most Buddhists don’t have a problem with creating images of the Gautama Buddha. Most Muslims, however, are strongly opposed to the creation of images of the prophet Muhammad.
There are a number of reasons why Muslims generally oppose images of Muhammad. Nevertheless, not all Muslims are as strict about not making depictions of Muhammad as others and many Muslims artists throughout history have actually created images of him. Let’s take a look at the extremely strange, somewhat disturbing history of representations of the prophet Muhammad.
Continue reading “The Extremely Strange History of Artistic Depictions of Muhammad”