Depictions of Muhammad

Depictions of Muhammad, founder of the Islamic faith, are often contentious. Oral and written descriptions are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions.^[1][2] The Qur'an does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad, but there have been a few hadith (supplemental traditions) which have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating the visual depictions of figures under any circumstances. Most Sunni and Shia Muslims therefore believe that visual depictions of any living beings generally should be prohibited, and they are particularly averse to visual representations of Muhammad.^[3] The key concern is that the use of images can encourage idolatry, where the image becomes more important than what it represents. In Islamic art, some visual depictions only show Muhammad with his face veiled, or symbolically represent him as a flame; other images, notably from Persia of the Ilkhanate, and those made under the Ottomans, show him fully.^[1]

Other Muslims have taken a more relaxed view. Some, particularly Shi'a scholars outside Iran, accept respectful depictions, and use illustrations of Muhammad in books and architectural decoration, as have Sunnis at various points in the past.^[4] However, many Muslims who take a stricter view of the traditions, will sometimes challenge any depiction of Muhammad, even if created and published by non-Muslims.^[5]

Most major religions have had times in their history when images of their religious figures were forbidden. In Judaism, one of the Ten Commandments forbid "graven images" of God. In Byzantine Christianity during the period of Iconoclasm (8th century, and again during the 9th century) visual representations were forbidden, and only the Cross could be depicted in churches. Even in modern times, there are disputes within different groups of Protestant Christians about the appropriateness of having religious icons of saints. The concern generally boils down to the concept of whether or not the image is becoming more important than what is being represented. ^[6] In Islam, although nothing in the Qu'ran explicitly bans images, there are some supplemental hadith which explicitly ban the drawing of images of any living creature; other hadith tolerate images, but never encourage them. Hence, visual depictions of Muhammad, or prophets such as Moses or Abraham, are avoided.^[1][7][3]

In one of the earliest sources, Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, there are numerous verbal descriptions of Muhammad. One description sourced to Ali ibn Abi Talib is as follows:

The Apostle of Allah, may Allah bless him, is neither too short nor too tall. His hairs are neither curly nor straight, but a mixture of the two. He is a man of black hair and large skull. His complexion has a tinge of redness. His shoulder bones are broad and his palms and feet are fleshy. He has long al-masrubah which means hair growing from neck to navel. He is of long eye-lashes, close eye-brows, smooth and shining fore-head and long space between two shoulders. When he walks he walks inclining as if coming down from a height. I never saw a man like him before him or after him. ^[8].

Athar Husain gives a non-pictorial description of his appearance, dress, etc. in "The Message of Mohammad". According to Husain, Muhammad was a little taller than average, sturdily built and muscular. His fingers were long. His hair, which was long, had waves, and he had a thick beard, which had seventeen gray hairs at the time of his death. He had good teeth and spare cheeks, brownish black eyes. His complexion was fair and he was very handsome. He walked fast with firm gait. He always kept himself busy with something, did not speak unnecessarily, always spoke to the point and without verbosity, and did not behave in an emotional way. He usually wore a shirt, trousers, a sheet thrown round the sholders and a turban, all spotlessly clean, rarely wearing the fine clothes that had been presented to him. He wanted others to wear simple, but always clean, clothes.^[9]

The Qur'an forbids idolatry, but does not specifically forbid representative art.

Behold! he said to his father and his people, "What are these images, to which ye are (so assiduously) devoted?" They said, "We found our fathers worshipping them." He said, "Indeed ye have been in manifest error - ye and your fathers." (TOQ 52-54)

However, there are hadith, or recorded oral traditions, that seem to forbid any representational art:

Allah, Most High said: "And who is more unjust than those who try to create the likeness of My creation? Let them create an atom, or let them create a wheat grain, or let them create a barley grain."^[10]

[...] All the painters who make pictures would be in the fire of Hell.^[11]

Just like "drinking of wine was more sternly and unequivocally forbidden in the Qur'an then was painting of pictures, but drunkenness has been a common features from days of Umayyads down to modern time". Similarly "despite the fulminations of the theologians the painter went drawing the figures of men and animals". However, "the figure of Muhammad seldom occurs in a picture painted by a Muslim artist, and when it is found the face is generally veiled or the prophet is symbolically represented by a flame of golden light. This vary rarity of the subject matter" leads to presenting those figures in this article.^[1]

T. W. Arnold says that "It was not merely Sunni schools of law but Shia jurists also who fulminated against this figured art. Because the Persians are Shiites, many Europeans writers have assumed that the Shia sect had not the same objection to representing living being as the rival set of the Sunni; but such an opinion ignores the fact that Shiisum did not become the state church in Persia until the rise of Safivid dynasty at the beginning of the 16th century."

Very few films have featured Muhammad. The only modern one to do was the 1976 The Message, also known as Mohammad, Messenger of God. The movie focused on other persons and never directly showed Muhammad. When Muhammad was essential to a scene, the camera would show events from his point of view.^[12]

• A devotional cartoon called Muhammad (PBUH): The Last Prophet was released in 2004^[13]

Two well-known Fatwas from Al-Azhar University and Shiite Council of Lebanon were issued about The Message.

"It is certainly probable that this is not the result of the creativity of the filmmakers but of the rules announced by the Islamic scholars of the Azhar and the Shiite Council of Lebanon, who prohibited any representation of Muhammad’s wives as well as of the Prophet himself."^[12]

A more severe case occurred in Egypt in 1926, around the anticipated production of a film about the grandeur of the early days of Islam. Upon learning of this plan, the Islamic Al-Azhar University in Cairo alerted Egyptian public opinion, and published a juridical decision (fatwa), stipulating that Islam categorically forbids the representation of the prophet and his companions on the screen. King Fauad sent a severe warning to actor Youssef Wahbi, threatening to exile him and strip him of his Egyptian nationality"^[14]

Other contemporary Shi'a scholars, outside Shi'a majority Iran, have taken a relaxed attitude towards pictures of Muhammad and his household, the Ahlul Bayt. A fatwa given by Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'a marja of Iraq, states that it is permissible to depict Muhammad, even in television or movies, if done with respect.^[15][16]

• Qadam Rasul
• Idomeneo controversy
• Aniconism
• Iconography
• Muslim veneration for Muhammad
• The Satanic Verses

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Muhammad.

• "Religious" Paintings in Islamic Art
• Mohammed Image Archive: Depictions of Mohammed Throughout History