[Foundation-l] Muhammad

Mon Mar 3 09:52:53 UTC 2008

On 03/03/2008, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We received an email on OTRS. I'll copy it in its entirety here for
> consideration, and will do a very simple translation. I think the
> proposal is interesting to reflect on.
>
> ---------
>
> Hello,
>
> I receive a lot of petition regarding the removal of our prophet.
>
> I am myself against the removal, because it shows how the friday prayer
> is important for muslims.
>
> However, it so happens that the man on the image represents not the
> prophet, but an imam (Ali, since the image is from Persia). In various
> descriptions of our prophet, it was said that he had a very long beard
> and it could be seen when he was talking very softly because his beard
> was moving (which was not the case of Ali).
>
> May I suggest a solution ?
> - Change of the name of the picture to islam.jpg instead of mohamet.jpg
> - Change of the description which could say something like "groups of
> muslims during the friday prayer in ancient times (date ?)"
>
> I love your encyclopedia for its richness, and conflict leads to
> nowhere. It is sometimes necessary to concede things, both from readers
> and from editors. But if a group is disturbed by something to the point
> of requesting removal, then it means the solution chosen is not the good
> one.
> I thank you for creating such a rich and free encyclopedia, and thank
> you for reading me.
>
> Bennani M.

Seems like a good solution for one image. We shouldn't assert that an
image is one person if we are not certain that the image does depict
that person. If we aren't sure, the caption should convey this ("Some
scholars believe this to be a depiction of Muhammad"). Which image in
particular is he referring to, because there are several on the
en.Wikipedia article, most of which are known to show Muhammad? Is he
even referring to en.wikipedia?

Still, this doesn't help images which are known to depict Muhammad's
face (such as plates from the [[Siyer-i Nebi]], including "Prophet
Muhammad at the Ka'ba").

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)