Muslims protest online images

“There have been complaints from Muslims saying ‘it offends me personally’ or ‘it offends my religion,’ ” Wikipedia spokesman Dan Rosenthal said.

An online petition, which surfaced in early December 2007 and has since gathered more than 134,000 signatures, is requesting that Wikipedia remove images of the Prophet, citing the teaching in Islam that forbids images of the Prophet and all living creatures. Signatories to the petition claim that the presence of the images in the article is insensitive and offensive.

“Portraying the image of Muhammad disrespects the Muslim tradition as a whole,” Sarah Dajani ’09, president of the Muslim Students Association, said in an e-mail. Nevertheless, “as a Muslim American, I understand the significance of allowing such images on an American website,” she added. Dajani is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian.

Traditional Islamic law does in fact forbid humans from creating images and depictions of living creatures in religious contexts because God is the one and only creator, said art and archaeology professor Thomas Leisten, who specializes in Islamic art history. For an artist to create an image of a living thing is equivalent to assuming the status of God, he explained.

Nevertheless, Islamic thought on this issue is not uniform.

“Islam is not a monolithic entity,” Leisten said. “There are many Islamic cultures, some in which images are frowned upon, or forbidden, and some in which images have their place.”

Depictions of Muhammad appeared for the first time in the early 14th century in illustrated manuscripts compiled by the Mongols as collections of history, Leisten said. For several centuries around this time period, the majority of Muslims did not object to displaying a depiction of Muhammad, he explained.

“Throughout its history, the Islamic world has had many images with the depiction of living creatures, and this has existed without any problem,” Leisten said.

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Leisten attributed the current negative reaction to “a cultural development triggered by modern cartoons,” citing the 2005 incident in which a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad depicted with bombs in his turban.

The petitioners should consider the source and the intent before suggesting that the images have no place in the public sphere, Leisten said.

“It is a general consensus that in the religious sphere, images have no place with respect for the one and only creator. But in the non-religious sphere, the depiction of living creatures is possible,” he said.

Wikipedia is not planning to remove the images at this time.

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“The Foundation prohibits images which violate American law ... beyond that, however, ... there is a very strong inclination towards the position that Wikipedia is not censored,” Wikipedia spokesman Mark Pellegrini said in an e-mail.

Censoring the images would suggest that the view of one interest group is more important than that of another, Rosenthal explained.

“While we respect their desire to censor depictions of Muhammad,” Pellegrini said, “it conflicts with our fundamental goal of providing access to the sum of human knowledge.”

Leisten said that the petition to Wikipedia “is missing is a historical perspective,” explaining that “the fact that many of these images are from highly pious literatures, and that the intent was in no way to ridicule the founder of Islam.”

In addition to the petition, Wikipedia has received numerous letters of support from both Muslims and non-Muslims, Rosenthal said.

“Non-Muslims have said ‘stand strong and don’t take the pictures down,’ ” Rosenthal explained. “There is also a middle ground where people say, ‘I am Muslim, but I don’t really care, do what you want.’ ”

Every page on Wikipedia links to a disclaimer that states, “Wikipedia contains many different images, some of which are considered objectionable or offensive by some readers.”