More on Muhammad

Seemingly to justify their own policy, the AP has a story out (in the Trib today, in the Washington Post on Wednesday), “In Islam, a long tradition against depicting the prophet,” in which they provide the historical context but pretty much fail in explaining why U.S. and U.K. journalists should adopt a no-Muhammad-pictures policy.

The key quote:

Religious traditions built over the years have prohibited such depictions out of respect for Muhammad and to discourage idolatry, according to Muslim scholars and clerics. The ban is further rooted in a wider prohibition against images or statues of human beings.

Now, clearly, the first of these reasons is wholly inapplicable to non-Muslims, who are not going to find themselves worshipping Muhammad, picture or no picture.  And the second of these?  If you take it to its logical conclusion, then “respecting the religious sensibilities of Muslims” would require that we ban images of human beings from our new publications completely, which, of course, the AP shows no interest in doing.  Instead, of course, we roundly mock, say, the ultra-Orthodox Israeli newspaper that photoshopped Merkel out of the Paris march pictures, and criticize Ikea for photoshopping women from the Saudi version of its catalog.  Oh, and I’ve yet to see a secular news source using the convention of “G_d” to avoid giving offense to Jews.

And the bottom line of this AP “article” (because, let’s face it, this is more religious instruction than journalism):

Islamic tradition is full of written descriptions of Muhammad and his qualities — describing him as the ideal human being. But clerics have generally agreed that trying to depict that ideal is forbidden. That puts satirical — and obscene — depictions like those in the French magazing Charlie Hebdo far beyond the pale.

It may be true that Muslims don’t like being told that Muhammad was anything less than sinless.  But this article makes it patently clear that this is a religious belief, pure and simple, and responsible journalists simply don’t have any obligation to conform their reporting to the religious beliefs of any one religion.

In short, this AP article meant to persuade its readers that it’s appropriate not to print Muhammad pics, has ironically convinced me (and I was somewhat on the fence before) of just the opposite.