Why does Islam ban images of the Prophet Muhammad?

Wednesday, 10 employees of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly newspaper, and two police officers were murdered by a band of masked gunmen who shouted “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” as they open-fired on the magazine’s Paris newsroom. Among the dead were four cartoonists who provided the paper with numerous cartoons depicting images of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Islam prohibits images of the Prophet. As the gunmen departed, one was heard to shout, “We avenged the Prophet Mohammed, we killed Charlie Hebdo.”

Why does Islam ban images of its founder?

The ban is traced to a verse the Quran in which Abraham is praised for asking his people, “What are these images to which you cleave?” There are also hadith – stories about Muhammad and sayings attributed to him – that forbid visual representations of Allah or the prophets. That includes Abraham, also considered the founder of Judaism, and Jesus, the founder of Christianity. Prohibiting such images is called “aniconism.”

The ban stems from the idea that images of Muhammad, Abraham and Jesus might encourage worship of them. But there are images of Muhammad in 12th and 13th century Persian manuscripts currently held by libraries in London, Edinburgh and Paris. And in some older Islamic texts, Muhammad’s body is shown, but his head is a flame.

Do other religions ban images of their prophets or of God?

Yes and no. Judaism bans “graven images,” thus the scarcity of human figures represented in synagogues. And some Christians get upset over more extreme representations of Jesus — remember the protests surrounding photographer Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ?”

Why do some Muslims consider this worth killing over?

Because Islam bans such images, it’s considered blasphemous to create them. Plus, the images published by Charlie Hebdo were not complementary portraits, but satirical criticism of Islam. Still, many Muslims have condemned the attacks. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria and Qatar all issued statements against the aattack. A French organization of 250 Muslim groups also condemned the killings, as did the Muslim Council of Britain. Tariq Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford and a progressive Muslim, said on the television program, “ Democracy Now,” “This is just a pure betrayal of our religion and our principles.”

Is this the first time Western journalists have been targeted for publishing images of Muhammad?

No. In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of Muhammad, which led to peaceful protests by local Muslim groups. More violent protests sprang up in other countries; at the time, The New York Times reported as many as 200 people were killed in the violence.

In 2012, at least 50 deaths worldwide were attributed to protests of a trailer of the film “The Innocence of Muslims,” a film that criticized Islam and featured an actor’s portrayal of the prophet. In Benghazi, Libya, protests linked to the trailer may or may not have led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens.

And Charlie Hebdo had been the target of extremists before. That’s why two police officers were stationed there to protect the journalists. In 2011, the newspaper claimed an issue was “guest-edited” by Muhammad, and the cover featured a cartoon of him promising “100 lashes of the whip if you don’t die laughing.” The paper’s offices were fire-bombed in response.

If the journalists knew they were in danger, why did they continue to publish cartoons?

We’ll let Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, one of the slain cartoonists, answer this one. Asked that question, he said, “I am not afraid of retaliation. I have no kids, no wife, no kids, no car, no credit. It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I prefer to die standing than living on my knees.”

The ‘Splainer (as in, “You’ve got some ‘splaining to do”) is an occasional feature in which Religion News Service staff give you everything you need to know about current events to help you hold your own at a cocktail party.

This story was originally published January 8, 2015 at 11:30 AM with the headline "Why does Islam ban images of the Prophet Muhammad?."