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September 12th, 2012
12:06 PM ET
Ambassador's killing shines light on Muslim sensitivities around Prophet MohammedBy Dan Gilgoff and Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editors (CNN) – Violence over depictions of the Prophet Mohammed may mystify many non-Muslims, but it speaks to a central tenet of Islam: that the Prophet was a man, not God, and that portraying him threatens to lead to worshiping a human instead of Allah. “It's all rooted in the notion of idol worship,” says Akbar Ahmed, who chairs the Islamic Studies department at American University. “In Islam, the notion of God versus any depiction of God or any sacred figure is very strong." “The Prophet himself was aware that if people saw his face portrayed by people, they would soon start worshiping him,” Ahmed says. “So he himself spoke against such images, saying ‘I’m just a man.’” The prohibition against such portrayals was on stark display Tuesday, as mobs in Egypt and Libya attacked U.S. compounds in response to a film that vilifies the Prophet Mohammed, who founded Islam in the 7th century. The attack on the U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya, was orchestrated by extremists who used the protests as a diversion, U.S. sources told CNN Wednesday. The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi killed J. Christopher Stevens, Washington's ambassador to Libya, as well as three other Americans at the compound. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter The film that’s believed to have inspired the violence depicts the Prophet Mohammed as a child molester, womanizer and ruthless killer, going a big step beyond violating the basic Muslim prohibition against depicting the Prophet, even in a favorable light. There are questions about who is behind the movie. Initial reports identified a supposedly Israeli-American real-estate developer named Sam Bacile, but it's unclear if that person even exists. A member of the film's production staff told CNN that the producer's name was listed as Abenob Nakoula Basseley. In Sunni mosques, the largest branch of the faith, there are no images of people of any kind. The spaces are often decorated with verses from the Quran. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories Mohamed Magid, an imam who leads the Islamic Society of North America, says the Muslim prohibition on depicting prophets extends to Jesus and Moses, who Islam treats as prophets. “Pictures and images are prohibited from being worshiped,” Magid says. There have been historical instances of Muslims depicting the Prophet, says Omid Safi, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina who has studied the issue. "We have had visual depictions of the Prophet in the form of miniatures and pictures in the Iranian context, the Turkish context, the central Asian Context,” says Safi, author of the book "Memories of Mohammed." “The one significant context where depictions of the Prophet have not been image-related has been in the Arab context.” “As you go farther east, away from the Arabian Peninsula, you find depictions of the prophet in art,” said Johari Abdul-Malik, the imam for Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia. He noted that images of the teachings of the prophet were sometimes used to bridge gaps in illiteracy. But even depictions of the Prophet by Muslim artists has been a sensitive issue. Akbar, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom, says that Muslim artists in the 15th and 16th centuries would depict the Prophet but took pains to avoid drawing his face. “It would be as if he was wearing a veil on his face, so the really orthodox could not object – that was the solution they found," Akbar says. In a Muslim film called “The Messenger,” which circulated throughout the Muslim world in the 1970s and 1980s, the Prophet is depicted only as a shadow. Adbul-Malik said that in the Quran, there is “no statement from the prophet requesting his image not be recorded.” The passages relating to a ban on creating images of the prophets come from the hadith, recordings of the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed and his closest companions. The hadith is not viewed on the same plane as the Quran but as important to understanding the Quran. Scholars of religion say Muslim opposition to portraying Mohammed wasn’t generally violated in earlier centuries because of a gulf between much of the Muslim world and the West. In the age of globalization, non-Muslims and critics of Islam have felt free to depict Mohammed, including in offensive ways. In 2006, a Danish cartoonist’s depiction of the Prophet wearing a bomb as a turban with a lit fuse provoked demonstrations across the world. Akbar says that until relatively recently, depictions of Jesus tended to be reverential, but Christianity has had a decades-long head start in dealing with negative portrayals of Jesus in film and art. soundoff (4,725 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 Next » |
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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One time when I was vacationing in the middle east I saw a muslim by the side of the road with his arm all the way up a camel's butt. " Car trouble ? " I asked.
Surprised it wasn't something else up the camel's rear.
Did you have a look. We all know you love to have your head up camel asss.
Hi. I'm an obnoxious prententious individual that blames all the worlds ills on religion. I spend all my time talking about how religion and only religion can cause hate, violence, and war because land, money, and political power could never incite people to use violence, hate, or start wars. I believe in my unbelievably narrow scope that nothing else in the world could have ever caused these problems. I can't even begin to understand that if religion never existed, people would still find reason to use violence, hate, and war as a means to an end, because I am an idiot . . . I mean atheist
I believe in God but not religion. I respect life and the God given right to have my own voice and feelings. I don't believe God looks highly on killing others or going to war in his Name. Remove the atheist and keep the DBAG.
Religion brings us so much joy, doesn't it?
The issue isn't images of the 'prophet', its that Muslim religious leaders speak and the Western World does not obey. This is what is intollerable to the radical Muslims. They want nothing less than a Caliphate controlling the world. Just as centuries ago, the Catholic Pope use to command the obedience of Christians regardless of borders, Muslims want the world under the control of a Caliph who's word is law, it is all about control, do what we say or else. Its about power and domination. Until you get religon out of government, there is no hope for the Middle East.
Arabs invented the zero, created many other things (art, etc) and then their minds and logic were destroyed by the Muslim religion.
The film that’s believed to have inspired the violence depicts the Prophet Mohammed as a child molester, womanizer and ruthless killer, going a big step beyond violating the basic Muslim prohibition against depicting the Prophet, even in a favorable light.
The movie was made by Sam Bacile, an Israeli-American real-estate developer...
The reason our Embassies are under attack and an American ambassador is dead... Israel, again.
It is not even know whether this "Sam Bacille" even exists...
The State of Israel is a very large embassy of the US in the Middle East – Deal with it.
That's only being used as an excuse by people who are looking for a reason to push their hatred. Cut the funding to those countries and let them kill each other if that's what they deem appropriate but we should never have to put up with a religious group who wants to kill us just because we don't share their faith.
No... the reason we are being attached by Muslims is because their values are wacked. It's a movie. It's not real. Once again, another example of religious violence. Frankly, they need to grow up. Protest all they want! But violence? Killing people? Over a movie? Really?
Muslims are the reason for this violence. They are the ones who follow a religion that tells them to kill infadels and murder over a cartoon. If theh worshipped the Flying Spaghetti Monster, this never would have happened. His Noodely Holiness condems violence, unlike Islam.
He was speaking on the associated press, nitwit.
We are being attacked in Libya. Say that again with a straight face. WE are being attacked in Libya. Last I checked there wasn't a country, accept for Israel, from Libya to Pakistan that we haven't attacked or paid militants to shoot up.
Snoop is correct and Jim is an idiot.
Christians – history of us
(the Inquistadors wiping out non0Christians, the Spanish Conquistadors Christians wiped out the Aztec and alos the Mayans, The KKK killing blacks, The Nazi killing Jews – these were all Christians. Now, we have evolved BUT, lets not think we are better than other religions, because we are not. There are loving and hating people in religions of any name.
Shut up loser
I fail to see any muslim religion that tolerates anybody who disagrees with their religious beliefs. They preach hatred and it's time to expose them for it.
Yes except the Majority of Christians condemn these actions and groups in modern day. You do not see the leaders of the Islamic religions in these areas preaching calm and understanding but yelling rhetoric and hate. They incite violence. Their religion is run by fanatics. These aren't small groups but large ones that are attacking embassies! I don't see the KKK nowadays attacking the NAACP headquarters or an African country embassy. We must keep things in the context of now. The Islamic religion is one of fear and power in the Middle East. These protesters are nothing more than pawns in extremist's deadly games.
Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to save millions of lives, but this is being prevented by religious radicals and therefore religion is detrimental to the preservation of life. Religion has been the greatest cause of war and conflict throughout human history and has resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people throughout history, therefore religion is detrimental to the preservation of life. Religion is the biggest scam in the history of humanity.
I am inclined to agree with you but I heard a saying once that "any strength taken to the extreme becomes a weakness".
Excess pride becomes arrogance etc,, I feel there is a place for religion but when the weakminded can't deal with it all heck can break loose.
How / Why did people tolerated M.F. Husain when he sketched Hindu Godess inappropriately? Wasn't that a crime? But did you see anyone losing life for the same?
Irrespective of what tune "Moderates" are singing, I guess this is the difference between religions that believe in Humanity and the one that does not.
Seriously? When Christians in this country will shoot doctors who perform abortions? Or preachers who tell parents their child is better off dead than gay?
Would you please count the number of Christians who've killed abortion doctors and compare with just an average day when a Muslim community gets outraged. No comparison, both are wrong and the offenders should be punished severely, but the scale on which Muslims commit these acts is greater by a huge factor.
A previous embassador in the middle east returned and spoke with Obama early in his presidency, at Obama's request. Obama asked him how to best position the U.S. with these countries. The embassador, having spent a lot of time in these countries as a young man and now later in life said, "these poeple understand only one thing .... if you kill one of mine we will kill 100 hundred of yours". Of course, Obama then setout on a campaign to apologize to every country on behalf of the U.S. because we must be the evil empire. Unfortunately, Obama lacks the understanding that these people just see that as weakness and these types of incidents just escalate.
Is an embassador anything like an ambassador? 🙂
Yes,but an embassador is just embarrassed to be on! 🙂
That film didn’t kill anyone. I don’t care if you were insulted or your wittle feelings are hurt. That is no reason to murder and riot. Pathetic primitives.
It is one thing to exercise freedom of speech, another to do it wantonly and with reckless abandon. Certainly the Arab response was barabaric, medieval and criminal. However, as much as we respect free speech in the U.S., we still have laws pratecting teh welfare of our people. For example, you can be arrested for yelling fire in a public place (when there is no such emergency) and held accountable fruther is people are injured or die as a result of the actions following that expression of "free speech" We all carry a responsiblity to act in a manner that doesn't lead to another's harm. In this case, the producers of that video yelled "fire" in a "crowded" theater and people died because of their callous and careless actions.
No one should cave into terrorist! This isn't about their silly religion, its about asserting their power over the West. You follow our demands or people die. They want control and they want to call the shots. Muslims cannot stand being in the minority. They are a religion founded on domination and forced conversiosn. Ther is no saying no to Islam
@Argh999
You are correct about free speech but it does not apply in this case and your example is lacking. The fire in a theater example does not apply to videos for one thing. No direct threat of imminent death or injury was implied to the viewer for viewing. More accurately the film maker yelled fire while recording it on his iphone and posted it on YouTube after the fact. The some basement dwelling geek trampled his mother while he was running out of the house…intentional.
That's just it, they are primitives. Anyone who commits these acts in the name of religion cannot believe in a loving and merciful God. Their god is neither loving or merciful, but hateful and vengeful.
Such a peaceful religion full of tolerance. Let's wha'ts more evil, making movies or killing innocent people? Smash these f'ers.
All religions are kinds of insanity. Muslims, these days, seem to be crazier than Christians, Jews, and what-not, but that's not to say that anyone who talks to invisible beings has their head screwed on right.
100% correct.
Henry, you're just talking to the wind. No ... wait ... you wouldn't do that because you can't see it and therefore it doesn't exist.
I guess what it is, is that we talk to God in hopes he's listening. Sometimes you have to wonder, but what is the alternative? To believe in nothing? I'll keep talking to God in hopes he will in someway answer, but if he doesn't , then I'm not out anything, but if he does, then I've gained everything in that just knowing he is and that this life just not end and that's it. Hope is all we have, because having faith does not make it so. Nothing from nothing comes, nothing, and I don't like that thought.
Ever since Bin Laden was taken out, I used the great Muhammad as the bulls eye for my target practice. It helps.
Another ridiculous article. Why is it that CNN will gladly publish an article asserting a moral validation of violent and sometimes murderous mobs but can't think of a single decent thing to say about the Chicago teachers Union's peaceful work stoppage? It is a clear delineation to me. Violent protests. Non-violent protests. One of these groups use terror as their weapon and that should be universally unacceptable to Muslims.
I give it about a week until the "peaceful work stoppage" turns into vandalism, threats, and intimidation. That's just what unions do.
The Chicago teachers union is just another socialist organization bent on milking the system to death just to get personal benefits.
just because aggression is passive means it is any less intimidating
This is a religion based mostly on fear and control. They take a false prophet and use allah(their god) to scare the living hell out of their followers. There is no proof that this allah even exists, but they are able to control by getting people to believe he does, and this is not a good god, but a vindictive one. They eat it up as if it's truth, without any proof whatsover. You either have to have faith beyond human ability, or be so brainwashed to accept this religion, that you are beyond insane.
Steve lL- and you have proof that Jesus exists? The jews have you believing that one of their dead carpenters was your God, and you are sharing your words of wisdom?
No god in history has ever been anything other than excuse for murder, mayhem, and cruelty.
I find it ironic that you used the term "scare the living hell".
Do you think the threats of eternal damnation, a centreal dogma of most Christian sects, is a healthy way to keep people in line?
To doc Vestibule. Scare the living hell is just a term I used. I was brought up catholic (no longer practicing) and have long ago stopped believing that there is an eternal hell, that makes no sense at all, and is just used as a scare tactic to get people to believe like they do. To me, the only people that believe in hell are those who think they're not going there, but must save all the others who are going there. An eternal hell would be the most severe punishment you could ever put on a person. We have trouble now putting people in the electric chair for fear they fight suffer just a little.
and if I told you 100% agree!! killing others is not from Islam , those people are not acting as mulsims ...by teh way I'm egyptian and mulism. I went to demonstrate infront teh US embassy in piece but, when some people started to burn teh flag I hated this as well as most of us and we asked them to stop this.
trust me , you need to read more about islam
Problem is, what Islam? Farrakan's Islam, Mohammed Atta's, Bin Laden, Al Zawahri? If people commit atrocities in the name of their religion then it's not God they believe in, it's humans who have decided that God would be on their side because they seem to have some direct line to him. They are deluded. In other words, out of their frickin minds. By the way believing or having faith in someone, doesn't necessarily make it so.
Sorry buddy but it seems you are no better than murder American Christians. You cherry pick the parts of Islam you like and ignore the rest. Violence is taught by your religion whether YOU follow it or not.
Modern*
Interesting autocorrect.
Tom, Tom, no violence is not taught by Islam. The quran was narrated to the prophet in parts. When early muslims were being persecuted for not practicing the faith of the day God told the prophet to fight back. Thats it. That's where it ends. Just like the Jews were told to fight the different tribes to establish a homeland after they left Egypt. It's not a call to constatnly fight non-believers. If anyone is cherry picking its you and your ilk. There are statements in the Quran that say that if the non-believers stop fighting you, you also have to stop fighting them. In a hateful mind like yours you ignore this and create your own context, which doesn't exist. You're no different than the radicals who also do this to fit their idea of their purpose in life.
Keep spinning buddy, someone who hasn’t read it for themselves might actually believe you.
Here's a great project for you atheists. Go talk some sense into these genuinely religious folks. Please tell them about radioactive half life of uranium, and don't forget the evolution of social hierarchy among west African bonobos. They need some empirical evidence, desperately.
you can't reason with religious people. if they used reason, they couldn't be religious.
mickey admits that reason and logic are inadequate paths to world peace.
Bill proves mickey’s point.
So what to do with all the crazies. What does the Mensa club say? Chemical treatments? Next shop to mars? TT?
Just one question? What in the hell planet do you live on? We mere mortals down here have trouble understanding your language.
i am sure someplace on earth there is a tribe armed with blow guns who think having their picture taken steals a piece of their soul, but they aren't trying to get their hands on AK-47's and Atom Bombs.
Do you really think this well coordinated, timely attack with RPG's was carried on by some angry public demonstrators? Who is crazier, you or they?
I’d say you are the crazy one serana if you think it makes a difference. You imply two groups..as if they are different. Yet both (if they are indeed different groups) are committing violence in the name of Islam.
you kind of missed the point serana, but i bet you hear that a lot...
Those tribesmen would likely seek the AKs and bombs if they knew they existed.
But in the modern age, if there is a group sufficiently insular to keep away from contact with the outside, you can bet your bottom dollar that religion is at the core of their choice to remain isolated.
I'm sorry. I will not be open to a religion that condones killing people. NEVER. Those people are crazy.
Guess you don't support christianity either.
The last time I looked at public demonstrators they did not have a habit of carrying RPG's in their lunch bags. Looks like the handiwork of intelligence agencies with an agenda.