Another Stupid Muslim Issue: Wikipedia petition
Tags:, Controversy, Islam in America, Wikipedia
When a news story pops up which would make Muslims look not very sophisticated, educated, or even rational all the media outlets eat it up. You may recall recent news stories such as the Muhammad Teddy Bear incident and Honor Killings in the US.
Well I received an email recently from angry Muslims asking me to sign a petition to ask Wikipedia to remove images of Muhammad from its page on Muhammad (S) linked under the entry on Islam. I refrained from commenting on it at the time. Now Nytimes has picked up on it. So I guess its time to speak up. Like most stupid Muslim issues, ignoring them is not enough in hopes of having them go away. So sometimes these issues need to be responded to. Many times to help Muslims understand what the correct Islamic viewpoint is on a situation.
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which allows users to contribute to its pages. Wikipedia has set guidelines to follow for its users. The issue at hand is that after the Cartoon Controversy stirred up by a Danish Cartoonist Muslims have become very sensitive about any and all depictions of the prophet (peace be upon him).
Firstly it should be noted that the images that caused the controversy in Danish newspapers were depicting the prophet as a Terrorist and Blood Thirsty war mongerer. The pictures in question on the wikipedia site are not the same type of “cartoons”, Rather they are historical images drawn by Muslims themselves in different eras of history which have survived till now. The objection that Muslims raise is that it is impermissible for Muslims to draw images of Muhammad (S) or any other prophet. Now you have to step back and examine this situation: Obviously if Muslims from different eras in the 12th and 15th centuries indulged in this inappropriate activity obviously to them it was not seen as inappropriate.
It does not matter whether I as an individual think that its inappropriate. Every Muslim at every period of time has the right to adopt their understanding of fiqh, even if it is totally incorrect. Back to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and those images are historical. There is no real reason for Wikipedia to remove those images. They are a part of history whether you/we like it or not. History is history, which can’t change because it happens to hurt your/our feelings.
Many times when trivial issues are concentrated on, someone will comment: Muslims should be worrying about and discussing other issues. But many times we fail to denote what those other issues are. Well Here’s a list for ya:
Pakistan falling apart | The CIA Admits to Water boarding | The deteriorating Situation in Gaza | How Americans perceive Islam | Climate Change | Racial and Religious profiling as a counter-terrorism measure | Niqabis in Wrestling (okay fine the last one is not as serious as the rest)
Lets chew (slowly) on this food for thought before we end up choking on our own tongues.
Filed under: Ranting and Raving
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Wonderful post! You gave it to those petitioners good!
Werd to Big Bird……Azeem.
Real educated written article and response.
Spread the knowledge!
http://www.chillyoislamyo.com
Asalaamualaykum
great post - i’A i will like to comment more on this later - just wanted to commend you for writing this and i agree 100%!
Salam,
Sounds good but saying that “There is no real reason for Wikipedia to remove those images. They are a part of history whether you/we like it or not. History is history, which can’t change because it happens to hurt your/our feelings.” is completely incorrect and I completely disagree with it even when those Muslim artists drew it at that time I am pretty sure other Muslims had a problem with it but they got away. Just like the book written buy Salman Rushdie “The Satanic Verses” has become part of literature even if one day the Muslim people got hold of him and executed him. So why does that punishment of executing a person who disrespects the prophet and Allah exist. The problem here is not the fact that whether those articles are offensive or not. It’s just about the principle Islam does not allow to draw any human being, prophet or not. Those images are not offensive but they are of the prophet Mohammad (PBUH). No Muslim will go around petitioning about taking the Jesus or Mary statues down. No Muslim will also ever go around asking people to take down billions of images of living things down. But a Muslim won’t wear a shirt or a hat or hang a drawing of a living thing up in there house.
Personally I will tell you I would never start a petition because I know it takes some time and might not have any outcome at all but signing one that’s already created is something that I will do because with automatic form filling it takes me two seconds to sign it. And if that takes those images down good if not it wont hurt nothing.
That said I would say that if the petition has not reached a 100,000 and you haven’t signed it enable the auto form filling feature in your browser and go sign it. It would take you less time then reading Azeem uncle’s article. Or my reply or your reply or the amount of time it took Azeem, or me to put it together. And if you think that this is not worth the time and something else is worth more time which I completely agree that list is pretty cool then stop wasting your time and go try to take care of those problems and if you think its worth discussing how important an issue is and how important it is to discredit another issue then you should DEFINITELY HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO SIGN THAT PETITION.
Thank you for your time
Salam
Oh btw in case you are wondering what I was doing replying to this article. I don’t read Azeem uncle’s blogs or anyone else’s because I just don’t have the time to. No offense Azeem. So the reason was that he sent me this article in an email and I read it on my blackberry on the way to work and was and am very upset that instead of just signing or not signing the petition people are discussing the fact if this is a BIG ISSUE or a small issue. Please stop wasting your time and just sign the petition or don’t sign the petition ignore it no one will come and ask you whether you signed the petition or not and just as it is your opinion that this is a small issue it is someone else’s opinion that it is a BIG ISSUE. But my own personal opinion is that asking people to sign a petition FORCEFULLY and asking people to not sign a petition or calling it a stupid issue based on priority in importance is both EQUAL……..
No one is forceing you to sign the petition they sent it out others forwarded it and you reserve the right to ignore it, or setup a filter to send it straight to TRASH
Forgive me if I offended anyone
Salam
I think it’s our right to ask Wikipedia to take down pictures because it’s offensive to Muslims. Imagine an article on Jesus having something equally blasphemous to Christians. I agree that Muslims tend to just get angry and passionate and not rational, but the depictions in the media are usually blown way out of proportion.
Thanks (to all) for taking the time out to share your comments
I want to add some comments/ things to think about:
If we want to know about what the prophet looked like, the best resource to turn to is books of seerah where we find first hand accounts of his description from the companions.
Whatever images are out there can not possibly be accurate (as other portraits would be) because they were made much later. So why should any Muslim be offended, when we know theres no way its even accurate?
On the Wikipedia entry there is so much information about the prophet that is missing. Like there is no reference to Michael Hart’s 100 Most influential People where he names Muhammad (S) as #1. There are alot of positive things we can do to improve that page, which no doubt millions of people will see, and now because of this controversy even more people will check it out.
One of my objectives in writing this was to share all these different links (URLs) to other very important topics, so the post would be more than just a rant. If you have not had a chance to go back and check out those links please do.
I guess the petition demanding that Muslims stop using mentally retarded girls as walking land mines got lost in the mail.
Tony that was a very uneducated comment, Please be considerate and factual when sharing your thoughts in a discussion.
The two biggest problems in the World….
Hunger and IGNORANCE.
Don’t speak unless you know what your saying.
and we hope God guides you and us all.
Thank you
Salam
its not about accuracy. ill use the same example of the Salman Rushdie book where we all know that whatever he said is inaccurate and false so why even get bothered by that book or the danish drawings we know that the prophet didn’t look like those images they had in the news paper. its just the fact that you take a picture and call it something, why did they call it Mohammad because that is what they drew it might not be anything like him but that is what they called that drawing. no matter how good or bad or inaccurate or accurate the picture WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DRAW THE PROPHET (PBUH) so if someone draws something and calls it Mohammad then i have a problem with it and so should other Muslims.
and i definitely agree with you on the fact that we should try to make that article better since a lot of people will read that article and my primary source of search consists of wikipedia and google so i would never ask them to take that article down at all, but the pictures are pointless they don’t do any good to the article, the viewers. So why have those images there at all????????? the only thing those images did is get wikipedia a media front a heavy traffic and a lot of disappointed Muslims
My comment, meant to be an ironic observation, got a strong reaction here and on other sites.
My point was this:
If someone was going to take the time to create and disseminate a petition about anything, I think the energy might have been better spent decrying a bestial act done in the name of their religion, rather than some images on a quasi-encyclopedia.
Awwab - Do you not care about Adam? Isa? Ibrahim? Musa? They all have images of them also throughout history. How come there are no petitions for them?
I agree with Azeem.
I was thinking about this some more…
Because most Muslims over time have agreed that it is inappropriate to draw images of Muhammad despite these images existing in history in various times and places they were never popularized or adopted by many Muslims. So unlike how Sikhs may have a portrait of Guru Nanak hanging in their homes, Christians of Jesus, or Hindus of their deities….. but no Muslim home would ever have one of these up in their homes. Islam’s core message is based on Monotheism or in Islamic Terms we would say the oneness of Allah (God) and adopting images or idols of deities or even of Holy people undermine the concept of there being one God, so Muslims overall reject it.
But we have to consider our context. Living in “the free world” we can not expect the world to live by our rules and follow what we think is appropriate or not appropriate.
If we look at our current context theres a major problem on our hands. Tony’s views are now very common amongst Americans when it comes to how Islam and Muslims are viewed.
Read what non-Muslims are saying about this same issue we are discussing. Read their comments on the following link:
http://www.digg.com/world_news/Online_petition_ask_Wikipedia_to_remove_pictures_of_Muhammad
So now whats more important us being offended by the image of Muhammad which was created in fact in history being viewable OR us working to correct how Islam and Muslims are viewed today?
Salam
To the comment MR made I do care about them but the way you sound it seems like if we can’t do anything about those we should forget about the rest. Those prophets are common amongst all of us we share them but the only unique one we have is Mohammad (PBUH). So try to keep that in mind.
And to Azeem’s comment I would like to ask are you still stuck in 1994? This is exactly what you said in your first post that there are other issues that are more important and I said why waste time discussing it just go and sign the petition or ignore it and take care of the bigger issues.
And I never said that Azeem is wrong. That is his opinion and he reserves that right. What I said was stop wasting your breath and convincing people not to sign the petition or to sign the petition. You get the email delete it set up a filter and let it go straight to trash or just sign the petition and forward it to your friends and family. And I am pretty sure that people are aware of the fact that there are bigger issues out there no one in any petition claimed that this is the most important issue and forget about everything and take care of this. Then why this blog????????????
I did make a new point in my last comment which was:
That this petition is actually making Muslims look bad.
Maybe I should start a petition to have this petition removed. Then you can start a petition to have my petition removed.
hahahaha as I said before I won’t start a petition but if it is available and I agree with it I will definitely sign it
as far as a petition making us look bad goes I believe we already looked bad way before this petition I read the comments there most of them were hate filled and had nothing to do with this petition those people had no idea what they were talking about. They started a petition against taking the pictures down and found only 260+ radical just like them to sign it. Those people are not our concern even if you tried talking to them they won’t listen. Most of those comments were made by atheist people they have long way to go. The more sane comments were from religious people. And if we were to look back in history Christians, Muslims, Hindu, and Jewish people lived together without a problem because they were smart and respected each others beliefs.
anyways Azeem forget this whole thing I would just like to ask you to check out Encarta and Britannica both very reliable and respectable sources of information and they both have some of the same images but out of respect for other religions they blacked out the facial features and as we all know no one protested against that.
So if Wikipedia was respectable and more sensible they would do the same and white out the face.
this should be my last post Insha-Allah. I will just see you sometime and we will talk about this instead of watching TV I will try to see you at the hospital Insha-Allah in the vicinity of March 13th.
Salam
Salaam,
This is a dumb issue. Overly offended Muslims sometimes fall into the same problem that other groups do: that of having a ‘victim mentality’.
What would I find offensive? Something like the Danish cartoons, or other provocative caricatures, but when it is Persian or Turkish miniatures or pieces I dont see the offense.
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[...] the hoopla around cartoons and the Wikipedia incident, Saad at “Chill Yo, Islam Yo!” shares a number of hadith describing the [...]
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Making images is totally forbidden in Islam, so just because previous Muslims made those pictures, u cant say Islam allows it. Dont pick up black sheeps from the communities and portray all Muslims as like them. Christianity prohibits making images too, did u know that, churches are full of them with pictures of jesus (peace be upon him), mary (peace be upon her) and angles and what not…..yet no priest says anything, why? ur not pleasing god here! we Muslims stick to our religion 24/7, whereas Christianity its all about Sunday and the rest of week its like, whos GOD?
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[...] why not just straight up describe the true beauty and appearance through authentic hadiths. My boy Azeem Khanblogged about the wikipedia beef here, you can join that discussion if you wish. But I want to [...]
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