What is a drawing of Muhammad?

[Leonardo17]

Careful, tell the types of folks that murder cartoonists that they don't know shit, and big mo didn't know shit, and you're next.  We don't all need to work on these issues.  We're not all murdering people over cartoons.

All of these reminds me of the Byzantine İconoclast movement of the 8th century A.D.:



(Chludow Plaster / Moscow / 8th century: Christians are covering up the images of Christ in the 8th century AD)



(St Irene Church in Istanbul. The is a mosaic behing the Cross but it was painted over (by Christians) because they didn't want to have visual representations of even holy personalities in their churches)



Archangel in the Church of St-Sophia, Also dates to the 8th century, Also covered with plaster (by Christians) in the 8th century AD.

   This kind of iconoclast behavior emerged in many places all over the Christian World throughout the Middle-Ages.

   But Byzantine examples are better known. You may want to check examples in the Church of St-Demetrius in Thessaloniki / Greece with beautyfull 5th century mosaics being simply plastered over and then restored in later periods (mostly in the 19th or 20th century).

    So dogmatically religious people will portray all sorts of irrational behavior and hatred of images is among them. When you think in very simple terms: Why do these people feel so threatened by the female body for instance? / And don’t tell me it’s only Muslims, before the renaissance, the human body (male and female) was a problem in Europe as well. Shakespeare and Moliere used male actors to portray female characters. The church was even against Theater in general because all of it was a “lie”.
 
   No, the mechanics of ignorant people, especially when they have the numbers is so different. You may check out the book of Gustave Lebon “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” (1895).

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crowd:...pular_Mind
 
   To sum up: It’s not even that they know what they are doing. It’s the same mentality that caused them to Crucify Christ in the first place. These people are mostly reacting. Thinking that the more they make noise, the better it is for themselves.
 
   So “sinful it is”. That’s the only thing they know with their limited cognitive capacities (when they are enmeshed in their dogmatic beliefs that way).

   So the only solution is dialogue. The only problem is that religious leaders can be very limited in their perspective as well. But in Europe, we can still count on the education system. As I said, there are so many kids (male and female) coming from these Zorro-like families who end up serving society in very important ways. That’s what we need to remind ourselves when things go ugly like this.