Talk:Muhammad/FAQ
 | Below are answers to frequently asked questions about the corresponding page Muhammad. They address concerns, questions, and misconceptions which have repeatedly arisen on the talk page. Please update this material when needed. |
Many of these questions arise frequently on the talk page concerning Muhammad.
To view an explanation to the answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question.
There is a prohibition of depicting Muhammad in certain Muslim communities. This prohibition is not universal among Muslim communities. For a discussion, see Depictions of Muhammad and Aniconism in Islam.
Wikipedia is not bound by any religious prohibitions. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that strives to represent all topics from a neutral point of view, and therefore Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group. So long as they are relevant to the article and do not violate any of Wikipedia's existing policies, nor the laws of locations where Wikipedia's servers are hosted, no content or images will be removed from Wikipedia because people find them objectionable or offensive. (See also: Wikipedia:Content disclaimer.)
Wikipedia does not single out Islam in this. There is content that may be equally offensive to other religious people, such as the 1868 photograph shown at Bahá'u'lláh (offensive to adherents of the Bahá'í Faith), or the account of Scientology's "secret doctrine" at Xenu (offensive to adherents of Scientology), or the account at Timeline of human evolution (offensive to adherents of Young Earth creationism). Submitting to all these various sensitivities would make writing a neutral encyclopedia impossible.No claim is made about the accuracy of the depictions of Muhammad. The artists who painted these images lived hundreds of years after Muhammad and could not have seen him themselves. This fact is made absolutely clear in the image captions. The images are duly presented as notable 14th to 17th-century Muslim artwork depicting Muhammad, not as contemporary portraits. See depictions of Muhammad for a more detailed discussion of Muslim artwork depicting Muhammad.
Similar artistic interpretations are used in articles for Homer, Charlemagne, Paul of Tarsus, and many other historical figures. When no accurate images (i.e. painted after life, or photographs) exist, it is a longstanding practice on Wikipedia to incorporate images that are historically significant artwork and/or typical examples of popular depictions. Using images that readers understand to be artistic representations, so long as those images illustrate the topic effectively, is considered to be more instructive than using no image at all. Random recent depictions may be removed as undue in terms of notability, while historical artwork (in this case, of the Late Medieval or Ottoman period) adds significantly to the presentation of how Muhammad was being topicalized throughout history.
These depictions are not intended as factual representations of Muhammad's face; rather, they are merely artists' conceptions. Such portrayals generally convey a certain aspect of a particular incident, most commonly the event itself, or maybe the act, akin to the Western genre of history painting. The depictions are, thus, not meant to be accurate in the sense of a modern photograph, and are presented here for what they are: yet another form in which Muhammad was depicted.
None of these pictures hold a central position in the article, as evident by their placement, nor are they an attempt to insult the subject. Several factions of Christianity oppose the use of hagiographic imagery (even to the point of fighting over it), but the images are still on Wikipedia, exactly for what they are—i.e. artistic renditions of said people.
If you do not wish to view Muhammad images, you can hide the depictions in this article from your personal account by following these steps:
- Sign in or create an account
- Click on this link to modify your personal CSS stylesheet (if no page is there already, just go ahead and create a page)
- Click the edit button, and add the following line:
body.page-Muhammad div.depiction {display: none;} - Click Publish changes or Publish page to save the preference
Please note that this will not hide the images for other users, or from yourself if you log out of your account.
Alternatives: If you do not have an account, and do not wish to register an account, you can disable all images on Wikipedia by going to the mobile version of the website (en.m.wikipedia.org), then going to "settings" and choosing "images off".
You may also block a list of specified images, following the format of this example.
Experienced JavaScript programmers can hide depictions of Muhammad on the desktop site using Greasemonkey or a similar tool.Accusations of bias towards Western references are often made when an objection is raised against the display of pictures of Muhammad or lack of honorifics when mentioning Muhammad. All articles on Wikipedia are required to present a neutral point of view. This neutrality is sometimes mistaken for hostility. Note that exactly the same guidelines apply to articles about Christianity or any other religion.
In addition, this article is hosted on the English-language Wikipedia. While references in languages other than English are not automatically inappropriate, English-language references are preferred, because they are of the most use to the typical reader. This therefore predisposes the material used in this article to some degree (see WP:NONENG).Persistent disruption of the page has forced us to disable editing by anonymous editors and new accounts, while still allowing edits by more experienced users who are familiar with Wikipedia's editorial policies and guidelines. This is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future.
In any case, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License grants everybody the right to republish this article elsewhere, and even to modify it themselves, so long as the original authors are also credited.- References
- ^ C. (Colin) Turner, Islam: The Basics, Routledge Press, pp.34–35