1 Feb 2014
Amid anger about whether a prospective parliamentary candidate should have tweeted a cartoon image of the prophet Mohammed, Channel 4 News finds his appearance is well known to Muslims.
The row began when Maajid Nawaz, Lib Dem candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, tweeted a cartoon depicting Jesus and Mohammed, which had already drawn criticism from some Muslims, who said it was offensive.
Nawaz stated that he did not feel threatened by the image, declaring: “My God is greater than that.”
Since then he has faced death threats and calls for him to be deselected by the Lib Dems.
No explicit ban
The Islamic faith, in particular Sunni Islam, discourages the making of depictions of a person who could be idolised. Other than a few miniatures, no-one made portraits of the prophet Mohammed.
There is more leniency in Shia Islam, which includes about 10 per cent of Muslims worldwide. Some Shia scholars say images of the prophet are acceptable if they are not considered exact representations. Such images are widely used in popular Shia culture, especially in Iran.
The Koran contains no specific or explicit ban on images of Allah or the Prophet Mohammed.
However chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say “[Allah is} the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of him.” That is taken by Muslims to mean that Allah cannot be captured in an image, such is his beauty and grandeur. The same is believed to apply to Mohammed.
‘The holy prophet was neither excessively tall nor extremely short. He was of medium height’
See AlsoNabeez, The Sunnah Drink
Inner devotion
But descriptions of the prophet are of profound importance to Muslims.
Rather than looking at pictures or statues, believers conceive of the prophet in a way that encourages inner devotion through the medium of the written accounts, or “pen portraits” of the prophet, known as the hilya. Hilya are a religious genre of Ottoman Turkish literature.
As Dr Mustafa Baig of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter explains, the most famous hilya was narrated by Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet:
“Ali said the following things when he described the holy prophet: ‘The holy prophet was neither excessively tall nor extremely short. He was of medium height. His hair was neither curly nor wavy. It was not too curly nor was it straight. It was both curly and wavy.
“His face was not swollen or meaty. It was fairly round. His mouth was white. He had black eyes that were large with long lashes. His joints were rather large. He had little hairs that stood up, extending from his chest down to his navel, but the rest of his body was almost hairless.
“He had thick palms and thick fingers and toes. When walking, he lifted his feet off the ground as if he were walking in muddy water.
“When he turned, he turned completely. The Seal of Prophethood was between his shoulders. That was the sign of the fact that he was the last prophet.
“Prophet Muhammed was known as the most generous, the most righteous, and the friendliest of all people, and one with a mild nature. Those who saw him were taken aback by his grandeur, however those who knew his high virtues would love Him more than anything else while conversing with him.
“A person who tried to depict Muhammad’s superiority and beauty would state their inability and incapability to represent him correctly, saying ‘I have never even seen a person like him. May the grace and peace of Allah be upon him!'”
Calligraphy
Since the 16th century, if not earlier, Muslims in the Ottoman Turkish regions have expressed their devotion to the prophet by making exquisite calligraphic copies of this text to be hung in their home and workplaces.
These texts can also be written in small forms of calligraphy that could be folded in three and carried in a breast pocket as a sign of respect.
The genre of the hilya was established in 1598-1599 through a 712 verse poem by Mehmet Hakani, the Hilye-I Serif (The Nobel Description), which listed the prophet’s features as reported by Ali (see above), and then commented on them.
