Depictions of Muhammad - Controversies in The 21st Century

Controversies in The 21st Century

The start of the 21st century has been marked by controversies over depictions of Muhammad, not only for recent caricatures or cartoons, but also regarding the display of historical artwork.

In a story on morals at the end of the millennium in December 1999, the German news magazine Der Spiegel printed on the same page pictures of “moral apostles” Muhammad, Jesus, Confucius, and Immanuel Kant. In the subsequent weeks, the magazine received protests, petitions and threats against publishing the picture of Muhammad. The Turkish TV-station Show TV broadcasted the telephone number of an editor who then received daily calls. Nadeem Elyas, leader of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany said that the picture shouldn't be printed again to avoid hurting the feelings of Muslims intentionally. Elyas recommended to whiten the face of Muhammad instead. In June 2001, the Spiegel with consideration of Islamic laws published a picture of Mohammed with a whitened face on its title page. The same picture of Muhammad by Hosemann had been published by the magazine once before in 1998 in a special edition on Islam, but then without evoking similar protests.

In 2002, Italian police reported that they had disrupted a terrorist plot to destroy a church in Bologna, which contains a 15th-century fresco depicting an image of Muhammad (see above).