islam and idolatry

[miriam_e]

I've been thinking about all the fuss regarding cartoons of Muhammad and how a cartoonist has had to change her name and her job and move because a half-wit muslim cleric declared a fatwa on her for drawing an utterly inoffensive cartoon about Muhammad. The cleric thought that it is wrong to depict Muhammad so she deserves to be murdered.

Interested in why people could think such a loony thing I started looking into it. It turns out that 2,000 years ago Muhammad said people should not worship idols. This strikes me as a very sensible thing. He'd obviously seen how completely derailed other religions became when they worshipped images, so he told his followers that they shouldn't make pictures of him because it would lead so easily to idolatry. He was right. For some weird reason people slip into idolatry incredibly easily. What he didn't foresee is how powerful this compulsion is to worship images. Now we have the absurdity of muslims considering the image of Muhammad holy because they've been forbidden from worshipping it!

I imagine Muhammad, if he was alive today, would be very, very disappointed with his followers.