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How can this fatwa run counter to Islam when it is based on a saying of Muhammad? More on this story from the Christian Science Monitor, with thanks to Mathew:
CAIRO - More than 1,300 years after the Muslim conquest swept through Egypt, one of the country's highest religious authorities has declared that its ancient sculptures are forbidden by Islam.In his fatwa - or religious ruling - issued earlier this month, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa quoted a saying of the prophet Muhammad that sculptors will be among those receiving the harshest punishment on Judgment Day.
Artists and intellectuals here say the edict, whose ban on producing and displaying sculptures overturns a century-old fatwa, runs counter to Islam. They also worry that extremists may use the ruling as a pretense for destroying Egypt's ancient relics, which form a pillar of the country's multibillion-dollar tourist industry.
"I was shocked," says art critic Ashraf Ibrahim. "Islam is not against art."
Though Mr. Ibrahim acknowledges that in the early days of Islam, the prophet Muhammad destroyed statues and criticized sculptors in a bid to end idolatry, he says that's no longer necessary.
"No one for sure is going to worship a statue now," says Ibrahim. "The reason to forbid statues is finished."
The problem Ibrahim has is that with Muhammad exalted as uswa hasana, an “excellent model of conduct” (Qur'an 33:21), and with the Qur'an telling Muslims repeatedly to obey Muhammad (3:32; 3:132; 4:13; 4:59; 4:69; 4:80; 5:92; 8:1; 8:20; 8:46; 9:71; 24:47; 24:51; 24:52; 24:54; 24:56; 33:33; 47:33; 49:14; 58:13; 64:12), it is extraordinarily difficult for Muslims to stake out positions that deviate from his example.
Posted by Robert at April 18, 2006 6:28 AM
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There goes the pyramids, and the museum, and Luxor, the sphinx, you name it...
Only the Jiziya can protect it now. Lets double it, hurry up! make it 4 billion p.a., how about 5...?
Posted by: sheik yer'mami![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 18, 2006 7:35 AM
After just reading this, I had to shake my head. Islam has just gone over the edge bigtime.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at April 18, 2006 8:12 AM
Prediction, there will be an international effort to declare these landmarks as historic and to get international protection.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at April 18, 2006 8:14 AM
In the last few years, statues in both France and Italy -- the former in churches (including a statue of Mary holding Jesus), the latter in public places such as the Piazza del Popolo --have been vandalized. Now if you were a Muslim, and you took seriously the clear teaching that statues are haram, forbidden, unless -- as Sheik Al-Qaradawi makes clear in his guide to what is Haram and what Halal -- they have been vandalized, so defaced or damaged that they will not be objects of any kind of veneration, what would you do, living in an Infidel country, among Infidels with their Infidel artifacts that are an offense -- the offense is rank! -- against Allah, against Islam, against the right way, the Only Way? What would keep you, if you could, from defacing or destroying those statues or, for that matter, figurative paintings ("just let me into that Louvre, that Prado, that Alte Pinakothek, that Uffizi, that Rijksmuseum, that National Gallery -- let me get in there and show them what outrages they continue to allow the public to watch, and if I ever find out that little Muslims have been taken on school outings to museums where they might be exposed to such horrors, I will....").
Europe is not thinking straight. America is not thinking straight. No one in power is thinking straight about Islam, and about the large-scale presence of Muslims deep within the Lands of the Infidels, behind what many Muslims, the ordinary, primitive Muslims (yes, they are the majority -- not Fouad Ajami, not Kanan Makiya, not Ahmad Chalabi, not even that smiling, sly careerist Fareed Zakaria -- but the full- monty Muslims with their full-bodied Islam).
Just a modicum of common sense, and some sense of self-preservation to go with it, would be welcome.
Is that too much to ask?
Posted by: Hugh at April 18, 2006 8:16 AM
Damn!
There goes that statue of Mohammad I was going to offer to sculpt for free in Cairo.
Out of camel butter.
Chipped canine tooth, mole on the back, and all.
Nuts!
Posted by: profitsbeard at April 18, 2006 9:48 AM
islam is a scourge on the earth.
Posted by: Carolyn2 at April 18, 2006 11:24 AM
Profitsbeard -your intended statue of Mohammed ,tobe made out of camel butter will melt on its way ,before it reaches Cairo.
Here is a solution- instead of camel butter, camel dung will be more sturdy,and can withhold the desert heat,and it is easier to mould.
at April 18, 2006 11:28 AM
"In his fatwa - or religious ruling - issued earlier this month, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa quoted a saying of the prophet Muhammad that sculptors will be among those receiving the harshest punishment on Judgment Day."
About time too. Those sculptors have been asking it for a long time now together with those other most wicked of sinners....chessplayers.
But a homicidal paedophile is to be revered as a shining example of how to live your life.
And Allah knows best.
Posted by: Celsius at April 18, 2006 12:58 PM
"those other most wicked of sinners...chessplayers."
-- from a posting above
Yes, they are very wicked. And if you live in a world where what matters is the Sicilian Defense, or what Morphy did at that tournament in St. Petersburg, or what Capablanca did to a certain Hungarian grandmaster in the third game of their match in Berlin, and how the Queen's Gambit Declined would never be the same, well how much time do you think would be left over for concentrating on Islam, Islam, Islam? No wonder the game of Hindu kings and Persian shahs was declared haram by those Arabs bringing their gift of Islam.
Posted by: Hugh at April 18, 2006 3:53 PM
sofia-
I meant to carve it in situ out of only the finest local coagulated camel lactate.
But dung'll do[o].
Posted by: profitsbeard at April 18, 2006 6:37 PM
18. Bd6!!
Posted by: Hugh at April 18, 2006 8:49 PM
Even a fool would not burn a house inherited, unless he adores a denser prophet.
Posted by: Jumpintimmy at April 19, 2006 2:40 AM
They make such a fuss for sculptures and idolatory. But in fact,every day, millions of Muslims fall to the ground,lifting their bottoms,facing that black stone of Kaba in Mecca. Mohammed wanted to bring into his new religion,the Arabs,who were Pagons, worshipping many idols,including the Moon God,which was imbedded into the Kaba stone. Since they refused to give up the worship of Kaba,with those idols,Mohammed 'modified'his new faith to suit those Pagan Arabs,by covering up the cubic stone of Kaba with a black cloth,and claiming it as erected by Abraham,the Prophet.
So the Muslims are nothing but Stone worshippers.
Posted by: sofia at April 20, 2006 10:17 AM
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