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How to make drawings with the Prophet Muhammad

Stay-out-of-trouble tips for the ignorant Cartoonist

It's not so difficult to avoid making images of Muhammad and still have clear and effective visual communication.

  • The Prophet ridiculed

    The Prophet ridiculed -

    This is not a cartoon but an illustration from a Dutch-Islamic children's book about the life of the Prophet. It's a good example of how to depict Muhammad if you must make a drawing. Just use a calligraphic symbol.
    The actual scene here depicts the prophet being ridiculed by the non-believing Quraish people. According to the story, they were throwing goat dung at him when he was praying and laughing at him.

    I could not find any reference to the artist that made the illustrations in this book (title: Ik ben een gelukkige druif). if you know who made the drawings, please contact us so we can give her/him credit)

with:

What we learn from the life of the Prophet is that he always turned the other cheek when he was hit or ridiculed by non believers. He typically prayed for those who attacked him. Now were have we read that before?

Anyway, I guess we just have to teach the Danish population the Muhammad sign and then Jyllands Posten can find a reasonable way out of all these awful misunderstandings.

I'm not only joking here. I think it would be a lot easier to deal with other people's cartoons about one's holy figures if one would at least feel respected by them.

When I'm reading stories about the life of the prophet Muhammad to my son Goos (a non baptised white kid attending a catholic school), it always occurs to me how incredibly close islamic and christian religions are. The morals are very similar. The misunderstandings too.

  • Prophet Muhammad

    Prophet Muhammad -

    If you want to depict the Prophet Muhammed in a cartoon, you can use this symbol.
    It's a calligraphic sign, not the normal way any Muhammad would write his name in arabic. The second m is somehow used to connect the h/g with the d. Compare it to the way you would sign quickly with your name. The sign is immediately recognised as such by arabic and islamic people. Normally Muhammad would be written in a linear fashion with 4 connected glyphs.