Muslims ask for illustrations of Muhammad to be taken down from Wikipedia. Quote from the petition text follows:
In Islam picture of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and other Humans are not allowed. But Wikipedia editors are showing illustrations with face illustrated and face is veiled or white washed. But still they are offensive to Muslims. I request all brothers and sisters to sign this petitions so we can tell Wikipedia to respect the religion and remove the illustrations.
What the heck? It’s all nice if Muslims or any other religious groups have sensibilities due to their faith, but why oh why do these sensibilities always have to affect other people which do not share this faith? This time it’s not about the caricatures of Muhammad, but about illustrations from the fifteenth century, by the way. So it’s not per-se something offending from a Muslim point of view. In fact the Shi’a and the Sunna are not of the same opinion concerning this question either.
By the way, while we’re at it. In the stricted sense there has been a clear prohibition of images of god (not of the prophets, though) in the Christian and Jewish world. This particular prohibition can even be interpreted as being valid for anything that has a face (which includes many animals, of course). Now what would we say if Christian fundamentalists told us to stop broadcast TV? Well, not that I really mind – I do not even have a TV set – but occasionally I watch reports on the internet.
// Oliver
PS: When will religious zealots start to respect my sensibilities as an atheist? 