I recently received an email that asked me if I could sign a petition that asks for removal of Prophet Muhammad’s (P.B.U.H) illustration from Wikipedia.

Here is the link to the illustration that is making quite a few people angry.

Keep in mind, the author, the illustrator of this manuscript is a Muslim himself. The first time I saw this illustration was in my humanities class which was about Cultural Images of Islam. A course directed towards mostly non-Muslims.

The above illustration is for imagination purposes and has nothing to do with offending Muslims. It was an author’s idea of showing what really went on in Prophet Muhammad’s life. It is easier to get a point across using an illustration, every heard that “A picture is worth a thousand words”?

I see why some people would have an issue with this illustration because to Muslims it is blasphemous to depict Prophet Muhammad in any way shape or form. That is why we had the craziness over Danish cartoons.

Apparently, there is a petition going around, goal was to collect 10,000 signatures but currently it has over 90,000. That is not a big deal considering there are 1.2 Billion Muslims in the world. Here is the link to the petition, Remove the Illustrations of Muhammad from Wikipedia.

Even though I get the point of this petition, I don’t agree with the premise so I am not going to sign it. On the petition page, they say:

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.

I don’t know what they mean when they say offensive? It is for educational purposes primarily for non-Muslims, don’t make a big deal about it. Wikipedia editors are, I am sure, not Muslims and neither do they do things to appease religions. Wikipedia is like an online fact book created and maintained by experts, PhDs, intellectuals etc. Wikipedia editors are only showing what a Muslim author illustrated in 15th century and nothing else.