Hey guys, it’s Karin.
Welcome back to Little art talks.
Remember in 2010, there was a huge controversy surrounding "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day".
It started when the American animated television show South Park depicted Muhammad, the central
figure of Islam.
The artists received death threats and the show's distributor, Comedy Central self-censored
the episode.
In response, Molly Norris drew a poster-like cartoon, intended as a satirical comment on
the event and in protest of censorship.
In it was various anthropomorphized objects that each claimed to be the likeness of Muhammad.
At the top is written: we hereby deem May 20, 2010 as the first 'Everybody Draw Mohammed
Day!'
From there it kind of blew up and became viral.
Now, rather than talking about who’s right or wrong, or anything like that, I want to
talk about, instead, why this is a big deal.
Why were people so offended by this cartoon, and these drawings of Mohammed.
While I’m sure many people who are religious would take offense to their Holy Prophet being
portrayed as the butt of joke, there’s also the fact that Islam comes from a tradition
of Aniconism.
What is that and what does it mean?
Let’s talk about it.
Aniconism is the opposition to the use of icons or visual images to depict living creatures
or religious figures.
It’s the absence of material representations of the natural and supernatural world.
There’s lots of different examples that can range from only God and deities to saint
characters, all living beings, and even everything that exists.
This is particularly relevant to the Jewish, Islāmic, and Byzantine artistic traditions.
This avoidance primarily comes from an attempt to avoid idolatry.
Idolatry is the worship of an idol or a physical object as a representation of a God.
The specifics in terms of what constitutes idolatry varies between religions and time
periods, but to put it simply, it’s the idea that God, deities, saint characters,
living beings, etc. shouldn’t or can’t be depicted or represented in any object.
The first commandment states, You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image – any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth.
You shall not adore them, nor serve them (Exodus 20:3-5).
In Judaism, the portrayal of YHWH in any kind of human or concrete form is absolutely forbidden.
Especially large and freestanding religious sculpture is avoided, but two-dimensional
images, especially ones that are pretty small like book illustrations are acceptable.
In Islamic culture, The Quran does not explicitly prohibit the depiction of human figures, but
it condemns idolatry.
Up till the 1st century CE, the Buddha was only represented through symbols/
In the Byzantine Empire, during the Iconoclastic Controversy (725–843), the use of religious
images or icons was banned.
Aniconism results in a restriction on the type of art that’s made, but also art that
people in that society can make.
But it also leads to an interesting development of art that are not figural depictions.
For example, Islamic art has a rich tradition of Islamic geometric patterns, calligraphy
and the barely representational foliage patterns of the arabesque.
There are also situations in which people enforce aniconism with Iconoclasm- the physical
destruction of images.
In the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy, the ban was accompanied by widespread destruction
of images as well as the persecution of supporters of the veneration of images.
I’ll talk more about that in my next video.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video and learned something new.
If you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe.
Be sure to come back for the next video on iconoclasm.
Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time.