Monday, February 20, 2006

Reader services

Looking at sitemeter, I see that a lot of people are aparantly coming here looking for information that I do not provide. In an effort to serve you better, I will begin to try to answer some of your questions, or at least refer you to people who can.

1. Christian Women Help with Orgasms. Oh honey, stop thinking about Jesus and just relax. Jesus will understand.

2. Prophet Mohammed Cartons. If you drop an "o" from cartoon, you wind up finding a post I wrote, which linked to Fafblog's post about the Prophet Mohammed appearing on milk cartons. The information you want is really here, at wikipedia. It includes, for now, a small reproduction of the cartoons, along with this interesting paragraph on the role of pictures of the Prophet in Islam:
The Qur'an, Islam's holiest book, condemns idolatry, but has no direct condemnations of pictorial art. Direct prohibitions of pictorial art, or any depiction of sacred figures, are found in certain hadiths, or recorded oral traditions.

Views regarding pictorial representation within several religious communities have varied from group to group, and from time to time. Among Muslims, the Shi'a Muslims have been generally tolerant of pictorial representation of human figures including Muhammad. Indeed a fatwa exists given by Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'a marja of Iraq, stating that it is permissible to make pictures of Muhammad, if done with the highest respect. [58] Sunni Muslims are considered less tolerant. However, the Sunni Ottomans, the last dynasty to claim the caliphate, were not only tolerant but even patrons of miniaturist art, some of which depicted Muhammad. These depictions usually show Muhammad's face covered with a veil or as a featureless void emanating light (depicted as flames). Pictorial surveys of Muhammad can be found on the internet.[59][60][61]

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