According to the International Herald Tribune, the depiction of Prophet Muhammad in Wikipedia’s article on the subject has triggered an online petition. The goal of the petition, which according to IHT collected more than 80,000 “signatures” (including many anonymous ones), is to remove the image of Muhammad citing a “prohibition in Islam on images of people.” IHT quotes from an FAQ explaining Wikipedia’s “polite but firm” refusal to remove the image:
Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.
Currently, the Wikipedia page in question is protected from editing, meaning, according to Wikipedia, “editing on the page has been restricted to either registered users or administrators.” (from Blogoscoped.com)
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"your liberty ends at the point the liberty of others start." (raised by Bilal who insisting on removing the images, though he was not the one who first made that statement)
Your liberty on not wanting the prophet drawn, ends where my liberty of expression starts.
This is a two-way street; it is important for both sides to accept that they may have to make compromises.
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I can't agree more.
Anyway, I would like to provide an evidence of existing practice. In Australia, the aboriginal people have religion faith not to draw or view the images of deceased persons (dead ancestors). So the television will often warn "Aboriginal viewers attention, the follow program contains the images of deceased persons, blahbla...". I guess the aboriginal viewers will just turn the eyes away. As aboriginal people is an important part of Australian population. I think this a great compromise.
However, it is obviously not reasonable to require television in UK to do the same thing because there might be aboriginal people visiting or living there. No compromised solution can possibly satisfy everybody.
Backing to the subject about images of Muhammad, as Muslim people are important parts of many modern societies, I think they may deserve such compromised solution: On the top of a wiki page which contain images of Muhammad, there is a warning, the following contents contain blahblabla ... please press this button...".
Many people, including myself, consider this is also a kind of censorship, since the admin editors of Wikipedia will have to censor the contents first for any page that contain the images of Muhammad. This involves moving the line of editing to introduce more censorship, such moving is always difficult. Maybe one day, the editors may loose the line a little bit to make such compromised solution to adapt viewers from the fast growing Muslim population.
