Kurosh ValaNejad

Very interesting indeed.

I've always held Al Jazeerah's affiliations suspect. I mean these are hardly holy men!

On a different note I've seen a more interesting way of dealing with the constricting rules regarding the depiction of the prophet Mohammad. This one is by children books illustrator/artist known as Demi:
http://www.simonsays.com/assets/isbn/0689852649/BC_0689852649.jpg

What if Mohammad is a woman and therefore "her" face cannot be shown???

Is this a common joking speculation or am I breaking every Islamic law known to human kind by stating this?

I find it fascinating that an outline of a person is so much more suggestive than a doctrine of what someone should look like. In Christian tradition the "ethnification" of Jesus figures to look as racially and ethnically similar to the worshippers is so common.

The spread of religion has at times taken advantage of existing religious images in order to replace one religion with another. In Mesoamerica and South America, Christianity was spread through worship of Mary instead of Jesus as the Virgin of Guadalupe, portrayed with rays around her, very much like the local female goddess that had been worshipped for centuries.

I am curious if the spread of Islam to so many variable cultures is aided by the lack of a stereotypical depiction of a prophet? Does that allow for people to project using their own imagination? Ahura Mazda is such a generic representation of a human in Zoroastrinism. Perhaps it was easier to replace him with a non-depiction of a prophet?

And then of course there are the Greeks whose human-centered religion depicted the Gods not much different than the non-gods, just prettier and with hotter scandals.