you are absolutely correct. Islam clearly states that any depiction of prophets (and obviously god) is strictly prohibited. This is because depictions would encourage over glorification, and in some extreme cases worship of the prophet as opposed to the almighty. A good example is how Christians always depicted Jesus and eventually started considering him part of this "trinity" and effectively worshiping him as opposed to worshiping the god that sent Jesus (who we believe is just another prophet) to show people the right way. the "depiction" I speak of is obviously the artistic type (ie: pictures, carvings, statues). It is only logical that it's extended to movies too. This is also related to our hero, Hakeem Olajuwon: He refused to have a depiction of himself in the form of a statue. I guess he feared people will worship it, but I guess he forgot that we all worshiped him during the great run he had with the Rockets and by the way, typing "god/allah" is redundant because the word "allah" is the literal Arabic translation of the word "god". It's like "dio" in Spanish
It's not a direct request not to depict him. It's just a direct request not to depict people who may be confused as being God. There are some that believe all drawings are forbidden as a result. There are some who believe it only applied at the time of the Prophet PBUH. There are some who don't believe in it at all. But the two reasons are interlinked. Don't depict him (or any other prophet for that matter) to avoid worshipping and also indirectly to say that "it doesn't matter what I look like". A good message all in all. There are, however, descriptions of Muhammad PBUH's appearance throughout the hadith, which can be found online. I'm not ure how much I buy into anything like that coming out of hadith, but I was interested enough to look it up. There is always a desire to put a face on someone so central in your life. Even if it should have no bearing on how you think about that person. Depicting God is slightly different. That's not allowed because you simply can't depict a being you don't understand and no depiction would do Him justice. In addition, there is the problem of people worshipping a statue over time, which is exactly what happened in Mecca before Islam. Many of the people worshipping statues were worshipping depictions of what they believed was God but which was also sourced from Abraham/Ibrahim PBUH. So in essense, they were doing the right thing, but their focus shifted to a bunch of statues which distorted their thinking about the true teaching of Abraham/Ibrahim PBUH.
Wouldn't the definition of being Christian be worship of Christ? My understanding of the Trinity isn't that Christians mistook worship of Jesus as worship for God but that Jesus and God are one in the same.
He is referring to the Muslim view of what happened to the early Christians. Your understanding of Christianity and the Trinity is definitely true for what it is today. However, i thought the definition of a Christian was a follower of Christ, not worship... BTW, I find it interesting that nobody has commented on who they got to produce the movie!
They must be doing a remake of "The Message", which was brilliant. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074896/
