40 Historical People that Everyone Should Know by Picture

Don’t be a jerk, Eigengrau. You know that Christians don’t take any offense at depictions of Jesus; on the contrary – you can find them in every church in the world.

Islam is completely different: to depict the Prophet representationally is deeply sacrilegious and offensive to Muslims. I am not saying I take the side of censoring when there is a historical or academic use (like I assume this painting is), but there is no need to be purposely offensive, is there? Aniq hardly went Charlie Hebdo about it; he asked politely and suggested an alternative. It didn’t warrant a sarcastic riposte.

And on that note, Flabber, I actually think Aniq’s suggestion would be a MUCH better clue (politics and religion totally notwithstanding). Because of the general dearth of images of Muhammad, people are only going to get it from the historical artistic style, not the facial likeness. But if you used an Arabic calligraphy of his name, people would have to think through why there wasn’t an actual photo, and be aware of the imagery prohibition in order to get the question right.

In other words, there is more than one way to “recognize” a historical figure, and depicting someone can be done in other ways besides just showing a picture of their face.