Story highlights Objections to portrayal of Mohammed rooted in the notion of idol worship

The Muslim disapproval of depicting prophets extends to Jesus and Moses

In globalization age, non-Muslims and critics of Islam have felt free to depict Mohammed

(CNN) Prohibitions against depicting the Prophet Mohammed may mystify many non-Muslims, but it speaks to a central tenet of Islam: the worship of God alone.

Nothing in the Quran, Islam's holy book, strictly bars portrayals of Mohammed. But the faith, like the Hebrew Bible's Ten Commandments, has long discouraged any graven images, scholars say, to avoid the temptation toward idol worship.

In some ways, early Muslims were reacting to Christianity, which they believed had been led astray by conceiving of Christ not as a man but as a God. They did not want the same thing to happen to Mohammed.

"The prophet himself was aware that if people saw his face portrayed by people, they would soon start worshiping him," Akbar Ahmed, who chairs the Islamic Studies department at American University, told CNN. "So he himself spoke against such images, saying 'I'm just a man.' "

In a bitter irony, the recent violent attacks against portrayals of the prophet are kind of reverse idol-worship, revering -- and killing for -- the absence of an image, said Hussein Rashid, a professor of Islamic studies at Hofstra University in New York.

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