PICTURE THIS

Muslim rioters offended by the 12 cartoons of Mohammed first published in Denmark -- rioters who went nuts because the content of the cartoons insulted their Prophet, but also because they believe it's blasphemous to picture him at all -- apparently don't know or care that Mohammed has been depicted in their own historical and religious Muslim texts.

I'm quoting that from a friend's e-mail message, though I don't know where the information originated. But I think it's reliable or I wouldn't be posting it. The message came with an attached image, left, which shows a miniature of Mohammed re-dedicating the Black Stone at the Kaaba. It's from Jami Al-Tawarikh ("The Universal History" written by Rashid Al-Din), a manuscript in the Library of the University of Edinburgh; illustrated in Tabriz, Persia, c. 1315.

The really weird information in the message may be less reliable, but I'm betting it's accurate. Here it is:

When a delegation of Danish imams went to the Middle East to discuss the issue of the cartoons with senior officials and prominent Islamic scholars, the imams openly distributed a booklet that showed not only the original 12 cartoons, but three fraudulent anti-Mohammed depictions that were much more offensive than the ones published in Denmark. It is now thought that these three bonus images are what ignited the outrage in the Muslim world.

The hotlinked references come from The Counterterrorism Blog, a bigfoot site founded and edited by a corporate-cum-government consultant who describes it as "the first multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues." The mission statement says the site intends to serve as "a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers" and is "designed to provide realtime information about terrorism cases and policy developments." Maybe it does.

Postscript: Holy shit! How about these depictions of Mohammed throughout history!