Quote:
Originally Posted by Hadis
Can you explain the uproar over the Muhammad cartoons?
Can you describe the structure of Islamic religious leadership,Imams,Caliphs,Muftis, is there a Central above the national level authority,kind of like the Catholic church?
Classical Islam has a negative view towards the realistic representations of living things (and humans obviously) as the early theologians were afraid of subtle links between representation and idolatry. Today, this view is much more lax of course, but still Muslims do not draw and represent the image of Muhammad out of respect for his personality.
There is no central authority in Islam, and significantly, there is no "church" as a concept. In theory, Islam rejects the idea of a clergy as an unnecessary block between the believer and God. In practice, however, religious opinion leaders were formed early in Islamic history and the general name given to them is "ulama" (literally, those who know). The concept of imamate is different between the Sunni and Shii Islam. For Sunnis, any prayer leader (any man who knows how to read the Qur'an and lead the prayers) may be called an Imam. For the majority of Shiis, Imamate represents a lineage beginning with Ali (the fourth Caliph and the son in law of Muhammad) and going through 12 generations of Ali's sons. These Imams, Shiis believe, knew the esoteric knowledge of how to correctly interpret the allegorical and metaphorical verses of the Qur'an.