The V&A has recently decided to remove an historic image of the Prophet Mohammed from its website. The image remains in the collection and will be made available to scholars and researchers by appointment.
I am not sure it is a very uplifting example, this censorship of the past, but they are certainly not alone in doing this. Indeed over the last generation, a slow but efficient iconoclasm has been at work in Britain pruning images of the Prophet from published books, not just about the life of the Prophet but also illustrated surveys of Islamic Art. It is extraordinary how successful this campaign has been, based not on any physical threat but on a deluge of orchestrated complaints by telephone and email. And if you are the publisher of an Islamic interest book, receiving hundreds if not thousands of messages from your target audience telling you that this book would have been bought, except for the inclusion of an ‘offensive’ illustration – well this message certainly gets through to the marketing department.
