Koran allows cartoons

Amir Taheri writes in a WSJ op-ed:

There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. ... and the claim that a ban on images is "an absolute principle of Islam" is purely political.

The claim that the ban on depicting Muhammad and other prophets is an absolute principle of Islam is also refuted by history. Many portraits of Muhammad have been drawn by Muslim artists, often commissioned by Muslim rulers. ...

The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more than a decade.

I believe that most of the news stories are incorrect when they try to describe the motives of the Mohammedan cartoon protesters. They shouldn't try to read minds, and certainly not Mohammedan minds.