Newspapers like to have things clear, so it was impressive that the Daily Mirror’s explainer, “Why publishing pictures of the Prophet is a minefield”, began with the statement: “Islam’s rules on publishing pictures of the Prophet Mohammed are far from clear.” In 50 words, a model of brevity, the paper summed up the position: “Any depiction is forbidden by certain Muslims, including many Sunnis. The Koran does not explicitly forbid images of Mohammed. Secondary rules, called Hadiths, forbid any depiction of the Prophet in order to avoid the worship of idols. But he was illustrated routinely in Persia in the 1200s and 1300s.”I had better mention that this is important because 17 or more people were murdered last week in France after the weekly