images of the prophet

just got back from one month in the land of my ancestors. a land famous for its miniature paintings. about pictures of our beloved prophet?!? aztaghfirullah! i've read much on and seen many persian miniatures, but... Some of the mi'raj pics are among the most beautiful works of art i've seen. They reflect MY civilization's ability to absorb the beauty of parent civilations as well as a desire to inject color and intricate geometric designs into our great book-based civilization. the artform probably came into existance because Mongols embraced islam but did not arabize themselves. plus, YOU try telling a Mongol or Turk warlord "images are haram." He'd slice off your head, then commision the paintings anyways. your poor severed blood-dripping head at the gates of the beautiful palace serving as a warning to other self righteous scholars trying to command good and forbid evil or brave souls trying to score iman points by speaking up to a tyrant. i don't know whats worse: Oppressive/Progressive Il-khanid, Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal princes sidelining sharia scholars, but sponsoring imaginative, unique, beautiful art and images of our beloved prophets in their poetry and history books (prophet Yusuf and Zulaikha was a favorite subject) or hyper-sensitive Muslims and idealistic activists ignorant about muslim history and art running around saying "there is no images in islamic art" or "we did not do what the christians did," ignoring centuries of our figurative art. maybe its a product of movements founded by arab or arab-wannabe activists who dismiss the history and contributions of non-arab muslim peoples producing a bunch of deluded followers. I can understand efforts to keep images of the prophet out of new productions. fear of iconization and all, but, its a shame that Non-muslim scholars seem to know more about our civilization than we do. we look like fools when they reply that those images of our prophet were from books produced BY MUSLIMS.