Not that it has any real relevance to the 
cartoon controversy over in Europe, but just as historical trivia: the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse at 27 Madison Avenue has a series of statues of history’s great lawgivers on the front of the building — Hammurabi, Moses, Justinian, etc.
The courthouse was built in 1900. And for the first half century one of the statues was of Mohammed.
However, in the 1950s, according to the city website, “the statue of Mohammed was removed at the request of representatives of various Muslim nations, responding to the Islamic canon which forbids the representations of humans in sculpture or painting.”
