Interdiction of Images in Islam

Published in: Volker Kuster, Gé Speelman (eds.), Islam in the Netherlands. Between Religious Studies and Interreligious Dialogue Lit (Berlin 2010), 135-148

Islamic Tradition and the Prohibition of Images

Gé Speelman

Introduction

Lately, the age- old taboo on images of living creatures within Islam has entered the public debate. In the Danish cartoon affair[1], the insult for some Muslims was not only connected to the way their beloved prophet was pictured, but also to the fact that he was pictured at all. Apart from the disgusting and disrespectful nature of the Danish cartoons, the question arose: can pictures of prophets or, for that matter, of anyone else be allowed?

The interdiction to picture humans and animals is not interpreted in a uniform manner among present- day Muslims, however. Recent research among Surinamese Muslims living in the Netherlands shows that for them, the taboo on the representation of any living creatures has had a profound influence on the way their houses are being decorated. Their identity cannot be stated by pictures of family members or small decorative statues of animals that often make part of the interiors of other households, as they feel this goes against Islam. Nevertheless, Surinamese Muslims usually do have photographs of family members, sometimes even in the living room. They need, however, to explain their presence, for instance by offering an alternative interpretation. The explicit religious command is the rule, but they can make allowances for photographs.

For these Muslim families, the absence of pictures serves to distinguish their identity as Surinamese (originally Indian) Muslims from their Surinamese Hindu counterparts on the one hand, and from Turkish or Moroccan Muslims on the other hand. A visitor can ‘read’ the extent to which the members of a household connect themselves to more ‘scripturalist’ interpretations of Islam by the presence or absence of family photographs in the room. [2]

There has been an iconoclastic strain in Islam, so much is certain. But on the other hand, as

journalists have pointed out, the Prophet of Islam has been pictured repeatedly by devout and pious artists. What is the nature of the interdiction on pictures in Islam?

Pre-Islamic traditions on figurative religious art

Let me start by linking Islamic debates in this field with Christian and Jewish traditions. What the three monotheistic religions have in common is a profound distrust of images, of figurative art.

In Rabbinic Judaism the third Commandment (Exodus 20: 4) has been so interpreted that humans and animals were not pictured. This interdiction was not always and everywhere in force in the Jewish community. The synagogue of Doura Europos is a witness to that. What Exodus forbids is related to the veneration of idols of course, and the following debate among Christians picks up this theme when it comes to the painting of icons.

In the first centuries of the Christian Church no art has been handed down. In the course of the third century, murals and other paintings begin to appear under the influence of the surrounding Hellenistic/ Roman culture.

There is a reason for this gap. The idea of religious art ( in this case especially portraits or ‘Icons’ of Christ and the saints) was disapproved of by many Church Fathers. Bishop Asterius (5th century): ‘Don’t paint Christ! It is enough that he has humiliated himself once and for all by becoming human for our sakes. Rather, bear in your souls the disembodied Word in a spiritual way.’ Augustine was likewise against the idea of religious art.[3]

After the Islamic attempt to conquer Byzantium the tone of the debate was heightened. Opponents of icons attributed the Islamic rise to power to the sinful worship of idols and wanted to forbid the use of icons. The war between Iconoclasts and Iconodoules (picture smashers and picture servants; the latter is a pejorative term) had begun.

But there were other voices. In the ongoing debate in the 7th century pope Gregory the Great (d. 664) pointed out the great profit to be had from icons for the education of the unlettered believers. Gregory II (d. 731) said that his party did not worship wood or stone, but used the icons as a device because they ‘elevate our earthly sensuous thinking to great heights.’

The mystery of the incarnation played a large role in the arguments of the Iconodoules. If God had come forward out of His invisible world and had taken on human form in His son, then we should not hesitate to show the divine world in our human representations. [4]

This was the stage on which the Muslims started to emerge as a community. In their own Arabian desert, there had been other gods, represented in some way, but from the scarce material we have it seems that they rarely had a human or human- like shape. We should rather think of offering stones or treelike wooden structures. There was no tradition of art following nature in the Arab desert in the times Islam was born there.

The Qur’an

In the Qur’an, we can find no unambiguous or explicit prohibition of figurative art. But two themes occur, which later on play a role in the theological debate. The first is the motive of creation:

‘It is Allah Who has made for you the earth as a resting place, and the sky as a canopy, and has given you shape- and made your shapes beautiful,- and has provided for you Sustenance, of things pure and good;- such is Allah your Lord. So Glory to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds!’ (Sura 4: 64; translation Yusuf Ali).

In the Qur’an, there are many terms to describe this creative power of God. God is named al-Khaliq (the Shaper) , al- Bari’ (the Creator; the same term is used in Hebrew in Genesis 1: 1), al- Musawwir (the Form- Giver). (Sura 59: 24, 64: 3, 7: 11, 3: 6). Musawwir is the word the Arab language up till the present day uses for painters or photographers.

It is conspicuous that in the Qur’an, there is no clear distinction between Gods activity as a Creator, a Shaper or a Form- Giver. This gives rise to the question how people in pre- Islamic Arabia saw the connection between the making of an image or a picture, making a statue or a clay figurine and the creation of its original. Was the connection between picture and original so close to them as to make them virtually indistinguishable?

There is one prophet who with Gods permission uses the creative power of the Almighty in a way parallel to Gods own creative work: Jesus fashions birds from clay who than come alive by the power of the Almighty (Sura 5: 110). Here, the term khalaqa is used, which is the usual term for the giving of shape of a potter or sculptor to his material, such as clay. In this Qur’anic text, the development from shapeless clay to live birds is described as a two- step process: the Prophet gives shape, God gives life by His divine will.

The other relevant Qur’anic theme is that of idolatry, often connected with the venerations of images of idols. The Qur’an is very clear about its rejection of idolatry. Sura 5: 90 says: ‘O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination,- of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper.’

The Prophet whose story is immediately connected to the fight against idols is Ibrahim, of whom the Qur’an tell us that he struggled with his own father and his people about the issue of the worshipping of images (in Sura 6, 19, 29 among others). In Sura 6:74, for instance, we read:

‘Lo! Abraham said to his father Azar: "Takest thou idols for gods? For I see thee and the people in manifest error.’ Ibrahim in Sura 21: 56-58 destroys the idols, but leaves one unharmed so that his compatriots may turn to it.[5]

Qur’anic terms for Idols are Asnam or Taghut. Asnam seems to apply to the images of Gods in the past, like in the time of Ibrahim and his people; they are akin to the Hebrew word Tselem. Taghut can also be used for idols in the time of the Prophet. In the Talmud, the Aramaic term t’wt is used for ‘being astray’ in the sense of:’ walking behind idols’. [6]

Here again, the terms used in the Qur’an are not unequivocal. Does the story of Ibrahim and his people tell us that it is wrong to worship images of gods or that it is wrong to have images at all? There seems to be no clear distinction between a statue, any statue at all, or an idol. This is possibly due to the scarcity of three dimensional art in the Arabic world.

Yet, there is also a set of texts that create some space for future use of art in the Islamic world. Those are the texts connected to king Sulayman. He has Jinns (spirits) working for him:

‘They worked for him as he desired, (making) arches (miharib, plural of mihrab) , images (tamathil), basins, as large as reservoirs, and (cooking) cauldrons fixed (in their place). (Sura 34: 12).

The jinns working for Sulayman seem to have been busy first and formost with artful utensils. That they were decorative as well, we can glean from the word ‘tamathil’, which denotes a picture of something. Also, Sulayman built his palace floor in such a way that the queen of Sheba, visiting him, held it for a sea, although it was a solid floor of glass slabs (27: 44). These stories show a decorative art that was meant to create an illusion of realness.[7]

Our conclusion must be that, although the Qur’an does not forbid the making of images of humans outright, there are tendencies within the Qur’an that make such a taboo understandable.

Later developments

Possibly, the later more negative reaction towards art representing human beings can be explained by the clash of cultures the Arab conquerors experienced when they got in touch with Byzantine and Sassanian art. The Arab peninsula was relatively unfamiliar with representative pictures and sculpture, whereas both in Roman and Persian tradition there was a wealth of images.[8]

Hadith literature, which started to develop in the course of the 8th century CE, is far more explicit in its condemnation of art and painters than the Qur’an itself. In several Hadiths, painters are classed with other sinners, such as usurers and pimps, and their products are condemned likewise.

‘Aisha said: ‘I bought a cushion having on it pictures (of animals). When Allahs Apostle saw it, he stood at the door and did not enter. I noticed the sign of disapproval on his face and said: ‘O Allahs Apostle! I repent to Allah and his Apostle. What sin have I committed?’ Allahs Apostle said: ‘What is this cusion?’ I said: ‘I have bought it for you so that you may sit on it and recline on it.’ Allahs Apostle said: ‘The makers of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection, and it will be said to them: ‘Give life to what you have created.’ The Prophet added: ‘The angels do not enter a house in which there are pictures of animals.’[9]

Abu Huraira recalled a saying of the Prophet when he saw a painter paint pictures in a house in Medina:

‘Who is more wicked than a man who sets to work to imitate the creative activity of God? Let them try to create a grain of wheat, or create an ant!’ (Bukhari, vol. IV, p. 104).

In both these stories the revolving point seems to be the joining of the three activities ascribed to God in the Qur’an: khalaqa, sawwara and bara’a. As we saw above, it seems to have been difficult to distinguish between those three functions. Therefore, the making of forms by a painter or sculptor could only be justified if he possessed the same miraculous power as Jesus had received from the Almighty. When the human artist fails, he will be punished in the fire. The interdiction on representation was only for animals and humans, creatures with a ‘life- breath’, not on plants and trees.[10]

In yet another hadith a connection is made between the Christian use of icons, the veneration of saints and the idol-worship the Qur’an denounces.

A’isha said: ‘When the Prophet became ill, some of his wives talked about a church which they had seen in Ethiopia and it was called Mariya. Um Salma and Um Habiba had been to Ethiopia, and both of them narrated its (the Church's) beauty and the pictures it contained. The Prophet raised his head and said, "Those are the people who, whenever a pious man dies amongst them, make a place of worship at his grave and then they make those pictures in it. Those are the worst creatures in the Sight of Allah.’ [11]

It seems clear that for the first Ummayad conquerors, it was important to put definite boundaries between their new religion, Islam, and the existing Christian religion in regions like Syria or Egypt. The making and veneration of images was one distinguishing characteristic. Differences were not as big as they seemed however. As we saw, within the Byzantine Church iconoclasm was not an unknown phenomenon. Likewise, the visiting of graves of holy men and women later on became part of the lived faith of millions of Muslims.

Yet, the injunction on use of images, even for worship, was not uncontested. As often, one can find stories in other sources that represent another point of view. These stories are also told around the Prophet and his companions.

The historian al- Azraqi (d. 834) has written a history about the city of Mecca.[12] He describes the days after the triumphal entrance Muhammed made into his home city.

‘When the Meccans rebuilt the Ka’aba after it had been damaged by a fire, they painted on its pillars pictures (suwar) of the prophets, trees and angels. Amongst these pictures there were ones of Abraham, the Friend of God, in the shape of an elderly man drawing out the divinatory arrows (istiqsam) and ones of Jesus the son of Mary and his mother. On the day of the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet went into the Ka’aba, ordered a garment to be brought, dipped it in the waters of Zamzam and commanded that all the pictures should be rubbed out except for that of Jesus and his mother, which he covered with his two hands, saying at the same time: ‘rub out all the pictures apart from the ones which I am covering with my hands!’[13]