From what I understand, one of the reasons that many of the ancient artworks are being destroyed by ISIS is that it is sinful to depict the human form. What is the actual rationale for this? Am I even correct about the sinfulness of the depiction? And are they being hypocritical when they video themselves doing it since they’re depicting the human form even more explicitly with the camera and showing it on the internet?
As with all human activities, this one has been the subject of much variation. My understanding is that Islam takes the original form of the Mosaic commandment about Graven Images very literally
Although I was taught in school that this meant not making any idols and worshipping them, to many people it meant not making any graven images at all, even if not intended as the object of worship. The idea wasn’t new with Islam – the Jews followed this closely for a long time, which is why there is very little ancient Jewish representational art*. Christianity has had periods of literal iconoclasm.
Muslim non-representation is probably more famous. It’s the rationale for all that beautiful calligraphy and those geometric mosaic tilings and the like that came to be called “Arabesques”. All that creative art impulse had to surface somehow.
But, again, there are necessarily exceptions. Many technical works used a very schematic method of depicting things that appear to be a way of giving technical details without being accused of doing art. In some places, art was allowed if it didn’t show people. (the famed Persian miniatures). Later, it was OK to show people, as long as you didn’t show The Prophet. Later still, some would depict The Prophet, but has his face veiled, but there are even images of Mohammed (rare, though) in Muslim art.
The taboo against depicting the prophet Mohammed is particularly strong, though. A lot of the ire against cartoons depicting him is, I think, as mjuch because they showed him at all, let alone under which circumstances. There was a movie made in 1977 by Muslim financiers, entitled Muhammed, Messenger of God. It had a big budget and big stars (like Anthony Quinn), and it was infinitelt respectful and scrupulously avoided showing its title character at all – his presence was indicated by his staff and other belongings. Nevertheless, some Muslims found this film (made , mostly, by Muslims) to be sacriligeous and offensive. During the 1977 Hanafi siege in Washington, the leaders of the attack demanded that the film be destroyed
(It has since quietly resurfaced as The Message)
*As I say at the start, though, all sorts of variations crop up in thousands of years of human history. WE actually have a circa first century Jewwish temple with wall paintings of worshippers.
When I was taking a Judaism class once, they showed slides of an illuminated Hebrew manuscript (of a Haggadah, I think). In the margins were pictures of people with animal heads (or animal heads with human bodies?). The explanation was that since such creatures don’t actually exist, it was OK to make pictures of them. But not of regular animals or people. I never got why anyone would want to make such illustrations anyway. The closest thing in Islam to that I ever saw was a picture of a pedestrian crossing sign in Saudi Arabia–where the silhouette of a walking person was headless. Such a bizarre ruse to get around a rule just for a mundane utilitarian function, but that’s Wahhabis and their extreme literalism for you.
There’s an additional aspect, which IIRC the Wahabi school of thought (? Sect?) of Sunnis has adopted, that even preserving relics or holy places is wrong (other than the basics of Islam). From what I’ve read - the wahabis are ascendant in the management of Saudi holy places, and are systematically destroying Mecca by tearing down various historic places and putting up bland modern architecture (paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, so to speak…)
The idea is, for example, that preserving the grave of the Prophet’s mother (one historic site I recall being mentioned as being under threat) was akin to making her into a graven image… plus it distracts from the pure contemplation and worship of the one true God, etc. This is the same logic behind fanatics destroying historic sites from Timbuktu to Afghanistan, including the ISIS destruction of ancient history and the threats to dismantle the pyramids.
Beyond the scriptural basis brought up by CalMaecham, there’s also the fact that back when Muhammad was alive, the big players in the Middle East were the Byzantines (or Eastern Romans if you prefer), who were Orthodox Christians and were at the time very much into depictions of the saints - going so far as to attribute a portion of the saint’s holiness itself to their representation or even magic powers ; and venerating them.
Across the border, that was lumped with a lot of other socio-economic & political items in a whole “the Byzantines are a corrupt and decadent society, we don’t want to end up like them” basket. Hence, strict proscriptions on relics and guidelines on what’s kosher to venerate.
This had an interesting knock on effect, too : when the Muslims started really eating into the declining Byzantine Empire and went so far as to lay siege to Constantinople itself in the early 8th century ; the people there started thinking that this must have been God’s punishment for their sins (a recurrent theme in the Middle Ages, across all cultures and religions), and because the Muslims were such iconoclasts and so self-demonstrably favoured by God, then holy icons must have been item 1 on God’s own shit list. So they, too, had a period of stringent iconoclasm. Followed by a strong swing back from the “iconophiles”, followed by yet another harsh iconoclasm in response the military trouble with the Bulgars, until finally worship of icons was restored for good by Empress Theodora (who’s feasted for it by Orthodox Christians to this day).
A large number of artworks were destroyed not simply because they depicted human form, but because they were idols or assumed to be idols.
Similarly, many ancient tombs of famous Muslims have been destroyed because the reverence people showed to them was perceived as akin to veneration (and often was, in fact). As already mentioned, even the Saudis have erased most surviving traces of the early companions of the prophet (tombs, houses) for this reason. The leveling of his own house and tomb has even been considered.
Many of the representations in ancient Egyptian temples and other carvings, the face and hands have been chipped away because the early Christians or Muslims would not allow idols, even if not being worshipped.