I was previously under the impression that Islam forbids the creation of human images, in either sculpture. painting or other artworks.
(There were several Malaysian students on my Architecture course who explained they could not attend sculpture / life drawing classes for this reason.)
But, many mosques in Iran have mosaic portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini on inner walls, and many similar painted images externally. Not to mention the huge blown-up photographs on billboards and buildings favoured by leaders in certain countries.
Is the restriction on re-creating the human form only implicit in a minority of Islam followers beliefs, or is it the case that photography and mosaic images are exempt from the rule?
What is the basis in the Koran for this belief? Is it only held by those with more of a fundamentalist leaning?
Apologies for my ignorance again, and thanks for any explanations.
I believe that images of humans and animals are forbidden because of possibility of idolatry (Islamic culture has given the world some fantastic geometric designs as a result of this); I can’t answer your question about the portraits though, which is a good one.
There are five major schools of Islamic law, of which four are Sunni and one is Shi‘i. The Shi‘i interpretation of the law apparently allows for portraits to be displayed.
My understanding is that most schools follow a very strict interpretation of what is really the commandment in Exodus not to make a graven image. The attitude is not unique to Islam – early Judaism followed the same rule, so that there was very little in the way of early Jewish religious art. (Modern Jewish religious art, too, for that matter).
Nevertheless, people are people, and at some point the desire for art seems to break through. I’ve seen some Roman synagogue paintings, and in Islam there was the period that produced the famed Persian miniatures. The laws about reproducing living things were at one point interpreted so liberally that you could even portray the Prophet, provided you shielded his face.
I’ve read that one reason that a lot of Medieval manuscripts (especially those on the mechanical arts) look so crude is not because of the ineptitude of the artists, but the need to provide useful diagrams coupled with this injunction against creating images, resulting in a variety of “schematic” art that was never intended to be taken literally. Criticizing the artist in those cases is thus as reasonable as complaining to a circuit designer that his squiggly resistors don’t look like real carbon-film tubes.
I have an excellent book, Symmetries of Islamic Geometrical Patterns, that quotes an authoritative viewpoint on this. The celebrated modern Islamic calligrapher, Ahmed Moustafa, says that “the not uncommon notion that religious interdiction prevented Islamic artists from depicting images from life … is unfounded and simply wrong”. He argues (I paraphrase) that geometric pattern was explored because it combined art, science and aesthetics in a way supremely appropriate to the Islam’s concept of pursuing God through pursuit of knowledge. “The direction and subsequent efflorescence of mainly abstract Islamic art was the result neither of compulsion or obligation, but of choice”.
As CalMeacham points out, ultraorthodox Jews do not permit images of man. Dolls, for example, are supposed to be disfigured by ripping off an ear or poking out an eye. In paintings, images of man are not permitted. In their homes, paintings would show still-life images of fruit, for example, or just patterns.
I think the basis for this in Judaism is two-fold. First, this is to reinforce that only God can create man, and this shows we are not attempting to create a living being. And, also, it is to prevent a person from being tempted to pray to an image or statue, like the old practice of praying to idols.
Disfiguring dolls? Personally, I think it gets to be far too extreme. - Jinx
This is mainly because of the ignorance and lack of retrospection on the part of many mainstream fundemental Islamic scholars and common people.
The reason of this forbiddance can be clued from very early days of Islam. People in Mecca were mostly idol worshipers. Islam forbids Idol worshiping. Mohammad forbade to create any idols etc for the newly converted since it’s hard to let go of old habits and practices. Of course, this mainly applied to that very first few generations of Muslims who converted so that they won’t go back to idol worshiping.
I do not think that such a decree is something that Muslims need to follow as they are more educated and understand the difference between the God and an idol so their chances of worshiping and idol are pretty low.
Many of the customs or practices that were forbidden in early days of Islam mainly applied to Bedouin culture specifically at that time frame when such society existed. Those decrees were not meant to be something carried over for the rest of the time but Muslims fear that if they’d let go of those practices or beliefs, they would be “changing” Islam. Which is an illogical and baseless premise.