Digital Pictures

The ban o­n pictures of animate objects (people and animals) is unequivocally stated with great emphasis in many highly authentic Ahaadith. The authenticity of these Ahaadith has never been questioned by anyone, not even the deviant learned men who propagate the permissibility of pictures. These deviates make their best endeavors to interpret away the prohibition. But all their interpretations are baseless and no Muslim of intelligence who is not intoxicated by his nafs will find sense in the interpretations to legalize the prohibition of pictures of animate objects.

WORN-OUT

The desperate old and worn-out argument for legalizing pictures produced by the photography method was the laughable contention that the photo-picture is a reflection of the object and not a picture of the object. Any person having some intelligence can understand that a photograph is NOT a reflection. It is a permanent picture notwithstanding the use made of the principle of reflection in the production of the picture.

Just as drawing with a pen or brush is a method which produces a picture, so too is the camera a method or a way of producing a picture. As long as the object remains in front of the mirror, its reflection will be there. As soon as the object is removed, the reflection too disappears. If a picture is drawn of an object reflected in the mirror, the drawn image will not be a reflection. Thus, the picture which was drawn by viewing a reflection in the mirror will remain a picture. It will not be said that it is not a picture, but is a reflection because it was drawn by viewing at the reflection in the mirror. But a picture for its sustainment is not indeed of the permanent presence of the object whose picture it is. The argument is absolutely ludicrous. In fact, it is technically and Islamically bizarre.

We have explained the Islamic ban of pictures, including photopictures, in our booklet, Photography, Picture-Making and Islam. The booklet is available from us.

LEGALIZING

Whenever a new method of making pictures is discovered, the modernistmen of ‘learning’ make their abortive attempts to legalize pictures. The most recent method invented is digital photography. Some Ulama have fallen into the trap of the modernist deviates and have proclaimed digital pictography to be permissible. These Ulama have viewed the issue very superficially. They have deliberately made a superficial and a defective research of the digital method to comply with their nafsaani desires to make haraam pictures halaal. But there is absolutely no validity in their arguments.

METHODS

There are a variety of ways and methods of producing pictures. The Shariah does not attack the method of picture production. It attacks and bans the product of the method, namely, the picture of animate objects. Regardless of the method employed to produce a picture, if it is a picture of a person or animal, it is haraam. It will remain haraam — a major sin— irrespective of the method of its production. By whatever existing methods or future new methods which maybe still be invented pictures are made, they will always remain haraam if the pictures are of animate objects.

The latest method is the digital o­ne. Some Ulama have subtley attempted to legalize haraam pictures by introducing the baseless argument —that pictures made by the digital method are not pictures. Even non-Muslims mock at the absurdity of this stupid argument. Those who claim that pictures produced by the digital method are not pictures should revert to the experts who have invented this method. Ask their opinion regarding the technical issues and see if they say that digital pictures are not pictures.

DIMENSIONS

Muslims should not allow themselves to be misled by the absurd arguments proffered to legalize what Allah Ta’ala has made haraam. Sin has two dimensions. The o­ne dimension renders the perpetrator a faasiq, and the other dimension makes him a murtadd (renegade). It expels him from the fold of Islam. As long as the sinner understands and believes that the sin he commits is haraam, he remains a Muslim and is described a faasiq. But when he becomes so flagrant and shameless in the perpetration of the haraam act that he declares the permissibility of the prohibition, then he leaves the fold of Islam. He has thus become a murtadd. May Allah Ta’ala save us from such calamities. Digital pictures are just as haraam as pictures drawn with the pen, brush, or any other method, past, present and future.

Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) said that among the worstpunished persons o­n the Day of Qiyaamah will be the picture-makers, including those who employ digital pictography. The Hadith places picture-makers in the same category as those who had murdered Ambiya and their own parents.


"The Majlis" Vol.15 No.10

Mujlisul Ulama of South Africa
P.O. Box 3393
Port Elizabeth, 6056
South Africa

Source : themajlis.net