The opinion that the canons of Islam do not allow to portray living creatures are widely used. We checked if it was true.

On the Internet you can find Materials About the full or partial Prohibition on the images or sculptures of living creatures in Islam. Moreover, such information You can find Not only on the Islamic orientation resources. There is also a judgment that calligraphy in the Muslim world Received Widespread precisely because of the ban on images. Did such a prohibition really exist in the past or existing now?

In order to answer this question, first we consider the authoritative sources of creed existing in the Muslim religious field. The main of these sources, of course, is Koran - The speech of God, sent down by the Prophet Muhammad “in the language of Arabic clear” through an intermediary, Archangel Jabrail. The Qur'an contains installations Sharia - a religious law regulating all aspects of the life of a believer (ritual, social, household, etc.). In the first centuries of Islam, the science of Tafsirs - comments on the Qur'an in which the verses of the Holy Book of Muslims are interpreted both from the point of view of the language (syntax, grammar, vocabulary) and from a semantic point of view.

The second source of creed for Muslims - Sunnah, the legend about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, which is a model for imitation of all Muslims. Sunna, contrary to a common misconception, is more than one whole text. It is installed on the basis Hadisov - The stories of the stories about Muhammad, which are describing his acts, statements and the so -called silent approval, corresponding to certain conditions. The main corps of hadiths is devoted to a separate branch of Muslim religious sciences, which uses an extensive system of classification of messages about Muhammad and identify the most reliable of them. Such hadiths (they are classified as a category "Sahih" - “True”) gathered separately, and six of the most authoritative collections of hadiths “Sahih” were called "Six books".

The Qur'an and the Sunnah are the main, but not the only sources for Fakikh, a specialist in Muslim law (Fikhu). The jurist makes decisions not only on the basis of the Koran and Sunnah, he also uses various rational methods and from time to time should resort to his own judgment. Differences in the definition of the methods and sources of Fikh, as well as the preference of some methods at one time, gave rise to the development of Mazhabov - schools of Muslim law. At the moment, four schools of Sunni law (Malikites, Shafiites, Hanafites and Hanbalites), as well as Jafarit Mazhab, adherents of which are most of the Shiites of the world, are most widespread in the world.

An important difference between Islam and, for example, Christianity is that in Islam there is no single center of authority. In Islam, the Church Institute did not have, headed by a person who has an unshakable authority among believers. In the same way, in Islam there is no clergy in his Christian sense, but in the VIII - IX centuries there was a class of religious scientists, known in the Russian language as depressions. It was the representatives of this corporation that became those who, in the absence of a single center of authority and a clear hierarchy, acquired the right to interpret and interpret the attitudes of the Koran and Sunnah. In other words, a person does not exist and cannot exist in the Muslim world, whose powers or status at least to some extent will be similar to the powers and status of the Pope or Patriarch. At the same time, this situation leads to the existence of a wide field of interpretations and a large number of authorities. Mufti -an authoritative specialist who has the right to make theological and legal decisions (Fatv), makes decisions, the execution of which is theoretically prescribed only by his followers.

An important story about images in the Qur'an is the story of the Prophet Ibrahim (biblical Abraham), which condemns their relatives for worshiping the images: “So he said to his father and his people:“ What are these images that you worship? ”” They object to him what they did because their fathers did this. However, Ibrahim urges them to believe in a single god and destroys the idols (Qur'an 21: 51–58). This story does not contain a direct indication of the inadmissibility of images or sculptures - it is condemned by the worship of images, which in the Muslim doctrine is classified as "Shirk". The concept of “shirk” is translated as “giving God for the comrade”, that is, the worship of something else, in addition to God (for example, from an Islamic point of view, under the category of “shirk”, the veneration of the Christians of the Trinity falls).

Another story, often given as an argument for the ban, is a message about the gods that the people of the Prophet Nuha (Biblical Noah) worshiped. The Qur'an reports that people turned away from the Epistle of Nuh and continued to worship the former deities: “Do not leave your gods in any way, do not leave Vadd, and Suva, Yagus, and Yauka, and Nasra!” (Qur'an 71:23). This story is revealed in hadiths. The authoritative collection of Al-Bukhari (810–870) gives the prophet commentary to this ayat, which states that these names had previously belonged to the righteous, and then Shaitan thought of people to create statues in the places where these righteous were sitting.

Both of these texts, as we see, do not contain a direct ban on creating images. It is only about the inadmissibility of worshiping images. At the same time, starting from the 9th century, there is an increase in the interpretations of the story about Ibrahim and specifically ayah 21:52 as instructions on the ban on images and sculptures. However, such an indication is not at all a dogma, mandatory for execution. In particular, popular among Russian Muslims Tafsir Saadi interprets It is like a warning against polytheism - it is unacceptable to worship statues and images.

If we turn to the Hadis Corps, then among those recognized by reliable you can find a number of messages dedicated to the attitude of Muhammad to images. Quite often, the hadith is quoted that the angels will not enter the house in which there are images or a dog. However, authoritative gathers of hadiths give different versions of this message. So, one version refers to the admissibility of patterns on the fabric. The popular topic of hadiths about images and sculptures is the warning to their creators. Such messages say that the creators of the images will be subjected to terrible torment in hell. In another hadith, this thought is revealed - the artist will have to breathe life into his creation. Such judgments are explained by the fact that the creator of images encroaches on the functions of God - the source of everything created.

In a number of hadiths you can find arguments in favor of the admissibility of images. In one of these reportedthat the Prophet broke the curtain with images in the room of his wife Aisha, but she later made pillowcases for pillows from this fabric, on which Muhammad was sitting. Another hadith, a transmitter and one of the actors of which is also Aisha, tells of her dolls (the Prophet married Aisha when she was still a child). In one version of this message Described The toy is a horse with wings. When Muhammad asked Aisha, there were horses with wings, she answered him that the Prophet Suleiman (biblical Solomon) had such. In response to this, Muhammad laughed, which can be regarded as approval. In another version of this hadith Explainedthat Aishe was allowed to play with dolls, as she was still a child.

Such hadiths can be interpreted differently. Is the laughter of the Prophet in response to the Aisha replica with the approval of images and sculptures in general or is it only about children's toys? Is it possible to portray animals only on pillows or this judgment can be interpreted more widely? The hadith cited above about angels that are not included in the house with images, for example, there is a more lengthy version in which It is said On the inadmissibility of anthropomorphic images. The Prophet explains that you can create images like trees or cut off your head in that they are similar to living creatures. In such cases, a lot depends on the nature of the interpretation - whether it will be strictly alpharal or wider.

Researcher Christian Gruber, Speaking On the narrower topic of the admissibility of the images of Muhammad, it notes that in the historical arch of Fatv there is not a single solution that would clearly and strictly prohibit images and sculptures. Banses of this level are already in the Father online collectors. For example, Fatva, which prohibiting images, was released by representatives of the Taliban movement in 2001, who thus tried to substantiate their plans for destruction Buddha statues in Bamian. By the way, a number of Muslim countries and individual authoritative couples performed sharply against such a decision.

For centuries, the diverse culture of the Muslim world has generated images and statues: for example, in a handwritten tradition Remained Rich iconography Ascension Prophet Muhammad and other episodes From his life. Christian Gruber in his article Selects Two periods in the history of images of Muhammad. She notes that in the images of the XIII-XV centuries you can see the face of the prophet without any curtain that appear on the miniatures of the 16th-19th centuries. The researcher also claims that such veils or calligraphic figures hiding Muhammad's face could be finished later, which should reflect more conservative religious trends.

In modern Iran Found A large number of various images of Muhammad. There you can also see many monuments to poets (for example, Firdousi) or Modern heroes like the deceased General Ksir Kasem Suleimani (there is also his Bust in Lebanon). In addition, over the past century in Muslim countries, a large number of photo and video materials have appeared in the utilitarian (for example, photos on a passport and driver’s license), an informational or entertaining nature (television, cinema, etc.). It is unlikely that all this would be possible in the conditions of a notorious ban on images.

The key problem that occurs even with a superficial study of the case with images is that on this subject there are many points of view supported by the authority system in Islam. While some mufti can, for example, resolve photos and television (as it happened over the 19th - 20th centuries), others (as in the case of Taliban and statues in Bamian) can issue prohibitions on the use of images. Sources of authority in the form of the Qur'an and Sunnah, as we see, give both the possibility, and the absence of a certain church hierarchy only fixes such pluralism. The second point that I would like to note in connection with the current situation is the politicization of artistic practices in itself. The most serious scandals that had tragic consequences arose around cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad in newspapers JYLLANDS-POSTEN And Charlie Hebdo. The discussion around such scandals unfolds not in the field of admissibility / inadmissibility of images in general, but the insults of a particular image in particular.