Tasweer in all its forms — pictures, drawings, paintings, sculpture — has become common among Muslims, and the reasons are worth naming. Part of it is admiration for the West and the assumption that whatever comes from there represents modernity and civilization. Part of it is a belief, held out of simple unfamiliarity, that Islam has nothing to say about art at all — when in fact Islam is a comprehensive system that regulates every aspect of human life.
The Evidences
The booklet presents a substantial body of proof from the Noble Qur'an and the Sunnah showing the prohibition of images, together with the exceptions permitted where there is genuine need. The narrations on this subject are unusually strong, which is what makes it difficult to dismiss once they have been read.
The Reasoning Behind It
Two reasons are given, and they are different in kind.
The first is protective of belief. Earlier nations fell into polytheism through images — likenesses of righteous people made in memory, venerated by the next generation, worshipped by the one after that. Cutting the practice at its root prevents the sequence from beginning. This is the same principle that runs through much of Islamic legislation on creed.
The second concerns morality. The booklet is direct about the harm that follows from photographic imagery in particular, and the part it plays in the decline of moral standards — an argument that has aged rather better than it might have when it was written.
Reading It Fairly
This is a subject on which sincere Muslims and qualified scholars hold differing positions, particularly regarding photography as distinct from sculpture and hand-drawn likenesses. The booklet argues one position and argues it from evidence. Read it for the evidences it assembles, which is what a reader forming his own view needs most.
Related Reading
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