Images of Living Things in Islamic Law — Ali Shukri Amin
First published on my writing site: www.aliamin.info/2026/09/images-of-living-things-in-islamic-law/
By Ali Shukri Amin. I first wrote this as a comment on r/BookshelvesDetective, in the thread “Need more space”, copied here as written.
Depictions of living things are not seen as “blasphemy” even in the strictest schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
Primarily the Hanbali school, although scholars from other schools, prohibited depicting living things that have a soul on the basis of a narration of a Prophetic companion ibn ‘Abbas wherein he saw a painter at the marketplace and told him that the Prophet Muhammad said,
Every maker of graven images will be in Hellfire. Every image he made will be given a soul to punish him in Hell.
Ibn Abbas interpreted this broadly to mean any depiction of a living thing with a soul (i.e. animals).
However, blasphemy would be akin to shirk (polytheism), kufr (disbelief), or nifaq (hypocrisy). Merely creating an image, despite how stern the hadith may seem, in no way rises to that level.
It is moreso akin to a minor sin, with the strictest possible interpretation being that it is a major sin.
Based on the wording of this narration however most scholars disagreed with ibn Abbas and took the meaning of craven images to be images pertaining to idolatry specifically.
Posted September 16, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
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