This was actually shot with the camera at my waist. This was a marketplace in a small town inland and, just as our guide told us, these are very conservative Muslims and they get quite angry if you take their picture. The presence of women ie quite rare in this market also.
Traditionally, females do not go in this room and when Paula da Silva entered to find us, there were many harsh looks.
So, except for photographing the musician shown in another posted shot, who happily accepted money to be photographed, I was loathe even to lift my camera.
I took what I could get.
The Islamic resistance to the representation of living beings ultimately stems from the belief that the creation of living forms is unique to God, and it is for this reason that the role of images and image makers has been controversial. The strongest statements on the subject of figural depiction are made in the Hadith (Traditions of the Prophet), where painters are challenged to “breathe life” into their creations and threatened with punishment on the Day of Judgment. The
Qur’an
is less specific but condemns idolatry and uses the Arabic term musawwir (“maker of forms,” or artist) as an epithet for God. Partially as a result of this religious sentiment, figures in painting were often stylized and, in some cases, the destruction of figurative artworks occurred.
Iconoclasm
was previously known in the
Byzantine period
and aniconism was a feature of the
Judaic world
, thus placing the Islamic objection to figurative representations within a larger context.