The Sin in Image-Making and Publishing Scholars' Pictures in Newspapers

The questioner:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, regarding photography, is the sin upon the photographer or the one being photographed? And what is your view regarding the images of the honorable scholars, including your own, which appear in some newspapers and magazines? Does that indicate permissibility, or...

The Shaykh:
This is what they consult about. They take the picture, and we have not done that for them. They say, "You are walking, and you are not confronting them." The sin falls on them because you did not order them to do it, nor did you approve of it. We are the scholars who know that they took their pictures without knowing about it, and we do not hold them accountable for that, so the sin is on them. As for the one who agrees with them and orders that his picture be taken and approves of it, so that his picture appears in the newspapers, the sin is on everyone: on the photographer and on the one whose picture is taken, and the photographer's sin is greater, because he could have prevented them but did not.

The questioner:
We say, Honorable.

The Shaykh:
His picture was taken, and he did not know; he is not responsible for this. Yes, they took the Shaykh's picture from that place, and he was one of the most severe in forbidding it. They took his picture and began publishing it, and in his lifetime, may Allah have mercy on him, he wrote to them and forbade them from doing it and made them feel its gravity. I bear witness that he made them feel its gravity, and yet they did not care. Yes.