The Shaykh’s remarks on the issue of using image-making in teaching.

The Shaykh : So these people do not prohibit and do not permit, and we have ended up walking behind them... and imitating them in everything they do, without weighing what we wish to benefit from them in this world, let alone the Hereafter, with the scale of the Shari'ah and the straight balance. Education today has become a matter of imitation, so it is necessary to study these means we have taken from the Europeans within the limits of the Islamic Shari'ah. For example, I will give you a very simple example: we want, for instance, to make the student understand what a camel is, so we show him a picture of a camel. The camel in our lands is always going... and so on. But if this picture were taken in lands where there are no camels, it would carry a ruling different from the previous one. We said earlier that necessity is measured by its extent, but this... In Europe, for example, camels are not known. Since they present a picture of a camel to their students out of necessity, we present a picture of a camel to our Arab students. This is a small and very small example. In conclusion, this teacher must, above all, understand the religion and be careful to apply its rulings. One of those rulings is that necessity is measured by its extent. So he should not go beyond the reading or the prescribed book for students, which contains images of all kinds, unless this teacher feels that there is a need to photograph and present them to the students, and feels that there is no need otherwise. Within these limits, it is permissible for the Muslim teacher to use the means of image-making only when no other means suffices to replace them.