From the explanation of the book "Al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib," clarifying the defectiveness of the Zahirite school.

The Shaykh : There is something here that must be pointed out; although there are these general texts that do not distinguish between one who draws and another, or between one image and another, this distinction between manual drawing and mechanical drawing is only fitting for the school of the Zahirites, who freeze on certain words and do not attach to them other meanings or issues that the words do not cover but their meanings do. The Zahirites are known for freezing on the words, and I have often given you more than one example; so I will now limit myself to one example to clarify the matter for those who have not understood the school of the Zahirites. For example, there is a hadith in "Al-Sahihayn": It is clear that the intended meaning of this prohibition is to preserve the purity of the water and its nature and essence, and that it not be exposed to contamination by impurity, whether the impurity is little or much, because it may actually become impure. This is how the majority of scholars understood this hadith. As for the Zahirites, they said: what is prohibited is urinating directly in stagnant water... as he says; so if he urinated in a vessel and then poured this urine from the vessel into the stagnant water, it is permissible. Who says with this logic? The Zahirites, who stop at the apparent meaning of the word. And this word does not mean urinating in stagnant water; so the one who urinated in a vessel that has no water, is this said linguistically to be urinating in stagnant water?! No, this is urinating in a vessel. So he froze on this word. But if he had considered the objective of the Lawgiver in this prohibition, he would have known that the intended meaning is preserving the purity of the water. So this preservation, or this objective that the Lawgiver aimed at with this prohibition, must be preserved; and preserving it obliges us not to look at the means and not to stop at the apparent word. So whether he urinated in the vessel in the stagnant water directly, or urinated, for example, in a pipe, long or short, and then this pipe, with what it contains of impurity, reached the stagnant water, there is no difference between this and that. This is an example, and I do not want to lengthen this now, as the time has grown long.
Those who say that this image which the artist draws with his hand is forbidden, but if he draws it with a machine it is lawful; this is Ibn Hazm the Zahirite, it is impossible that he would say this; so I said to some of those who are entrenched in such freezing in the issue of image-making, by way of illustration: They claimed that a Shaykh from those who distinguish between manual image-making, which is forbidden, and mechanical image-making, which is lawful, claimed that a Shaykh from these visited a brilliant student of his at his home. He saw that this student had placed the Shaykh's image in the front of the place, so he admonished him and rebuked him, and said: I have... repeatedly and again and again that keeping images is forbidden, and that they prevent the entry of the angels; so what do you say, you have placed my image? He said to him: O honorable Shaykh, this image is photographic, and this is not a manual image, and we understood from you the difference between the manual image, which is forbidden, and we avoided it, and the photographic image, which is lawful; so this is a photographic image. So the Shaykh patted the student on the shoulder and said to him: May Allah bless you, you have understood jurisprudence and comprehended.
This is jurisprudence!! So if a person came to the first image; that is: the manual image which was forbidden...