What is the ruling on photographic imaging?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : May Allah reward you. A questioner asks about photographic imaging: is it permissible?
The Shaykh : There is scholarly disagreement among the later scholars regarding photographic imaging; some classify it as image-making, while others do not. However, we must ask why we take pictures. Is it for a valid purpose, or merely to preserve a memory, as they say? If it is for a valid purpose, such as identification, travel documents, or the like, then there is nothing wrong with it. But if it is merely for the sake of memory, or for something worse than that, such as hanging pictures on the walls, or for something similar or more severe, such as taking a picture of someone whom it is forbidden to look at with enjoyment, then in any case, these follow the means, and the means have the rulings of their objectives. Yes.
The Shaykh : There is scholarly disagreement among the later scholars regarding photographic imaging; some classify it as image-making, while others do not. However, we must ask why we take pictures. Is it for a valid purpose, or merely to preserve a memory, as they say? If it is for a valid purpose, such as identification, travel documents, or the like, then there is nothing wrong with it. But if it is merely for the sake of memory, or for something worse than that, such as hanging pictures on the walls, or for something similar or more severe, such as taking a picture of someone whom it is forbidden to look at with enjoyment, then in any case, these follow the means, and the means have the rulings of their objectives. Yes.