creatures, and He placed within them the souls by which they live. As the Most High says: “He created the heavens and the earth in truth, and He fashioned you and perfected your forms” 1, and He says: “He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, the Fashioner” 2. Allah then challenged those image-makers who try to rival His creation to put into the figures they fashion souls that would make them live, just as in the real creature whose likeness they depict. This exposes their inability and the futility of their effort: just as they are powerless to create a living being endowed with a soul, they are equally powerless to produce fruit or even a single grain—“then let them create a grain.”

2- Al-Bukhārī and Muslim report from ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “The people who will receive the severest punishment on the Day of Resurrection are those who seek to imitate Allah’s act of creation.”

This is the Prophet’s ﷺ declaration of the intense punishment that awaits image-makers on the Day of Judgment and the misery of their final outcome. Even if, in this world, they live in safety, are called “artists,” and are applauded in every way, a destiny awaits them unless they repent, for by their work they imitate Allah’s creation—that is, the images they fashion resemble the beings that Allah alone has brought into existence, He who is the All-Creating, All-Knowing. “Or have they set up partners with Allah who have created the like of His creation so that the two creations seemed alike to them? Say: Allah is the Creator of everything, and He is the One, the All-Compelling” 3.

Imām al-Nawawī (d. 676 AH) said concerning this hadith: “Some say it applies to the one who makes an image to be worshipped—that is, the maker of idols and the like; such a person is a disbeliever and will be among those most severely punished. Others say it refers to anyone who intends what the hadith describes—namely, to rival Allah’s creation—and believes that; he too is a disbeliever, and his torment will match his disbelief and increase in proportion to it. As for one who makes images without intending worship or rivalry, he is a flagrant sinner guilty of a major offense, but he does not thereby disbelieve.” Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan (d. 1285 AH) said: “And if this is the ruling concerning one who forms…"