Islam prohibits the depiction of people. How did the Muslim world react to/reconcile the invention of cameras and cinema?

by qernanded
whodyougonnacall

As someone half of whose family is or was Muslim, I'd like to inform you that, Islam doesn't necessarily prohibit depiction of people. There is the aniconism, and that's it. Koran doesn't have any prohibition of visual representation but there are some hadiths saying so, which Muslims can take serious or not, depending on their own tastes and wishes. Currently, irs only the representation of God and Muhammad being seen as problematic, and once upon a time other prophets were an issue as well although not anymore.

When it comes to cinema, what you're asking is basically not that different than asking how Christians reacted to cinema, since the aniconist traditions of theirs. Basically, aside from the extreme puritan doctrine called Wahhabism, which is basically a reform/revival movement came into existance around 18th century, Muslims moved out of the 'not representing the figures' thing pretty early, and representing human forms thing since concerns of idolatry has been abondened, while the insistence on not 'truely' representing human forms and the distaste towards that, etc. went away by time. Of course, unlike Christianity having its iconoclasm eras, like the Roman ones, and ones came with reformation, and the process of slowly getting out of the things with first statues that doesn't have a real depth, then only using paintings for religious purposes, then one step back, two steps forward, and so on; avoidance of figurative representation getting to be only limited to very specific contexts had its own story, even though these two stories argued to have their effects on each other. Unless you're to specifically look for Wahhabi zealots and what some of these very group had said about this and that, I doubt if you can find any reactions to cinema or TV from a religous standpoint.

I'm not academically studying the late Ottoman history, but I still think that I can contribute a bit when it comes to photography and reactions to it in the Ottoman Empire. When photography became a thing, it was Mahmud II on the throne, and Westernisation efforts were in practice. He already made portraits of himself and make them put up in the official buildings, Western aesthetics were also regarded well among the bureaucrats and official circles, and so on. Now, from the very start, photographers have flocked into the Ottoman Empire, since it was regarded as some mysterious land and they simply wanted to record it. This followed with studios being opened in Istanbul/Constantinople, but of course there was still the distaste towards the figurative paintings among the common Muslim folk. But at the same time, sultan himself supported the photography and he even personally practiced it. This resulted with public slowly accepting the art, and during the reign of Abdülmecid, first adoption by the Muslim public have occurred. After the military school of engineering being added with the drawing courses into their curricula, some of the graduates got into photography, and sent around to record the empire. It was Abdülhamid II era that these kind of efforts have started, since sultan have realised the value of photography when it comes to recordings things. Events and structures have been photographed by the order of sultan, and ~800 photograph albums prepared. Even though, a Muslim civilian opening his own studio only happened in 1910. While photography started to seen as the normal, all these meant most of the photographers being non-Muslims even after the early republican era.

There is at least one article specifically talking about the relationship between photography and painting in Ottoman Empire as I recall reading one, and other articles on the photography in the late Ottoman era should be explaining these briefly. I can search for the name of article and the writer if you want me to.