me, me, virgogirl! i am one of ur your would be angels, let me be forward and name myself :P

why else would you text me with satc friendly messages the minute you wake up :)

Yes thats beautiful labs.

For some strange reason i cannot read mysticlv and virgogirl. I think i used to be able to.

oh gosh way too much 'niceties' going on in here....i'm gonna need the sick bucket yet again *:

how come suddenly so many people's comments are off limit to me. i could read all last evening but today nada.

anyway friends are friends and will be friends. i have two that i have had since we were all 21 and one since i was 3 and she was 6.

have to add that in the past 1 month i have met some really really nice and special people here on naseeb and it will be my good "Naseeb" if one day i can acutally call them my angels too. i dont have to name u lot u know who i am talking about. long live SATC ;)

aw that IS a lovely prayer fairytale

awww - that's a nice prayer. :) how sweet!

When i was coming here my mum prayed for me 'da rahmat farikhtay day mal sha' i.e 'may the angels of mercy be your friends' and ever since i have befriended many and have been helped and assisted by many.

fff irfani....are ONE! LOL

Mila who are these jerks and jerkettes complaining about your War & Peace writings? :P

lets all have a key orgy....woohoooo

yea mila is right on this one .. quite a lot of dudes here are now getting it on with the keyboard and the keystrokes !

MILA yeah gal u tell them :P

Okay firstly....Some you commented about my ONE long message on a JE and here these guys are writing a Book and you don't say anything....whats up with that!

2nd, the JE is called FRIENDS....if you all wanna talk about religion and Pictures, why don't we just start a JE on the subject because this is a VERY interesting Subject seriously, but not kool on someone else's JE.

Lets start a JE on this and peoples ideas and thoughts cause I have been going threw something regarding pics in our home and I would love to ask some questions and what not.

interesting.....hmmmmmmm

Salaam All. I can't see MsL's words. The rest I read, and can identify with the questions of FoN and SamSpan. The whole reason Islam becomes hard to fathom is because of the complications that arise from rigid interpretation of otherwise commonsensical tenets. (Rigid in historic meaning with changing cultural context or understanding.) Imagine if you were a courier of Islam to some distant land, say the Far East, a thousand years ago. Someone found a holographic display system (or created one, same argument,) wouldn't you immediately attempt to stop that person by explaining that others may not understand what this is, and do everything in your power to stop this means of conveying an image which might, over time, end up being worshipped? (Or across distance, since people in different places see things differently.) That danger might not exist today, but it certainly would have existed a hundred years ago. Do you see the analogy? It is the same argument really, but I am approaching it from another direction, so that you may understand easily.

Back then there was a danger that PEOPLE, not Bibi Ayesha (R), OVER TIME (not right then,) might start to worship this image as most of the statues and false gods in the Ka'aba came to be. They were originally representations of good or great men. And over time they became gods to these ignorant people. How much danger of the same exists in our day and age? Aren't you are intelligent enough, and ensure an intelligent enough household, that even if you take a picture, anyone in your home (or coming into contact with the image by being in your proximity) doesn't misrepresent it? Isn't it your duty to let your kids know that those aren't real people inside that screen, that they are just images made possible by technology? Now what would happen if you were in an ignorant land? Or in a place where ignorant people were to come into contact with your TV or other images? There would be a danger there, but _not_ in our world, which was my point all along. If you end up going to New Guinea and live among the last remaining savage people on the planet, and adorn your house with pictures, _then_ there's the danger that those people would worship those images. But are you really living among unthinking savages?

If you cannot accept the fact that _knowledge_ expands our universe and things we never considered before are now right or wrong because of how we utilize them and what neeah (Intention) we bring to our use of them, then you and I really don't have anything further to talk about. I will maintain that, growing up in an educated family and one which holds Islam as the fundamental truth in our lives, I see this religion as dynamic and reactive - or proactive for the best among us - but never fixed. Islam is a living religion, which risks death everytime someone says "don't analyze this, it has been decided already, and here's what the judgement was". The same was Iqbal's contention in his seminal work "The Revivification of The Islamic Sciences." He too argued that the reason the muslim ummah is suffering now is because we have all this scholarship which we take as our laws now, instead of continuing upon that scholarship and re-interpreting the interpretations of the middle ages with our wider and more enlightened mindsets. If you do not agree then please be blissful in your ignorance. I cannot afford to argue with someone who does not recognize that my point is the same as Iqbal's. If you see that, then please recognize how your take on images needs to expand to incorporate our current reality, which is vastly more complex than the technological mindset from our beloved Prophet (S)'s time.

The first characteristic of Islamic art is a limitation set by Islamic law (Hadith): Images of living beings, human or animal, are forbidden. This is because of the emphasis on the unity and singularity of God, and the prohibition against idol worship. As a result, most Islamic art is non-representational.

this is ridiculous..its legal to display them, not legal
to take them..and inbetween to look at them

sounds like some stuff made up by man to me.

so replicating the human form in art/design is considered haram?

i think paintings incorporating plant life/ geometric patterns aren't frowned upon (hence their abundance in Islamic art)

maybe digital pics didnt exist during the olden times - but what does islam say about portraits/paintings?