There was a whole schism in the Byzantine Empire during the late 700s over whether religious iconography constituted graven images. This enveloped all the Abrahamic Religions and periodically reasserted itself for nearly a millennium, both in the academic sphere and in riots lead by hot-headed zealots of various sects.
Muslims simply ended up on the iconoclast side of the fence once the dust settled. If you study art history of the region, you get some truly incredibly geometric patterns emerging throughout the Muslim world, well into the 20th century, because of this stricture against iconography. There’s some speculations iconoclasm inspired efforts to produce these shapes and patterns, resulting in a heavy religious patronage of Islamic mathematics in much the same way the Renaissance Era in Europe contributed to the modernization of art and sculpture.
But the idea that Islam is somehow unique in the views on artistic reproduction of the human form is really more an artifact of history than of the religion itself. Absent certain twists of fate, we’d be angrily denouncing Muslims for making big bronze statues of their religious figures, which 600 years of Protestant iconoclasty informs us is only something a bunch of evil religious psychos would ever do.
There was a whole schism in the Byzantine Empire during the late 700s over whether religious iconography constituted graven images. This enveloped all the Abrahamic Religions and periodically reasserted itself for nearly a millennium, both in the academic sphere and in riots lead by hot-headed zealots of various sects.
Muslims simply ended up on the iconoclast side of the fence once the dust settled. If you study art history of the region, you get some truly incredibly geometric patterns emerging throughout the Muslim world, well into the 20th century, because of this stricture against iconography. There’s some speculations iconoclasm inspired efforts to produce these shapes and patterns, resulting in a heavy religious patronage of Islamic mathematics in much the same way the Renaissance Era in Europe contributed to the modernization of art and sculpture.
But the idea that Islam is somehow unique in the views on artistic reproduction of the human form is really more an artifact of history than of the religion itself. Absent certain twists of fate, we’d be angrily denouncing Muslims for making big bronze statues of their religious figures, which 600 years of Protestant iconoclasty informs us is only something a bunch of evil religious psychos would ever do.