The issue of taking pictures

The Saudi people are notoriously private.  They build homes with walls around them.  As you drive by, you can often see the windows blacked out or covered with paper (on the inside).  In older times, the windows or balconies were covered with wooden fretwork, so that women could look out without being seen.  But the thing that I find interesting is that Saudis, in general,  do not seem to like to have their pictures taken.  People advise you to always ask before you take pictures of anyone, even for faraway crowd shots.  It is especially taboo to take pictures of women.  I know that they are not the only culture that does not like their picture taken, but I am curious about the reason.

I began thinking more on this topic while shopping last week.  At a few clothes stores at the mall, they had large posters of models wearing fashionable clothes.  That part is normal.  The odd thing is that all the faces were blurred (or mosaic'd) out.  You could basically see the face, but it was not clear.  Actually, as you walk around the mall, the advertising posters in the windows all have faces that are blurred.  I took a picture of one.  Here it is below:

 

 

I was looking at it wondering why would they do that.  Were they saving money in not having to pay model fees?  This seemed so ridiculous.  I mentioned this to a friend and she thought that maybe the parent stores were not located in Saudi Arabia, but perhaps another middle eastern country where they were not as strict about having pictures taken of people.  I looked up the parent company of one of these stores and the parent company was located in Bahrain.  Maybe one day, I will get to Bahrain and check out one of these stores to check the theory. 

So then, my next question is whether this is a cultural thing (perhaps a Saudi Arabian Bedouin tribe dislike of pictures) or an Islamic teaching.  I knew that Islam does not like drawings, paintings or sculptures of people.  I knew that it had something to do with not wanting to promote idol worship.  That is why many of the statues were destroyed in Madein Saleh. But what about photography, which is a little different?  And now, with the prevalence of camera phones, I wondered what the thinking actually was about pictures.

It turns out that there is an actual name for the forbidden activity of making drawings, paintings or sculptures of people.  The teaching is that innovating the features of a person is something that only Allah can do.  It is called Tasweer.  I found a website that actually asked questions of an Islamic scholar about picture taking.  His name is Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  He said that when photography is a medium of communication or for simply retaining innocent memories without trying to give it the same regard as Allah, it does not fall into the category of Tasweer.

Taking this into account along with the probability that other Muslim cultures do allow advertising posters of models in their stores.  I am pretty sure that I saw this in Istanbul.  And I would imagine that Dubai does also.  So, my conclusion is that this is a not a Muslim norm, but a cultural one.  Therefore, this must be part of the desire for privacy.  It is not a male female issue, because the posters are blurred for both male and female.  So, now, my question is whether this is something that was  something that came about to ensure survival in the desert of the Bedouin tribes or was this precipitated by something more recent.  I think that it must be the former reason because of the statements that I read about in older times (a century ago), the windows had wooden fretwork so that the women could see out without being seen.

My search for answers will continue.  I don't actually get to meet many Saudi Arabian people.  But I do meet other middle eastern ladies on the grocery bus.  Maybe, I will ask them.