Can I Draw and Sell Stylized Human Characters with Eyes and Ears but No Nose or Mouth?
Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Question
I am a Muslim digital artist opening art commissions for stylized human characters that have a head, hair, eyes, and ears, but no nose or mouth. Can I take payment for drawing them?
Answer
Taking commissions to draw these characters is not permitted. In the Hanafi school, an image of a living being is complete once the head is drawn, and by your own description, the head is there in full: hair, eyes, and ears, on a face that is still a face. Leaving out the nose and the mouth does not lift it out of the prohibition.
The exemption our books record is for the figure whose head was never drawn, or was drawn and then effaced, since “it is not worshipped without the head, ordinarily” [Ibn Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar 1:648]. Ibn Abidin (Allah have mercy on him) ties that exemption to the head alone: “He restricted it to the head, because removing the eyebrows or the eyes is of no account, since it is worshipped without them” [Ibn Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar 1:648]. The wording is Ibn Nujaym’s (Allah have mercy on him), and in al-Bahr al-Raiq it runs on: “… and likewise no account is taken of cutting off the two hands or the two feet. And in al-Khulasa: likewise, if he effaces the face of the image, that is like cutting off the head” [Ibn Nujaym, al-Bahr al-Raiq 2:31].
Read together, these settle your question. A face wiped out altogether is treated like a head cut off. A face that remains a face, with some features left out, is not the reason being that such a figure is still worshipped without them. If removing the eyes changes nothing, leaving out a nose and a mouth changes less, and stylization does not change it either, since the ruling turns on the head being there and not on how lifelike the drawing looks.
Payment follows the work. Hiring for an act of disobedience is not permitted [al-Mawsua al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaytiyya 38:217], and a commission does not become lawful because a client is willing to pay well for it.
The Head Is the Criterion, and It Leaves You a Wide Road
The same criterion shows you what is open to you: figures with no head, figures whose face is wiped out rather than merely simplified, and everything that is not an animate being. Landscape, architecture, plants, pattern, objects, lettering, and calligraphy are all commissionable, and there is beauty in that work and a living in it. Set your commission terms before you open, and let clients choose from what you can offer with a clear heart.
And Allah knows best.
Faraz Rabbani
Related Answers
- What Makes an Image “Complete” in the Hanafi School? — The Hanafi criterion set out at length, including the head, the erased face, and images too small to make out.
- Are Drawings for Educational Purposes Permissible? — Outlines drawn without features, and what teaching needs make room for.
- What Is the Ruling Regarding Drawing Living Creatures Without Features? — The difference of opinion on featureless figures, and where the caution lies.
- Which Type of Art Is Permissible? — What is open to a Muslim artist, and the intention that turns the work into worship.
