Response to Dr. Saʿd al-Khathlān on the Issue of Photography

Then he said:
"But suppose that someone drew a picture of this person, and his drawing was so precise that people marveled: How could this person draw such an image?"

I say:
1. People marvel at it because so few are capable of it and people are not used to it, just as they do not marvel at a calculator but are amazed at those few who can do math mentally. It is well known that one of the characteristics of modern machines is precision and the ability to repeat operations consistently.

2. Also, let us consider this phrase carefully: "and his drawing was precise".
Here, the secret behind the appearance of the image as realistic was noticed, the secret being the accuracy of the drawing and the precise arrangement of colors.
From this arise two possible implications:
   1. Either he differentiates between the precision of human drawing and that of a machine, which is false, especially if the two results are identical.
   2. Or he denies that the machine draws, traces, and forms, and therefore does not accept the imitation cause in photography. This is the lesser error, inshāʾ Allāh. We have explained repeatedly how machines carry out drawing; readers may refer to the beginning of our book for this explanation.

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https://arm-alqaddari.codeberg.page/books/buzoogh/

This is among the response to Dr. Saʿd al-Khathlān. He has the strongest arguments among those who defend the permissibility of photography, because he delved into what photography is. Sadly he missed the correct understanding, and built on that wrong conclusions, and contradicted himself many times, which is natural.

I benefited a lot from his stance, because he is the second most common source for specious arguments in this issue.