We can understand from the ancient history of the Arab peninsula how degraded the ancient Arabs were. They had terrible customs and rituals. They lost their real spiritual knowledge and had became idolaters (those who worship idols, or false gods). The Holy Prophet Muhammad (Sallal-lahu Alaihe Wa Sallam) started to preach in this environment. He preached according to time, place, circumstances and the level of people’s spiritual understanding.
Once, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) said, “Speak to people according to the level of their intellectual capacities. For if you speak all things to all men, some cannot understand you, and so fall into errors.” (6, p. 31)
In this connection ustad Abdullah Yusuf Ali writes:
“While the basic principles of Allah’s Law remain the same, its form, expression and application have varied from time to time, e. g., from Moses to Jesus, and from Jesus to Muhammad. It is one of the beneficent mercies of Allah that we should forget some things of the past, lest our minds become confused and our development is retarded.” (9, p. 1939)
The mission of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) was to reestablish the worship of one God and to stop false gods worship (worshipping unauthorized concocted forms). Even though the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) had been given divine knowledge and vision of Allah’s confidential, transcendental form and as we shall show soon, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) factually accepted holy pictures, images and deity worship as bona fide methods of honoring, remembering and serving Allah, he couldn’t reveal this very personal information about Allah because the people were at a stage of great morale degradation and to reveal such sensitive knowledge in these circumstances would have been very dangerous and destructive. So, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) was obliged to completely reject worship of any images or pictures. He had to cut back the disease right down to it’s root because the religious teachings had become infested by sinful activity right down to their roots.
The Holy Prophet Muhammad’s (S. A. W.) mission was not to repair the sick environment but to completely cut it down and reestablish the divine teaching on solid healthy foundations. His mission was to wipe away a spreading disease and give us a foundation which can support our future progress to Allah. Just like history shows us, another representative of Allah, namely Buddha. He came at a time when people were misusing the Vedic sacrificial ceremony. They were killing cows and eating their flesh under the name of serving and pleasing God. This was a very abominable state of affairs. So in order to begin the correction process Buddha was obliged to totally reject Vedic injunctions (the very knowledge that took one to God) and preach ahimsa (non-violence). This had to be established first. Then people were ready to understand and follow the next stage of purification and realization. Just like it would be most dangerous to build nice apartments on top of a building that’s rotting away. The correct procedure is to knock it down, strengthen the foundations then begin building nice apartments, one floor after another.
So similarly, according to time, place and circumstances the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) rejected images and pictures. But in one incident which is very prominent in his life he factually accepted a holy picture. This took place when the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) conquered Mecca and entered the Ka’ba, he ordered the destruction of all idols which were being worshipped there. It is alleged that there were paintings on the walls, including pictures of Virgin Mary with infant Jesus in her arms. According to ancient tradition, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) ordered all the paintings to be erased except one depicting Jesus and His mother. (80, p. 309) He put His hands over this picture and so saved it from destruction. (94, p. 171), (47, p. 133)
Once, in the earliest Meccan period of his preaching, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) had a revelation which apparently permitted the intercession of the most honorable goddesses. One version of this is:
Did you consider Al-Lat and Al-Uzza
And Al-Manat, the third, the other?
Those are the swans exalted;
Their intercession is expected,
Their likes are not neglected.
(The word translated “swan exalted” means that these are a kind of angelic being.) (113, p. 113)
The Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) prostrated himself at the end of the discourse, and the congregation prostrated also. (94, p. 387), (154, p. 184), (164, p. 21), (122, p. 137)
All these facts show us that factually the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) accepted holy pictures, images, and deity worship but practically completely rejected pictures and images because of time, place and circumstances.
According to the Muslim tradition, a part of the ”Heavenly Book” which was kept under the Throne of Allah was revealed to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) in the Arabic language. More than this, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) once had miraj, or ”ascending” to the heaven and after penetrating the 7th layer of heaven, he attended the Throne of Allah . This time he received divine knowledge from Allah. This divine knowledge given by Allah is of three kinds:
1) The knowledge that Allah ordered the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) to conceal;
2) The knowledge that Allah let him choose whether he concealed or revealed;
3) The knowledge which Allah ordered the Apostle to communicate to all the members of the ummah (community). (63, p. 10 
In this way the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) got part of the unlimited spiritual knowledge and at the same time he was ordered by Allah to conceal some parts of this knowledge. But still, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) gave many hints for those people who had some understanding. When the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) ascended to heaven and met Allah, Allah was sitting on the Throne. When people asked the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.), “Have you seen Allah?” The Apostle answered: “I saw only light, a light so intense that Allah sat behind 20,000 curtains. If these curtains were to be removed and someone were to see the face of Allah he would immediately be burned to ashes. (132, p. 10
When the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) stood in front of Allah he felt reassured, but He found it hard to stand his ground when Allah stretched out His hands and placed one on his shoulder and the other on his chest. An icy chill froze his bones and his blood . Then the coldness faded and was succeeded by an ecstatic bliss which seemed to carry the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) out of his body into a state of being so marvelous that it was impossible to describe. (52, p. 114)
Muadh-bin-Jabal said:
“The Prophet on one occasion, hindered our saying the morning prayers till we were near seeing the sun, then he hastened out of his house, and the Tacbir was called aloud, then the Prophet said prayers in haste, and when he had repeated the Salam, he said, ” Sit in your places, and I will inform you the cause of my being so late this morning. I got up early, and performed the Wadu, and said prayers, agreeably to the wishes of Allah, and I felt drowsy in my prayers, after which I awoke, and all of a sudden I saw my Creator in a most lovely form, and he said, “O! Muhammad!” I said, “What do you command?” He said, “What do the angels argue about?” I said, “I do not know.” Then I saw my God put the palm of his hand between my two shoulders till I felt my breast cold; then everything in the world appeared clear before me, and I knew the whole. Again He asked about disputations of the angels . I replied, “They dispute about deeds which cover sin.” (101, p. 155)
Once the Prophet of Islam said:
“Those believers who are in the highest honor with Allah will see the Divine Face morning and evening and compared with which all other pleasures of Paradise will be lightly esteemed and forgotten.” (142, p. 94)
It is recorded in tradition from Bukhari and Muslim, that once the Prophet of Islam said, “Allah-Taala (God Most High) created Adam in His own sura (form, image).” (141, p. 45), (100, p. 74)
From these clear evidences of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.) himself we can understand that Allah is the Supreme Transcendental Person and has a Spiritual Form .
But let us also see what is the opinion of prominent Muslim scholars.
The author of Jowhara (p.107-112) says:
“It is possible to see Allah in this world as well as in the next. In this world it has been granted to Muhammad only. In the future world, however, all believers will see Him; some say only His eyes, others say His whole face, others say every part of His body.” (89, p. 55)
Many Muslims on the basis of Qur’anic verses: (48.10); (25.60); (7.52); (10.3); (32.3); (11.9); (57.4); (75.22-23); (22.60 and 74); (31.27); (42.9); (58.1) believed that Allah posses a head, mouth, eyes, ears, hands and feet just like those of a human being. In the opinion of Abu Mo’ammar ol-Hodhali, a preacher at Baghdad, anyone who denied this belief was an infidel. Adherents of the school of the famous traditionist and lawyer Ahmad b. Hanbal have the same opinion. The school’s chief later exponent, Ahmad b. Taymiya, called the Mo’tazelites infidels and Ghazzali a heretic; on one celebrated occasion, after quoting the Qur’an in a sermon, he said to the congregation as he stepped down from the pulpit of the great mosque at Damascus,
“Allah will step down from His Throne in the same way as I am stepping down from this pulpit.” (33, pp. 157-15
Abu’ Amer ol-Qorashi, a Moor from Majorca declared that it was heretical to understand the sentence, “There is nothing similar to Him (Allah )” in (42.9) as meaning what it says; it meant, in his opinion, that nothing resembles Allah in respect of His divinity, because “Allah possesses limbs and organs like yours and mine.” As proof of God’s possession of such limbs and organs, Abu’ Amer ol-Qorashi cited the description of the Last Judgment in (68.42), and then slapped his thigh and said, “Allah has legs just like mine.” (33, p. 159)
A eminent Muslim scholar and ustad (holy preceptor) Al-Ashari (9th century AD), declared in his creeds,
“We confess that Allah has a face, without asking how. . . . We confess that Allah has two hands, without asking why.”
Thus, considering all the above mentioned points we can understand that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S. A. W.), like the prophets of ancient times, revealed knowledge according to time, place and circumstances. But because Allah is al-Rahman-ul-Rahim, the Compassionate and Merciful, He simultaneously reveals knowledge for people of all levels of understanding. If someone wants to understand Him as impersonal and formless He reveals suitable knowledge, if someone is ready to accept Him as personal but formless He reveals the corresponding knowledge, but if someone is sufficiently fortunate and intelligent enough to understand Him on the highest level as the Supreme Transcendental Person possessed of a beautiful, charming and indescribable Spiritual Form He has left sufficient hints to understand this.
Thus I have sincerely tried to present opinions of the most scholarly persons in the world. I have tried to be objective because I accept all religions, all revealed scriptures and all Prophets according to instructions given by Allah in the Qur’an: “Each one believed in Allah and His angels and His scriptures and His messengers. We make no distinction between any of His messengers” (2.285). And I try to be obedient and surrendered to the will of Allah in order to develop love of God. If, by my humble presentation I have disturbed someone’s sentiments or offended someone I offer my humble apologies and in the cause of spreading Allah’s glories I seek your forgiveness.
