For many Muslims, a visual image made by a human hand was something completely abstract and unknown. A picture was simply a category of evil like the Devil himself. It was irreligious, an innovation, to be shunned and avoided. Culture formed around the spoken word, which translated the glories of nature not into an image but into poetry. The world of Islam did not share the iconic awareness common throughout the West, where images were part of the culture that developed in every European nation. Even those ascetic Protestants who defaced sculptures in churches, and ground the images of saints,
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