Printing pictures and the income from it

Question

Question: Nowadays large commercial companies have pictures of living beings, and these are printed in the press. Of the printing jobs that come in, two thirds are such that they bear a picture of some living being or other. On every printed page there is a part on which there is no picture. Now, does printing these pictures by Muslims come under the ruling of making pictures and drawing pictures or not? And is the income obtained from it permissible or impermissible?

Answer

Making a picture of a living being is prohibited — whether it is made originally from a living being or copied from a picture, with a pen or with a machine, or in the weave of cloth, or made with some tool on stone, wood, iron and the like. And when it serves as a trade mark, it will be at the level of what is intended (i.e. it is itself the purpose)

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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