The Iconoclasm Analysis

As this course started, we have touched upon many terms, events, artifacts, and influential figures from the 16th century, but the historical movement that shocked me the most was the “Iconoclasm”. Iconoclasm as defined in our textbook is a “systematic destruction of religious icons because of their religious connotations”(336). The reason behind that important movement came after the Protestants or anti-Catholics, who wanted to reform Christianity, criticizing most of its false doctrines, so they wanted to fix the corruption in the Catholic Church. If a person looks at the catholic churches at that time, he will definitely be astonished by its greatness, and fantastic images and sculptures that were representing Jesus, Marry, and God. The images were firstly used as a way of storytelling for those who embarrassed Christianity and did not know the story of Jesus the Christ, as they were illiterate, so the images helped them to better understand what happened in the past. Later on, religious images destruction was justified by the old testament of the bible. John Calvin wrote about that, “ Therefore it remains that only those things are to be sculpted or painted which the eyes are capable of seeing: let not God’s majesty, which is far above the perception of the eyes, be debased …show more content…
Islam starting from the second it arose was stressing on destroying religious figures, and this prohibition was mentioned in both Quran and prophet’s sayings. As Christianity, the literal interpretation of the Ten Commandments prohibits representing God, so it is a religious inheritance that was mentioned in sacred religious texts. Additionally, since Christianity and Islam both believe in one God, there will surely be many beliefs in common between them. Plus, Islam as a religion came to continue what Christianity carried, so it is an accumulative historical and religious