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Contrary to what many Westerners believe, Islam has a rich tradition of secular painting in spite of its ban on images. It is only in religious rituals that the use of pictorial representation is totally prohibited.

I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.

We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.

The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.

What is right? Simply put, it is any assignment in which the photographer has a significant spiritual stake... spiritually driven work constitutes the core of a photographer's contribution to culture.

I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.

The language of the moment or, as it were, the language of the order in which we live, is the image. I felt that if I wanted to commune with the public, I should best do so through the language of image. It's a conscious embrace of a contradiction.

The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion.

Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.

My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.