Answer
Wa `alaykum as-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
There is nothing wrong, as far as Islam is concerned, in keeping those framed wedding pictures as well as other family photos you tend to keep for memories or as souvenirs.
In his response to the question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a Senior Lecturer and Islamic Scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
There is nothing wrong for you to keep those wedding pictures in a frame on a bedroom dresser.
Photographic pictures are not considered quite haram or forbidden as is the case with carving of images, which has been forbidden in the Prophetic Sunnah.
Pictures are taken by trapping the shadows of a thing, and hence, it is not mimicking Allah’s creation.
Also if a person is simply keeping them for memory or as a souvenir it is not at all prohibited to do so.
Warning
However, to display pictures of heroes or leaders or scholars on the walls may fall into category of undesirable or forbidden category. For it may breed reverence, which is a slippery road leading to hero-worship, which is forbidden in Islam.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.