idolatry

In Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the turning away from God to other objects of religious devotion. In the Hebrew Bible it is specifically forbidden in the second of the Ten Commandments. Generically, all worship of something visible and concrete, as opposed to unseen beings. Islam forbids the use of any pictures or other images of living beings, because of the danger of transferring admiration and wonder from God to the image or the artist.

Christianity has interpreted the command variously at different times and places. In the 6th and 7th centuries, a reaction against the use of images arose in the Byzantine Empire, culminating in the iconoclast movement. In the Reformation, the use of images was repudiated as idolatrous, but Martin Luther allowed them as helpful to devotion. Some groups, notably in certain Protestant churches, now avoid all images, while others, such as the Roman Catholic and Orthodox, encourage the use of pictures and statues as pointers, or icons, to God. The word ‘idol’ is prejudicial to Hindus for whom the worship of an image of the deity is an important element in their path of devotion.