A note on statues [from at-Tāj, in the marginalia]

Answer (and Allah grants success): What appears to me is that statues fall into two categories:
1. Statues prohibited unequivocally;
2. Statues prohibited presumptively.
Unequivocally prohibited statues and images are those taken for worship, like those the idolaters used to make from stone and other substances to worship, calling them lords. Such statues must be denounced, smashed, and prohibited—there is no disagreement about the obligation to denounce them. In the Noble Book, and in what Allah has related about His Prophets (may Allah bless them), are countless indications of what we have said.
Allah relates that Abraham (peace be upon him) said to his people: “What are these statues to which you are devoted?” [Al-Anbiyāʾ:52] Then he (may Allah bless him) went to the idols of his people and set about striking them and breaking them with his right hand, “And he made them into fragments, except a large one for them, that they might return to it …...” [Al-Anbiyāʾ:58]
As for presumptively prohibited statues, they are animal statues not intended for worship but for other purposes. Denouncing these is not like denouncing the first category, because the proof for prohibiting and forbidding them is not unequivocal but probabilistic.
Thus, what is required here is guidance and sincere counsel; it is not permissible to denounce them by smashing, striking, or fighting—for people’s reputations, lives, and property are unequivocally inviolable, and one may not abandon what is unequivocal on the basis of a solitary probabilistic proof.
In addition, that probabilistic proof may be intended to prohibit only those statues meant for worship. It may also be that the prohibition of statues in the ḥadīths came because people were newly removed from idol- and image-worship: if they saw them, their souls would gleam for them and their hearts incline to them, because of a long familiarity, a deep-rooted love, and close ties with them. Thus when Allah sent the Prophet (May Allah bless him and his family and grant them peace) with Islam, and idolatry was forsaken and people entered the religion, the Prophet (May Allah bless him and his family and grant them peace) wished to sever those ties completely, to wean people from what they were accustomed to, and to extinguish the love their souls had known and grown used to. So he (May Allah bless him and his family and grant them peace) forbade images and statues, and taking them into homes—blocking the means (sadd adh-dharīʿah) and as a precaution against the hearts being touched by longing for the familiar, and yearning for the old era. Human souls, by their nature, weaken at the sight of what reminds them, and grow tender.
How much in Arab poetry and tales revolves around remembering the days of youth, or seeing the abodes of friends and loved ones, or the traces they left—this is something experiential that a person recognizes.
Yes: we interpret the reported prohibition accordingly because it has not become clear to us that the prohibition is for statues as such, but rather for what they may lead to of being worshiped.
Moreover, matters today are not as they were then, and people are not those people; no consequences like those once feared follow from the existence of animal statues. The commands and prohibitions of the Law are founded on considering interests and harms. Parallels to what we have said exist in the Law. Among them is the command to wash for Jumuʿah: Ibn ʿAbbās said, "it was only because of the odors that would arise when people gathered and crowded in the mosque. When people expanded and Allah expanded their means, the ruling differed and washing for Jumuʿah was not obligatory"—thus did Ibn ʿAbbās say and give fatwā: he tied the obligation to the presence of its cause, namely emitted odors; when the cause is not present, the obligation is not present. Another example is the matter of hospitality: scholars restricted the obligation to cases of need; if there is in the locale a restaurant or bakeries where food is sold, and places where the traveler may lodge, then hospitality is not obligatory. Thus scholars qualified the obligation and did not impose it absolutely.
Source : Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.1