THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World isn’t all about Islam but about the cultures of the parts of the world where it is the dominant influence, from Sudan to Indonesia. There’s lots about the religion of Islam all the same, and one of the obvious themes is how it deals with the problem of figurative art.

The curators make clear that it’s an ambiguous tradition; the prohibition on human images in a religious context, in order to avoid distraction during prayer, leaves open the question about how far it is allowable in other contexts. One curator told me that the hadiths, or sayings attributed to Muhammad, were contradictory on this one.