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Fatwa CenterAn art teacher as a career
Question
I am in a state of complete dilemma right now. I am an art teacher and one of the requirements to teach the fundamentals of Art is portrait drawing. Let me qoute a hadith I found, "The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “The most severely punished of the people on the Day of Resurrection will be the image-makers.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari (5950) and Muslim (2109)." Astaghfirullah! I have three years of bond to finish up and the worst part is that, the bond has not start proper (If bond has been breached, I will have to deal with monetary consequences which will fetch up to tens of thousands) First of all, image making is haraam altogether and I will be disseminating this haraam concept to my students! May Allah forgive me for my past sins (with regards to this issue)
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
First of all, may Allaah reward you for being keen on asking about the religious rulings that apply to you, and avoiding what displeases Allaah. May Allaah increase your piety and guide you even more.
Undoubtedly, it is forbidden for a Muslim to draw pictures of living beings because this is religiously prohibited as in the Prophetic narration which you mentioned in the question among other narrations; for more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 83249, 92456 and 90068.
Therefore, if this job involves committing a prohibition, it is not permissible for you to continue doing it, and you may try to convince the school administrators and clarify to them that your religion does not approve of drawing pictures of living beings, and the administration may agree that you teach the children what is only permissible to draw, like trees, stones, or drawing persons without their head for instance, because this is permissible as we clarified in Fatwa 89104. It might be as well that they may accept that you leave your work without you facing any financial consequences. If this happens, then all praise be to Allaah.
However, if they insist that you continue working with them or that you leave while paying the financial consequences, and this fine will cause harm to you if you pay it, then it is permissible for you to continue working until the end of the work contract, and during this period you should fear Allaah as much as you can.
Allaah Knows best.
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