May photos of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as), the Promised Messiah, be retouched or coloured to make them look better?

No. The only thing permitted is to restore a damaged picture by comparing it with a reliable original. Anyone who tries to beautify his features distorts them and opens the door to the kind of exaggeration that raises a human being above the human.

Old photographs suffer with time. Stains appear, parts fade, and sometimes the features look distorted as a result. In such a case it is right to restore the picture. The condition, however, is that there is a reliable original, such as a well preserved picture, to compare it with. One corrects only so far that the picture matches the original exactly once again.

It is something quite different to beautify a picture, to colour it or to smooth the features to suit one's own taste. Whoever does that may think he is improving something. In truth he is distorting it. The features of a person whom God has chosen carry gifts that God gave him and a piety that grew from within. They cannot be improved by any ideal of beauty. Every such attempt is therefore more an offence than an honour.

There is a deeper danger as well. Whoever keeps beautifying a picture and adds to it, as it were, a glow of holiness gradually raises the person in that picture above the human. In the end comes a veneration that belongs to God alone. The Promised Messiah (as) himself had exactly this concern. He did not want his pictures hung on walls, but kept away and taken out only when they were needed.

The verses and the hadith above show how seriously Islam takes this danger. Even the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) insisted on being called the servant of God and His Messenger, and nothing beyond that. Whoever raises a messenger above his station does him no good. He does injustice to his true standing before God.

So the simple rule stands. A picture may be restored to what it was. It may not be beautified.