Short answers, pulled from the story.
Aniconism is the cultural or religious absence of artistic representations of deities, prophets, or living beings. It is found across Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, the Bahai Faith, and various indigenous traditions, though the scope and strictness of the prohibition varies widely within each tradition.
Aniconism is the absence or prohibition of images; iconoclasm is the active physical destruction of existing images. When aniconic prohibition is enforced by smashing or removing images already made, it becomes iconoclasm.
The Quran does not explicitly prohibit the depiction of human figures; it condemns idolatry. Prohibitions against figurative representation come from the Hadith. Sunni exegetes from the 9th century onward increasingly interpreted these as categorical bans, while Shia communities and Sufi orders have held less stringent views.
Scholars have described Buddhist art before the 1st century CE as aniconic, representing the Buddha through symbols such as an empty throne, a Bodhi tree, footprints, and a dharma wheel. In 1990, Susan Huntington challenged this view, arguing that many supposedly aniconic scenes were depictions of relic worship rather than absent Buddha figures; the debate among specialists continues.
David Kaufmann was the first scholar to challenge the assumption of Jewish aniconism. In 1878 he introduced the term "Jewish art" and used medieval Ashkenazi illuminated manuscripts to argue that the prohibition applied only where worship was involved, not to art generally.
The Beeldenstorm was an aggressive wave of iconoclasm in the Netherlands in 1566, during the Protestant Reformation. Reformed and Calvinist Protestants destroyed images in churches, with attacks directed primarily at churches that were still Catholic.