Exploring Islam

It seems to me that a fire, when lit

Is very much like our minds, when lit

The very best sorts of rooms in a house

Are the easiest to find, when lit

My enthusiasm for your cooking

Burns like a match in time, when lit

If you’d ever met my mother, you’d see

Her face glowed with joy- it shined when lit

I can’t say I know all about the light

But I know that their work I’ve signed, when lit.

I really enjoy working with this form.  It’s difficult, and I couldn’t manage to make all of my lines have the same number of syllables (though I generally got pretty close).  There’s a sort of joy that one can derive by the evolution of the qafia and radif.  Here, I’m working with one of my favorite concepts- light.  The multiple meanings of “lit” fit well into the the idea of a ghazal- in one couplet it can literally mean having light on a thing, while later it can relate to how a face can light up, or how a match can be lit.  In the final couplet, I refer to my own relationship with light- as a light designer for theater, I know that my contribution to a work of theater (my signature) is the light on the faces of actors.  I determine how they’re seen by how I put light on them.  In this attempt at a ghazal, light shifts between an active force and a passive force, a metaphor and a reality.  It’s interesting to note how the radif informs the qafia- the meaning of the qafia is determined by the repeated radif.  Whereas it could always take a different meaning (and indeed the couplet could usually be interpreted to mean many other unrelated things without the radif), the particular version of the qafia that we are exploring is explained by the radif that follows.

One of the things that interested me most when talking about the Mi’raj and Isra’ was the Buraq, the mystical creature that Muhammad supposedly rode on during his journey.  Mythological creatures have always interested me, particularly those that are tied to religion.  Religions, at least in an early age, generated a host of creatures to embellish their stories, and many of our favorite creatures from today come from religion.

I chose to make a pencil sketch of the Buraq because I wanted to put on paper some of the strange descriptions I found about the Buraq in my explorations.  People seem to argue about whether the Buraq was supposed to have a human face or not.  This is interesting to me, because a human face seems to be the one quality that stays consistent in most all of the religious mythological creatures.  Angels and devils tend to have human faces, though the faces of devils may be distorted or gruesome. The sphinx of greek mythology has a human face, as do various faeries, elves, dwarves, etc.  It’s as if the presence of the human face is there so that we can relate to the creature, but the distortion of the rest of its body helps us understand the religious significance of the creature.

The other interesting characteristic of the Buraq is how it moves.  It supposedly had a stride so long that it could reach the edge of its sight with each new step.  I suppose this could mean that it’s extremely nearsighted, but it likely meant that either its legs were extremely long or it could jump/fly quite far between paces.  I chose to depict the latter, as the idea of such long legs is hard to fathom.  The other interesting characteristic of the Buraq that I read about, though, is similar to the long legs- it was said that its hind legs extended when going up a slope, and its front legs extended when going down.  This means that the rider will always be kept level.  It’s interesting to me that the Buraq was designed as essentially a mystical luxury car- it travels super fast, and has a very comfortable ride.  The modern version of a Buraq might look something like this:  http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/automotive/bose_suspension/index.jsp

Watching the movie last week [Feb 29th] inspired me to think a lot about Islamic Architecture.  In particular, I was fascinated by the repeated patterns that I saw everywhere, so I endeavored to create my own.  I made it red for visibility, but ideally it’d be shades of blue.  While I know that the intent of many of the repeated patterns that we saw was to convey literal meaning, perhaps even a written phrase, I made this pattern with the thought of water in mind.  I was fascinated by some of the sculptures that had water flowing through them in intricate patterns, into the mouth of animals and through them in a recycled path.

The idea of water as a thing of value is foreign to me, having grown up on the east coast of the US.  I had a well at home, and I really never had to worry about it running dry.  It makes sense to me that water could be a precious thing in a number of areas where Islam is practiced, though.  Saudi Arabia in particular, I know, has a lot of difficulty with water.  Part of the program that I was on this January was working on new techniques for desalination of ocean water- from what I learned, most all of the water in the eastern part of Saudi Arabia comes directly from the ocean, which is an expensive process.

Water seems to be a reasonable thing to call precious.  I don’t understand diamonds or gold- they’re pretty, to be sure, and I guess they’re somewhat rare, but water is literally life.  The esteem with which water is treated in some of the Islamic architecture that we looked at is really fascinating to me, and I endeavored to capture some of that essence with a repeating figure of a crashing wave.

He sat so many days and many nights

Inside a cave in darkness he would think

Till once a vision came and said RECITE

But this was nearly all too much to bear

Muhammad knew not what to do or say

It brought him almost to a deep despair

But then a miracle he did observe-

From in the sky the angel bade him see

And from this faith he vowed never to swerve

From this a lesson all of us must take

That in the darkness there may soon be light

And if a dream you have, do not awake.

I’m not usually very much of a poet (and I don’t claim this work to be a masterpiece), but something about the image of Muhammad reciting in a cave drove me to write this.  It’s a bit strange to be writing it, to be sure, as Muhammad was not a man of letters.  In fact, the more appropriate form for this poem would be recitation, I suppose.

The Qur’an itself is written in a rhythmic, rhyming cadence, and I endeavored to include rhythm and rhyme in my own poem, though I used the iambic pentameter that I’m more familiar with.  We discussed the role of poetry in both pre-Qur’anic societies and Islamic societies, and it seems to be a pretty powerful thing.  It’s difficult to write a poem that’s moving and powerful, especially if you live in a culture where words don’t have the same meaning as they did in Muhammad’s time.

Throughout the course of this semester, we’ve seen examples of words that have had a remarkable impact, and that’s made me think about words in American culture.  It feels a bit like we’ve lost the weight of words over the course of the past few decades.  With so many people saying so many fiery, combative, and perhaps even offensive things at the same time, we seem to have lost sensitivity to a strong oral argument.  Perhaps in the time of Muhammad, when it was a serious matter to impugn the dignity of another man, harsh words would have been seen as bold or striking.  Now, when virtually no public figure has universally accepted dignity, and when scandals involving honor and dignity are commonplace, it doesn’t mean nearly the same thing to attack someone with words.

Even uplifting words are often met with cynicism.  When was the last time that words truly unified us? You could argue that some speeches post-9/11 may have had this effect, but I’d have to argue in return that it was really the event (not the words) that had the effect.  Do we live in a society that is too fragmented to value words?

I’ll post a more detailed introduction soon, but I thought I’d give a brief intro here.  I’m a Harvard College Student looking to learn more about Islam and Islamic cultures, particularly in the Middle East.  I’m interested in how Islam affects regional politics, but also how Islamic societies work on a day-to-day level.  This class is just one of the avenues by which I am exploring this topic; I’m taking other classes, and I plan to continue exploring the subject in an academic context in the future.  That’s all for now!