{"id":14,"date":"2014-02-22T20:52:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-22T20:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/?p=14"},"modified":"2014-02-22T20:55:16","modified_gmt":"2014-02-22T20:55:16","slug":"paradise-lies-beneath-her-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/2014\/02\/22\/paradise-lies-beneath-her-feet\/","title":{"rendered":"Paradise Lies Beneath Her Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jahima came to the Prophet and he said, \u201cO Messenger of Allah, I intend to join the expedition and I seek your advice<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Prophet said, \u201cDo you have a mother<\/em>?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

He said, \u201cYes<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Prophet said, \u201cStay with her, for verily, Paradise lies beneath her feet<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

-Source: Sunan An-Nasa\u2019i, Book of Jihad, Number 3104<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The passage above comes from the hadith and was my inspiration for this project. Due to its oral origins, the accuracy of the hadith is disputed, but I focus on the importance of this phrase for women in Islam rather than its definitive truth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The idea of a mother as connected with the divine is significant not only because it elevates a woman\u2019s position in society, but also because it emphasizes the importance of the mother as the first teacher of the Qur\u2019an and an intermediary between the word of God and her child. As noted by Z. Sardar, learning the Qur\u2019an on your mother\u2019s lap creates a more flexible and familiar relationship than the structured, rule-oriented methods learned in a madrasa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To express this relationship between the word of God and mothers, I interwove Islamic art, calligraphy, and female images to create the image that \u201cparadise\u201d is within a woman. I interpret \u201cparadise\u201d to mean God or Allah because of the Quranic interpretation that heaven (paradise) is being with God.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My project has three pieces painted on wood and gloss-finished. The first shows a woman kneeling and reading the Qur\u2019an. The second panel is the same style, but portrays the side silhouette of a woman wearing a hijab. In both, I wrote Allah<\/em> (\u0627\u0644\u0644\u0647) in their dresses and blended it into the background. This subtlety represents a mother\u2019s connection with God and the background represents the style of mosaic and calligraphic writing often found on mosque walls. Blue and white were used to reflect the familiarity of a mother\u2019s relationship with God\u2019s word.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The third panel, which is the largest, uses the same color scheme and has Allah<\/em> written in large calligraphy along with the Islamic moon and star. This was done to show that while He is inside of her, God is still above a mother and at the center of all.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jahima came to the Prophet and he said, \u201cO Messenger of Allah, I intend to join the expedition and I seek your advice.\u201d The Prophet said, \u201cDo you have a mother?\u201d He said, \u201cYes.\u201d The Prophet said, \u201cStay with her, for verily, Paradise lies beneath her feet.\u201d -Source: Sunan An-Nasa\u2019i, Book of Jihad, Number 3104 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6279,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbprasad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}