Stepping Outside Myself

This color pencil piece was inspired by the tradition of poetry and stories praising the prophet, particularly The Mevlidi Sherif. I took one scene and tried to draw the beauty and religious significance. I included the pregnant Amina with the prophetic light shining from the prophet babe in her belly, the blaze of light from her home, the three heavenly women attending her, three angels represented by wings, the white bird and the cup of white nectar.

One part of my decision to take this course was my hope to be better able to step outside of my own culture and experience another major religion’s understanding of the world. The birth narrative of Muhammad, with its parallels and differences from the Christian nativity, fascinated me. From a secular viewpoint, I’m also intrigued by the importance of marking the prophet from birth. It seems plausible as a method to reinforce retrospectively the divine role Muhammad filled. Religiously, it ties Muhammad into the tradition of prophets that people would have known from other Abrahamic religions. It also explicitly ties him into God’s favor from birth, establishing the importance of Muhammad and his divinely given role as guide for life. I can also imagine the succession of prophets and the inheritance from birth playing into the Shiah view of succession.

I debated how to depict the women, and settled on drawing them with facial features vaguely present but unclear. This piece straddles the uncertainty within Islam over figural representations. On the one hand, there is a long religious tradition of forgoing figural representation to honor a monotheistic god. On the other hand, Islamic art has a long history of beautiful figural art. However, I doubt my attempts at portraying these beautiful women count as accurate figural representations, and hence probably are okay.

The idea for this mosaic was born out of the lecture by András Riedlmayer and Michael Sells’ article “Erasing Culture”. The article and lecture were vivid, tragic reminders of how Muslims of different communities and different times interpret art and religion differently. The variety of beliefs and art forms among different Muslim communities has been a recurring theme of this course. Ornate mosques that implicitly say “God is beauty” or unadorned white washed walls? Oral Quran elaborate art or simple recitation? Do graveyards, shrines, and intercessory figures offend a monotheistic god? Figural representation or none?

The destruction of monuments, graveyards, and mosques was a tragic example of that diversity. Within the Wahhabi sect, libraries, tombs, and mosques are viewed as potential idols (Sells). As such, these precious sites are being destroyed by a minority of the very religion that built the sites, despite the fact that most Muslims accept Sufi mystical practices and do not see these sites as idols. I found the devastation even more tragic because it contrasts so sharply with the beauty created, such as that shown in “Mirror of an Invisible World”.  In other times and places, different subgroups within Islam have viewed creating beautiful sites as alluding to God and his beauty in the created world.

This stunning juxtaposition of beliefs within one religion fascinates me. I wanted to combine these two extremes of creating and destroying great, historic art. I highlight the diversity of beliefs by putting side by side the beauty and devastation rising out of those beliefs.  I chose to do so in the Islamic art form of a mosaic, mingling images of created and destroyed art in a geometric pattern. The gold and blue images portray creations within Islamic communities, mostly mosques. The black and white images show destroyed monuments and mosques or their former sites.

All images courtesy of Google Image search

Take 1: Original version

Take 2: Edited after feedback

Recitation of Quran

This piece was inspired by “Koran by Heart”. In particular, several of the children reciting the Quran in the documentary did not speak Arabic. These children memorized a complex document with precise pronunciation and voice quality—all in a language they do not speak. Kristina Nelson explains the religious and poetic importance of the oral Quran in Arabic: rote memorization from childhood, tajwid preserving sound, the inimitable proof of the Quran’s divinity, simultaneously great art and God in word, and the constant murmur behind everyday life. Yet I’m intrigued by how non-Arabic-speaking Muslims interact with the oral aspect of the Quran.

So I attempted to recite the first verses of the Surah Al-Fatihah. I listened to the words repeatedly, read the English translation, and practiced until I could produce something resembling the sounds I heard.

Personally, I found the exercise melodious, but possessing relatively little meaning. In the TV show White Collar, a forger says that the secret to mimicking handwriting is to do copy the signature upside down. Rather than copying words, the forger copies the strokes and his own handwriting doesn’t influence the forgery. My experience was similar. Without the understanding of the language, I merely mimicked sounds. My mouth formed the syllables, but I wasn’t reciting words that connected with emotions, ideas, or beliefs in my head. I suspect that Muslim children who do not speak Arabic might have a similar experience when first learning the Quran. However, their study of the Quran likely infuses those sounds with the Quran’s meaning, particularly for those who memorize the Quran.

I will mention that I still find lines running through my mind weeks later, like the chorus of a catchy song.

I used these two sites to learn the words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQRWCpIxEx8.

http://www.theonlyquran.com/quran/Al-Fathiha/English_Transliteration

Surah Al-Fatihah (The Opener):

Arabic: بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيم الْحَمْدُ للّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِين الرَّحمـنِ الرَّحِيم مَـالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّين إِيَّاك نَعْبُدُ وإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِين اهدِنَــــا الصِّرَاطَ المُستَقِيم

صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنعَمتَ عَلَيهِمْ غَيرِ المَغضُوبِ عَلَيهِمْ وَلاَ الضَّالِّين

English Translation:

“In the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful.

Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds.

The Compassionate, the Merciful. Ruler on the Day of Reckoning.

You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help.