Connection of Islamic Art With God in Terms of Metaphysics

Religious fine art, meanwhile, includes items of religious significance or those used for religious purposes. Not all religious art is Islamic art, while much of Islamic art is religious art—even if not obviously then. Syrian wood inlay cabinets and tables may be used to hold alcohol, just their geometric patterns portray some of the loftiest realities of Islamic metaphysics and cosmology. Posters of Mecca and Medina or mass-produced prayer carpets emblazoned with the Kaaba are religious art but non Islamic fine art, despite the sacred architecture of the sites they draw. The recitation of the Qur'an in traditional maqāms and even the singing of inspired verse in these modes and rhythms are both Islamic and religious fine art, whereas "Islamic" parodies of Justin Bieber songs and the popular auto-tuned, acapella qa śī dahs in iv-office harmony may exist religious, but Islamic or sacred they certainly are not.

While difficult to ascertain in physical, formal terms, Islamic art is recognized easily, especially by those familiar with other dimensions of the Islamic tradition. Whether visual or sonoral, the Islamic arts project unity (taw ĥ īd), which manifests equally symmetry, harmony, and rhythm—the imprint of unity on multiplicity. The Islamic arts exercise non mimic or imitate the outward forms of things but present their inner, archetypal realities, hence the emphasis on number (geometry) and letters (calligraphy), which are the basic edifice blocks of space/time and language. In traditional calligraphy, geometric ratios govern even the shapes and sizes of the letters, which gives the lettering art its remarkable harmony.

The Islamic arts likewise all carry the imprint of the Qur'an in terms of its meanings (ma¢ānī) and structures (mabānī). Like many sacred texts, many of the surahs and verses of the Qur'an have a chiastic, or ring, structure. That is, the final section mirrors the commencement, the penultimate section mirrors the 2nd, and and then on, until the center, which contains the principal theme or bulletin. This symmetric, polycentric structure of overlapping patterns is clearly reflected in the geometric patterns of illumination that adorn Qur'anic manuscripts; the tessellations that beautify the mosques, madrasas, and homes where its verses are chanted; and even the structure of the musical maqāms in which it is recited.

Islamic art is founded on the interconnected sacred sciences of mathematics, geometry, music, and cosmology, non so different from the medieval Christian notion of ars since scientia nihil est (art without science is nix). All of these sciences connect the multiplicity of creation to the unity of the Creator and engage the qualitative, symbolic aspects of multiplicity as well as its quantitative dimensions. Aristotle divided philosophy into three parts: physics, mathematics, and theology (ilāhiyyāt). Physics addresses the natural or fabric world, and theology the divine, while mathematics (and the associated sciences of geometry and music, which are numbers in space and time, in the visual and sonoral domains, respectively) deals with the intermediate, archetypal, imaginal realm—the barzakh, between the divine and the terrestrial. These sciences of the intermediate realm allow the Islamic arts to serve every bit a ladder from the terrestrial to the angelic, from the sensory to the spiritual. They likewise have their foundation in Islamic metaphysics and spirituality, which requite the artists direct access to the spiritual realities and truths represented in their art.

Plato describes beauty as the splendor of the true; the inability to discern betwixt beauty and ugliness, therefore, corresponds to and accompanies the disability to discern between the true and the false (al-bā ţ il). Harmonious and geometric, true beauty is timeless and reflects the beauty of the unseen, leading to tranquility and the remembrance of God. Simulated beauty, like ugliness, is fleeting, discordant, and unbalanced, reflecting the anarchy and multiplicity of the lower world and the lower levels of the human psyche, which leads to imbalance, dispersion, and heedlessness (ghaflah). Information technology brings out the opaque aspect of creation that hides or veils the divine, whereas true beauty brings out the transparent or cogitating attribute of things that makes them legible as signs of God.

The 2 Streams of Islamic Art

Beauty is found in two things: in a verse, and in a tent of skin.
– Emir ¢Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā'irī

While the Islamic arts are many and various, they tin be roughly categorized into ii domains: adab and ambience—that is, the arts of language and those that create the surround in which people live (such equally dress, architecture, urban design, and perfume). In precolonial times, both of these domains were nearly ubiquitous; they were part of the teaching of not just Islamic scholars but all Muslims. Most all scholars studied, quoted, and wrote poetry. Many were masters of geometry; some were architects; while others, such as al-Fārābī and Amīr Khusrow, were master musicians. Fifty-fifty those scholars who were not accomplished artists were nurtured by the arts of adab, which they studied, and the arts of ambience that marked the institutions of their educational activity. Some of the finest masterpieces of Islamic architecture are madrasas, such equally the Bou Inania of Fes and Ulugh Beg in Samarqand, considering it was understood that architecture tin back up and nourish the soul, kindle the intellect, and nurture all the other Islamic sciences. Moreover, the arts of adab and ambience were not limited to mosques, madrasas, and palaces only adamant the structure and form of the cities and homes in which Muslims lived, not to mention the utensils and tools they used; the wearing apparel they wore; and the melodies, poetry, and idioms that filled their hearts and flowed from their tongues. As Ananda Coomaraswamy notes, in traditional societies, "the creative person was not a special kind of man, but every man a special kind of artist."

"Adab" is a word that is notoriously hard to translate into English. Meaning at once "custom, culture, etiquette, morals, courtesy, decorum, and civilized comportment, as well every bit literature," to accept adab is to be well-read and educated, to take skillful manners, to be cultured or refined, and to have the wisdom to give everything and anybody their due rights. The literature of adab is and then named because it is designed to cultivate adab in its readers. Studying Islamic literature in the traditional fashion shapes and refines one's soul, intelligence, behavior, and speech according to the prophetic norm of elegance and eloquence.

The Prophet's wife ¢Ā'ishah called the Prophet ﷺ "the Qur'an walking on earth," and the arts of adab nurture the cosmos of such character. Virtually all works of Islamic literature are, in one way or another, commentaries on the Qur'an. Even the profane poetry of Abū Nuwās or al-Mutanabbī bears the imprint of the revelation in its linguistic communication, images, idioms, and rhythms. The sophisticated belles-lettres of al-Jāĥiż, al-Ĥarīrī, Niżāmī, and Sa¢dī sharpen non just the linguistic but also the intellectual and moral faculties of their readers. The philosophical allegories of the Brethren of Purity, Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, and Ibn Ţufayl draw on Qur'anic narratives and concepts, while integrating and inspiring the imagination and the intellect.

The influence of the Qur'an is fifty-fifty more than evident in the more than sacred works of adab, such every bit Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī'due south Mathnawī; ¢Aţţār's Man ţ iq al- ţ ayr; Ibn ¢Aţā' Allāh'south Ĥ ikam; and the poetry of al-Būśīrī, Hafez, Ibn al-Fāriđ, Yūnus Emre, Amīr Khusrow, Ĥamzah Fansūrī, Shaykh Aĥmadu Bambā, Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse, and many others whose meanings, structures, styles, and even sounds closely mirror those of the Qur'an.¹³ These works of adab are like lagoons that open up onto the ocean of the Qur'an, which in turn opens onto the divine reality. Works of adab bring us closer to the Qur'an and bring the Qur'an closer to u.s.: they train us to read and interpret verses that have multiple levels of meaning, to read verses and stories from multiple perspectives, and to swoop into their depths for pearls of meaning; they teach us how to read and alive the Qur'an and Sunnah. In short, they cultivate adab.

Throughout Islamic history, nearly Muslims learned metaphysics, cosmology, and ethics through these poems and works of literature. To paraphrase a S Asian Muslim nawab'due south lament: "Nosotros lost our civilisation and the living reality of our organized religion when nosotros stopped studying the Gulest ā n of Sa¢dī." Our grandmothers and grandfathers and the former generations of Muslims learned how to realize, live, and put into practice the Qur'an and Sunnah, in large role, through the poems and works of the literature they memorized and studied, even if they could not read or write. The words of the 8th-century (second-century hijr ī) scholar and mu ĥ addith Ibn al-Mubārak seem even more true today: "We are more in demand of acquiring adab (courtesy) than of learning hadith."

The traditional madrasa combines the learning of adab with the beautiful arts of ambient. Whether in the elaborate and ornate tessellation of the Ben Youssef madrasa of Marrakesh or under the simple shade of a baobab tree in the Sahel, surrounded by God'due south artwork of nature, Islamic learning traditionally takes place in a cute ambience. This is pregnant and intentional, as one'southward environment take a profound impact on one's thoughts. Contemplating the twin rosettes/stars on a Moroccan door helped me grasp the relationship between the divine essence and names, and their manifestations in the cosmos and the homo soul, and it was while gazing at the tiles in the Bou Inania madrasa in Fes that I realized the pregnant of the metaphor describing God as "a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

The nigh ubiquitous and important art that creates an Islamic ambient is the recitation of the Qur'an. This is the first and highest form of Islamic art, from which all others are derived. The precise art of tajwīd and the science of the maqāms, the musical modes in which the Qur'an is recited, bring out the beauty and geometry of the Qur'anic revelation as it was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ. In reciting the Qur'an, we participate in the divine act of revelation and the prophetic act of reception, both of which have a profoundly transformative outcome on our souls. The sound of Qur'anic recitation is an integral part of the soundscape of any Islamic city or town and is nearly e'er arrestingly cute. This is significant because in traditional Islamic culture, truth (of which the Qur'an is the highest example) is always accompanied by beauty. In fact, beauty is a criterion of the authentically Islamic. There is nothing Islamic that is not beautiful. This precept governs every other traditional fine art of ambience, such as calligraphy; architecture and geometric design; music; and even dress, food, and perfume. As music plays such a prominent role in contemporary Western culture, it is important to examine music as an Islamic art more than closely.

Many who know picayune nigh music or Islam confidently proclaim that "in that location is no such thing equally Islamic music" due to the lack of consensus almost the status of music in Islamic law. First, it is important to distinguish the English term music from the Arabic mūsīqā. Although both are derived from the aforementioned Greek word pregnant "the art of the muses," they take slightly different meanings and connotations. Whereas a native English language speaker would classify the religious chanting of poetry, prayers, the adhān, or the Qur'an as music or musical, these arts would not be considered mūsīqā, which has the connotation of involving instruments and being non-religious. Similarly, the instrumental and vocal music (in the English sense) that accompanies some Sufi ceremonies is seldom considered mūsīqā; rather, it is called samā¢(audition) or dhikr (remembrance).

Nevertheless, instrumental music, whether mūsīqā or samā¢, remains controversial in the Islamic legal traditions precisely because of its tremendous ability to elevate or debase the soul. Simply compare the behavior of an audience at a heavy metal concert with that at a concert of Andalusian music. When criminals or soldiers pump themselves up to commit acts of violence, they seldom listen to the Indian classical music of Ali Akbar Khan. Traditional Islamic music has a remarkable ability to induce states of remembrance, peace, contentment, joy, backbone, harmony, balance, and near specially beloved and longing for the divine. The Islamic philosophers developed elaborate musical theories based on the principles of Pythagorean harmony to explicate and refine preexisting folk traditions of music. Courtroom musicians produced a refined and refining fine art that served as the acoustic equivalent and accompaniment of adab, while the Sufi orders developed powerful traditions of spiritual music capable of transporting the soul into the divine presence. Although Islamic music differs widely from civilisation to civilisation, information technology has certain common features related to its Islamic cosmology and emphasis on taw ĥ īd. It typically has a regular rhythm (rhythm is the imprint of oneness across time), oft increasing in pace toward the terminate of the vocal or concert, earlier dropping off into silence (which mirrors the acceleration of time as the final hour approaches); information technology ofttimes includes ś alawāt or Qur'anic recitation; and it is characterized by a unity of melodic voices, eschewing the complex harmonies and multiple voices that characterize the best of Western music (east.g., Bach), due to its emphasis on taw ĥ īd. For the skilled musician in an Islamic tradition, playing music is like praying with one'southward musical instrument, and for the prepared listener, it is like listening to the wordless praise of the angels and the creation. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes, "Islamic civilization has not preserved and developed several smashing musical traditions in spite of Islam, just because of it."^xiv

It is important to note that music and other traditional Islamic arts not but belong to the past merely are contemporary living traditions. All of these art forms are dynamic: they continually change, conform, and create new possibilities, all without departing from the fundamental principles of their particular form, the very principles that make them Islamic. These same principles tin can exist practical to new fine art forms, such equally spider web and graphic blueprint, photography, and cinematography. The cinematic arts are primarily derived from the theater, which was never a major Islamic art, as it was in the ancient Greek, Christian, and Hindu civilizations. In fact, Greek works of drama and theater were just about the only works Muslims did non interpret into Arabic, perhaps considering the Islamic revelation is based more on a presentation of "the way things are" and not on the heroic sacrifice of a God-man (Christianity) or on the myths virtually personified aspects of the divine (ancient Greek and Hindu traditions) that are repeated in liturgy and passion plays. The relatively non-mythological character of the Islamic tradition, and its accent on the unity and omnipotence of the divine, precluded dramatic tension within the divine or between human heroes and the divine. Yet, Persian Shi¢ism adult the drama of ta¢ziyeh depicting the events of the battle of Karbala, and while non a primal sacred art, it was nevertheless an of import Islamic religious art form. This is probably not unrelated to the fact that Iran has the most developed cinematic tradition of any Muslim country. Although some of Majid Majidi's films come close, I believe a truly Islamic cinematic art has yet to develop. Islamic cinema is non just movies about Islam or Muslims, or picture palace made by Muslims, but the very philosophy and techniques of the art must be rooted in the Islamic perspective, much every bit Bresson's piece of work is rooted in Catholicism, Terrence Malik's piece of work is rooted in a Heideggerian philosophy, and Tarkovsky's work is rooted in his ain unique metaphysical vision influenced by Russian Orthodox Christianity.¹⁵

All of the Islamic arts exist to support the supreme fine art: the purification of the soul, the cultivation of character, and the remembrance of God. "I was sent only to perfect the beauty of character," the Prophet ﷺ said. At that place is no question of "art for art's sake" in the Islamic arts because all of them have practical, psychological, and spiritual functions. The Islamic arts are not a luxury; rather, they serve equally essential supports for that fine art which is the raison d'être of Islamic law, theology, and indeed the entire Islamic tradition—the realization of the full potential of the human state (and thus the unabridged cosmos, through humanity's part as khalīfah) through the remembrance of God. The fail of the Islamic arts has severely crippled the ummah'due south ability to pursue this highest art, both individually and collectively.

Can Art Heal Our Souls?

Know, O brother ... that the study of sensible geometry leads to skill in all the practical arts, while the report of intelligible geometry leads to skill in the intellectual arts because this science is one of the gates through which we move to knowledge of essence of the soul, and that is the root of all knowledge.^sixteen
– Ikhwān al-Śafā

Dazzler will save the earth.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky

As these epigrams suggest, the Islamic arts are gates through which we can admission the deepest truths of the cosmos, the revelation, and ourselves. The neglect of these arts is a terrible accident, non only to our aesthetics but also to our ethical, intellectual, and spiritual lives. Just as our bodies, in a sense, get what we eat, our souls become what nosotros look at, mind to, read, and think nearly. When the Islamic arts are rare, unrecognized, and underappreciated, what then happens to our souls?

Just as our bodies, in a sense, become what we eat, our souls become what nosotros await at, heed to, read, and call back about. When the Islamic arts are rare, unrecognized, and underappreciated, what and so happens to our souls?

The loss of the Islamic arts is as well deeply connected with the rise of extreme sectarianism, the cloudburst of the imaginal kinesthesia, and the overall difficulty perceiving unity in diversity. In traditional Islamic cosmology and metaphysics, multiplicity and difference govern the outward world of appearances, whereas unity increases the farther one travels inward, into the earth of meaning and spirit. Because God is i, equally ane approaches the divine presence, things become more unified. Those without access to this unity are unable to perceive and participate in the harmony—the reflection of unity in multiplicity—that links the earth of appearances to that of realities. Imagination and the arts are bridges that unite these two worlds.

Dome interior of Shaykh Lutfollah Mosque

Those with a deep appreciation of the Islamic arts can appreciate thebarakah of and place the profound realities represented in the architecture of Almohad Morocco, Mamluk Arab republic of egypt, or Safavid Islamic republic of iran completely irrespective of the official legal schoolhouse or theology of these dynasties. Moreover, those familiar with the profound principles of Islamic art cannot help but notice these same principles, albeit in a different mode, in the sacred arts of the other revealed religions. Islamic art, like Islam itself, synthesizes and confirms the traditions of sacred arts that came before it.¹⁷ Anyone familiar with the theory and principles of Islamic music cannot help but admire Bach, and those expert inadabwill find much to appreciate in the works of Shakespeare and Chuang Tzu, despite the great differences in the way the Muslim composer and these authors applied universal principles. In addition, anyone familiar with Islamic sacred geometry cannot fail to recognize the aforementioned principles at work in Buddhist and Hindu mandalas and temples.

This is precisely what Muslim scholars and artists accept done for generations: understood, appreciated, and integrated the arts and sciences of other civilizations. One of the clearest signs of our decline has been the virtual disappearance of these constructed and creative intellectual and artistic processes. This has as well been accompanied past increasing tensions between unlike Muslim groups and minority communities of other faiths that thrived in Muslim-majority lands for centuries. The Qur'an describes the diversity of humanity as providential and divinely willed in order for u.s.a. to know i another, and through this noesis, to better know ourselves and our God.¹⁸ As Muslims lose touch with noesis of our arts, of our history, of ourselves, of our tradition, and of God, we lose touch with reality and with the ability to recognize the truth and humanity of those who differ from us.¹⁹

For Muslims who practice a craft, such as the Islamic arts of calligraphy, poetry, or Qur'anic recitation, that craft provides them with a model for Islamic spirituality. A craft is an activity that requires continuous practice and improvement over a lifetime, non a cookie-cutter mold into which ane either fits or does not. If we view the purification of our hearts, the effort to follow in the Prophet's footsteps, and the quest to know God every bit a craft or an art class instead of as an identity, we tin understand how unlike approaches tin can lead to the same or a similar goal. Thus, I believe the recent epidemic oftakfīr could exist ameliorated past understanding the practice of Islam as an art form instead of focusing on an either/or notion of Muslim identity.

All is not lost, withal. Discernment, whether intellectual or aesthetic, is difficult to recover once lost, but the Qur'an says, "Inquire the people ofdhikr, if you do not know" (21:07). Those Islamic societies and communities with thriving traditions of Islamic spirituality tend to take thriving artistic traditions, even if they are not economically wealthy (as in West Africa). This is considering the practice of Islamic spirituality, being the scientific discipline of taste (dhawq), refines one's taste, enabling recognition of spiritual truths and realities (ĥaqā'iq) in sensible forms; similarly, the Islamic arts back up and refine the exercise of Islamic spirituality. The revival of the arts must be a priority for Muslims worldwide considering the arts are vital to the rejuvenation of the Muslim listen and soul.^xx As Plato wrote, "The arts shall care for the bodies and souls of your people." While many have attempted to reduce the Islamic tradition to a list of dos and don'ts in the realm of behavior and conventionalities, the Islamic arts serve as a powerful reminder of the more profound realities of the tradition, ofiĥsān, and of the purpose of the entire Islamic tradition in the offset identify: the highest art of bringing the human soul dorsum to itsfiţrah, which perfectly reflects all of the divine names and qualities, both thejalāl (the purple) and thejamāl (the beautiful).

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Source: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-silent-theology-of-islamic-art

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