What Is the Role of Art in Ancient Islam Yahoo
The republication of caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in September 2020 led to protests in several Muslim-majority countries. It also resulted in disturbing acts of violence: In the weeks that followed, 2 people were stabbed virtually the former headquarters of the magazine and a teacher was beheaded later he showed the cartoons during a classroom lesson.
Visual depiction of Muhammad is a sensitive issue for a number of reasons: Islam's early opinion against idolatry led to a full general disapproval for images of living beings throughout Islamic history. Muslims seldom produced or circulated images of Muhammad or other notable early Muslims. The contempo caricatures have offended many Muslims effectually the world.
This focus on the reactions to the images of Muhammad drowns out an important question: How did Muslims imagine him for centuries in the near total absence of icons and images?
Picturing Muhammad without images
In my courses on early Islam and the life of Muhammad, I teach to the amazement of my students that there are few pre-modern historical figures that we know more than about than we practice virtually Muhammad.
The respect and devotion that the first generations of Muslims accorded to him led to an affluence of textual materials that provided rich details about every aspect of his life.
The prophet'due south primeval surviving biography, written a century after his death, runs into hundreds of pages in English language. His final x years are so well-documented that some episodes of his life during this period can be tracked solar day past solar day.
Even more than detailed are books from the early Islamic menses dedicated specifically to the description of Muhammad's body, graphic symbol and manners. From a very popular ninth-century book on the discipline titled "Shama'il al-Muhammadiyya" or The Sublime Qualities of Muhammad, Muslims learned everything from Muhammad's height and body pilus to his slumber habits, clothing preferences and favorite food.
No single slice of information was seen too mundane or irrelevant when it concerned the prophet. The style he walked and sat is recorded in this book alongside the approximate amount of white hair on his temples in old age.
These meticulous textual descriptions have functioned for Muslims throughout centuries as an alternative for visual representations.
Near Muslims pictured Muhammad every bit described by his cousin and son-in-law Ali in a famous passage contained in the Shama'il al-Muhammadiyya: a broad-shouldered man of medium height, with black, wavy hair and a rosy complexion, walking with a slight downwardly lean. The 2nd half of the clarification focused on his character: a humble man that inspired awe and respect in everyone that met him.
Textual portraits of Muhammad
That said, figurative portrayals of Muhammad were not entirely unheard of in the Islamic world. In fact, manuscripts from the 13th century onward did contain scenes from the prophet's life, showing him in full figure initially and with a veiled face later on.
The majority of Muslims, even so, would non have access to the manuscripts that contained these images of the prophet. For those who wanted to visualize Muhammad, there were nonpictorial, textual alternatives.
There was an artistic tradition that was specially popular among Turkish- and Farsi-speaking Muslims.
Ornamented and golden edgings on a unmarried page were filled with a masterfully calligraphed text of Muhammad's description by Ali in the Shama'il. The center of the page featured a famous poesy from the Quran: "We only sent you (Muhammad) equally a mercy to the worlds."
These textual portraits, chosen "hilya" in Arabic, were the closest that one would get to an "image" of Muhammad in nearly of the Muslim earth. Some hilyas were strictly without any figural representation, while others contained a drawing of the Kaaba, the holy shrine in Mecca, or a rose that symbolized the beauty of the prophet.
Framed hilyas graced mosques and individual houses well into the 20th century. Smaller specimens were carried in bottles or the pockets of those who believed in the spiritual ability of the prophet'southward description for adept health and confronting evil. Hilyas kept the memory of Muhammad fresh for those who wanted to imagine him from mere words.
Unlike interpretations
The Islamic legal ground for banning images, including Muhammad'southward, is less than straightforward and there are variations across denominations and legal schools.
Information technology appears, for instance, that Shiite communities have been more accepting of visual representations for devotional purposes than Sunni ones. Pictures of Muhammad, Ali and other family unit members of the prophet have some apportionment in the popular religious culture of Shiite-majority countries, such as Islamic republic of iran. Sunni Islam, on the other manus, has largely shunned religious iconography.
Exterior the Islamic earth, Muhammad was regularly fictionalized in literature and was depicted in images in medieval and early mod Christendom. But this was ofttimes in less than sympathetic forms. Dante's "Inferno," most famously, had the prophet and Ali suffering in hell, and the scene inspired many drawings.
These depictions, nonetheless, hardly e'er received any attention from the Muslim earth, as they were produced for and consumed within the Christian world.
Offensive caricatures and colonial past
Providing historical precedents for the visual depictions of Muhammad adds much-needed nuance to a complex and potentially incendiary effect, but it helps explicate simply part of the flick.
Equally of import for agreement the reactions to the images of Muhammad are developments from more recent history. Europe now has a big Muslim minority, and fictionalized depictions of Muhammad, visual or otherwise, exercise not go unnoticed.
With advances in mass communication and social media, the spread of the images is swift, and so is the mobilization for reactions to them.
About chiefly, many Muslims find the caricatures offensive for its Islamophobic content. Some of the caricatures draw a fibroid equation of Islam with violence or immoderacy through Muhammad'due south image, a pervasive theme in the colonial European scholarship on Muhammad.
Anthropologist Saba Mahmood has argued that such depictions can crusade "moral injury" for Muslims, an emotional pain due to the special relation that they have with the prophet. Political scientist Andrew March sees the caricatures as "a political act" that could cause impairment to the efforts of creating a "public space where Muslims experience safe, valued, and equal."
Even without images, Muslims accept cultivated a brilliant mental film of Muhammad, not merely of his appearance just of his entire persona. The crudeness of some of the caricatures of Muhammad is worth a moment of thought.
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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site defended to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Suleyman Dost, Brandeis University.
Read more:
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Muslim schools are allies in France's fight against radicalization – non the cause
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Why there'due south opposition to images of Muhammad
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The attack on Charlie Hebdo: the trouble is the Middle East, not Islam
Suleyman Dost does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any visitor or organization that would benefit from this commodity, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations across their academic appointment.
Source: https://news.yahoo.com/muslims-visualized-prophet-muhammad-words-130743796.html
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