Calligraphy's beauty is universal, not religious

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Tania Ahsan guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 26 October 2011 12.00 EDT

There is a beautiful scene in Nicole Krauss's 2005 book The History of Love in which her nine-year-old character Bird is inspired by the Hebrew school janitor who, while correctly disposing of old siddurs, tells him that you can't just throw away something with the name of God on it, you have to bury it properly with prayers. The young boy takes to writing the four Hebrew letters of the ineffable name of God on everything from his underwear to his homework, rendering everything sacred.

Muslims also cannot mundanely dispose of things with Qur'anic verses on them; they have to be buried or released into running water and prayers are also said over them. They are not to be burned or end up in landfill. A number of Urdu newspapers found that when they published Qur'anic verses, that the truly pious objected to the verses being on something so throwaway as a newspaper and would clip the verses and send them back to the newspaper offices for them to dispose of properly.

Orthodox Hindus object when European and American clothing companies put Om, the syllable representing the Absolute, on yoga clothing. The argument is that the way to show respect for God is not to sweat all over His name. Objections to tattoos must derive from a similar source and there seems to be an implied suggestion that the human body is profane and so cannot be the vessel for something sacred. Yet, if you believe that everything was created by God then even the so-called profane must be sacred.

A new exhibition, Arabic Calligraphy: The Art of the Written Word, at the Lahd gallery in Hampstead seeks to explore the historical significance of Arabic calligraphy and how it is now used in modern art. The selection includes works by a number of artists from around the world, all using Arabic words or stylisations of Arabic fonts in their work. What is interesting is that religion is not mentioned anywhere in the literature for the exhibition, the word "culture" being used instead to denote the importance in the Arab world of the written word. This is not altogether disingenuous, for while Arabic is a holy language for Muslims, Arabs have to use it for everything from swearing to filling in dull forms. It is holier in countries such as Pakistan, where it is used only in a religious context rather than in a day-to-day one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/26/arabic-calligraphy-beauty-universal?newsfeed=true

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1. "Religion is not mentioned anywhere..."

That's funny. Since religion is the very reason Arab artists had to use calligraphy and not pictures. As even Rick Perry probably knows, Islam forbids depictions of humans or animals as "graven images."

There were some loopholes. Apparently, in the earliest days of Islam, that ban on pictures didn't exist. While Islam was rolling across the landscape and peacefully converting everyone (according to modern lib'rul believers), Xian churches often got peacefully converted into mosques.

Xian churches often came pre-decorated with depictions of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, et. al. Since those characters were also mentioned in the Koran and considered Muslim prophets, their depictions were usually left alone.

When I lived in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, I enjoyed wandering around mosques even though I am a Fundamentalist Atheist. Along with the calligraphy, mosques are often decorated with eye-popping mosaics using floral designs and wild geometric shapes. Some are downright psychedelic.

In Egypt at the Quitbay Mosque (located in Cairo's City of the Dead), I even saw an actual footprint of Mohammed preserved inside the mosque. That's what the caretaker said, anyway.

Many older mosques and minarets in Egypt have a direct link back to a famous piece of secular architecture. Those structures are built on a noticeable pattern - square bottom floor, octagonal middle floor, round top floor. That was also the design of the famous Pharos lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt - built by Greek pagans in the Third Century BCE.

Actual Egyptian Muslims also showed me how the mosque designers and artists got sneaky. In the pic below, those balcony decorations represent...GASP!...people praying, with their arms raised to heaven. Many mosques have similar decorations. (That's the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the third largest mosque in the world):