Muslims and the Arts

Even with no understanding of the Arabic language, I could hear the rhythm, meter, and rhyme scheme of the poetry in the Qur'an quite easily. I didn't have to know the meaning of the words to follow the hypnotic rhythms of the ayat, to discern the patterns in the structure, to catch the internal and end rhymes within each line, to hear assonance and alliteration. Because I lacked familiarity with the language, the poetic form itself spoke to me. It crossed the barriers of time, language, culture, and geography, reaching out to me in a way that only a truly universal art form can.

I had often heard stories of people who, without understanding a single word, were moved to tears from hearing a recitation of the Qur'an. These people weren't always Muslims and weren't always moved to embrace Islam by the message contained within the ayat they had heard because they didn't understand the words. Still, something moved the listener to tears, and I would argue that it was not the voice of the reciter, especially if the individual was an American. (Generally speaking, Americans have a very low threshold of tolerance for nasal sounds. Rude as it is, we poke fun at people from certain areas in the East [Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.] for their "stuffy nosed" accents.) If the voice is not what moved these individuals to tears, then what did? The poetry, pure and simple.

The oldest texts known to mankind were written in the form of poetry; it has been around since humanity began to record its existence on earth. Poetry is timeless, universal, and familiar. We don't have to speak a language to hear a rhyme, recognize a cadence, feel a rhythm, mark out a meter (a poetic unit of measure based on the number of syllables in a word). We may not know the technical names for the poetic forms or be able to distinguish a sonnet from a ghazal, an iamb from a spondee, or a heroic couplet from blank verse, but the point is that knowledge of these things is not necessary to feel the beauty of the poetry!

Why is it that Muslims have such a difficult time using the arts as tools of examining some of the same ideas that the Qur'an teaches? Justice, goodness, poverty, kindness, evil, rebellion, punishment, reward, ties of kinship, relationships, and hope, themes that run throughout the Qur'an, are universal themes meaning that people the world over, in all times and places have an interest in them. They appear in the visual arts and literature, yet many Muslims refuse to acknowledge them. And should an artist or author express him or herself in a way that a cleric or sheikh disapproves of, he or she will soon find a price upon his or her head with any number of impoverished radicals more than willing to do the deed required to win his place in Jannah. Do these clerics even bother to read the texts they so readily condemn? Are they trained to understand the nuances of the language, the meaning of symbols, syntax, word order, allegory, metaphor, allusion, or any of the other intricacies that master writers use in their craft? If they haven't read the text from beginning to end, and if they do not have the same training in literary theory and analysis that they require for interpreting the meanings of Qur'an and Hadith, then who are they to decide what a text does or does not mean and to issue a fatwa demanding the death of the author?

"I was the first in our alley to make a career out of writing, though it has brought me much contempt and mockery."(from Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz)

Despite much Tarzan-like chest beating displays of pan-Arab pride when Naguib Mahfouz received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, just mention the title of the novel noted at the end of the quotation above and watch what happens. Immediately the joy turns to anger as people who never bothered to read the book begin to castigate it and the author, citing blasphemy as the charge. With no understanding of allegory or reading a text on a deeper more meaningful level, these people take Mahfouz's novel at face value alone. An intricate and complex novel, Awlad Haretna (Children of the Alley in English) operates on three different allegorical levels simultaneously while telling the story of an Egyptian family that lives in an old Cairo neighborhood. Regardless of the allegory (political, religious, or social) at work, however, there is a constant rejoinder from the author about humanity's inability to learn from the past:

"Good examples would not be wasted on our alley were it not afflicted with forgetfulness. But forgetfulness is the plague of our alley." (Mahfouz, 171)

Forgetfulness dooms us to repeat our mistakes, and the Qur'an teaches us this invaluable lesson, too!

"But because of their breach of their covenant, We cursed them, and made their hearts grow hard; they change the words from their (right) places and forget a good part of the message that was sent them, nor wilt thou cease to find them- barring a few - ever bent on (new) deceits: but forgive them, and overlook (their misdeeds): for Allah loveth those who are kind."(5:13)

"From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done." (5:14)

So why did the now infamous Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman claim that if Naguib Mahfouz had been killed back in 1959 when Awlad Haretna was first written then Salman Rushdie would never have had the nerve to write The Satanic Verses? Because he, and countless of other Muslims who reduce the world to their monochromatic understanding of it, simply cannot fathom how allegory or parable or storytelling works.

In a few days, when the Spring semester commences at the university where I teach, the students in my Comparative Literature class will begin their reading assignments with Mahfouz's "controversial" novel. I suppose that I should be concerned that an anonymous fatwa might be issued against me for daring to encourage such free thinking among my students. Instead of worrying about knife-wielding fanatics, however, I will be reminding my students about how prone humanity is to forgetfulness and how, when we don't learn from the mistakes of the past, we will surely repeat them. And then I will open the floor for a discussion about Bush's recent announcement of his plan to send an additional 22,000 troops to Iraq.