Even more literalism
Following on from the last post outlining the general gist of my wiseacrings about literalism and Islam, I thought I’d belabour the point with an actual example though (hopefully) not in as much depth as in the finished writings.
Part of the purpose of the project is to ‘map the territory’ of what Islam actually represents. Of course most people seem to think that that territory is already mapped but that is the problem and why the subject needs attention. Although (imo) it can easily be shown that elements both within the religion and in the West seem to have a commitment to misrepresenting Islam - they do not call it this, they call it ‘stating the facts’ but it revolves just the same - the research I am engaged in does not aim to address why this might be but rather to identify the misconceptions and correct them.
Let’s consider one such area of confusion: the Islamic attitude to the representation of living forms in an artistic context.
If you ask a layman or non-Muslim in the West what they know about Islamic art, they will generally reply something to the effect of ‘it does not allow representation of human forms’, ‘it is geometric’ or ‘portrayal of human figures is banned in the Qur’an’. In fact, no such ban exists in the Qur’an, there is no Islamic authority capable of imposing such a ban even if it did exist and Islamic art, particularly manuscript illustration, is overflowing with examples of depictions of animals, humans and the Prophet Muhammad. See this post for examples.
It is understandable that a westerner or someone with no knowledge of Islam may think this but clearly there is a large school of thought within Islam which thinks it also. The interesting question is: why? It is interesting because it is a classic text-book example of the sort of literalism we have been discussing.
As has been noted above, this attitude does not derive from the Qur’an. Instead it is origin is to be found in the hadith (sayings ascribed to Muhammad) which is universally hostile to the idea. Two examples will suffice:
“On the Day of Judgement the punishment of hell will be meted out to the painter and he will be called upon to breathe life into the forms he has fashioned; but he cannot breathe life into anything.”
The above hadith is transmitted by Bukhari who cites a further tradition that has Abu Harayrah recount how he heard the Prophet say “Who is more wicked than a man who sets out to imitate the creative activity of God? Let them try to create a grain of wheat or create an ant!”. A further example may be found in Ali al-Muttaqi (Kanz al-Ummal) who records that:
“Those who will be most severely punished on the Day of Judgement are the murderer of a Prophet, one who has been put to death by a Prophet and a maker of images or pictures.”
It will be clear from the above that the anti-representational attitude is based on the (mis) perception that the artist is attempting to compete with God by definition, that the very act of portraying a human form must be an an attempt to create life and thus usurp God’s creative function. This is the form of literalism we have been considering.
We have seen that this attitude is not outlined in the Qur’an but is ascribed to certain alleged sayings of Muhammad but we have to ask “did (or would) Muhammad ever teach such a doctrine?”. Certainly Muhammad taught that to compete with God was a sin but the question is, did he put painters and representational art in this category? There is much evidence that he did not.
An indication of Muhammad’s attitude to the depiction of living forms can be gleaned from the historian al-Azraqi (d. 858 ce.), whose Chroniken der Stadt Mekka (ed. F Westenfeld, Leipzig 1858, Beyrouth 1964) is the earliest surviving history of Mecca. Azraqi recounts that when Muhammad captured Mecca in 630 his first decision was to enter the Ka’ba in order to destroy the paintings and idols that were housed there. Inside the Ka’ba there was discovered to be a painting of Mary holding the infant Jesus and, according to Azraqi, Muhammad ordered this preserved whilst all the others were to be destroyed. It seems clear from this account that the destruction of the idols and the paintings was not an expression of iconoclasm but rather was what it is traditionally regarded to have been: a statement against polytheism. Further, the fact that the preserved painting remained in the Ka’aba under Muslim governance until it was destroyed in the siege of ibn Zubayr in 683 strongly suggests that no antagonism towards depictions of the human form existed in the Muslim consciousness at this time.
A further example is to be found in the historian Ibn Sad’s (d. 845 ce.) Taqabat (translated as: Biographien Muhammeds, seiner Gefuhrten und der spateren Trager des Islams bis zum Jahre 230 der Flucht. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1909) which recounts an occasion when A’isha was playing with her dolls (apparently modelled figures of King Solomon, his armies and his horses) in the presence of Muhammad - it is clear from this account that Muhammad saw nothing objectionable in these figures as he is reported as asking A’isha what they were and making no adverse comments on being told they were King Solomon’s horsemen.
The attitude of the early Muslims was not markedly different from that of Muhammad and we can reasonably conclude that an anti-representational motif was not present during the formative period of Islamic thought. For example, an early convert, Said ibn Abi Waqqas, is reported to have led the prayers after the capture of Ctesiphon (637 ce) in the Sasanian royal palace whose walls were decorated with human and animal figures of all kinds (Tabari). Nor were these paintings destroyed during the next several centuries of Islamic rule. Similarly, the Caliph Umar is reported by Ibn Rustah to have perfumed the mosque at Medina by means of a censer that featured decoration in the form of human figures. It is telling that Umar is regarded as an extremely strict and orthodox individual yet seemed to see nothing objectionable in figurative representation, even in a quasi-religious context. It is perhaps significant that the censer itself survived intact until 783 ce when the governor of Medina had the figures emblazoned on it erased and it seems likely that the prohibition therefore arose at some point around the early to mid-eighth century.
So if it did not stem from the teachings of Muhammad and the attitudes of the early Muslims, where did the idea originate? We know why figurative art was objected to - because of the percieved attempt to create life (interestingly, in some Islamic manuscript depictions of people, literalists have defaced the illustrations by drawing lines through the character’s throats thus ‘killing’ them) - but on what was it based if Muhammad taught no such doctine? Why ascribe to him such a teaching - is there any action or statement of Muhammad’s that could have been misinterpreted in this way? As a matter of fact there is.
Bukhari, again, provides the clue. He relates how one day Muhammad found that A’isha had hung a curtain in the door of her room which was decorated with life-size human figures. He ordered her to remove it and Bukhari has him adding the usual riders about the punishments awaiting those who imitate the creative function of God. However it is A’isha’s subsequent actions that are of interest for she removed the cloth and had it made into cushions which were used in the house without any negative comment by Muhammad.
It may logically be deduced that there was some reprehensible aspect attached to the human figures when they functioned as a curtain which did not apply when they were used as decoration on the cushions - likewise, this factor was not operational when the figures were dolls or model horses.
As the accusation levelled against artists is one of ‘trying to imitate or create life’ then it can reasonably be assumed that the prohibition applied to exactly that - trying to imitate God’s creative function. Obviously book illustration and model dolls can not possibly fall into this category but Muhammad’s teaching was infintiely more subtle than the literalists could understand (and still is) - his objection was to full-size human figures which in the right (or wrong) light conditions - and positioned perhaps in a doorway such as the curtain was - could easily fool someone into believing a real person was there.
It will clearly be seen that the objection was not to the actuality of depictions of the human form but to the intent behind the depiction - if the attempt was to deceive (a form of lying) or to otherwise use artistic skill to fool someone into believing a living person was present then this was the behaviour that was proscribed. Of course the literalists could not understand this concept and it degenerated into the false and ludicrous belief that representations of living forms in themselves represent an attempt to comepte with God.
These misconceptions are not confined to ancient Islamic history but unfortunately are very much still with us - hence the importance of identifying the facts behind them. The most recent example would be of course the destruction of the Bamiayan Buddhas. This is often held up to be the result of Islamic radicalism or a ‘fundamentalism’ which is a either a survival of, or harking back to, a medieval perspective.
In truth this cannot be so. There were no attempts at the destruction of the Buddhas throughout centuries of Islamic rule in the region. The is no record of any Islamic writer censoring or commenting on them negatively - so who is right, the Taleban or the earlier Muslim communities? Surely they cannot both be.
The fact is that there is no such thing as ‘fundamentalism’, Islamic or otherwise. In reality everything is multi-faceted and shades of many different hues. There are people who can percieve varying degrees of this spectrum and people who can only see a black and a white.
That’s all there is.
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