Today I am going to be giving a khutbah on something I never
thought I would give a khutbah on, and I can only attribute this to the Power
of Art. My khutbah is called, “Frivolous Portraits”. These are some reflections on the Syrian
refugee crisis which were inspired by Mounira Al Solh’s exhibit ‘I strongly
believe in our right to be frivolous’ currently showing in the Contemporary
Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago. This past Sunday, Abid had to do some
volunteer hours in the city and while he was helping the homeless, I went to
the Art Institute.
In the modern wing, they were having a show by the
Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh. Mounira Al Solh works in Beirut and Zutphen
(Netherlands). Her father is Lebanese and her mother is Syrian. Beirut is about
two hour car drive from Damascus. She lived in Beirut through the Lebanese
civil war in the 1980s, but she could not speak out about the war through her
artwork at that time. In an interview with Henrik Folkerts, Al Solh said,
“Growing up in the war is not about analyzing; it’s more about surviving. It’s
beyond words. Even when you get older, there are traces that you will never be
able to analyze or speak about.” However, this changed for her when the Syrian
civil war broke out. Al Sohl said, “I
was living in Beirut at the time, and it was like being in the direct image of
the war- not the actual war, but its mirror. A direct reflection of its impact,
an immediate witness to how people flee and are focused on survival.” This
‘mirror effect’ gave her enough distance to be able to express the experiences
of Syrian refugees through art.
The exhibit at the Art Institute is called “I strongly
believe in our right to be frivolous” and this title is taken from an interview
with the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
When Darwish was asked how he felt about being identified as a poet of
the “Palestinian cause”, the poet responded that he would prefer to speak about
love, life, and great literature. Rather than reducing people to victims or
advocates of a political cause, he insisted on their humanity. He strongly
believed in the right to be frivolous.
So while this exhibit is about refugees and the political
crisis in Syria, it is a lot more than that. For me, this exhibit demonstrated
the humanity of the refugees, and the humanity does sometimes get lost when
people are reduced to the one dimension of victimhood. Yes, there were stories
about trauma, but there was a lot of every day life, hopes, dreams, and humor. The
exhibit consists of over two hundred drawings; portraits of refugees the artist
drew as she interviewed them. Some people she interviewed more than once, and about
their experiences at different points in time. At the beginning of the popular
uprising, people were optimistic about the opportunity to live in a freer and
more open society. As the civil war progressed, people became more pessimistic,
and when people escaped, in addition to trying to adapt to a refugee camp or
settling into a new country with a different culture, nearly all of the
refugees were grappling with the guilt of leaving friends and family behind.
Another part of the exhibit is embroideries. Some are
portraits on, what looked like to me, ready to be assembled throw pillows.
There is also an embroidered sperveri, a Greek tradition of decorating canopied
bridal beds. This sperveri is decorated on the outside with Ottoman and Greek
motifs and when you look at the bed portion there are ten or so stories in
Arabic and English which memorialize those lost and deceased. The embroideries
were collaborative efforts with women in refugee camps and minority
communities.
Al Solh has interviewed refugees in Lebanon, the
Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Greece, and even Chicago. She has collected so many different stories
and different perspectives. Young Syrian refugees in Lebanon are unaware that
Syrian soldiers fought in these Beirut neighborhoods in the Lebanese civil war,
and many of the Christian residents still remember the trauma. Refugees coming
into Chicago are heavily vetted and come to this county via airplane, a very
different experience for refugees coming to Greece via boat or those who have
to cross a land border to Turkey or Jordan.
Why I bring up the refugees during a khutbah is not just the
fact that they are Arab Muslims, which is one good reason, but I am also
reminded that the religion of Islam is full of refugees and immigrants. Our
Muslim calendar is dated from the hijrah, the migration of Our Prophet from
Mecca to Medina. Even earlier than, a group of Muslims had immigrated to the
Christian kingdom of Abyssinia – this group included Uthman ibn Affan and
Ruqayyah, the daughter of the prophet who was Uthman’s wife at the time. Our
Qur’an has many examples of the migration of the Bani Israel from Egypt to
Palestine, and there are a number of ayat concerning migration. Some examples
are
2:218 “Lo! those who believe, and those who emigrate (to
escape the persecution) and strive in the way of Allah, these have hope of Allah's
mercy. Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
3:195 “And their Lord hath heard them (and He saith): Lo! I
suffer not the work of any worker, male or female, to be lost. Ye proceed one
from another. So those who fled and were driven forth from their homes and
suffered damage for My cause, and fought and were slain, verily I shall remit
their evil deeds from them and verily I shall bring them into Gardens
underneath which rivers flow - A reward from Allah. And with Allah is the
fairest of rewards.”
16:110 “Then lo! thy Lord - for those who became fugitives
after they had been persecuted, and then fought and were steadfast - lo! thy
Lord afterward is (for them) indeed Forgiving, Merciful.”
59:8-9 “And (it is) for the poor fugitives who have been
driven out from their homes and their belongings, who seek bounty from Allah
and help Allah and His messenger. They are the loyal. Those who entered the
city and the faith before them love those who flee unto them for refuge, and
find in their breasts no need for that which hath been given them, but prefer
(the fugitives) above themselves though poverty become their lot. And whoso is
saved from his own avarice - such are they who are successful.”
One aspect of human
nature that does not seemed to have changed very much for the last two thousand
years is the pattern of immigration and displaced persons- whether people leave
their homes to escape persecution or find new opportunities, the refugee
phenomenon has continued for centuries, and does not show any signs of letting
up. Whenever the refugee finds themselves in a new environment, inevitably,
there is a response to that person from the native population; acceptance and
help, or suspicion and hostility.
Religion urges people to be generous to those in need, while the base
human survival instinct has a far less open-handed agenda.
PAUSE
Whenever I come across a Muslim artist, I am interested in
how they come to terms with the hadith prohibitions on figurative art. These
are in Al-Bukhari and Muslim collections and state
1) The most greviously tormented people amongst the
denizens of Hell on the Day of Resurrections will be the makers of images
(al-musawwirun)
2) He who makes an image (sawwara suratan) will be
punished by God on the Day of Resurrection until he breathes life into it-
which he will not be able to do.
The second warning is most likely a reference to Quran 5:110
When Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour
unto thee and unto thy mother; how I strengthened thee with the holy Spirit, so
that thou spakest unto mankind in the cradle as in maturity; and how I taught
thee the Scripture and Wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel; and how thou didst
shape of clay as it were the likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst
blow upon it and it was a bird by My permission, and thou didst heal him who
was born blind and the leper by My permission; and how thou didst raise the
dead by My permission; and how I restrained the Children of Israel from
(harming) thee when thou camest unto them with clear proofs, and those of them
who disbelieved exclaimed: This is naught else than mere magic.” –Marmaduke
Pickthall translation
For the legal jurists, Jesus is the only artist who is
allowed to create. The Hadith scholar and Shafi’I jurist, Sharaf al-Din
al-Nawawi (1234-1278) wrote in his collection of Hadith,
“The authorities of our school and others hold that the
making of a picture of any living thing is strictly forbidden and that is one
of the great sins because it is specifically threatened with the grievous
punishment mentioned in the Hadith….the crafting of it is forbidden under every
circumstance, because it imitates the creative activity of God…This is the
summary position of our school on the question, and the absolute majority of
the Companions of the Prophet and their immediate followers and the succeeding
generations of scholars accepted it; it is the view of al-Thawri, Malik, Abu
Hanifah, and others besides them.”
By invoking the names of these other scholars, al-Nawawi is
implying that ALL the legal schools have the same opinion about figurative art.
However, I would argue that with this reasoning, that art “imitates the
creative activity of God”, one could also put forward the same argument in
discouraging modern medicine, forensic science, anthropology, robotics, and
computer sciences. In the Qur’anic reference, the art of bringing birds to life
as well as the curing of lepers and the blind and the bringing forth of the
dead is all possible only with God’s permission. Do our artists, physicians,
scientists, and programmers have God’s permission in practicing their craft? We
can talk about this after the khutbah.
While it is true that in many Muslim societies there has
been a general discomfort or even outright destruction of figurative art (think
of the Bamiyan Buddha statues and the Afghan Taliban), it is also true that
there has been a lot of figurative art which was supported by Muslim rulers and
other court elites and these artists were regarded with high esteem and status
in their societies. Clearly, these patrons of the arts found value and meaning
in figurative art which did not constitute worship (idolization) but rather the
image led them to discover higher truths.
What are the higher truths that Mounira Al Sohl’s images of
refugees tells us? For me, despite a language and cultural barrier, I felt a
connection to the humanity the portrait was trying to convey. (Show example
here). The portraits, for the most part, were done on yellow legal paper, and
what they said during the interview is written as marginalia around the
face/faces. I couldn’t read or understand the Arabic, but I could read the
expression on the faces: hope, despair, kindness, perseverance, grief, dignity,
contentment, trauma, guilt. The legal paper is also a reminder of the status of
refugee (stuck in a bureaucracy) and as well as the fragility in the face of
change and time. The portrait is a snapshot of a particular person at a
particular time in their life. One day you have a normal life, and then a month
later, a week, even a day and your life can be thrown into total chaos.
(Recite Surah Al-Asr).
The portrait is a snapshot of a particular person at a
particular time in their life. The portrait is not the complete person, it can
never be. We are far too complicated beings to be crammed into and summed up in
a single snapshot. Even a thousand portraits could not capture the complete
person, and all artists and photographers realize this. But an image can help
the viewer find their way to a higher truth about the conditions of human
existence.
“It is a great joy to see those who really fight to make
their way into this new life. They have to climb up again with everything they
have: their feet, their teeth, their toes, their mouths, to reach a certain
level, a bit closer to how they used to live back at home. Many others are slow
and won’t be able to go that far. And some are just happy that their children
at least will have a life and they forget about themselves…Guilt is a common
emotion among the many people I have met. Although their reasons for feeling
guilty varied, one should not forget that living in a safe place doesn’t mean
that a person’s mind is fully shielded from trauma and violence. As I
experienced myself when I came to the Netherlands…once you are in a safe place,
emotions rooted in your past come out stronger than ever before.”
Let us thank God for our ability to have empathy for our
fellow human beings, thank God for the gift of art which can often facilitate
this process. Let us make du’a for the refugees and immigrants, to make their
way easier as they make a new life for themselves in a different country, to
help them heal and give hope. Let us ask
God to help us make refugees and immigrants welcome and help them to the best
of our abilities in a way that is pleasing to God. Amen
References:
Mounira Al Sohl interview based on a conversation on June 1,
2017 in Kassel, Germany conducted by Hendrik Folkerts, Dittmer Curator of
Modern and Contemporary Art, printed in her artist statement pamphlet for the
February 8-April 29 2018 I strongly believe in our right to be
frivolous exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago
Interview with Mahmoud Darwish in BOMB Magazine No. 81, Fall 2002
Quran translation by Marmaduke Pickthall
Sharif al-Din al-Nawawi Riyad al-salihin (Garden of the Righteous)
