The Art of Nuance: Liberation Through Creativity

Revolution was the Beginning by Sliman Mansour (2016)

I have always said that mysticism, the chronicles of visions and experiences of saints across all faiths, is dialectical theology rendered human while art is mysticism made personal. This is why, throughout human history, art has always been married to religion. Alongside scriptures we find their translation in word, color or sound across east and west. Even before the emergence of the three major monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), architecture and painting stand as traces of ancient civilizations. More importantly, art is how we process and understand the past.

I have also mentioned elsewhere that art is a collective form of dhikr (remembrance). It is tethered to our dhikriyat (memories). In the Quran, God connects these derivative terms: "So dhakkir [remind], for indeed dhikra [memory] benefits the believers" (51:55). He also commands us to undertake storytelling because it alone activates our cognitive ability of tafakkur [contemplation]: "So tell stories that they might reflect" (7:176). Incidentally, this same meditative state, tafakkur, is also connected to our contemplation of the heavens and earth: "Indeed, in the creation of heavens and earth and alternation of night day are signs for those with hearts. They are those who yadhkurun [remember] God standing up, sitting down and laying on their sides and yatafakkarun [contemplate] over the creation of the heavens and earth" (3:190-191).

Here, God connects tafakkur (contemplation) with dhikr (remembrance) and, by extension, dhikriyat (memories). Essentially, these twin rituals of tafakkur and dhikr are the very purpose of our existence, but not as abstract mental excercises or a mere rote repetition of God's Names - akin to abstract dialectical theology - but a matter of dhawq (taste) that must be experienced at the deepest and most visceral level of human existence. It must permeate and make sense amidst the messiness of our daily life. It is here that the arts have usually played their most significant role. As Oscar Wilde brilliantly expressed regarding music, it is "most nigh to tears and memories."

The Egyptian thinker Mostafa Mahmoud further emphasizes the relationship between memories and the affairs of the spirit. He gives an analogy of sitting in a car that is traveling on a completely frictionless road, such that the only proof one has that they are moving is the stationary objects outside the car (e.g., trees, buildings). Similarly, past memories and our awareness of bodily aging is itself proof for the existence of our spirit, since we would not be able to tell that we have aged unless there exists a dimension of our being that stands free of time and space and which has access to incidents from the past. Simply, memories are proof that we have a spirit.

This is why, as I have written in my article "How Art Liberates Land", published in SacredFootSteps, colonial powers made sure to invade not only Arab and Muslim land at the beginning of the 20th century, but also - and perhaps more importantly - metaphysics and art. As Palestine was ravaged so were the writings and teachings of Rumi and Ibn Arabi from our seminaries by a colonized educational system in neotraditional garb, and our arts as musical instruments were burned in large fires in the holy city of Madina, whose inhabitants were known for a thousand years, until the 17th century, as ahl al-ghina (people of singing) as Qurtubi mentions.

The reason why the arts were in the crosshairs of the colonial powers should be now clear: to hinder the ability of the living generation to commemorate their suffering and, in turn, curtail subsequent generations from remembering this oppression and paving the way for redemption. But what might not be clear is the relationship between land, arts and metaphysics and the last's role in this triumvirate. Simply, a community's metaphysics, which for the Muslim community reached its zenith in the works of the Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi, is the proverbial well of ink, dye and sound from which cultural production is born.

Since the ancient Greek civilization, it has been understood that poets and artists are not geniuses but rather have a genius or muse. Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of this eloquently in her TED talk "Your Elusive Creative Genius". This is also the Islamic point of view as the Prophet ﷺ mentioned in a hadith regarding one his companions and poet Hassan b. Thabit: "Ruh al-Quds [the holy spirit] continues to support Hassan so long as he defends God and His Messenger." Remarkably, the same ruh al-quds (holy spirit), the archangel Gabriel, is also described as the one who descends with revelation upon the heart of the Prophet ﷺ: "Say: 'Ruh al-quds cast it upon your heart'" (16:102).

It is not only that creative inspiration comes from the unseen but also the resulting work that is born out of this communication is itself a translation of the artist's experience of what lies beyond the Material, hence why I began this post with 'art is mysticism made personal'. As the creative inspiration permeates the being of the artist, as a formless spirit, it begins to dress itself in garments of memories from their past. In turn, a work of art emerges as a liminal conversation between the artist's own present moment, their entire lifetime and procession of memories that hearken back to that primordial moment when God asked all of us: "Am I not your Lord?" (7:172). This liminality or intersectionality of both, horizontal and vertical, time and space is crucial for the artist, as T.S. Eliot expresses: "The intersection of timeless with time is an occupation for the saint."

The ultimate objective of the colonizer is not just to oppress lands or bodies, but to render the very being of the oppressed ravaged, hollow and one-dimensional, not only as 'savage' or 'violent', but also 'victim' or 'passive'. I am reminded here of my dear friend's prof. Bilal Ware's brilliant work "The Walking Quran" which begins with a critique of African Studies in the academy that by portraying the African population during the trans-atlantic slave trade as utterly passive, they ultimately deprived them of agency, including to sell their own brethren to the white slave traders in exchange for liquor or weapons, as some indeed did.

This story repeats itself in the French, British, Italian and more recently American and Zionist colonization of the Arab world. Arabs are not - nor were ever - completely passive objects, despite Said's well-intentioned portrayal in "Orientalism". And it is here that art is needed now more than before, not only as a commemoration of resistance and hopeful foreshadowing of justice, but more importantly as a liberation through the very ink, dye and sound with which we write - and right - our stories, as we break the chains of representational politics - that are colonial at root - that seek to classify us as either victims or perpetrators, passive or active, and instead tell our stories on our own terms, weaving ourselves as characters who live messy lives, communicate with the unseen, sin and repent, laugh and cry, live and die, all the while being fully human.