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Saeeda
Begum - Finding the Prophet in his People http://www.feath.com/story/findingtheprophet.htm
I spent
a lot of time looking at art the year before I became a Muslim. Completing a
degree in Philosophy and Fine Arts, I sat for hours in darkened classrooms
where my professors projected pictures of great works of Western art on the
wall. I worked in the archives for the Fine Arts department, preparing and
cataloging slides. I gathered stacks of thick art history books every time I
studied in the university library. I went to art museums in Toronto, Montreal
and Chicago. That summer in Paris, "the summer I met Muslims" as I
always think of it, I spent a whole day (the free day) each week in the Louvre.
What was I seeking in such an
intense engagement with visual art? Perhaps some of the transcendence I felt as
a child in the cool darkness of the Catholic church I loved. In high school, I
had lost my natural faith in God, and rarely thought about religion after that.
In college, philosophy had brought me from Plato, through Descartes only to end
at Existentialism-a barren outcome. At least art was productive-there was a
tangible result at the end of the process. But in the end, I found even the
strongest reaction to a work of art isolating. Of course I felt some connection
to the artist, appreciation for another human perspective. But each time the
aesthetic response flared up, then died down, it left no basis for action. Then I met people who did not
construct statues or sensual paintings of gods, great men and beautiful women.
Yet they knew about God, they honored their leaders and they praised the productive
work of women. They did not try to depict the causes; they traced the effects. Soon after I met my husband, he
told me about a woman he greatly admired. He spoke of her intelligence, her
eloquence and her generosity. This woman, he told me, tutored her many children
in traditional and modern learning. With warm approval, my husband spoke of her
frequent arduous trips to refugee camps and orphanages to help relief efforts.
With profound respect, my husband told me of her religious knowledge, which she
imparted to other women in regular lectures. With deep affection, my husband
told me of the meals she had sent to him, when she knew he was too engaged in
his work with the refugees to see to his own needs. When I finally met this
women I saw that she was covered, head to toe, in traditional Islamic dress. I
realized with amazement that my husband had never seen her. He had never
seen her face. Yet he knew her. He knew her by her actions, by the effects she
left on other people. Western civilization has a long
tradition of visual representation. No longer needing it to do more than allow
me a moment of shared vision with an artist alive or dead, I can appreciate it
once more. But popular culture has made representation simultaneously
omnipresent and anonymous. We seem to make the mistake of thinking that seeing
means knowing, and that the more exposed a person is, the more important they
are. Islamic civilization chose not to
embrace visual representation as a significant means of remembering and
honoring God and people. Allah is The Hidden, veiled in glorious light from the
eyes of any living person. But people of true vision can know God by
comptemplating the effects of his creative power, Do they not look to the birds
above them If God transcends his creation,
it is far beyond the capacity of any human to depict him. Indeed, in Islamic
tradition, any attempt to depict God with pictures is profound blasphemy.
Rather, a Muslim depicts God only with words that God has used to describe
himself in his revelation. Among these descriptions are the so-called "99
Names of God," attributes that are recited melodiously throughout the
Muslim world: The Merciful, the Compassionate, the Forbearing, the
Forgiving, the Living, the Holy, the Near, the Tender, the Wise. . . .
Written in beautiful script on lamps, walls, and pendants, the linguistic sign
provokes a profoundly personal intellectual and spiritual response with each
reading. Deeply wary of idolotry, Muslims,
with few exceptions, declined to glorify not only God, but even humans through
visual representation. Historians, accustomed to illustrating accounts of great
leaders with their images captured in painting, sculpture and coin have no
reliable visual representations of the Prophet Muhammad. What is seen rather,
is the Prophet's name, Muhammad, written in curving Arabic letters on
those spaces where sacrality is invoked. Along with the names of God and verses
of the Qur'an, the name Muhammad, read audibly or silently, leads the
believer into a reflective state about the divine message and the legacy of
this extraordinary, but still human messenger of God. Words, written and oral, are the
most important medium by which the life of the Prophet and his example have
been transmitted across the generations. His biography, the seerah, has
been told in verse and prose in many languages. Even more important than this
chronological account of the life of the Prophet are the thousands of
individual reports of the Prophet's utterances and actions collected in the hadith
literature. These reports were transmitted by early followers of the Prophet
who heeded God's words, "Indeed in the Messenger of God you have a good
example to follow for one who desires God and the Last Day (Qur'an,
33:21)". Eager to follow the divinely inspired actions of the Prophet, his
Companions paid close attention not only to his style of worship, but to all
aspects of his comportment-everything from his personal hygeine to his
interaction with children and neighbors. The Prophet's way of doing things, his
sunnah, formed the basis for Muslim piety in all societies where Islam
spread. The result was that as Muslims young and old, male and female, rich and
poor, adopted the Prophet's sunnah as a model for their lives, they became the
best visual representations of the Prophet's character and life. The Muslim who
implements the sunnah is an actor who internalizes and, without artifice,
reenacts the behaviour of the Prophet. The performance of the sunnah by living
Muslims is the archive of the Prophet's life and a truly sacred art of Muslim
culture. I first realized the profound
physical impact of the Prophet's sunnah on generations of Muslims as I sat in
the mosque one day, watching my nine year old son pray beside his Qur'an
teacher. Ubayda sat straight, still and erect beside the young man from Saudi
Arabia who, with his gentle manners and beautiful recitation, had earned my
son's deep respect and affection. Like his teacher, Ubayda was wearing a
loose-fitting white robe that modestly covered his body. Before coming to the
mosque, he had taken a shower and rubbed fragrant musk across his head and
chin. With each movement of prayer, he glanced over at his teacher, to ensure
that his hands and feet were positioned in precisely the same manner.
Reflecting on this transformation of my son who had abandoned as his norm
grubbiness and impulsivity for cleanliness and composure, I thought to myself,
"thank God he found a good role model to imitate." My son's role
model could have been an actor, a rap singer or an athlete. We say that
children are "impressionable," meaning that it is easy for strong
personalities to influence the formation of their identity. We all look for
good influences on our children. In my son's imitation of his
teacher, however, it occurred to me that there was a greater significance, for
his teacher was also imitating another. Indeed, this young man was very keen in
all aspects of his life to follow the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. His
modest dress was in imitation of the Prophet's physical modesty. His scrupulous
cleanliness and love of fragrant oils was modeled after the Prophet's example. At
each stage of the ritual prayer he adopted the positions he was convinced
originated with the Prophet. He could trace the way he recited the Qur'an back
through generations of teachers to the Prophet himself. My son, by imitating
his teacher, had now become part of the living legacy of the Prophet Muhammad. Among Muslims throughout the
world, there are many sincere pious men and women; there are also sinners,
criminals and hypocrites. Some people are deeply affected by religious norms,
others are influenced more by culture-whether traditional or popular culture.
Some aspects of the Prophet's behaviour: his slowness to anger, his abhorence
of oath taking, his gentleness with women, sadly seem to have little affected
the dominant culture in some Muslim societies. Other aspects of his behaviour:
his generosity, his hospitality, his physical modesty, seem to have taken firm
root in most Muslim lands. But everywhere Muslims can be found, more often than
not, they will trace the best aspects of their culture to the example of the
Prophet Muhammad, for he was, in the words of one of his Companions, "the
best of all people in behaviour." It was their excellent behaviour
that attracted me to the first Muslims I met, poor West African students living
on the margins of Paris. They embodied many aspects of the Prophet's sunnah,
although I did not realize it at the time. What I recognized was that, among
their other wonderful qualities, they were the most naturally generous people I
had ever known. There was always room for one more person around the platter of
rice and beans they shared each day. Over the years, in my travels across the
Muslim world, I would witness the same eagerness to share, the same deep belief
that it is not self-denial, but a blessing to give away a little more to
others. The Prophet Muhammad said, "The food of two is enough for
three, and the food of three is enough for four." During the attack on
Kosovo, there were reports of Albanian Muslims filling their houses with
refugees; one man cooked daily for twenty people he allowed in his modest home.
The Prophet Muhammad said,
"When you see one who has more, look to one who has less." When I
was married in Pakistan, my husband and I, as refugee workers, did not have
much money. Returning to the refugee camp a few days after my wedding, the
Afghan women eagerly asked to see the dresses and gold bracelets, rings and
necklaces my husband must have presented to me, as is customary throughout the
Muslim world. I showed them my simple gold ring and told them we had borrowed a
dress for the wedding. The women's faces fell and they looked at me with
profound sadness and sympathy. The next week, sitting in a tent in that dusty
hot camp, the same women-women who had been driven out of their homes and
lands, women who had lost their husbands and children, women who had sold their
own personal belongings to buy food for their families-presented me with a
wedding outfit. Bright blue satin pants stitched with gold embroidery, a red
velveteen dress decorated with colorful pom-poms and a matching blue scarf
trimmed with what I could only think of as a lampshade fringe. It was the most
extraordinary gift I have ever received-not just the outfit, but the lesson in
pure empathy that is one of the sweetest fruits of true faith. An accurate representation of the
Prophet is to be found, first and foremost, on the faces and bodies of his
sincere followers: in the smile that he called "an act of charity,"
in the slim build of one who fasts regularly, in the solitary prostrations of
the one who prays when all others are asleep. The Prophet's most profound
legacy is found in the best behaviour of his followers. Look to his righteous
people, and you will find the Prophet. ++ Dr. Ingrid Mattson, is a
professor of Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary. In 1995, she was an adviser
to the Afghan delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women. The first woman to be elected President of the Islamic Society of
North America. Raised a Roman Catholic in Canada and reverted
to Islam, she is now a highly regarded academic specializing in Islamic society
and law. "Whosoever chooses to follow
guidance, follows it for his own good; whosoever goes astray, goes astray for
his own loss"(al-Isra' 17:15) |
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