For the maker shall meet his Maker

Husayn Ahmad

Have you ever heard a muslim say “dīn over dunyā”? I have always found this saying perplexing because for some allotted amount of time, we are stuck here in the dunyā. It does not seem, at first glance, productive to shut ourselves off from the world. To choose the faith over worldly gain, however, is an important attitude for a muslim to have when orienting his gaze towards his external surroundings. The distinction between faith (dīn) and the world (dunyā) finds itself complicated by our very presence in the dunyā. There must be some way to interact with the dunyā such that it improves our spiritual well-being, rather than hinders it. Perhaps it rests in the life of the artist whose duty is to beautify the dunyā. The very act of creating art is one where an artist externalises an idea that came to him internally.

Islāmic Art, perhaps more than any other art, maintains a powerful unity of form despite countless cultural differences amongst the regions that the religion inhabits. This is because all of Islāmic Art, whether it was geometry, music, or architecture, finds itself informed by transcendent spiritual principles. The nature of any transcendent principle is that it remains unchanged even if it finds itself expressed in manifold ways. The muslim artist then finds himself in a position where he must rise up to the level of these principles, and this “rising up” is, in some sense, a spiritual activity. This is because any art which a muslim undertakes is a time-consuming craft of some kind, since the distinction between “art” and “craft” did not exist until much later. Historically speaking, craftsmen were initiated into Sūfi tariqas whose sole concern is to transform men into exceedingly moral beings. Thus, any artist, living in a traditional muslim society, who undertook an art inevitably found himself, whether he was conscious of it or not, undergoing a spiritual transformation.

The prolific writer and theorist of sacred art, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, posited that all art, no matter the medium, whether it be “vibrant air in the case of music or poetry, human flesh on the stage, or stone, metal, clay in architecture, sculpture, and pottery,” necessarily implied a transformation of material [1]. The artist is confronted by material which is both “relatively formless and ugly” and yet, through the “impression of a new form on material,” the artist is able to craft a beautiful piece of art (Coomaraswamy, 3). But just because a transformation of material takes place does not necessarily prove that the artist is transformed.

Coomaraswamy’s colleague René Guénon contends that the process of transformation is one which does fundamentally transforms the artist himself. The creation of art in an ideal sense must be an endeavor that achieves anonymity, both in the object and, most importantly, the artist [2]. A person’s individuality, which is tied to the ego or nafs, "has effaced itself” and has made way for a higher, transcendent Self. Guénon calls this self-transformation a “sublimation” of one’s self, referring to the chemical process of a substance transitioning from a solid state to a gaseous state; from a physical state to a non-corporeal one. This sublimation—which can take place completely ‘inwardly’ so to speak (picture an ascetic locked away from the world performing hours of dhikr)—can find itself externalized. If it does, then it “must ensure…that [the] activity imitates the corresponding anonymity, so that it might be said to participate therein to a certain extent, and it will then furnish a ‘support’ for a spiritual realization to come” (Guénon, 63). For Guénon, art is a deeply spiritual activity, one that profoundly affects the individual who undertakes such a life.

In Fez: City of Islām [3], Titus Burkhardt reminisces about a Moroccan comb-maker he knew who creates combs from ox horns. He directly links craftsmanship to divine origins: “this craft can be traced back from apprentice to master until one reaches our Lord Seth, the son of Adam…I gradually came to understand that there is nothing fortuitous about this craft, that each movement and each procedure is the bearer of an element of wisdom” (Burckhardt, 79). Through a patient and sustained practice with each movement of his craft, the comb-maker comes to an important spiritual realization. He achieves this through consciously spiritualizing every movement: “as he worked he would sing [sic] Koranic sūras in a humming tone” (Burckhardt, 76). Where does the anonymity lie, however? Guénon would argue that it lies in the object itself: “the works of traditional art, those of medieval art…are generally anonymous and it is only very recently that attempts have been made, as a result of modern individualism, to attach the few names to known masterpieces” (Guénon, 62). The achievement of anonymity in the artistic object inevitably leads to an anonymity in the artist himself, thus merging the body with its spirit. But an object such as a comb or painting bears the possibility of becoming impersonal. I can hang up a painting on my wall and ignore it for weeks, or stop using the comb for a couple of days.

Architecture does not afford us this luxury. The built environment affects how we live, which consequently affects how we think. Islamic architect Abdel Wāḥed el-Wakīl, in a recent conversation with Notre Dame professor Lucien Steil, speaks of the urban design of modern cities as “schizophrenic”; the necessary consequence of which is to become a schizophrenic society. The artistic object of the architect (his designs and blueprints) must find themselves built with real materials found in the world. Whether one is designing a comb, a mosque, or a city, expertise in these arts concerns both a technical aspect as well as an aesthetic presentation. Theory is inevitably bulwarked through praxis. Or to put it more succinctly, dīn must find itself expressed in the dunyā. The life of the artist is one that begins in linear movement, but through the act of artistic creation, we find that it returns to where it began. The maker becomes a reflection of his ultimate Maker, if only for an instant.

Works Cited

1 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought? The Traditional View of Art. World Wisdom, Inc., 2007

2 Guénon, René. “Chapter 9: The Twofold Significance of Anonymity.” The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Sophia Perennis, 2004.

3 Burkhardt, Titus. Fez: City of Islam. The Islamic Texts Society 1992.

Husayn Aḥmad (@wisdomhousee) received his Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a filmmaker and writer with a passion for the intellectual origins of art and its impact on culture.