"Mustn't offend? Mustn't offend? That was more important than saving the blessed beauty of our lost civlization...?!"

Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād, c. 1450 – c. 1535
Persian
Advice of the Ascetic, c. 1500-1550

Diana West eloquently puts Islam into perspective with the beginning lines of her recent article: Report from the Future: The Umma States of America:

Imagine a curious soul or two in the not-too-distant future furtively peeling back the layers and learning the cruel truth: that their forbears willingly exchanged all of their precious liberties for tyranny rather than assess and educate and protect themselves against Islamic conquest -- violent, pre-violent, smooth, explosive, financial, political, kafiyya-wrapped or Armani-suited...They will be astonished, also very angry, over the way free men and women in 20th-21st centuries saw fit...to erect a massive and invasive security state that robbed all citizens of their liberties as they fiddled away the Islamic threat. Mustn't offend? Mustn't offend? That was more important than saving the blessed beauty of our lost civlization...?!

Perfect. We try to sympathize with the Islam that we think we can sympathize with. Mine would be the Armani-suited, although I would paraphrase it with the "Islam that attempts to take example from the beauty it finds in the countries it takes over."

I used to have Iranian friends in university. I found their language beautiful, unlike the harsh guttural sounds of Arabic. We used to frequent a couple of Iranian restaurants, where we had dishes flavored with delicate herbs. And my Iranian friends knew about Paris and fashion, although they were careful since those were the days of the Shah's demise and the start of the Iranian revolution, and any Iranian flaunting her assets would be suspect.

But, every single one of them chose their Islam, and their culture, over the Western culture from which they were getting so much. One girl had a terrible time though, louder than her well-mannered friends. She was clearly rebelling. But they put up with her, and protected her. The men, who looked so modern and were so gentlemanly, would marry women they hardly knew, through arrangements made by their families. One married a girl at least eight to ten years his junior, who was into mini-skirts and shaggy hairstyles. During their engagement, he was the model of tolerance and care, letting her go to dance clubs (with him of course). After their marriage, he graduated and they left, so I never knew what became of her.

At one time, I used to to go to every Iranian movie that came out. I even knew the directors, and would look for their new releases. The regular film festivals (the Toronto International Film Festival here in Toronto) used to have whole sections on Iranian films. But, the theme of these films was always the same: the culture of Islam, one way or another, approved or not by the filmmaker, would dominate. The filmmakers were so adroit at going around the restrictions and censorship that are part of Islamic society, that their very endeavor was artistic.

In an article about Muslim women, I describe a video installation by an Iranian woman. I write, taken in by the poetry of her images:

Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat’s video installation "Rapture" shows a group of women traversing a long empty beach with a row boat anchored at a distant shore. The women reach the boat amid ululations. Their long black chadors get caught in the water and the wind. Only a few can board the boat while the rest push them out into the open seas.

Neshat’s women have now reached our shores.

[...]

Another striking video by Shirin Neshat is of a singer. Muslim women are not normally allowed to perform before an audience, but this woman circumvents that order by singing into an empty hall. Her Western film audience is as symbolically absent as are her barred Muslim followers. We cannot understand what she is singing while watching the footage, and they are unable to hear what she’s singing for their absence in the auditorium.

In the end, our attempts at understanding may ultimately be in vain. Even Muslim women cannot clearly articulate, and listen to, their own quandaries and dilemmas.

And it is the same now. As West writes, it is irrelevant the form in which Islam is presented to us, its end game is always the same.


Rapture, 1999
Shirin Neshat [Links to biographical information]
Iranian

Rapture is a two-channel video projection divided down gender lines. The male protagonists of the narrative are projected on the left wall of the gallery, the women on the right (Neshat exploited this binary technique in a series of films made in the late ’90s, like “Shadow Under the Web” of 1997, “Turbulent” of 1998 or “Soliloquy” of 1999). This binary formulation is stressed by the artist’s stark use of black and white (down to the actors’ clothes — women in black veils and robes, men in white shirts and black trousers). The viewer, meanwhile, is right in the middle, confronted with the constant dilemma of where to focus her attention; she can’t fully grasp the action in one scene without turning her back on the other. [Synopsis source]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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