Finding the Prophet in his People
Abu-Alwafa
by Ingrid Mattson
Ingrid Mattson is a professor of Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary.
She is Vice President of the Islamic Society of North America.
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, he spoke of her
frequent arduous trips to refugee camps and orphanages to help relief
efforts. With profound respect, he told me of her religious knowledge,
which she imparted to other women in regular lectures. And he 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 woman I found that she was covered, head to toe, in traditional
Islamic dress. I realized with some 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 more from such art than 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.
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