The Islamic Arts Exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris is a reminder of how power and its pervasiveness influences the stories that we tell about ourselves, and others.
This week, I was fortunate to visit the Islamic Arts exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Saud of Saudia Arabia, His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, the late Emir of Kuwait and His Majesty the late Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of the Sultanate of Oman all contributed to the construction of the Islamic Art Gallery which opened more than a decade ago, Alhamdulillah.
After winding my way through the upper floors of vibrant noise and all the colourful sensibilities of Western Europe’s re-representation of its worldly conquests, religiosity and pageantry, I was delighted to find a discreet passage that led me downstairs via a sombre staircase into what felt like a quiet glass cavern inside the Louvre.
It was a curious juxtaposition. On the floors above me, there was all the light, noise and urgency of jostling souls taking selfies. Underneath the bustle, I found myself in a near-empty cave with the words of Allah etched on items both delicate and crude, once loved or discarded by people who have passed before us.
Years earlier, I had visited the Vatican in Rome, and I marvelled at how a space can so aptly personify worldly wealth, power and pride. Later, I pilgrimaged to the House of Allah in Mecca, and again, I was struck by the same feeling of juxtaposition that I felt this week at the Louvre. The Kaaba is like some rare desert flower that sprung up in the middle of a barren, dusty moonscape. Without merciful sustenance, death awaits one on all sides. In the breathtaking simplicity and austereness of the space that defines Mecca, it is a deep oasis of meaning. As if Allah is whispering to his servants, I detest your pride in pomp and pageantry. I have put my House in a barren land, so that all who are worthy to find it, will be sated.
This is what I love about Islam. There is a constant interplay of simultaneous realities, that which is obvious, and that which is hidden. Ablute, then repeat.
There has been many a conversation in our community about the demonization of muslim identity and the deliberate erasure of Muslim contributions to humanity in Western European discourse – which of course spread to the ‘new worlds’ of the US, Australia and beyond. What a shame. Not for us, that must bear derision for it, but if only those who have never ‘entered the peace’ knew just what an honour it is to serve the King of Heaven.
As I wandered the bright halls of the Louvre earlier in the day, I found myself in front of an oil painting ‘La Crucifixion’ by Milanese artist Andrea di Bartolo, painted in 1503.
The scene is dominated by the figure of the Prophet Jesus suffering on the cross. On the left, his mother Mary has fainted and is being supported by his friend, Mary Magdalene and his cousin, the Prophet John. Behind her, a roman centurion, named Longinus is about to pierce his right side with his spear, while the soldiers on the right are playing dice for his robe.
What makes this painting perverse, (aside from theological diversion or deviation – which is a personal matter of interpretation), is how di Bartolo represented Longinus.
The painting is absurd, in the sense that it portrays a scene from over 2,000 years ago with Palestinian people from the House of Imran reimagined in the fashion of the Milanese at the turn of the 16th Century. The ‘villain’ Longinus appears to be the only one out of costume – a Roman centurion from the Duchy of Milan is portrayed as a dark-skinned bearded man wearing a thobe and white turban.
The inference is clear and the fallacy, comedic.
Cultural biases are not a modern-day woke virus, nor is it the singular province of Italian Renaissance artists of the 1500s, indeed, just across the channel, a hundred years later, England’s very own master of comedy and tragedy, the great Bard that was Shakespeare, never portrayed villains as the (mythic) English gentleman either; his antagonists were ‘Italianate savages’, ‘sneaky Jews’ or ‘devilish Moors’.
The defining characteristic of ‘othering’ is a total lack of grace. It is one of the scourges of human failures, that is not defined to a people or place. It is a challenge that we must all work on together to overcome, within our own communities and outside of it – if we are ever to receive grace ourselves from the Most Gracious.
As I neared the end of the Islamic arts exhibition, there is a rather simple, yet elegant dish from central Asia, with the inscription in Arabic, “Magnanimity tastes bitter at first, but sweeter than honey in the end”. If a simple Potter from the ancients understood that to receive grace, one must practice it first, so too can we.
