12023-01-29T20:04:05-05:00Kevin Guiney27284d5e9164c09945238f77330779abea1b73ab1984plain2023-05-05T23:39:06-04:00ChiChi Ejikemea02c5f14b0bd9a3ed717d5225475c49221ad8a15Hello everyone. Attached below is my calligram made using notability. For my theme, I decided to focus on a famous quote from Rabia al-Adawiyya, the saint and Sufi mystic we discussed in class. She carried a bucket of water and a torch to quell the fires of hell and burn down the gardens of paradise. She believed that people were more concerned with God's dominion over their eternal fate, rather than developing a relationship of unconditional love with God. Instead of worshipping God out of fear of hell or hope for paradise, one should worship with no ulterior motive. I depicted this in my calligram, which depicts a wave of water working to quell the fires of hell as they burn down the cherry blossom trees of paradise. I also attached my original Arabic script, as it may have been cut off a little bit by the shading. Thank you for your time.
Section C (500 words): Offer reflections on Section B. What venue and medium did you choose and why? Who is your audience and why did you select them for your focus? How does your piece represent the idea you highlighted in A?
For section B, I decided on depicting the many shades, faces, and packages in which Islam comes in in terms of its followers. To do this, I used Canva which is a digital platform that allows for creative graphic design projects. I chose to design this art project using my computer in lieu of using Notability to draw because I wanted to create cleaner, more uniform portraits of Muslim people. I chose to focus on this idea of intersectionality because it was the most important takeaway for me from this class. Islam is not bad or good nor are its people. Islam cannot promote violence, as mentioned in Reza Khan’s infamous interview for CNN with Don Lemon that we viewed during Week 3’s in-person seminar. Islam is not patriarchal or modern like Egyptian philosopher Qasir Amin was trying to craft it to be. As Leila Ahmed critiques him in Women and Gender in Islam, Islam is simply a core of beliefs that gain these attributes from the people that interpret it. Imbuing the faith with political agendas distills the purity of the religion’s intentions. For me and my audience of American students, it was important for me to challenge the image of what a Muslim is meant to look like. While yes, they can be Arab, they can also be Black like Omar or Malcolm X, Italian like Imam Aga Khan, or queer like Hanif Kureishi. I wanted to demonstrate the diversity through images, but the people distinctly have no faces because anyone can be Muslim. I added hijabs and head coverings to some but not all to be reminiscent of our discussion on reasoning for wearing the hijab that we had during our Feminism in Islam unit during class. It emphasizes that the practice of Islam is individualized and looks different for everyone. It is not emblematic of their closeness to God, as that relationship, too, is personal.
